Title: American Dream, American Nightmare
Description: "Kathryn Hume explores how estrangement from America has shaped the fiction of a literary generation, which she calls the Generation of the Lost Dream.".

"In breaking down the divisions among standard categories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies shared core concerns, values, and techniques among seemingly disparate and unconnected writers including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy, N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez, Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Don DeLillo.".

"Hume explores fictional treatments of the slippage in the immigrant experience between America's promise and its reality. She exposes the political link between contemporary stories of lost innocence and liberalism's inadequacies. She also invites us to look at the literary challenge to scientific materialism in various searches for a spiritual dimension in life."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: 20th century, American Psychological fiction, American fiction, Disappointment in literature, Economics in literature, Failure (Psychology) in literature, History, History and criticism, Literature and society, Loss (Psychology) in literature, National characteristics, American, in literature, Psychological fiction, American, Success in literature, United States, American fiction, history and criticism, 20th century, Psychological fiction, history and criticism, National characteristics in literature, American fiction (collections), 20th century
Places: United States
Time periods: 20th century