Mowery holds a Ph.D. in composition and literature from Southern Illinois University. In this essay, Mowery examines narrative techniques in postmodern fiction.

One facet of Postmodernism that sets it apart from Modernism is the attitude that postmodern authors bring to fiction. While the modernist was concerned with precision both in language and presentation, the postmodernist breaks with these established practices. Time lines are often disrupted, leaving it to the reader to determine the order of events. At other times narrative expectations are upset as the author either contradicts the narrative or intrudes deliberately into the story line.

The way an author tells a story is through a narrator. Generally the narrator is not the author but a created persona with a personality, a behavior pattern and special reasons for telling the story in the manner it is being told. For example, the narrator of the Edgar...