Genres of Doom: Reporting from Cities in Crisis

This is a study of narratives—fictional, non-fictional, or both—set in crisis-stricken cities: the ambience of doom is arguably at its most compelling where fictional and non-fictional elements coalesce. Reflecting on issues of genre, the book references literary representations of various crises having emerged in Alexandria, London, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong, all of which were triggered by momentous historical events. Yet inherent in doom is a hyperbolic and therefore fictional aesthetic; cities represented as doomed are highly sensual, if not always spectacular, aesthetic objects, which, in our postmodern present, are still constructed through modernist flânerie and stream-of-consciousness. Foregrounding the blending of fiction and non-fiction in reports of cities in crisis, this monograph traces the development of doom as a genre in itself. Doom-writing was inspired by the late-twentieth-century English travelogue, but has influenced genres as diverse as documentary films and literary memoirs.