White Diaspora : The Suburb and the Twentieth-Century American Novel / Catherine Jurca.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jurca, Catherine, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century -.

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

Race in literature.

Segregation in literature.

Suburban life in literature.

Suburbs in literature.

White people in literature.

American fiction.

Local Subjects:

American fiction--20th century -.

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

Race in literature.

Segregation in literature.

Suburban life in literature.

Suburbs in literature.

White people in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (247 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is the first book to analyze our suburban literary tradition. Tracing the suburb's emergence as a crucial setting and subject of the twentieth-century American novel, Catherine Jurca identifies a decidedly masculine obsession with the suburban home and a preoccupation with its alternative--the experience of spiritual and emotional dislocation that she terms "homelessness." In the process, she challenges representations of white suburbia as prostrated by its own privileges. In novels as disparate as Tarzan (written by Tarzana, California, real-estate developer Edgar Rice Burroughs), Richard Wright's Native Son, and recent fiction by John Updike and Richard Ford, Jurca finds an emphasis on the suburb under siege, a place where the fortunate tend to see themselves as powerless. From Babbitt to Rabbit, the suburban novel casts property owners living in communities of their choosing as dispossessed people. Material advantages become artifacts of oppression, and affluence is fraudulently identified as impoverishment. The fantasy of victimization reimagines white flight as a white diaspora. Extending innovative trends in the study of nineteenth-century American culture, Jurca's analysis suggests that self-pity has played a constitutive role in white middle-class identity in the twentieth century. It breaks new ground in literary history and cultural studies, while telling the story of one of our most revered and reviled locations: "the little suburban house at number one million and ten Volstead Avenue" that Edith Wharton warned would ruin American life and letters.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. Tarzan, Lord of the Suburbs

CHAPTER TWO. Sinclair Lewis and the Revolt from the Suburb

CHAPTER THREE. Mildred Pierce's Interiors

CHAPTER FOUR. Native Son's Trespasses

CHAPTER FIVE. Sanctimonious Suburbanites and the Postwar Novel

EPILOGUE: Same As It Ever Was (More or Less)

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786613339737

9781283339735

1283339730

9781400824137

1400824133

OCLC:

768731929