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基本説明
Provides detailed interpretations of 12 key contemporary novels from authors including Purple America by Rick Moody, The Age of Consent by Geoffrey Wolff, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel.
Full Description
This book explores the ways in which a range of recent American novelists have handled the genre of the 'coming-of-age' novel, or the Bildungsroman. Novels of this genre characteristically dramatise the vicissitudes of growing up and the trials and tribulations of young adulthood, often presented through depictions of immediate family relationships and other social structures. This book considers a variety of different American cultures (in terms of race, class and gender) and a range of contemporary coming-of-age novels, so that aesthetic judgements about the fiction might be made in the context of the social history that fiction represents. A series of questions are asked: * Does the coming-of-age moment in these novels coincide with an interpretation of the 'fall' of America? * What kind of national commentary does it therefore facilitate? * Is the bildungsroman a quintessentially American genre? * What can it usefully tell us about contemporary American culture?
Although the focus is on the contemporary period, this is placed in the context of reference to earlier novels and criticism of the genre, as well as historical changes in the status of the family, and the adolescent within it. Features * Provides detailed interpretations of 12 key contemporary novels from authors including Purple America by Rick Moody, The Age of Consent by Geoffrey Wolff, The Virgin Suicides by Jefffrey Eugenides and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. * Explains the importance of the coming-of-age genre to the broader American literature canon. * Makes a significant intervention in contemporary debate about what is most valuable in recent American fiction.
Contents
American Adolescence: The Contemporary Coming-of-Age Novel; Introduction: Contemporary Coming-of-Age: Subject to Change; 1. In the Name of the Father; Brady Udall, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, 2001.; Russell Banks, Rule of the Bone, 1995.; 2. I Change Therefore I Am: Growing up in the Sixties; Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land, 1996.; Geoffrey Wolff, The Age of Consent, 1995.; 3. Citation and Resuscitation; Rick Moody, Purple America, 1997.; Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides, 1993, and Middlessex, 2001.; 4. Language Acquisition: Life Sentences; Scott Bradfield, The History of Luminous Motion, 1989.; Mark Richard, Fishboy, 1993.; 5. Lexicon of Love; Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, 1981.; Josephine Humphries, Rich in Love, 1987.; 6. Memoirs and Memorials; Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina, 1992.; Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation, 1995.; Conclusion.
