The Book Contains Well Researched Articles By Scholars From Indian Universities. The Articles Offer A Comprehensive View Of What American Fiction Has Been Like During The Last Hundred Years Or So. American Culture, Society, Family, Cities Of Blacks And Whites Have Been Variously Framed Into The Narrative Art Form By A Galaxy Of Talented American Novelists : Mark Twain, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Faulkner, Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Salinger, Norman Mailer, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Ernest J. Gaines, Among Others. The Editor Has Adopted A Chronological Approach And The Emphasis In Articles Has Fallen Upon Providing A Synoptic View Of American Fiction Rather Than Giving A Historical Account Of It. The Approaches Covered Here Are Multi-Disciplinary As Well As Intertextual. The Reader, Teacher And Scholar Should Find The Book Full Of Fresh Insights.

A dazzling anthology of essays by some of the best writers of the past quarter century—from Barry Lopez and Margo Jefferson to David Sedaris and Samantha Irby—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate. The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a blossoming of creative nonfiction. In this extraordinary collection, Phillip Lopate gathers essays by forty-seven of America’s best contemporary writers, mingling long-established eminences with newer voices and making room for a wide variety of perspectives and styles. The Contemporary American Essay is a monument to a remarkably adaptable form and a treat for anyone who loves fantastic writing. Hilton Als • Nicholson Baker • Thomas Beller • Sven Birkerts • Eula Biss • Mary Cappello • Anne Carson • Terry Castle • Alexander Chee • Teju Cole • Bernard Cooper • Sloane Crosley • Charles D’Ambrosio • Meghan Daum • Brian Doyle • Geoff Dyer • Lina Ferreira • Lynn Freed • Rivka Galchen • Ross Gay • Louise Glück • Emily Fox Gordon • Patricia Hampl • Aleksandar Hemon • Samantha Irby • Leslie Jamison • Margo Jefferson • Laura Kipnis • David Lazar • Yiyun Li • Phillip Lopate • Barry Lopez • Thomas Lynch • John McPhee • Ander Monson • Eileen Myles • Maggie Nelson • Meghan O’Gieblyn • Joyce Carol Oates • Darryl Pinckney • Lia Purpura • Karen Russell • David Sedaris • Shifra Sharlin • David Shields • Floyd Skloot • Rebecca Solnit • Clifford Thompson • Wesley Yang An Anchor Original.

Writing America into the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the American Novel seeks to explore an exciting period in American literary scholarship. Concentrating on novels written after 1990 and through to the new millennium and to the present day, this collection presents a refreshing and much-needed analysis of recent American fiction. Representing the work of established scholars and emerging critical voices, the essays interrogate a range of fiction including works by Philip Roth, Jeffrey Eugenides, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy. Accessible to students, scholars and the interested reader, this invigorating collection navigates the works of several key male American authors of the last twenty years and, in so doing, offers a new way of examining the American novel. This volumeâ (TM)s strength lies in its careful academic focus on recent American fiction and seeks to re-acquaint the reader with well-known authors and introduce them to new literary voices such as Christopher John Farley, Anthony Giardina and Daniel Suarez. The collection is organised into four large topic areas: â ~Youth and Age, â (TM) â ~War and Crime, â (TM) â ~Cultureâ (TM) and â ~Spaces and Patterns.â (TM) Each essay deals with its own particular subject and author but the full impact of each section on the concept of writing the American novel into the present day can only really be understood when read in conjunction with the others. Writing America, a companion volume to Reading America: New Perspectives on the American Novel (2008) would be a valuable asset to any university or branch library. The volume will also attract strong interest from established academics, especially those researching the fields of literature, critical theory, cultural history and politics.

Two generations ago, most essayists were men, but in recent decades, women writers have claimed the personal essay, using its freedom to explore contemporary life in all its diversity. Wendy Martin has gathered a wide range of writing, from classics by Maya Angelou and Joan Didion to new voices of younger writers, many appearing here for the first time in book form.

The Book Is A Pioneering Study Of Its Kind, Chronologically Examining The Novels Of Anita Desai Mostly From A Female Point Of View. The Book Excels In Formally Analysing The Character And Situation Relationship In The Overall Context Of The Feminine Phyche Which It Thoroughly Examines. The Value Of The Book Is Immensely Enhanced By A Consideration Of Anita Desai S Fictional Technique. Dr. Gopal S Formal Method Is Not A Closed Universe But Cross Refers To The Social Structure Within Which The Situations Manipulate Characters And Their Destinies.

The humor of the Old South—tales, almanac entries, turf reports, historical sketches, gentlemen's essays on outdoor sports, profiles of local characters—flourished between 1830 and 1860. The genre's popularity and influence can be traced in the works of major southern writers such as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Harry Crews, as well as in contemporary popular culture focusing on the rural South. This collection of essays includes some of the past twenty five years' best writing on the subject, as well as ten new works bringing fresh insights and original approaches to the subject. A number of the essays focus on well known humorists such as Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, William Tappan Thompson, and George Washington Harris, all of whom have long been recognized as key figures in Southwestern humor. Other chapters examine the origins of this early humor, in particular selected poems of William Henry Timrod and Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which anticipate the subject matter, character types, structural elements, and motifs that would become part of the Southwestern tradition. Renditions of "Sleepy Hollow" were later echoed in sketches by William Tappan Thompson, Joseph Beckman Cobb, Orlando Benedict Mayer, Francis James Robinson, and William Gilmore Simms. Several essays also explore antebellum southern humor in the context of race and gender. This literary legacy left an indelible mark on the works of later writers such as Mark Twain and William Faulkner, whose works in a comic vein reflect affinities and connections to the rich lode of materials initially popularized by the Southwestern humorists.

In modern culture, the essay is often considered an old-fashioned, unoriginal form of literary styling. The word essay brings to mind the uninspired five-paragraph theme taught in schools around the country or the antiquated, Edwardian meanderings of English gentlemen rattling on about art and old books. These connotations exist despite the fact that Americans have been reading and enjoying personal essays in popular magazines for decades, engaging with a multitude of ideas through this short-form means of expression. To defend the essay—that misunderstood staple of first-year composition courses—Ned Stuckey-French has written The American Essay in the American Century. This book uncovers the buried history of the American personal essay and reveals how it played a significant role in twentieth-century cultural history. In the early 1900s, writers and critics debated the “death of the essay,” claiming it was too traditional to survive the era’s growing commercialism, labeling it a bastion of British upper-class conventions. Yet in that period, the essay blossomed into a cultural force as a new group of writers composed essays that responded to the concerns of America’s expanding cosmopolitan readership. These essays would spark the “magazine revolution,” giving a fresh voice to the ascendant middle class of the young century. With extensive research and a cultural context, Stuckey-French describes the many reasons essays grew in appeal and importance for Americans. He also explores the rise of E. B. White, considered by many the greatest American essayist of the first half of the twentieth century whose prowess was overshadowed by his success in other fields of writing. White’s work introduced a new voice, creating an American essay that melded seriousness and political resolve with humor and self-deprecation. This book is one of the first to consider and reflect on the contributions of E. B. White to the personal essay tradition and American culture more generally. The American Essay in the American Century is a compelling, highly readable book that illuminates the history of a secretly beloved literary genre. A work that will appeal to fiction readers, scholars, and students alike, this book offers fundamental insight into modern American literary history and the intersections of literature, culture, and class through the personal essay. This thoroughly researched volume dismisses, once and for all, the “death of the essay,” proving that the essay will remain relevant for a very long time to come.

A one-of-a-kind anthology of American essays on a wide range of subjects by a dazzling array of mid-century writers at the top of their form—from Normal Mailer to James Baldwin to Joan Didion—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America—racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them—proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Essay, Phillip Lopate assembles a dazzling array of famous writers, critics, sociologists, theologians, historians, activists, theorists, humorists, poets, and novelists. Here are writers like James Agee, E. B. White, A. J. Liebling, Randall Jarrell, and Mary McCarthy, pivoting from the comic indignities of daily life to world peace, consumerism, and restaurants in Paris. Here is Norman Mailer on Jackie Kennedy, Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Here are Gore Vidal, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Joan Didion, and many more, in a treasury of brilliant writing that has stood the test of time.