Book Description

This specially commissioned volume of essays offers a refreshing and unusual perspective on classic novels from the American literary canon. Accessible to students, scholars and the interested reader, this engaging collection explores familiar novels through unfamiliar lenses and, in so doing, sheds light on surprising and previously overlooked aspects of each text. Reading America presents a new approach to American literature by showcasing a cross-section of recent research into previously un-tapped areas of interest. Each chapter attempts to re-read classic American texts using new or unorthodox theoretical frameworks, including such diverse topics as an Emersonian reading of Don DeLillo, decoding Thomas Pynchon with eco-criticism and understanding Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy by exploring the graphic novel version of “City of Glass”. Other authors explored in this way include Henry James, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This type of approach widens the reader’s knowledge of each well-known text and encourages new critical evaluations of contemporary American literature. The collection moves through six large topic areas, from Naturalism and an idea of the “Great American Novel” at the end of the nineteenth century, through politics, sexuality, language and nature, to a contemporary engagement with postmodernism. Each essay deals with its own particular subject and author, but the full impact of each on the notion of the “American novel” as a phenomenon can only be understood when read in conjunction with the others. Of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, Reading America would be a valuable asset to any American Studies or American Literature degree course, and a useful companion to American History or Politics courses. The volume will also attract strong interest from established academics, especially those researching the fields of literature, critical theory, cultural history and politics.