Description
Book SynopsisFrom Flannery O'Connor and James Baldwin to the post-9/11 writings of Don DeLillo, imaginative writers have often been the most insightful chroniclers of the USA's changing religious life since the end of World War II. Exploring a wide range of writers from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and secular faiths, this book
is an in-depth study of contemporary fiction's engagement with religious belief, identity and practice. Through readings of major writers of our time like Saul Bellow, E. L. Doctorow, Philip Roth, Marilynne Robinson and John Updike, Mark Eaton discovers a more nuanced picture of the varieties of American religious experience: that they are more commonplace than cultural ideas of progressive secularisation or faith-based polarization might suggest.
Trade Review[Eaton shows] the depth and power of literary analysis when it takes the religious into serious consideration. * Cercles Book Review *
Eaton’s book challenges longstanding narratives about secularization by showing how uneven and often unpredictable spiritual experience is today...This is a bracing and encouraging work of cutting edge literary analysis of the continuing relevance and mystery of the spiritual and religious in our everyday lives—a must read for everyone doing work in these fields. * Harold K. Bush, Professor of English, Saint Louis University, USA *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Suspending Disbelief Chapter 1: “Cursed with Believing”: Failed Apostasy in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction Chapter 2: Conversion and Storefront Pentecostalism in James Baldwin’s Harlem Chapter 3: Secular Theodicy: Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, and Philip Roth Chapter 4: Apocalypse Then: Eschatology in Don DeLillo’s America Notes Bibliography
