What do you think?
American Fictions 1940-1980: A Comprehensive History and Critical Evaluation
This comprehensive, critical analysis of American novels of the past four decades interprets and evaluates a wide range of writers and works of what Karl views as the first sustained period of "American Modernism"
637 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1983
About the author
Frederick R. Karl
79 books7 followersAlong with his biographies, Frederick Karl wrote several volumes of literary criticism, among them American Fictions: 1940-1980. He also was general editor and volume co-editor of the Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, five volumes of which have appeared. He taught at City College of New York, Columbia, and NYU. Karl died in 2004.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Read
June 26, 2015I’ve very much been enjoying my recent Reviewing=Slump. But I wanna duck in here and drop a few quick thoughts.
Karl’s title is adequate descriptor :: American (sic! ==USAian.) Fiction (mostly novels ; several short storyings). 1940-1980 (a very productive era ; according to Karl’s thesis, the era when Modernism (finally!) arrived in the USofA (with the prior generation bragging only of Faulkner and Dos Passos)). Comprehensive [this guy has read everything, if ‘everything’ is understood as more than you can imagine a single person having read (aside maybe from Bloom)]. History (this is a story of the stories ; why a metafiction reader like me likes to read the histories and the criticisms of what I most like to read). Critical Evaluation (nothing gets a free pass, all has its flaws ; the downside of which is that it is much easier to focus on those short comings than to sense how great a given work really is (easy to dis on Pynchon for the juvenile materials he insists on including, etc etc)).
So, yeah, that last part about the critical evaluation is pretty thorough ; there is not much Karl says that gets one’s juices really ramped up and leading one to add to that must=read shelf. But if you look, you’ll find them.
Karl is on the right side of the window=pane. He wants to see the window glass (Pynchon, Gaddis, McElroy, Barth (esp. LETTERS), etc) and not just what’s in the garden (Bellow, Updike, Roth, Mailer, la la la la). But he writes about both streams, the popular ones and the ones more interested in what a novel can do. So, you see why I find him so sympathetic.
Despite his omnivorous reading -- and he is a great (simply phenomenal) reader ; reading another greatreader is reason enough to read this volume [also, you’ll just want to have it on hand as a reference] -- some writers get left out. No Marguerite Young. No D. Keith Mano. Gore Vidal gets only two footnote’d discussions and maybe here’s why ::
In addition to the sweeping overview of the highest high points (and many mid=range points) of USAian literary production in these post=war decades, a sweet advantage here for the SPADE=wielding unBURY’er is Karl’s perspective from 1983, when those high points looked different, and some minor players of the time were still visible ; I’ve tried to collect and gather some of these books lesser known to us today but perhaps worthy of some renewed attention. Thus my fred-karl shelf. But you may want to have Karl’s volume on hand to double=check his comments on any particular book ;; I didn’t add only the ones he adVOCates with no equivocation, because he just never does that.
A few headlines from the ToC to give you a feel for its organization ::
“American Space and Spatiality” [where american really becomes america]
“The Persistence of Pastoral” [the edenic fantasy which also makes america america]
[there’s a bunch of stuff about “The War and Combat Novel” ; WWII, Vietnam, etc]
“Growing Up in American” [you probably know most of these Bildungsromane]
“The Counterfeit Decade” [where you see how he uses The Recognitions as a thread in his argument]
“The Political Novel”
“The 1960s: The (Wo)Man Who Cried I Am” {a play on the title of a little=read novel, The Man Who Cried I Am }
“The Female Experience” [instead of ‘The Female Novelist”]
“The Possibilities of Minimalism” [basically, Beckett’s already done it as well as it will ever be done, so why are you bothering any more. well, except for Barthelme and a few others....]
“The 1970s: Where We Are” [end of decade stuff, which kicks off with this wonderful pairing -- “Pynchon and Barth”, wherein Karl riffs on LETTERS and you’d think as many would’ve gone for it as have gone for Gravity’s Rainbow. But alas, LETTERS still awaits many a goodreader!]
“The Nonfiction Novel” [ which really needs to make up its mind or change its title]
“Who We Are And Where We are Going” {or, American Fictions, 1980-2000: Whose America Is It Anyway?...... }
A thing about the Decline of Literary Culture and its Industry :: this volume was published by Harper & Row ; its follow up volume (American Fictions, 1980-2000: Whose America Is It Anyway?, for which I will be placing an order presently) is ‘published’ by Xlibris.
Sum :: not as adVOCating as Mr Moore, but as thorough as he.
Karl’s title is adequate descriptor :: American (sic! ==USAian.) Fiction (mostly novels ; several short storyings). 1940-1980 (a very productive era ; according to Karl’s thesis, the era when Modernism (finally!) arrived in the USofA (with the prior generation bragging only of Faulkner and Dos Passos)). Comprehensive [this guy has read everything, if ‘everything’ is understood as more than you can imagine a single person having read (aside maybe from Bloom)]. History (this is a story of the stories ; why a metafiction reader like me likes to read the histories and the criticisms of what I most like to read). Critical Evaluation (nothing gets a free pass, all has its flaws ; the downside of which is that it is much easier to focus on those short comings than to sense how great a given work really is (easy to dis on Pynchon for the juvenile materials he insists on including, etc etc)).
So, yeah, that last part about the critical evaluation is pretty thorough ; there is not much Karl says that gets one’s juices really ramped up and leading one to add to that must=read shelf. But if you look, you’ll find them.
Karl is on the right side of the window=pane. He wants to see the window glass (Pynchon, Gaddis, McElroy, Barth (esp. LETTERS), etc) and not just what’s in the garden (Bellow, Updike, Roth, Mailer, la la la la). But he writes about both streams, the popular ones and the ones more interested in what a novel can do. So, you see why I find him so sympathetic.
Despite his omnivorous reading -- and he is a great (simply phenomenal) reader ; reading another greatreader is reason enough to read this volume [also, you’ll just want to have it on hand as a reference] -- some writers get left out. No Marguerite Young. No D. Keith Mano. Gore Vidal gets only two footnote’d discussions and maybe here’s why ::
In addition to the sweeping overview of the highest high points (and many mid=range points) of USAian literary production in these post=war decades, a sweet advantage here for the SPADE=wielding unBURY’er is Karl’s perspective from 1983, when those high points looked different, and some minor players of the time were still visible ; I’ve tried to collect and gather some of these books lesser known to us today but perhaps worthy of some renewed attention. Thus my fred-karl shelf. But you may want to have Karl’s volume on hand to double=check his comments on any particular book ;; I didn’t add only the ones he adVOCates with no equivocation, because he just never does that.
A few headlines from the ToC to give you a feel for its organization ::
“American Space and Spatiality” [where american really becomes america]
“The Persistence of Pastoral” [the edenic fantasy which also makes america america]
[there’s a bunch of stuff about “The War and Combat Novel” ; WWII, Vietnam, etc]
“Growing Up in American” [you probably know most of these Bildungsromane]
“The Counterfeit Decade” [where you see how he uses The Recognitions as a thread in his argument]
“The Political Novel”
“The 1960s: The (Wo)Man Who Cried I Am” {a play on the title of a little=read novel, The Man Who Cried I Am }
“The Female Experience” [instead of ‘The Female Novelist”]
“The Possibilities of Minimalism” [basically, Beckett’s already done it as well as it will ever be done, so why are you bothering any more. well, except for Barthelme and a few others....]
“The 1970s: Where We Are” [end of decade stuff, which kicks off with this wonderful pairing -- “Pynchon and Barth”, wherein Karl riffs on LETTERS and you’d think as many would’ve gone for it as have gone for Gravity’s Rainbow. But alas, LETTERS still awaits many a goodreader!]
“The Nonfiction Novel” [ which really needs to make up its mind or change its title]
“Who We Are And Where We are Going” {or, American Fictions, 1980-2000: Whose America Is It Anyway?...... }
A thing about the Decline of Literary Culture and its Industry :: this volume was published by Harper & Row ; its follow up volume (American Fictions, 1980-2000: Whose America Is It Anyway?, for which I will be placing an order presently) is ‘published’ by Xlibris.
Sum :: not as adVOCating as Mr Moore, but as thorough as he.
Want to Read
June 26, 2015"It may be that the book he is most keen on here is Gaddis' The Recognitions-- which he also introduces for the Penguin edition. And he is positive on McElroy, e.g. Lookout Cartridge..."
posits that "the works of John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, John Hawkes and other ‘experimental’ writers constitute our authentic ‘literature’"
A book like John Barth’s Letters ‘does what literature is supposed to do, which is to probe new modes of perception,
posits that "the works of John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, John Hawkes and other ‘experimental’ writers constitute our authentic ‘literature’"
A book like John Barth’s Letters ‘does what literature is supposed to do, which is to probe new modes of perception,
May 18, 2020
I disagree with over half of the assessments Frederick Karl makes on authors and novels. I disagree with his main thesis. I think history, since its publication, does not support his thesis, and he subsequently minimized it in the sequel to this book. Still, I loved reading this book. Why? Because Frederick Karl clearly loves American literature, has read a lot, thought about it a lot, is intelligent, tries to be a sympathetic reader to diverse authors and has come to learned opinions and conclusions which he has clearly expressed here. Clarity, Passion, Love/appreciation, and intelligence are admirable qualities. He spends most of his time [80%] delving into what about certain works are great and worthy of all our attention. He is clear about when works fail and why but he doesn’t give those the same attention. For example his view of Updike is mixed, but he spends the most time looking into the rabbit books and short stories [70%] which he considers an artistic success, and then makes clear why most of the other work doesn’t rise to the same level. What’s not to like....well a lot of the actual positions taken lol.
So it goes.
He values a lot of the more experimental works that are often referred to as postmodern literature which he sees as a further expansion of modernism and the possibilities of the novel in the works of Pynchon, Gaddis, Barth, William Burroughs, and Joseph McElroy. I enjoy these authors but I don’t find convincing the thesis that these authors are the most interesting or central to the development of the American tradition over the 40 year period covered in this book. I think Pynchon and Burroughs probably had the most lasting influence but even here it was more marginal then Frederick Karl thinks. Luckily he also covers a wide range of other writers, including many realists, some obscure authors, and many mainstream writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Bellow and many more. Occasionally he’ll champion an author I feel is neglected, like Joyce Carol Oates, which brings joy to my heart, but as often his readings can be narrow and casually dismissive given his overvaluation of experimental fiction imo.
It's rare I find an author I can often disagree with on a topic I care about and still really enjoy and learn from them. This is one of those rare authors, and this book is a great example of such a book: confounding, passionate, maddening, and substantial.
So it goes.
He values a lot of the more experimental works that are often referred to as postmodern literature which he sees as a further expansion of modernism and the possibilities of the novel in the works of Pynchon, Gaddis, Barth, William Burroughs, and Joseph McElroy. I enjoy these authors but I don’t find convincing the thesis that these authors are the most interesting or central to the development of the American tradition over the 40 year period covered in this book. I think Pynchon and Burroughs probably had the most lasting influence but even here it was more marginal then Frederick Karl thinks. Luckily he also covers a wide range of other writers, including many realists, some obscure authors, and many mainstream writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Bellow and many more. Occasionally he’ll champion an author I feel is neglected, like Joyce Carol Oates, which brings joy to my heart, but as often his readings can be narrow and casually dismissive given his overvaluation of experimental fiction imo.
It's rare I find an author I can often disagree with on a topic I care about and still really enjoy and learn from them. This is one of those rare authors, and this book is a great example of such a book: confounding, passionate, maddening, and substantial.
January 6, 2014
I've been using this book as a guide for the last 25 years! A literary mentor of sorts. indispensable!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews