At a Loss

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature grade: 13 University of Potsdam course: HS: From Poe to Akunin: Highlights of the international Mystery Story in literature and film language: English abstract: This paper is building up on postmodern patterns of fragmentation loneliness and disorientation. The Quest is a central storytelling technique - in times where traditional ways of living and social constellations fade and the grand narratives have lost their guiding functions people have to mind-map their own routes through a fagmentary world. The paper establishes the quest form in the 1966 book by Pynchon and draws lines of tradition to Jarmusch's 2005 Browken Flowers.