On Edge: Gender and Genre in the Work of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett

Ashley Lawson's On Edge presents a new picture of postwar American literature, arguing that biases against genre fiction have unfairly disadvantaged the legacies of authors like Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. Each of these authors deftly navigated a male-dominated postwar publishing world without compromising their values. Their category-defying treatment of both gender roles and genre classifications created a thematic suspense in their work that spoke to the tension of an age saturated with nervousness stemming from quotidian fears and from the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Lawson engages with foundational voices in American literature, genre theory, and feminism to argue that, by merging the dominant mode of literary realism with fantastical or heightened elements, Brackett, Jackson, and Highsmith were able to respond to the big questions of their era with startling and unnerving answers that perfectly illustrate the feelings of suspense that defined the "Age of Anxiety." By elevating genre play to a marker of literary skill, Lawson contends, we can secure for these writers a more prominent place within the canon of midcentury American literature, as well as open the door for the recovery of their similarly innovative peers.