Description
Book SynopsisDesire and Disillusionment: A Guide to American Fiction Since 1890 departs from the typical academic study in that it appeals to the general reading public, undergraduate and graduate students, and literary scholars. The book's focus on a highly relatable subject, longing and loss, its running plot summaries, and lucid presentation account for this broad appeal. Lawrence E. Hussman examines selected novels and short stories of fifty major American fiction writers from Stephen Crane to Junot Diaz. The reader will also find references to American politics, history, and popular culture in the book. Additionally, the author's decidedly original, provocative critical approach delivers new insights that will reshape thinking about American literature as a reflection of the nation's way of life. Literary critics will find the discussion of naturalism as a bridge to modernism and postmodernism especially enlightening. Furthermore, the book includes a summary of ideas about desire from t
Table of ContentsContents: The Provenance of Longing – Preamble: American Desire and Literary Naturalism – Writers: Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Frank Norris (1870–1902), Kate Chopin (1851–1904), Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), Jack London (1876–1916), Edith Wharton (1862–1937), Willa Cather (1873–1947), Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) Carson McCullers (1917–1967), Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), William Faulkner (1897–1962), Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), John Steinbeck (1902–1968), John Dos Passos (1896–1970) Nathanael West (1903–1940), James T. Farrell (1904–1979), Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), Richard Wright (1908–1960), Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964), E. B. White (1899–1985), Walker Percy (1916–1990), Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977), J.D. Salinger (1919–2010), Truman Capote (1924–1984), Saul Bellow (1915–2005), Evan S. Connell (1924–2013), James Baldwin (1924–1987), Richard Yates (1926–1992), John Updike (1932–2009), Norman Mailer (1923–2007), Philip Roth (*1933), John Cheever (1912–1982), Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), William Styron (1925–2006), Toni Morrison (*1931), Cormac McCarthy (*1933), N. Scott Momaday (*1934), Annie Proulx (*11935), Don DeLillo (*1936), Raymond Carver (1938–1988), Joyce Carol Oates (*1938), Bharati Mukherjee (*1940), John Irving (*1942), Lee Smith (*1944), Jane Smiley (*1949), Jay McInerney (*1955), Elizabeth Strout (*1956), Junot Díaz (*1968) – Conclusion: Past as Future – Afterword: A Call to Contentment.
