SOURCE: Klinkowitz, Jerome. “Ritual: Max Apple's History of Our Times.” In Structuring the Void: The Struggle for Subject in Contemporary American Fiction, pp. 73–90. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Klinkowitz analyzes Apple's depiction of American cultural history and usage of cultural icons, and compares Apple's writing to that of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan.

As Kurt Vonnegut takes the otherwise unknowable self and from its elements constructs a system for interpreting the world, so does Max Apple approach the history of our times, which would otherwise remain an ineluctable subject, and transform it into something writable and therefore understandable. In doing so he follows Vonnegut's example in several important ways.

Americans do require richly colored symbols, three dimensional and juicy, Vonnegut tells one of his own characters in Breakfast of Champions. Max Apple understands this need, and by taking advantage of the great technical innovations forged...