Description: Critical introduction to the contemporary american novel focusing on contexts, key texts and criticism.
Brief description: Andrew Dix is Lecturer in American Studies at Loughborough University, UK. He is the author of Beginning Film Studies (Manchester University Press, 2008) and co-editor of Figures of Heresy: Radical Theology in English and American Writing, 1800-2000 (Sussex Academic Press, 2006); his other published work includes book chapters on Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Native American fiction.
Review Quotes:
"The concluding argument of Dix, Jarvis and Jenner's fine book is "that to engage keenly with current American fiction is not a dry-as-dust academic exercise but itself an act charged with political significance." The authors make their case well, presenting strong and well-judged readings of nine recent American novels, indicating their representative function in terms of consumer capitalism, race, hemispheric transnationalism and globalisation. If this sounds disconcertingly abstract, this book is far from that, giving an immensely readable, bang up-to-date and skilled introduction to the American novel at this point in our history, and the reasons for its continued vitality and importance. Aimed at a student audience, it will bring the subject alive for them, but will also offer many stimulating insights to any scholar or general reader interested in this topic. The book takes a complicated and contentious field and charts a way through it with authority and verve: a real achievement." --Professor Peter Messent, School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK
"Reviewed by" --Jerome Klinkowitz, American Literary Scholarship