Many readers imagine Gavin Stevens as the character most similar to William Faulkner in all of his apocryphal Yoknapatawpha, and while Stevens was once considered the most reliable Faulknerian spokesp
Offers a fictional portrayal of the darkest period of the American Revolution, when Washington's army was close to total collapse in the summer and fall of 1776
Chandarlapaty (composition and literature, Southern U, New Orleans) explores the literary and cultural contribution of the Beat Generation by focusing on the life and works of Paul Bowles, William S.
American Literature in Transition, 2000–2010 illuminates the dynamic transformations that occurred in American literary culture during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The volume is the first major critical collection to address the literature of the 2000s, a decade that saw dramatic changes in digital technology, economics, world affairs, and environmental awareness. Beginning with an introduction that takes stock of the period's major historical, cultural, and literary movements, the volume features accessible essays on a wide range of topics, including genre fiction, the treatment of social networking in literature, climate change fiction, the ascendency of Amazon and online booksellers, 9/11 literature, finance and literature, and the rise of prestige television. Mapping the literary culture of a decade of promise and threat, American Literature in Transition, 2000–2010 provides an invaluable resource on twenty-first century American literature for general readers
Written in the shadow of the approaching millennium, American literature in the 1990s was beset by bleak announcements of the end of books, the end of postmodernism, and even the end of literature. Yet, as conservative critics marked the century's twilight hours by launching elegies for the conventional canon, American writers proved the continuing vitality of their literature by reinvigorating inherited forms, by adopting and adapting emerging technologies to narrative ends, and by finding new voices that had remained outside that canon for too long. By reading 1990s literature in a sequence of shifting contexts - from independent presses to the AIDS crisis, and from angelology to virtual reality - American Literature in Transition, 1990–2000 provides the fullest map yet of the changing shape of a rich and diverse decade's literary production. It offers new perspectives on the period's well-known landmarks, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, but also overdue
Michael Chabon’s America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces is the first comprehensive scholarly collection analyzing the work of acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon.
June (English literature and criticism, Paine College, Atlanta, Georgia) explores how fragmentation has defined women's position in the US, and how recent, multi-ethnic American women authors have emb
In Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American Novel, Bob Batchelor explores the birth, life, and enduring influence ofThe Great Gatsby—from the book’s publication in 1925 through today’s headl
American Realist Fictions of Marriage: From Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton to Frances Harper, Pauline Hopkins intervenes in the field of American literary realism by arguing that selected marriage fiction
Playing with Expectations: Postmodern Narrative Choices and the African American Novel explores a merging of works by African American novelists to promote critical acceptance of postmodern literature
American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980 examines the literary developments of the twentieth-century's gaudiest decade. For a quarter century, filmmakers, musicians, and historians have returned to the era to explore the legacy of Watergate, stagflation, and Saturday Night Fever, uncovering the unique confluence of political and economic phenomena that make the period such a baffling time. Literary historians have never shown much interest in the era, however - a remarkable omission considering writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Marilyn French, Adrienne Rich, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Alice Walker, and Octavia E. Butler were active. Over the course of twenty-one essays, contributors explore a range of controversial themes these writers tackled, from 1960s' nostalgia to feminism and the redefinition of masculinity to sexual liberation and rock 'n' roll. Other essays address New Journalism, the rise of blockbuster culture, memoir and self-help, and crime fiction -
Smith (mythological studies, Pacifica Graduate Institute) presents five mini-studies of stories by Thomas Pynchon that tease out what Smith terms "necrotypes," archetypes catalyzed by a trip or connec
The 1920s offered a veritable explosion of distinctively American fiction for the first time, from many of the nation’s most widely heralded writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, John Dos
The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and strategi
