San Antonio College Library

"The Extension of Life seeks to define the nature of fiction as it has been practiced by some major American authors. It is inspired by the feeling that fiction is puzzling: that it is strange that readers appreciate stories which both are the free invention of their authors and also owe much to the actual facts of the history and society that the readers know from their everyday lives. It seeks to illuminate this puzzle by reference to the substantial...

"Challenging Fiction" is a double entendre. This book argues that modernist fiction is not only difficult (or challenging) to read, it also provokes readers to challenge the fictions that they live by. To read modernist literature in a way that unlocks its humor, its discomfiting insights, and its strong emotional undercurrents, a reader must be both receptive and resistant to the author's perspective, actively challenging it with his or her own experience,...

"Oprah's Book Club sparked a revolution among readers by bringing serious contemporary novels to the attention of a wider audience. The Oprah's Book Club seal on a book led to instant fame and bestseller status for authors - but, how did Oprah change the way America reads and values books? Reading Oprah suggests that Oprah initiated an all-important mantra - trust readers. Not only did the public start reading accessible novels, but they also would...

"In this study, Ronald Berman examines the work of the critic/novelist Edmund Wilson and the art of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway as they wrestled with the problems of language, experience, perception, and reality in the "age of jazz."" "Fitzgerald is often thought of as a romantic, but Berman shows that Fitzgerald actually sought to subvert the romantic models he studied so assiduously. Hemingway, widely viewed as a stylist who captured...