| What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920-1960 Contributor(s): Hutner, Gordon (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807872121 ISBN-13: 9780807872123 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $42.75 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Literary Criticism | American - General |
| Dewey: 813.520 |
| LCCN: 2008050469 |
| Physical Information: 1.15" H x 5.76" W x 8.94" (1.37 lbs) 464 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Despite the vigorous study of modern American fiction, today's readers are only familiar with a partial shelf of a vast library. Gordon Hutner describes the distorted, canonized history of the twentieth-century American novel as a record of modern classics insufficiently appreciated in their day but recuperated by scholars in order to shape the grand tradition of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. In presenting literary history this way, Hutner argues, scholars have forgotten a rich treasury of realist novels that recount the story of the American middle-class's confrontation with modernity. Reading these novels now offers an extraordinary opportunity to witness debates about what kind of nation America would become and what place its newly dominant middle class would have--and, Hutner suggests, should also lead us to wonder how our own contemporary novels will be remembered. |
Contributor Bio(s): Hutner, Gordon: - Gordon Hutner is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founding editor of the journal American Literary History. |