The Modern American Novel: New Revised Edition
by Malcolm Bradbury
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The Modern American Novel is an indispensable handbook for all those interested in the novel and American culture. This new, completely revised and updated edition of Malcolm Bradbury's examination of the modern American novel offers an extensive account of the multiplicity and variety ofcontemporary American fiction, while providing a clear critical survey of the fictional scene from the 1890s to 1991.In this broad study, Malcolm Bradbury traces the development of naturalism and show more impressionism, the growth of modernism, the realism of the thirties and forties, to the postmodern experiment of the sixties, and the work of contemporary American writers. show lessTags
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A brilliant survey of American novels from the 1890s to the 1990s, this book provides an overview that highlights the best in American fiction. While eminently readable, it basically provides a reference for readers interested in exploring the best in American fiction.
This is a useful survey of the American novel from roughly 1890 to 1990. As in his similar survey of the British novel each chapter begins with a short sweeping cultural and literary overview followed by discussion of major figures and some of their work. This book is much more disciplined than the rather baggy, underedited, and verbose British volume. As the book gets closer to the present the coverage skews between what amount to somewhat sketchy annotated lists and longer set pieces clearly based on previously published reviews. Curiously, the "List of Major Works" includes a number of writers not covered in the text, and vice versa. There is an extended annotated bibliography.
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66+ Works 5,685 Members
A professor of English literature and American studies who has published numerous critical works, Malcolm Bradbury is also a novelist whose protagonists are academics who make muddles of their personal and professional lives. He maintains that his main concern is to explore problems and dilemmas of liberalism and issues of moral responsibility. show more The targets of Bradbury's satires include intellectual pretension, cultural myopia, and official smugness. His protagonists are largely sympathetic, if comic, failures at mastering their own fates in a world of absurd rules and regulations. His major novels include Eating People Is Wrong (1959), Stepping Westward (1965), and The History Man (1975). This last, a novel of intellectual and political conflict at an English university in the late 1960s, was made into a successful television minidrama. More recent novels include Rates of Exchange (1983) and Cuts (1987). (Bowker Author Biography) Malcolm Bradbury is a novelist, critic, television dramatist, & satirist. His many books include "Rates of Exchange", which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, & "The Modern American Novel". (Publisher Provided) show less
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- Members
- 114
- Popularity
- 286,072
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.61)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 1
