Research Catalog

Title

Classics and contemporaries / John W. Aldridge.

Author

Aldridge, John W.

Publication

Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri Press, [1992], ©1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 240 pages; 22 cm

Summary

"Since the publication of his highly influential first book, After the Lost Generation, John W. Aldridge has been recognized as a master of contemporary literary criticism. In this selection of brilliant essays he turns his creative critical mind toward some of the major figures of modern literature--Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Wright Morris, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Saul Bellow, John Barth, and Robert Penn Warren, among others." "Throughout his career, Aldridge has been deeply concerned with the relation of society to literature. In "Catch-22: Twenty-Five Years Later" he shows how the novel that shocked and outraged reviewers upon its publication became a monumental artifact of contemporary American literature. In "Norman Mailer: Conquering the Bitch Goddess" he shows how Mailer finally succeeded in becoming a literary hero by embodying the contradictory spirit of the 1960s protest movement, adopting both its blind faith and its cynicism. A new review of Mailer's latest novel, Harlot's Ghost, concludes that Mailer "possesses the largest mind and imagination at work in American literature today." Aldridge traces literary fads in "William Styron's Holocaust Chic" before concluding that "Styron's problem is not so much that he is unable to express his ideas in his fiction as that he seems not to have any ideas to express."" ""Amidst the tumult and confusion of the times, John W. Aldridge has kept a singular purity of vision," said the New York Times Book Review. While the changing editorial policies of the major book reviews and magazines threaten to make serious literary criticism a thing of the past, Aldridge still believes that books and their ideas have a living relation to daily life. Taken together, these essays offer not only a survey of John Aldridge's distinguished career as a critic, but also an intriguing picture of the evolution of contemporary literature."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• American literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• English literature > 20th century > History and criticism

Note

• Includes index.

Contents

The Erotic Passion of Henry James -- Notes toward the Definition of T. S. Eliot -- The Saddest Story of Ford Madox Ford -- Edmund Wilson's Twenties -- Hemingway's Last Big Novel -- The Sun Also Rises: Sixty Years Later -- Biographing Faulkner -- Mailer on Miller -- The Death of the Lions -- Afterthoughts on the Twenties -- Homage to Malcolm Cowley -- Celine and the Hateful Horror of It All -- J. P. Marquand, Esquire -- Steinbeck's Knightly Little People -- The Final Novels of Algren and Farrell -- James Gould Cozzens: By Writing Possessed -- Robert Penn Warren's Legend of the South -- The Appalling Diaries of Evelyn Waugh -- World War II and the American Novel -- James Jones's Men at War -- Catch-22: Twenty-five Years Later -- Donald Barthelme and the Doggy Life -- No One in Charge -- William Gaddis and the "Ongoing Situation" -- John Barth: Versions and Reversions -- Robert Coover's Party Animals -- Norman Mailer: Conquering the Bitch Goddess -- A Mailer Masterpiece -- William Styron's Holocaust Chic -- Saul Bellow's Struggle with the Cosmos -- Wright Morris Country -- Little Magazines and the Great Gray Middle.

ISBN

0826208223

LCCN

92006694

OCLC

• 123316708
• ocn123316708

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries