Wrestling angels into song : the fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson / Herman Beavers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beavers, Herman, 1959- Author.

Series:

Penn studies in contemporary American fiction.

Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McPherson, James Alan, 1943---Criticism and interpretation.

Gaines, Ernest J., 1933---Criticism and interpretation.

African Americans in literature.

African American men--Intellectual life.

African American men.

African Americans--Intellectual life--20th century.

African Americans.

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

American fiction.

American fiction--African American authors--History and criticism.

Louisiana--In literature.

Louisiana.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (290 pages)

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Herman Beavers offers a richly nuanced study of Ernes J. Gaines, James Alan McPherson, and Ralph Ellison as writers who have found ways to invest circumstances that might otherwise be seen as sites of squalor or despair with a sense of cultural vitality. He examines the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looks at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers.For Beavers, the fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson are peopled by characters who value acts of storytelling and whose stories frame a fuller, more complex, and more inclusive version of American identity than those the dominant white culture has allowed.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Relative Politics: The Literary Triumverate of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Ernest J. Gaines, and James Alan McPherson

Chapter 2. The Possible in Things Unwritten: Kinship and Innovation in the Fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson

Chapter 3. Tilling the Soil to Find Ourselves: Conversion, Labor, and [Re]membering in Gaines's Of Love and Dust and In My Father's House

Chapter 4. "If It's Going To Be Any Good, It's Your Story"-. Legibility, [Un]speakability, and Historical Performance in McPherson's "A Solo Song: For Doc"

Chapter 5. Voices from the Underground: Conspiracy, Intimacy, and Voice in Gaines's Fictions

Chapter 6. "The Life of the Law Is Thus a Life of Art": Antagonism and Persuasion in McPherson's Legal Fiction Trilogy

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [257]-266) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9781512800852

1512800856

9780585171999

0585171998

OCLC:

44960292