American dream, American nightmare : fiction since 1960 / Kathryn Hume.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hume, Kathryn, 1945- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century.

American fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (462 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Champaign : University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Summary:

In this celebration of contemporary American fiction, Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream. In breaking down the divisions among standard categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies shared core concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected writers including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo. Hume explores fictional treatments of the slippage in the immigrant experience between America's promise and its reality. She exposes the political link between contemporary stories of lost innocence and liberalism's inadequacies. She also invites us to look at the literary challenge to scientific materialism in various searches for a spiritual dimension in life. The expansive future promised by the American Dream has been replaced, Hume finds, by a sense of tarnished morality and a melancholy loss of faith in America's exceptionalism. American Dream, American Nightmare examines the differing critiques of America embedded in nearly a hundred novels and points to the source for recovery that appeals to many of the authors.

Contents:

Intro

Cover

Halftitle

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Shocks of Transplantation

The Trauma of Transplantation as Literary Topos: Boyle and Banks

World's End

Continental Drift

Transplanting Gender and Race: Alvarez, Tan, Kingston, Hijuelos, and Butler

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

The Joy Luck Club

China Men

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

The Xenogenesis Trilogy

Immigrant Success: Mukherjee

Jasmine

Constructing the Immigrant Experience

2. Mythical Innocence

Constructing the White American Pastoral: Bradbury

Dandelion Wine

Constructing Black Innocence and Arcadia: Morrison and Naylor

The Bluest Eye

Mama Day

Deconstructing the Dream of Small-Town Innocence: Banks and Alther

Original Sins

From Innocent Food to Guilty Guns: Brautigan and Vonnegut

So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

Deadeye Dick

The Slaughter of Innocence in Vietnam: O'Brien and Haldeman

The Things They Carried

1968: A Novel

False Innocence: Ellison and Barth

Invisible Man

The Sot-Weed Factor

3. Yearning for Lost Civilization

Which Western Civilization? Welch

Fools Crow

The Obligations of Civilization: Bellow

Mr. Sammler's Planet

The Dean's December

Why Science Cannot Be the New Civilization: Percy

Love in the Ruins

Life among the Cultural Ruins: Barthelme

Snow White

Blackening the "Fair Name" of Western Culture: Reed

The Free-Lance Pallbearers

Flight to Canada

4. Seeking Spiritual Reality

The Magic of Traditional Religions: Momaday and Updike

House Made of Dawn

Rabbit, Run

Rabbit Redux

Rabbit Is Rich

Rabbit at Rest

The Melodramatic Imagination: Anaya and Kennedy

Bless Me, Ultima

Legs

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

Ironweed.

Creating New Realms of the Spirit: Mailer and Pynchon

An American Dream

Gravity's Rainbow

5. The Fragility of Democracy

Conspiracyland: Pynchon, Doctorow, DeLillo, Reed

The Crying of Lot 49

The Book of Daniel

Libra

The Terrible Twos

The Terrible Threes

Calls for a Second American Revolution: Macdonald, Callenbach, Burroughs, and Heinlein

The Turner Diaries

Ecotopia

Ecotopia Emerging

Cities of the Red Night

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Light That Failed: Pynchon

Vineland

6. Demonic Visions

Murder as Central Ritual of the State: Reed and Coover

The Public Burning

When the Institution Steals Your Spirit: Kesey, Piercy, and Acker

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Woman on the Edge of Time

Blood and Guts in High School

Private Rituals of Violence: Ellis, Mailer, and Dworkin

American Psycho

Why Are We in Vietnam?

Mercy

Seeking the Holy Moment When World Order Collapses: Vizenor and Silko

Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles

Almanac of the Dead

7. Liberating the Land of Freedom

Anarchic Cities: Brautigan, Delany, and the Cyberworld Writers

Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel

Dhalgren

Trickster Anarchism: Kingston and Vizenor

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

Griever: An American Monkey King in China

Utopian Anarchies: Le Guin, Piercy, and Starhawk

Always Coming Home

The Dispossessed

He, She and It

The Fifth Sacred Thing

8. Small Is Beautiful

The Strengths of Beleaguered Community: Morrison and Wideman

Sula

Hiding Place

Damballah

Sent for You Yesterday

Preservation and the Reservation: Erdrich and Silko

Tracks

Love Medicine

Ceremony

Poor, Rural Whites: Chute

The Beans of Egypt, Maine

Letourneau's Used Auto Parts

Merry Men.

Artificial Extended Families: Vonnegut

Slapstick

or, Lonesome No More!

Electronic Community: Sterling

Islands in the Net

9. The Failure of the Dream in Fiction

The Absence at the Heart of Recent American Fiction

Where Are the Children?

What Happened to Love?

Where Is the Work That Satisfies?

What Does It Mean to Succeed?

Why Read Such Fiction?

Clearing Paths into a Trackless Future

Narrative Responses to the Lost Dream

Bildungsroman

Two Worlds

or, There and Back Again

Descent and Return

Other Forms

Mourning the Death of the Dream

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252054136

025205413X

OCLC:

1343250327