Diminishing Fictions: Essays on the Modern Novel and Its Critics - Hardcover

Bawer, Bruce

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9781555971090: Diminishing Fictions: Essays on the Modern Novel and Its Critics

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555971091 ISBN 13: 9781555971090

Publisher: Graywolf Pr, 1988

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Discusses Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wolfe, Salinger, Capote, Mailer, Bellow, Doctorow, and Updike

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From Library Journal:

In the history of American literature, and particularly in its marketing, introductions to novels have sometimes meant the difference between success and failure. Editor Skillion has collected a number of introductions that, taken as a whole, form a substantial body of criticism of American literature from the 1850s to the 1960s. Readers might find a favorite missingone wishes, for instance, that Malcolm Cowley's introduction to the Viking "Portable" Faulkner had been includedbut the book works well as an appreciation of some classics of American literature. Bawer's book, on the other hand, can in no way be misconstrued as an appreciation. "The American novel, to state it plainly, seems headed for some very grim times indeed," he says. While Skillion's work focuses on acknowledged successes, Bawer's book is devoted largely to emerging writers and critics of American literature. Bawer's collection of essays and reviews (which seem a bit randomly thrown together from journal pieces) does display a consistent line of critical assessmenthe doesn't like much of anything being written these days. In sum, Bawer's criticism by overstatement adds little to our understanding of any of the works he discusses. Libraries, spend money on Skillion's book, save it on Bawer's. John Budd, Graduate Lib. Sch., Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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