Reading the American Novel 1920-2010

This astute guide to the literary achievements of American novelists in the twentieth century places their work in its historical context and offers detailed analyses of landmark novels based on a clearly laid out set of tools for analyzing narrative form. Includes a valuable overview of twentieth- and early twenty-first century American literary history Provides analyses of numerous core texts including The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, The Sound and the Fury, The Crying of Lot 49 and Freedom Relates these individual novels to the broader artistic movements of modernism and postmodernism Explains and applies key principles of rhetorical reading Includes numerous cross-novel comparisons and contrasts

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Reading the American Novel, 1920–2010 1 1 Principles of Rhetorical Reading 23 2 The Age of Innocence (1920): Bildung and the Ethics of Desire 39 3 The Great Gatsby (1925): Character Narration, Temporal Order, and Tragedy 61 4 A Farewell to Arms (1929): Bildung, Tragedy, and the Rhetoric of Voice 85 5 The Sound and the Fury (1929): Portrait Narrative as Tragedy 105 6 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937): Bildung and the Rhetoric and Politics of Voice 127 7 Invisible Man (1952): Bildung, Politics, and Rhetorical Design 149 8 Lolita (1955): The Ethics of the Telling and the Ethics of the Told 171 9 The Crying of Lot 49 (1966): Mimetic Protagonist, Thematic–Synthetic Storyworld 193 10 Beloved (1987): Sethe’s Choice and Morrison’s Ethical Challenge 213 11 Freedom (2010): Realism after Postmodernism 237 Index 261