Tüllmann, Mareike
Writers, Readers, and True Crime

Negotiating Truth and Meaning in Contemporary American Nonfiction.

This study traces the development of the 'True Crime' genre and its central role in American reading culture, focusing on contemporary texts, which, after Capote had made the genre reputable in the 1960s with In Cold Blood, have played a dominant role in the American literary marketplace in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The study constitutes a literary and cultural history of true crime that investigates the social and cultural significance of the genre as well as the question of authenticity in documentary texts that make a point of crossing the border between fact and fiction. It studies the contemporary nonfiction texts regarding their approach to questions of truth in light of postmodern epistemological skepticism as well as their allusions to and use of public discourse on violence and fear. 293 Seiten, broschiert (Arbeiten zur Amerikanistik; Band 41/Verlag Die Blaue Eule 2012)