Road-book America : contemporary culture and the new picaresque / Rowland A. Sherrill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sherrill, Rowland A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Picaresque literature, American--History and criticism.

American prose literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American prose literature.

Travelers' writings, American--History and criticism.

Travelers' writings, American.

Travelers--United States--History--20th century.

Travelers.

History.

Picaresque literature, American.

United States--Civilization--1945-.

United States.

Civilization.

Travelers in literature.

Travel in literature.

Physical Description:

xi, 352 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2000]

Summary:

In Road-Book America, Rowland A. Sherrill explores how the old picaresque tradition, embodied in such novels as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, opens to include a number of recent American texts, both fiction and nonfiction.

Sketching the socially marginal, ingenuous, travelling characters common to old and new versions of the genre, Road-Book America is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of the "new American picaresque", exemplified by William Least HeatMoon's Blue Highways, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, James Leo Herlihy's Midnight Cowboy, Bill Moyers's Listening to America, E. L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate, and hundreds of other narratives published in the past four decades. Open, resilient, adaptable, and perennially hopeful, the protagonist of the new American picaresque follows a therapeutic path for the alienated modern self and lays the groundwork for spiritual renewal.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-340) and index.

ISBN:

0252025466

OCLC:

42296884