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The birth of death and other comedies : the novels of Russell H. Greenan / by Tom Whalen.
LIBRA PS3557.R376 Z97 2011
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Whalen, Tom.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Greenan, Russell H--Criticism and interpretation.
- Greenan, Russell H.
- Criticism and interpretation.
- Physical Description:
- 182 pages ; 22 cm
- Edition:
- First edition.
- Other Title:
- Novels of Russell H. Greenan
- Place of Publication:
- Champaign : Dalkey Archive Press, 2011.
- Summary:
- Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston? is one of the most radical narratives to appear in the late 1960s ("this is a book that encompasses everything," as David L. Ulin noted in Bookforum). Yet due in large part to the difficulty of classifying Greenan's fiction, many readers are unaware of his other novels. In The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan, Tom Whalen, drawing widely from the American literary tradition, locates Greenan's lineage in the work of Hawthorne and Poe, "where allegory and dream mingle with and illuminate realism," as well as in the fiction of Twain, West, Hammett, Cain, and Thompson. Examining Greenan's characteristic themes and strategies, Whalen provides perceptive readings of the dark comedies of this criminally neglected American master, and in a coda reflects on Greenan's career and the reception of his work. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Chapter 1 The Mechanical Universe of Nightmare (1970) 31
- Chapter 2 Realism and Allegory in The Queen of America (1972) 41
- Chapter 3 "Alone in the Void": The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton (1973) 51
- Chapter 4 "A Myriad of Disquieting Considerations": Heart of Gold (1975) 65
- Chapter 5 The Devil to Pay in the Paradigm: The Bric-a-Brac Man (1976) 81
- Chapter 6 "A Pretty Gloomy Idea": The Trickster Figure in Keepers (1978) 98
- Chapter 7 A Bucket of Maggots, A Can of Worms (1987): Methods of Order in Greenan's Macabre Collage 111
- Chapter 8 "What an Edifice of Artifice!": It Happened in Boston? (1968) 126.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references.
- ISBN:
- 9781564786401
- 1564786404
- OCLC:
- 668193916
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