Beyond suspicion
Subtitle: new American fiction since 1960
By: Marc Chénetier ; translated by Elizabeth A. Houlding.
Series: Penn studies in contemporary American fiction
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 321
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Suspicion in literature
Description: In this landmark study, Marc Chenetier provides a synthetic view of developments in American fiction between 1960 and the 1990s. Beyond Suspicion focuses primarily on the works of Gaddis, Pynchon, Elkin, McElroy, Hawkes, Nabokov, Gass, Barth, and Coover, although a host of other writers are discussed as well. Chenetier argues that traditional generic approaches to this body of work are misleading.

He rejects the categorization of works by their writer's region, race, and gender, and suggests instead an examination of works from a variety of artistic and epistemological viewpoints.

Chenetier's status as outsider - geographically speaking - fosters this approach; from his critical distance, he is able to look on American letters with a very specific and individual point of view. Beyond Suspicion is notable too for the grace with which it links the concerns of French literary theory with those of American fiction.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-310) and index.