Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

In this celebration of contemporary American fiction, Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream. The expansive future promised by the American Dream has been replaced, Hume finds, by a sense of tarnished morality and a melancholy loss of faith in America's exceptionalism. American Dream, American Nightmare examines the differing critiques of America embedded in nearly a hundred novels and points to the source for recovery that appeals to many of the authors. Hume's discussion covers a broad range of contemporary writers, including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo.

Fiction --- American literature --- Psychological study of literature --- anno 1980-1989 --- anno 1960-1969 --- anno 1970-1979 --- anno 1990-1999

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Pynchon, Thomas

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Debate poetry, English (Middle) --- Civilization, Medieval, in literature --- Birds in literature --- History and criticism --- Owl and the nightingale (Middle English poem) --- -Civilization, Medieval, in literature --- Debate poetry, Middle English --- English debate poetry, Middle --- Middle English debate poetry --- English poetry --- Civilization, Medieval, in literature. --- Birds in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Owl and the nightingale (Middle English poem). --- Debate poetry, English (Middle) - History and criticism

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers-or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. Kathryn Hume calls such works "aggressive fiction." Why would authors risk alienating their readers-and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, Hume offers a commonsense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy.In her reliable and sympathetic guide, Hume considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. Hume gathers "attacks" on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.

Aversion in literature. --- American fiction --- Aggressiveness in literature. --- American literature --- Aggressiveness (Psychology) in literature --- History and criticism.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

In this celebration of contemporary American fiction, Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream. In breaking down the divisions among standard categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies shared core concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected writers including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo. Hume explores fictional treatments of the slippage in the immigrant experience between America's promise and its reality. She exposes the political link between contemporary stories of lost innocence and liberalism's inadequacies. She also invites us to look at the literary challenge to scientific materialism in various searches for a spiritual dimension in life. The expansive future promised by the American Dream has been replaced, Hume finds, by a sense of tarnished morality and a melancholy loss of faith in America's exceptionalism. American Dream, American Nightmare examines the differing critiques of America embedded in nearly a hundred novels and points to the source for recovery that appeals to many of the authors.

American Fiction (Collections) --- Fiction