American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction since 1960

373 Pages·2000·12.53 MB·English

by  Kathryn Hume

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athryn ume
F I C T I O N S I N C E I960
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FICTION SINCE I960
Kathryn Hume
In this celebration of contemporary
American fiction, Kathryn Hume ex­
plores how estrangement from America
has shaped the fiction of a literary gen­
eration, which she calls the Generation
of the Lost Dream.
In breaking down the divisions among
standard categories of race, religion,
ethnicity, and gender, Hume identifies
shared core concerns, values, and tech­
niques among seemingly disparate and
unconnected writers including T. Cora-
ghessan Boyle, Ralph Ellison, Russell
Banks, Gloria Naylor, Tim O'Brien,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Walker Percy,
N. Scott Momaday, John Updike, Toni
Morrison, William Kennedy, Julia Alvarez,
Thomas Pynchon, Leslie Marmon Sillco,
and Don DeLillo.
Hume explores fictional treatments of
the slippage in the immigrant experi­
ence between America's promise and its
reality. She exposes the political link
between contemporary stories of lost
innocence and liberalism's inadequacies.
She also invites us to look at the literary
challenge to scientific materialism in
various searches for a spiritual dimension
in life.
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American Nightmare
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K A T H R Y N H U M E
U niversity of Illinois Press
Urbana and C hicago
© 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
@ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hume, Kathryn, 1945-
American dream, American nightmare : fiction since i960 /
Kathryn Hume,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-252-02556-3 (alk. paper)
1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Failure (Psychology) in literature. 3. Literature and society—
United States—History—20th century. 4. Psychological fiction,
American—History and criticism. 5. National characteristics,
American, in literature. 6. Loss (Psychology) in literature. 7. Dis­
appointment in literature. 8. Economics in literature. 9. Success
in literature. I. Title.
PS374.F24H86 2000
813'.5409—dc2i 99-050421
*k
c 5 4 3 2 I
For Philip Jenkins,
historian,
who helped supply a sense of chronology
for one who is chronology impaired
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Acknowledgments ix
Introduction i
1, The Shocks of Transplantation 9
World's End * Continental Drift * How the Garcia Girls Lost
Their Accents * The Joy Luck Club * China Men * The Mambo
Kings Play Songs of Love * The Xenogenesis Trilogy * Jasmine
Z. Mythical Innocence 40
Dandelion Wine * The Bluest Eye * Mama Day * Continental
Drift * Original Sins * So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away *
Deadeye Dick * The Things They Carried * 1968: A Novel *
Invisible Man * The Sot-Weed Pactor
3. Yearning for Lost Civilization 75
Tools Crow * Mr. Sammler's Planet * The Dean's December *
Love in the Ruins * Snow White * The Pree-Lance Pallbearers *
Plight to Canada
4, Seeking Spiritual Reality 113
House Made of Dawn * Rabbit, Run * Rabbit Redux * Rabbit Is
Rich * Rabbit at Rest * Bless Me, Ultima * Legs * Billy Phelan's
Greatest Game * Ironweed * An American Dream * Gravity's
Rainbow
5. The Fragility of Democracy 143
The Crying of Lot 49 * The Book of Daniel * Libra * The Terrible
Twos * The Terrible Threes * The Turner Diaries * Ecotopia *
Ecotopia Emerging * Cities of the Red Night * The Moon Is a
Harsh Mistress * Vineland
.
6 Demonic Visions 175
The Free-Lance Pallbearers * The Public Burning * One Flew
over the Cuckoo’s Nest * Woman on the Edge of Time * Blood
and Guts in High School * American Psycho * Why Are We in
Vietnam! * Mercy * Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles *
Almanac of the Dead
7. Liberating the Land of Freedom 208
Sombrero Fallout: A fapanese Novel * Dhalgren * Tripmaster
Monkey: His Fake Book * Griever: An American Monkey King in
China * Always Coming Home * The Dispossessed * Woman on
the Edge of Time * He, She and It * The Fifth Sacred Thing
8. Small Is Beautiful 240
Sula * Hiding Place * Damballah * Sent for You Yesterday *
Tracks * Love Medicine * Ceremony * The Beans of Egypt,
Maine * Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts * Merry Men * Slapstick;
or, Lonesome No More! * Islands in the Net
9. The Failure of the Dream in Fiction 266
Notes 293
Bibliography 319
Index 347
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I received very valuable criticism from friends and colleagues. They told
me that the first version of this work was much too long. Future readers
will thank them for so insisting. Christopher Clausen challenged many of
my attitudes and made me modify them or justify them by context. Jack-
son I. Cope was the only reader to mark passages and books with an eye
to cutting; from studying his judgments, I learned to cut yet more. David
Cowart, Philip Jenkins, and John Whalen-Bridge made me rethink some
of my statements on politics and insisted that I include a few references
to earlier American literature. Daniel Punday provided bibliographic as­
sistance at the outset of the project. I am grateful to all of them, and if I
have not gone as far in various directions as they advised, the fault is mine,
not theirs. Finally, I owe more than I can say with mere thanks to Robert
D. Flume. Fie has provided endless help and encouragement and has nev­
er been too busy to discuss ideas and how one might write about them.
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