A Companion To Twentieth-Century United States Fiction

Through a wide-ranging series of essays and relevant readings, A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction presents an overview of American fiction published since the conclusion of the First World War.
Features a wide-ranging series of essays by American, British, and European specialists in a variety of literary fields
Written in an approachable and accessible style
Covers both classic literary figures and contemporary novelists
Provides extensive suggestions for further reading at the end of each essay

David Seed is Professor in the School of English at Liverpool University. He has published books on Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Science Fiction and the Cold War. He edits the Science Fiction series of Liverpool University Press and serves as a consulting editor for Science Fiction Studies. He is the editor of our Companion to Science Fiction.

Notes on Contributors
Introduction (David Seed, University of Liverpool)
Part I: Genres, Traditions, and Subject Areas
1. U.S. Modernism (Susan Hegeman, University of Florida)
2. The City Novel (James R. Giles, Northern Illinois University)
3. The Western (Neil Campbell,University of Derby)
4. Postmodern U.S. Fiction (Hans Bertens, Utrecht University)
5. Modern Gothic (Marilyn Michaud, University of Stirling)
6. The Short Story (Mark Whalan, University of Exeter)
7. Southern Fiction (Sharon Monteith, University of Nottingham)
8. Jewish American Fiction (David Brauner, University of Reading)
9. "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me": Modern African American Fiction (A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Tokyo)
10. U.S. Detective Fiction (Cynthia S. Hamilton, Liverpool Hope University)
11. Hard-Boiled/Noir Fiction (Lee Horsley, Lancaster University)
12. Chicano Fiction (Helen Oakley, University of Nottingham)
13. Black Humor Fiction (David Seed, University of Liverpool)
14. Fiction on the Vietnam War (Philip Melling, Swansea University and Subarno Chattarji, Swansea University)
15. The Rediscovery of the Native American (Joy Porter, Swansea University)
16. Trash Fiction (Stacey Olster, State University of New York at Stony Brook)
Part II: Selected Writers
17. Edith Wharton (Pamela Knights, Durham University)
18. Willa Cather’s Entropology: Permanence and Transmission (Guy J. Reynolds, University of Nebraska–Lincoln)
19. Gertrude Stein and Seriality (Ulla Haselstein, Freie Universität Berlin)
20. Ernest Hemingway (Peter Messent, University of Nottingham)
21. John Dos Passos (Andrew Hook, University of Glasgow and David Seed, University of Liverpool)
22. Thomas Wolfe (Anne Ricketson Zahlan, Eastern Illinois University)
23. F. Scott Fitzgerald (William Blazek, Liverpool Hope University)
24. Zora Neale Hurston (Lovalerie King, Penn State University)
25. Theodore Dreiser (Clare Virginia Eby, University of Connecticut)
26. William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha (Charles A. Peek, University of Nebraska–Kearney)
27. H.D.’s Visionary Prose (Rachel Connor, formerly of the University of Glasgow)
28. John Steinbeck (Brian Railsback, Western Carolina University)
29. Raymond Chandler (Sean McCann, Wesleyan University)
30. Richard Wright (Tara T. Green, University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
31. Ralph Ellison (Rachel Farebrother, Swansea University)
32. James Baldwin (D. Quentin Miller, Suffolk University)
33. Vladimir Nabokov (Barbara Wyllie, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London)
34. Norman Mailer (Michael K. Glenday, Open University)
35. William S. Burroughs (Davis Schneiderman, Lake Forest College)
36. Saul Bellow (Michael Austin, Newman University)
37. Gore Vidal (Heather Neilson, University of New South Wales)
38. Joseph Heller (David M. Craig, Clarkson University)
39. Kurt Vonnegut (Jerome Klinkowitz, University of Northern Iowa)
40. Thomas Pynchon: Ian Copestake (formerly of the University of Frankfurt)
41. Ishmael Reed: American Iconoclast (Darryl Dickson-Carr, Southern Methodist University)
42. Joyce Carol Oates (Gavin Cologne-Brookes, Bath Spa University)
43. Philip Roth (Timothy Parrish, Florida State University)
44. The Fiction of John Updike: Timely and Timeless (Brian Keener, New York City College of Technology, City University of New York)
45. Maxine Hong Kingston (Helena Grice, Aberystwyth University)
46. Toni Morrison (Jennifer Terry, Durham University)
47. Alice Walker (Maria Lauret, University of Sussex)
48. Don DeLillo (Mark Osteen, Loyola College)
49. Gerald Vizenor: Postindian Gamester (A. Robert Lee, University of Nihon, Tokyo)
50. Bret Easton Ellis (James Annesley, Newcastle University)
51. Amy Tan: "American Circumstances and Chinese Character" (Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, De Montfort University)
52. Paul Auster: Poet of Solitude (Mark Brown, University of Northhampton)
53. Bharati Mukherjee (Judie Newman (University of Nottingham)
Index