In 1983, McCaffery published two books in the field of postmodern literary studies. The first was The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Coover, Gass, and Barthelme, which explored the emergence of the "meta-impulse" as one of the defining features of postmodern aesthetics.[4] The second was Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (with Tom LeClair), which helped identify the major innovative authors associated with postmodernism.[5]
McCaffery went on to publish three additional collections of interviews with contemporary authors: Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s with Sinda Gregory (1986),[6]Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors (1990),[7] and Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors (1995).[8] McCaffery explains that the interviews within these works begin orally, and, after being transcribed from tape and edited by both McCaffery and the interviewee, become "collaborative texts based on an actual conversation rather than a direct rendering of that conversation".[8] These works established "avant-prof" critic Lance Olsen to dub McCaffery as "Guru of the Interview"[9]
During his career as Professor at SDSU, McCaffery played a large role as editor of literary journals. In 1983, McCaffery arranged to have the literary journal, Fiction International move to SDSU from New York City, where it had been edited and published by Joe David Bellamy since 1973.[10] McCaffery served as co-editor of FI with Harold Jaffe for the next decade, during which it became one of the leading publishers of radically innovative, politically charged fiction.[10] Since the early eighties, he has also been an editor of American Book Review, and executive editor of Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. McCaffery has guest-edited several special issues of other literary magazines, including Mississippi Review's landmark "Cyberpunk Issue".[11][12]
McCaffery is briefly mentioned in Raymond Federman's novel The Twofold Vibration,[19] and is mentioned throughout William T. Vollmann's book Imperial.[20] He has also been quoted in an article in The New Yorker about David Foster Wallace's legacy.[21]
He created a theory of media/visual studies about the relation between memory, narrative, and sexuality called "Avant-Porn," as claimed in his introduction to Michael Hemmingson's 2000 anthology, WTF: The Avant-Porn Anthology.[22] a true account.[23]
^McCaffery on Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium ("GLORY DAYS: A BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SYMPOSIUM - Admin". Archived from the original on 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2011-02-25.)
^See McCaffery's chapter "The Fictions of the Present." The Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Eliiott. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 116–77. (ISBN 978-0-231-05812-4)
^ a b c"January 2000".
^The Metafictional Muse: The Work of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. (ISBN 978-0-8229-3462-2)
^"Guru of the Interview": Lance Olsen reviews Across the Wounded Galaxies In American Book Review August/September 1990, p. 1 (http://americanbookreview.org/issueContent.asp?id=97)
^ a b"Fiction International". Archived from the original on 2008-07-24.
^Mississippi Review: The Cyberpunk Controversy. #47/48. 1988. Including general introduction, "The Desert of the Real: The Cyberpunk Controversy."
^"Readercon: Guests". Archived from the original on 2006-07-15.
^for essay "Towards the Theoretical Frontiers of 'Fiction:' From Metafiction and Cyberpunk through Avant-Pop" (with Takayuki Tatsumi), SF Eye. 12 (Summer 1993):43-50.
^Federman, Raymond. The Twofold Vibration. Green Integer. 2000. (ISBN 978-1-892295-29-3)
^Vollmann, William T., Imperial. Viking, 2009 (ISBN 978-0-670-02061-4)
^"David Foster Wallace's Struggle to Surpass "Infinite Jest"". The New Yorker. March 2009.
^"Dust Devil" (critifictional introduction) In Michael Hemmingson, ed., What the Fuck: The Avant-Porn Anthology. NY: Soft Skull Press, 2001, pp. i–xi. (ISBN 978-1-887128-61-2)
^American Book Review, September/October 1999, Volume 20, Issue 6. (http://www.litline.org/abr/issues/volume20/issue6/abr100.html)
^McCaffery's 100 and explanation at Spineless Books (http://www.spinelessbooks.com/mccaffery/100/index.html)
External links
Interview with McCaffery by Alexander Laurence
The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English Language Books of Fiction, list by Larry McCaffery at ABR