What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920-1960 - Softcover

Hutner, Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807832278 ISBN 13: 9780807832271

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009

Synopsis

This title discusses reviving forgotten twentieth-century novels.Despite the vigorous study of modern American fiction, today's readers are only familiar with a partial shelf of a vast library. Gordon Hutner describes the distorted, canonized history of the twentieth-century American novel as a record of modern classics insufficiently appreciated in their day but recuperated by scholars in order to shape the grand tradition of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. In presenting literary history this way, Hutner argues, scholars have forgotten a rich treasury of realist novels that recount the story of America's confrontation with modernity.Hutner explains that realist novels were frequently lauded when they first appeared. They are almost completely unread today, he contends, largely because they record the middle-class encounter with modern life. This middle-class realism, Hutner shows, reveals a surprising engagement with the social issues that most fully challenged contemporary readers in the United States, including race relations, politics, immigration, and sexuality. Reading these novels now offers an extraordinary opportunity to witness debates about what kind of nation America would become and what place its newly dominant middle class would have - and, Hutner suggests, should also lead us to wonder how novels of our own era will be remembered.

About this title

Review:

Hutner's study should begin a useful discussion about how we judge literature and just where the value of a novel lies.--The CEA Forum The originality of this project and the avenues it opens for further comparative work are undeniable. Hutner's book promises to enliven work in modernist and American studies, recalibrating our sense not only of what America read but of why that reading matters.--Clio An interesting analysis of how the literary academy decides which books will be remembered.--The Wall Street Journal "Hutner covers a great deal of ground with a good deal of clarity, and his book deserves to be read with close attention by anyone interested in the reading habits of the American public.--The National Review A legitimate corrective to the English department syllabus.--Wilson Quarterly No one who studies or teaches U.S. fiction should overlook this sharp, luminous book. . . . Hutner's brilliance as synthesizer, theorizer, and literary historian makes this study shine, as both a straight read and a reference tool.--Choice Hutner surveys four decades of American fiction from the viewpoint of the reading public and the mainstream critics of the time, and reveals just how shifts in the currents of critical tastes can leave many good works stranded and quickly forgotten.--NeglectedBooks.com Hutner exhibits skillful precision in advancing through this often misty and stony literary landscape. . . . [An] entertaining and comprehensive survey.--Publishing Research Quarterly

About the Author:

Gordon Hutner is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founding editor of the journal American Literary History.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0807832278
• ISBN 13: 9780807832271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464