A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900 - 1950

This cutting-edge Companion is a comprehensive resource for the study of the modern American novel. Published at a time when literary modernism is being thoroughly reassessed, it reflects current investigations into the origins and character of the movement as a whole. Brings together 28 original essays from leading scholars Allows readers to orient individual works and authors in their principal cultural and social contexts Contributes to efforts to recover minority voices, such as those of African American novelists, and popular subgenres, such as detective fiction Directs students to major relevant scholarship for further inquiry Suggests the many ways that “modern”, “American” and “fiction” carry new meanings in the twenty-first century

Notes on Contributors viii  List of Figures xiii  Preface xiv  Acknowledgments xxiii  1 An Economic History of the United States 1900–1950 1  EricRauchway  2 The Changing Status of Women 1900–1950 13  Nancy Woloch  3 The Status of African Americans 1900–1950 31  Matthew PrattGuterl  4 Pragmatism, Power, and the Politics of Aesthetic Experience 56  Jeanne Follansbee Quinn  5 Class and Sex in American Fiction: From Casual Laborers to Accidental Desires 73  Michael Trask  6 Jazz: From the Gutter to the Mainstream 91  Jeremy Yudkin  7 French Visual Humanisms and the American Style 116  Justus Nieland  8 Early Literary Modernism 141  Andrew Lawson  9 Naturalism: Turn-of-the-Century Modernism 160  Donna Campbell  10 Money and Things: Capitalist Realism, Anxiety, and Social Critique in Works by Hemingway, Wharton, and Fitzgerald 181  Richard Godden  11 Chronic Modernism 202  Leigh Anne Duck  12 New Regionalisms: Literature and Uneven Development 218  Hsuan L. Hsu  13 “The Possibilities of Hard-Won Land”: Midwestern Modernism and the Novel 240  Edward P.Comentale  14 Writing the Modern South 266  Susan V. Donaldson  15 What Was High About Modernism? The American Novel and Modernity 282  John T. Matthews  16 African-American Modernisms 306  Michelle Stephens  17 Ethnic Modernism 324  Rita Keresztesi  18 The Proletarian Novel 353  Barbara Foley  19 Revolutionary Sentiments: Modern American Domestic Fiction and the Rise of the Welfare State 367  Susan Edmunds  20 Lesbian Fiction 1900–1950 392  Heather Love  21 The Gay Novel in the United States 1900–1950 414  Christopher Looby  22 The Popular Western 437  William R. Handley  23 Twentieth-Century American Crime and Detective Fiction 454  Charles J. Rzepka  24 What Price Hollywood? Modern American Writers and the Movies 466  Mark Eaton  25 The Belated Tradition of Asian-American Modernism 496  DeliaKonzett  26 Modernism and Protopostmodernism 518  Patrick O’Donnell  27 The Modern Novel in a New World Context 535  George B. Handley  28 Reheated Figures: Five Ways of Looking at Leftovers 554  Jani Scandura  Index 579