The Dumbing Down of American Fiction The 1976 film "Network" is an acerbic satire of television's single-minded obsession with mass ratings.One of the film's main characters, Howard Beale, is called the "Mad Prophet of the Airways," and his weekly harangues produce a "ratings motherlode"--yet he constantly admonishes his viewers to "Turn the damn tube off!"During one such rant Beale berates his audience as functional illiterates: "Less than three percent of you even read books!" he shouts messianically--and
Book Review: Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction by Ymitri Mathison. University Press of Mississippi, 2017. 248 pp. ISBN: 9781496815064. In Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction, just published this last fall, Ymitri Mathison presents a collection of ten essays by writers that discuss Asian American young adult(YA) novels addressing different Asian American subgroupings and how those novels address issues particular to each subgroup. In her introductory essay, Mathison
Supernatural in American Fiction The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Therefore, it makes sense that if mortals cannot bear the darkness, they [should not] not go there. If man dislikes black night and yawning chasms, then should he not even consider them? Shouldn't man seek out the sunshine, instead? The remedy is very simple: Avoid the darkness and seek the light. But, no. Mankind would never submit to
The American Dream, Modernist Fiction Ever since America has emerged as its own nation, the idea of The American Dream has constantly evolved with ever changing ideas. During the Modernist Era, America was going through a time of prosperity and new economic wealth. These factors helped shape the American Dream during this time period. Americans' actions at the time, along with the fictional pieces from this time period, reflect these American ideals. The American Dream during the Modernist Era was
examples of what is now called literary journalism, or blurring the line between fact and fiction. What has changed " . . . is not the practice of literary journalism but expectations about truth" ("In"). In Postmodern American Fiction, the editors make the point that Truman Capote's " In Cold Blood (1965) illustrates how the postmodern inclination to blur the boundary between standard journalism and fiction could itself create a new layer of narrative tension within the bounds of the tradition
Biography Kate Chopin was one of the most influential nineteenth century American fiction writers. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on either one of three dates: February 8, 1851, February 8, 1850, or July 12, 1850, depending on the source. She once said that she was born in 1851, but her baptismal certificate states February 8, 1850 as her birthday (Inge, 2). There is also an indiscretion regarding the spelling of her name. Her full name is Katherine O’Flaherty Chopin, but one source spells her
and consumerism. Klinkowitz, writing in Literary Subversions.New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism, sees larger reasons for the book's success: 'Kurt Vonnegut's fiction of the 1960s is the popular artifact which may be the fairest example of American cultural change. . . . Shunned as distastefully low-brow . . . and insufficiently commercial to suit the exploitative tastes of high-power publishers, Vonnegut's fiction limped along for years on the genuinely democratic basis of family
(Roh 16-17). On the other hand, Angel Flores was a little hard fro me to understand at first. I found myself asking questions such as "Will I understand what I am reading?" "Is this going to make sense to me?" "What am I suppose to see in this American Fiction?" I did learn that magical realism has to deal with fantasies written in Spanish (Flores 110-111). Then looking at Amaryll Chanady, I learned that Flores stated that, "practitioners of magical realism clings to reality as if to prevent their
in Introduction to the Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Fetterley's writing is useful for the study of Their Eyes Were Watching God because of her discussion of power and its relation to women. In her introduction she explains the relationship between the two classifications of gender (male versus female) and the ideology of America. According to Fetterley, "American literature is male," and "to be American is male" (991). Unfortunately, this type of philosophy has existed
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, one of the major authors of American fiction. Twain is also considered the greatest humorist in American literature. His varied works include novels, travel narratives, short stories, sketches, and essays. His writings about the Mississippi River, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, have proven especially popular among modern readers. I feel that many of Mark Twain's writings
considered a novel of great worth and one which contains an important and moving plot. In addition, it provides a standard against which to compare the works of writers to follow. It is nearly impossible to truly understand modern European and American fiction without reading, Madame Bovary. Charles Bovary, the only son of a middle-class family, became a doctor and set up his practice in a rural village. He then married a women who was quite older then himself. He was unhappily married to her
Catherine as "Code Hero" in A Farewell to Arms In the last book of A Farewell to Arms, when the pregnant Catherine Barkley is having painful contractions, Frederic Henry, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, reminds his "wife" that she is "a brave good girl" (FTA 313). A day later, after undergoing a caesarian section and giving birth to a stillborn baby boy, Catherine proves just how brave she is; though she knows she is dying, she still has the dignity and strength to accept such a fate
Nathaniel Hawthorne's 19th Century Prose Nathaniel Hawthorne, a master of American fiction, often utilizes dreams within the annals of his writings to penetrate, explore and express his perceptions of the complex moral and spiritual conflicts that plague mankind. His clever, yet crucial purpose for using dreams is to represent, through symbolism, the human divergence conflict manifested in the souls of man during the firm Christian precepts of the Era in which he lived. As a visionary
Minrose Gwin‘s book, Black and White Women of the Old South, argues that history has problems with objectiveness. Her book brings to life interesting interpretations on the view of the women of the old south and chattel slavery in historical American fiction and autobiography. Gwin’s main arguments discussed how the white women of the south in no way wanted to display any kind of compassion for a fellow woman of African descent. Gwin described the "sisterhood" between black and white women
Archaeologists have been popular characters in American Fiction at least since the 1920’s. In the movie The Fifth Element directed by Adrian Lyne an archaeologist makes a startling discovery, which kicks off the entire plot for the movie. The setting is a popular one for that of archaeologists which is Egypt in the year 1914. The archaeologist in this movie was a professor of Italian origins. He was about fifty to sixty years old with gray hair and a beard. He was dressed in nice Italian clothes
of the characters' or the community's evolving experience ( Brodhead, p. 159 ) . In Hawthorne's use of symbols in The Scarlet Letter, we observe the author making one of his most distinctive and significant contributions to the growth of American fiction. Indeed this novel is usually regarded as the first symbolic novel to be published in the United States ( Dibble, p. 77 ) . Hawthorne attempts to spread a revelation into imagined characters and scenes, to transfer the realization of the symbols
Strategies of Influence: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Feminine Ego Works Cited Missing ... despite the influence of the women's movement, despite the explosion of work in nineteenth century American social history, and despite the new historicism that is infiltrating literary studies, the women, like Stowe, whose names were household words in the nineteenth century ... remain excluded from the literary canon. And while it has recently become fashionable to study their works as examples of cultural
Stephen King: American Author of Contemporary Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Introduction Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and suspense who was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. He has sold more than 350 million copies of his books. Many of his books have been adapted into films, TV movies, and comic books. King has published 50 novels, five nonfiction books, and two hundred short stories. He has received many awards to recognize his
Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it? -Chuck Palahniuk Throughout Phillip Seymour's novel, American Pastoral, the concept of national identity changes for characters with the progressive times. The Swede’s identity builds from his
and American Slave Gothic literature has a number of conventions, including evils of horror, present of light and dark, suggestions of the supernatural, and dark and exotic localities such as castles and crumbling mansions (American). Violence in gothic literature never occurs just for the sake of violence; there is always a moral dilemma (Clarke 209). By going the extremes, a gothic author is able to accentuate a contrast allowing the author's point to be made more easily. American fiction