Bøger i Understanding Contemporary American Literature serien

With the publication of Susan Sontag's diaries, the development of her career can now be evaluated in a more genetic sense, so that the origins of her ideas and plans for publication are made plain in the context of her role as a public intellectual, who is increasingly aware of her impact on her culture. In Understanding Susan Sontag, Carl Rollyson not only provides an introduction to her essays, novels, plays, films, diaries, and uncollected work published in various periodicals, he now has a lens through which to reevaluate classic texts such as Against Interpretation and On Photography, providing both students and advanced scholars a renewed sense of her importance and impact. Rollyson devotes separate chapters to Sontag's biography; her early novels; her landmark essay collections Against Interpretation and Styles of Radical Will; her films; her major mid-career books, On Photography and its sequel, Regarding the Pain of Others; and Illness as Metaphor and its sequel, AIDS and Its Metaphors, together with her groundbreaking short story, "e;The Way We Live Now."e; Sontag's later essay collections and biographical profiles, collected in Under the Sign of Saturn, Where the Stress Falls, and At The Same Time: Essays and Speeches, also receive a fresh assessment, as does her later work in short fiction, the novel, and drama, with a chapter discussing I, etcetera; two historical novels, The Volcano Lover and In America; and her plays, A Parsifal, Alice in Bed, and her adaptation of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. Chapters on her diaries and uncollected prose, along with a primary and secondary bibliography, complete this comprehensive study.

Pat Conroy's work as a novelist and a memoirist has indelibly shaped the image of the American South in the cultural imagination. His writing has rendered the physical landscape of the South Carolina lowcountry familiar to legions of readers, and it has staked out a more complex geography as well, one defined by domestic trauma, racial anxiety, religious uncertainty, and cultural ambivalence. In Understanding Pat Conroy, Catherine Seltzer engages in a sustained consideration of Conroy and his work. The study begins with a sketch of Conroy's biography, a narrative that, while fascinating in its own right, is employed here to illuminate many of the motifs and characters that define his work and to locate him within southern literary tradition. The volume then moves on to explore each of Conroy's major works, tracing the evolution of the themes within and among each of his novels, including The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and South of Broad, and his memoirs, among them The Water Is Wide and My Losing Season. Seltzer's insightful close readings of Conroy's work are supplemented by interviews and archival material, shedding new light on the often-complex dynamics between text and context in Conroy's oeuvre. More broadly Understanding Pat Conroy also explores the ways that Conroy delights in troubling the boundaries that circumscribe the literary establishment. Seltzer links Conroy's work to existing debates about the contemporary American canon, and, like Conroy's work itself, Understanding Pat Conroy will be of interest to his readers, students of American literature, and new and veteran South watchers.

Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major-but understudied-American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose. His status in the front ranks of American poets and thinkers on poetry was acknowledged in 1984, when he won the Shelley Memorial Award, which had previously gone, as an acknowledgement of "e;genius and need,"e; to E. E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, and W. S. Merwin. In this first book-length study of Knight and his complete body of work, Michael Collins examines the poetry of a complex literary figure who, following imprisonment, transformed his life to establish himself as a charismatic voice in American poetry and an accomplished teacher at institutions such as the University of Hartford, Lincoln University, and his own Free Peoples Poetry Workshops. Beginning with a concise biography of Knight, Collins explores Knight's volumes of poetry including Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Born of a Woman, and The Essential Etheridge Knight. Understanding Etheridge Knight brings attention to a crucial era in African American and American poetry and to the literature of the incarcerated while reflecting on the life and work of an original voice in American poetry.

Named by Harold Bloom as one of the most significant American novelists of our time, Cormac McCarthy has been honored with the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for The Road, and the coveted MacArthur Fellowship. In Understanding Cormac McCarthy Steven Frye offers a comprehensive treatment of McCarthy's fiction to date, dealing with the author's aesthetic and thematic concerns, his philosophical and religious influences, and his participation in Western literary traditions. Frye provides extensive readings of each novel, charting the trajectory of McCarthy's development as a writer who invigorates literary culture both past and present through a blend of participation, influence, and aesthetic transformation. He explores the early works of the Tennessee period in the context of the romance genre, the southern gothic, and the grotesque. A chapter is devoted to Blood Meridian, a novel that marks McCarthy's transition to the West and his full recognition as a major force in American letters. Frye also explores McCarthy's Border Trilogy and his later works-specifically No Country for Old Men and The Road-addressing the manner in which McCarthy's preoccupation with violence and human depravity exists alongside a perpetual search for meaning, purpose, and value.

Examines the common threads that interlace William Vollmann's corpus and grapples with the depth and complexity of his massive output. In her readings of Vollmann's works, Isil Izcan identifies a rich but accessible Set of themes that he explores afresh in each text, including death, war, violence, suffering, and love.

The winner of every major American literary prize, John Updike (1932-2009) was one of the most popular and prolific novelists of his time and a major cultural figure who traced the high point and fall of mid-century American self-confidence and energy. This volume offers a close look at the extraordinary literary achievements of this popular and prolific American author.

Offers a thoughtful examination of the life and work of William Gibson, author of eleven novels and twenty short stories. This study situates Gibson as a major figure in both science fiction history and contemporary American fiction, and it traces how his aesthetic affected both areas of literature.

An analysis introducing Mason's nonfiction prose, short stories and novels. Price sheds light on the writer's distinctive style and thematic concerns in her writings about contemporary Western Kentucky.

A companion to the novels of the king of the Beats. It introduces readers to what Matt Theado calls Kerouac's 'unwieldy accretion of published work' - fiction, poetry, nonfiction, selected letters, religious writing, and 'true-story novels'.

Offers close readings of James Welch's poems and five novels, as well as his volume of nonfiction, ""Killing Custer"", which tells the story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn from a Native American perspective. This title demonstrates how Welch wrote each of the novels from a different angle.

Presents an introduction to Richard Powers - one of the important and admired writers to emerge in the post-Pynchon era of American literature. This title places Powers in context as a major voice in the first generation born entirely within the era of television and the computer.

Explores the idiosyncratic vision that permeates Heller's writings, and maps the dark terrain Heller carved out, novel by novel, with considerable verbal dazzle.

An appraisal of six theorists who have shaped America's literary landscape. It offers analyses of their principle claims and illustrates how their works reflect a range of critical perspectives, also including a short history of 20th-century theory and criticism.

The author of seven short story collections and eleven novels, T C Boyle has been honored with the 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award for ""World's End"" and the 1997 Prix Medicis Etranger for ""The Tortilla Curtain"". This title presents study of this contemporary America's most prolific, popular, and critically acclaimed fiction writers.

The recipient of the 1998 O Henry Award and the 2004 Rea Award for the Short Story, Lorrie Moore is best known for her short fiction. This book shows that Moore's virtuosic prose, wry humor, and sense of irony are tools for registering how Americans face the discomfort of their daily lives as individuals and as a nation.

Introduces readers to the author best known for Postcards and The Shipping News. The book examines her lyrical prose and wealth of detail, and analyses her primary thematic concern - the way ordinary people conduct their lives in the face of massive social, economic, and ecological change.

Filling the gap of critical study on McCorkle, Barbara Bennett analyzes the widely read and admired output of this prolific southern woman writer. Bennett identifies and discusses the diverse characters, thematic concerns and keen sense of language that distinguish McCorkle's work.

In examining the four novels and one collection of short stories by Hubert Selby Jr, this author argues that the full complexity of his fiction has not previously been understood. It contends that Selby's writings, represent an innovative merger of two narrative modes.

Charles Wright's work centers around a lengthy self-described ""Trilogy of Trilogies"" project consisting of ""Country Music"", ""The World of the Ten Thousand Things"", and ""Negative Blue"". This title offers a study of Wright's body of work. It provides readers an introduction to the books and themes that have defined the poet's illustrious career.

Presents an analysis of Vonnegut's fiction as a point of entrance for students and general readers. This title examines the distinctive stylistic, thematic, and formally innovative elements that earned Vonnegut (1922-2007) a mass following, especially among young readers, as well as critical respect among scholars.

Introduces readers to the author known for the novels ""Annie John"", ""Lucy"", and ""The Autobiography of My Mother"". This work surveys Jamaica Kincaid's life, career, and works of fiction and nonfiction to identify and discuss her interests in familial relations, Caribbean culture, and aftermath of colonialism and exploitation.

Carson McCullers was deemed the ""find of the decade"" when she appeared on the literary scene at the age of twenty-three and is best remembered for her celebrated novels ""The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter"" and ""The Member of the Wedding."" This book provides a balanced introductory study of her major fiction and shows her as more than a lesbian novelist.

Surveys Flannery O'Connor's short stories, novels, essays and letters, as well as the body of criticism that has proliferated since her death in 1964. The book illumines the religious themes and bizarre characters that make O'Connor's prose so different from that of other American writers.