{"product_id":"9781587294754","title":"The Novel and the American Left: Critical Essays on Depression-Era Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first collection of critical essays to focus specifically on the fiction produced by American novelists of the Depression era, \u003ci\u003eThe Novel and the American Left\u003c\/i\u003e contributes substantially to the newly emerging emphasis on twentieth-century American literary radicalism. Recent studies have recovered this body of work and redefined in historical and theoretical terms its vibrant contribution to American letters. Casey consolidates and expands this field of study by providing a more specific consideration of individual novels and novelists, many of which are reaching new contemporary audiences through reprints.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Novel and the American Left\u003c\/i\u003e focuses exclusively on left-leaning fiction of the Depression era, lending visibility and increased critical validity to these works and showing the various ways in which they contributed not only to theorizations of the Left but also to debates about the content and form of American fiction. In theoretical terms, the collection as a whole contributes to the larger reconceptualization of American modernity currently under way. More pragmatically, individual essays suggest specific authors, texts, and approaches to teachers and scholars seeking to broaden and\/or complicate more traditional “American modernism” syllabi and research agendas.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe selected essays take up, among others, such “hard-core\"” leftist writers as Mike Gold and Myra Page, who were associated with the Communist Party; the popular novels of James M. Cain and Kenneth Fearing, whose works were made into successful films; and critically acclaimed but nonetheless “lost” novelists such as Josephine Johnson, whose \u003ci\u003eNow in November\u003c\/i\u003e (Pulitzer Prize, 1936) anticipates and complicates the more popular agrarian mythos of Steinbeck’s \u003ci\u003eThe Grapes of Wrath\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis volume will be of interest not only to literary specialists but also to historians, social scientists, and those interested in American cultural studies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Iowa Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47137905639664,"sku":"9781587294754","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781587294754_p0.jpg?v=1763800186","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781587294754","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}