MAKING SENSE OF THE PRESENT: WAKEFIELD AND THE 21ST CENTURY WELTANSCHAUUNG
MAKING SENSE OF THE PRESENT: WAKEFIELD AND THE 21ST CENTURY WELTANSCHAUUNG

Summary/Abstract: Andrei Codrescu is, undoubtedly, one of the most critically acclaimed Romanian-American writers. Born in Sibiu in 1946, Codrescu immigrated to the United States as a teenager, eventually settling in New Orleans where he developed a successful literary and teaching career at the University of Louisiana. The aim of this paper is to analyze, from a cultural perspective, his 2004 novel, Wakefield. Setting off on a journey to understand the 21st century American zeitgeist, Wakefield, the novel’s eponymous character, exposes the strangest phenomena in our contemporary society; examples include the appearance of Internet money, ethnic wars, the clash of cultures, globalism gone awry and the perpetual search of one’s origins in a country that is constantly on the move. The novel becomes representative, not just for the American society, but for the world community as a whole, since it addresses problems that are pervasive in almost every culture and country.

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