Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in Post-World War II American Fiction
Fantasies of the New Classis highly original and keenly argued. Stephen Schryer does a superb job of reconstructing concepts central to the intellectual and political debate of the era, and he shows, often with striking critical insight, how major writers worked out the subtleties and contradictions in these ideas. As Schryer convincingly demonstrates, these artists' ideas about literary vocation accompanied much more sweeping and consequential changes in the ways in which expertise and authority were conceived in the United States. His elegant analysis gives a compelling new map of postwar American cultural history.(Sean McCann, Wesleyan University, author ofA Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government)Fantasies of the New Classis a major contribution to our understanding of the relationship between history and literary form in the postwar United States. Through sophisticated readings of fiction and sociology, Schryer ably shows how American writing from the 1940s through the 1980s resonates with (and helps to create) a transformed vision of the professional. Whether demonstrating the importance of understudied writers like Mary McCarthy or breathing new life into such critical favorites as Ralph Ellison and Don DeLillo, Schryer offers a fascinating new way to read the fiction of the second half of the twentieth century. WithFantasies of the New Class, he enters the first rank of scholarship on this period.(Andrew Hoberek, University of Missouri-Columbia, author ofThe Twilight of the Middle Class: Post-World War II American Fiction and White-Collar Work)Interesting, insightful synthesis.(Choice)