The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction

by Stacey Olster

Overview

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction explores fiction written over the last thirty years in the context of the profound political, historical, and cultural changes that have distinguished the contemporary period. Focusing on both established and emerging writers - and with chapters devoted to the American historical novel, regional realism, the American political novel, the end of the Cold War and globalization, 9/11, borderlands and border identities, race, and the legacy of postmodern aesthetics - this Introduction locates contemporary American fiction at the intersection of a specific time and long-standing traditions. In the process, it investigates the entire concept of what constitutes an “American” author while exploring the vexed, yet resilient, nature of what the concept of home has come to signify in so much writing today. This wide-ranging study will be invaluable to students, instructors, and general readers alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107049215
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/09/2017
Series:	Cambridge Introductions to Literature
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Stacey Olster is Professor of English at Stony Brook University, a former Fulbright Fellow Scholar, and an award-winning teacher. She is the author of Reminiscence and Re-Creation in Contemporary American Fiction (Cambridge, 1989) and The Trash Phenomenon: Contemporary Literature, Popular Culture, and the Making of the American Century (2003), and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (Cambridge, 2006) and Don DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man (2011). Her articles on contemporary American literature and culture have appeared in essay collections and journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Critical Inquiry, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Critique.

Table of Contents

Introduction: from Sweet Home to homeland; 1. History and the novel; 2. Regional realism; 3. The contemporary political novel; 4. The novel and 9/11; 5. Smooth worlds; 6. Borderlands and border identities; 7. Race relations; Conclusion: postscripts and post-postmodernism; Works cited; Index.