San Antonio College Library

"James T. Farrell vaulted into the American literary firmament during the 1930s to become one of its brightest lights. Studs Lonigan, his trilogy about a young Irish "tough" from Chicago's South Side, was a literary sensation and acclaimed as a modern classic. Farrell went on to produce other excellent novels in four more decades of writing. But his courageous stance against Stalinism took a toll on his literary reputation, and later, as the naturalism...

"This book offers a perfect introduction to contemporary American novels and their authors. John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Thomas Wolfe, John Marquand, James Farrell, John Steinbeck are men whose books have a permanent place in American Literature. Out of his long critical experience, Professor Beach explains what each of these eight men -- revolutionaries in their different ways -- is trying to do, and how...

Pizer explores six novels to define naturalism and explain its tenacious hold throughout the twentieth century on the American creative imagination.