Research Catalog

The novel and the American left : critical essays on Depression-era fiction

Title: The novel and the American left : critical essays on Depression-era fiction / edited by Janet Galligani Casey.
Publication: Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, ©2004.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Book/Text	Use in library	PS228.C6 N68 2004	Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Casey, Janet Galligani.

Description

xviii, 216 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"The Novel and the American Left focuses exclusively on left-leaning fiction of the Depression era, lending visibility and increased critical validity to these works and showing the various ways in which they contributed not only to theorizations of the Left but also to debates about the content and form of American fiction. In theoretical terms, the collection as a whole contributes to the larger reconceptualization of American modernity currently under way. More pragmatically, individual essays suggest specific authors, texts, and approaches to teachers and scholars seeking to broaden and/or complicate more traditional "'American modernism" syllabi and research agendas." "The selected essays take up, among others, such "hard-core" leftist writers as Mike Gold and Myra Page, who were associated with the Communist Party; the popular novels of James M. Cain and Kenneth Fearing, whose works were made into successful films; and critically acclaimed but nonetheless "lost" novelists such as Josephine Johnson, whose Now in November (Pulitzer Prize, 1936) anticipates and complicates the more popular agrarian mythos of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath." "This volume will be of interest not only to literary specialists but also to historians, social scientists, and students of American cultural studies."--Jacket.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction / Janet Galligani Casey -- Taking tips and losing class / Donna M. Campbell -- My little illegality / Joy Castro -- Shriveled breasts and dollar signs / Angela Marie Smith -- Monstrous modernism / Joseph Entin -- The objectivity of nature in Josephine Herbst's Rope of gold / Caren Irr -- Agrarian landscapes, the Depression, and women's progressive fiction / Janet Galligani Casey -- The avengers of Christie Street / Lee Bernstein -- "Smashing cantatas" and "Looking glass pitchers" / Lawrence Hanley -- Marching! marching! and the idea of the proletarian novel / Jon-Christian Suggs -- Time, transmission, autonomy / David Jenemann and Andrew Knighton.

ISBN

0877458804
9780877458807

LCCN

2003066271
9780877458807

OCLC

ocm53170193
53170193
SCSB-1332823

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library