The novel and the American left
Subtitle: critical essays on Depression-era fiction
By: edited by Janet Galligani Casey.
Contributors: Casey, Janet Galligani.
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Iowa City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Communism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Socialism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Right and left (Political science) -- History -- 20th century.; Working class writings, American -- History and criticism.; Right and left (Political science) in literature.; Progressivism (United States politics); Depressions -- 1929 -- United States.; Working class in literature.; Progressivism in literature.; Depressions in literature.
Description: "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."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-210) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / Janet Galligani Casey; title: Taking tips and losing class / Donna M. Campbell; title: My little illegality / Joy Castro; title: Shriveled breasts and dollar signs / Angela Marie Smith; title: Monstrous modernism / Joseph Entin; title: The objectivity of nature in Josephine Herbst's Rope of gold / Caren Irr; title: Agrarian landscapes, the Depression, and women's progressive fiction / Janet Galligani Casey; title: The avengers of Christie Street / Lee Bernstein; title: "Smashing cantatas" and "Looking glass pitchers" / Lawrence Hanley; title: Marching! marching! and the idea of the proletarian novel / Jon-Christian Suggs; title: Time, transmission, autonomy / David Jenemann and Andrew Knighton.