An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Recent Books on American Fiction

AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SELECTED RECENT BOOKS ON AMERICAN FICTION James Nagel* The following annotated bibliography is a listing of selected “general” studies (those devoted to a broad subject or group of writers) published during the last half-decade. These works are de­ scribed in terms of their thesis and coverage, and they are assessed exclusively for their treatment of American fiction. The comments about them relate only to this concern and should not be taken as applying to their discussions of the literatures of other nations nor to other forms of American literature. In each instance basic bibliograpical data is provided, including length and price; the items are arranged alphabetically. This listing is, of course, by no means complete. However, it is a fairly representative sampling of recent work which reveals the present focus and methodology of professional scholarship on the prose fiction of the United States. Even a quick review of these items brings to light several current trends and basic areas of attention: the South as a socio-cultural region; the representation of Black characters in American fiction; American Jewish characters and works; Roman Catholic themes in contemporary literature. An or­ ganizational device employed with increasing frequency is the development of a schema which isolates and illuminates a given ideology or artistic device. Despite the range of these studies, several other areas have yet to receive extensive critical attention: an inter­ disciplinary study of the relationship between fiction and the other arts; the influence of “imported” forms and themes during periods of heavy immigration; the literature of such regions as the Northwest and Midwest; and further exploration of the philosophic and aesthetic nature of fiction itself, along with an intellectually verifi­ able methodology for its professional study. In sum, the scholarship of the last several years has produced a rich and diverse national harvest, but there is much yet to be done and broad new American fields which await both a general survey and close scrutiny. *James Nagel teaches in the Department of English of Northeastern University and is the Editor of Studies in American Fiction. He has published in such journals as Modem Fiction Studies, Studies in Short Fiction, Research Studies, and the University Review, and he is currently at work on a book on the fiction of Stephen Crane. Studies in American Fiction 77 Alter, Robert. After the Tradition: Essays on Modem Jewish Writing. New York: Dutton, 1971. 256 pp. Paper: $1.95. A collection of fifteen essays (most of them reprinted from Commen­ tary) which focus on Jewish literature in the 1950s and 1960s. Alter explores the Jewish renaissance as a “precarious, though stubborn, experiment in the possibilities of historical continuity, when most of the grounds for continuity have been cut away” (pp. 10-11). Individual chapters on Bellow, Malamud, S. Y. Agnon, and Elie Wiesel. Alter finds that “the vogue of Jewish writing, quickly exhausting its artistic possibilities, offers many indications that it may be falling into a de­ clining phase of unwitting self-parody, and what will follow it on the American literary scene is by no means clear” (p. 9). Bartlett, Irving H. The American Mind in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967. 133 pp. Paper: $1.95. A brief overview of the intellectual, political, and artistic climate in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapters on religion, philosophy, and science: political and social thought; the South; and the “democratic imagina­ tion." Some discussion of fiction, especially that of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville. Useful only as background for undergraduate students. Blake, Nelson M. Novelists’America: Fiction as History, 1910-1940. Syracuse: Syracuse U. Press, 1969. 279 pp. Cloth: $6.95. A book by a historian which treats the fiction of Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Farrell, and Richard Wright as a means of gaining insight into the past. Professor Blake demonstrates that the “hot truth” of fiction is not antithetical to the “cold truth" of history and that a historical portrait of the United States of some depth is inherent in its fiction. An interesting discussion of fictional history, but one of limited value as literary analysis. Browne, Ray B., Donald M. Winkelman, and Allen...