As noted above, Butler has placed in a tradition represented by Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Joyce's Ulysses. In its innovative complexity of narrative technique, Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock fits well with those classics but, naturally, reflects as well the theory and practice of other important writers and other developments in fiction in the mid and later twentieth century. "Postmodern" fiction leaves its mark in the "metafictional" liberties the author takes with traditional fictional representations of reality, as well as in his technical manipulations of narrative voice. The idea of the "unreliable narrator" is here, as in Butler's other novels, carried to new extremes: even the narrator's identity — even his (or Its) existence — is open to question.

Another, more generalized fictional tradition in which Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock operates is the trend (most prominent...