LEADER 04413nam 2200613 450 001 9910464255403321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-8018-9923-0 035 $a(CKB)3170000000046944 035 $a(PromptCat)40018452402 035 $a(MH)012604857-6 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000606089 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11381853 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000606089 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10579796 035 $a(PQKB)11470272 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4398332 035 $a(OCoLC)794700398 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse1430 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL4398332 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr11161049 035 $a(EXLCZ)993170000000046944 100 $a20091218d2010 uy| 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aSecret histories $ereading twentieth-century American literature /$fDavid Wyatt 210 1$aBaltimore :$cJohns Hopkins University Press,$d2010. 215 $a1 online resource (xix, 400 p. ) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-8018-9712-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aThe body and the corporation: Norris, Chambers -- Double consciousness: Johnson, Chesnutt, Du Bois, Washington -- Pioneering women: Austin, Eaton, Stein, Eliot, Williams, Cather -- Performing maleness: Hemingway -- Colored me: Toomer, Hurston -- The rumor of race: Faulkner -- The depression: Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Yesierska, Di Donato, Himes, Farrell, Steinbeck -- The second World War: Mori, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Silko, Hersey -- Civil rights: Wright, Gaines, Baldwin, Walker, King, Clark -- Love and separateness: Welty, Petry, Douglas, Mary Mccarthy, Friedan, Steinbeck -- Revolt and reaction: Mailer, Didion -- The postmodern: Shepard, Beattie, Carver, Delillo, Gaddis -- Studying war: Cormac Mccarthy, Herr -- Slavery and memory: Morrison -- Pa not pa: Kingston, Walker, Ellison, Lee, Rodriguez -- After innocence: Roth. 330 $aThis work claims that the history of the nation is hidden in plain sight, within the pages of twentieth-century American literature. The author argues that the nation's fiction and nonfiction expose a "secret history" that cuts beneath the "straight histories" of our official accounts. And it does so by revealing personal stories of love, work, family, war, and interracial romance as they were lived out across the decades of the twentieth century. He reads authors both familiar and neglected, examining "double consciousness" in the post Civil War era through works by Charles W. Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington. He reveals aspects of the Depression in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anzia Yezierska, and John Steinbeck. Period by period, the author's readings recover the felt sense of life as it was lived, opening dimensions of the critical issues of a given time. The rise of the women's movement, for example, is revivified in new appraisals of works by Eudora Welty, Ann Petry, and Mary McCarthy. Running through the examination of individual works and times is his argument about reading itself. Reading is not a passive activity but an empathetic act of cocreation, what Faulkner calls "overpassing to love." Empathetic reading recognizes and relives the emotional, cultural, and political dimensions of an individual and collective past. And discovering a usable American past, as the author shows, enables us to confront the urgencies of our present moment. 606 $aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism 606 $aHistory in literature 606 $aLiterature and history$zUnited States$xHistory 607 $aUnited States$xIn literature 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aHistory in literature. 615 0$aLiterature and history$xHistory. 676 $a810.9/35873 700 $aWyatt$b David$f1948-$0936711 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910464255403321 996 $aSecret histories$92247324 997 $aUNINA 999 $aThis Record contains information from the Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset, which is provided by the Harvard Library under its Bibliographic Dataset Use Terms and includes data made available by, among others the Library of Congress