LEADER 04260nam 2200745 a 450 001 9910821216403321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a9786612158414 010 $a1-4008-2681-0 010 $a1-282-15841-4 010 $a0-691-12145-1 024 7 $a10.1515/9781400826810 035 $a(CKB)2560000000324404 035 $a(EBL)457827 035 $a(OCoLC)439018510 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000263158 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11225338 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000263158 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10272219 035 $a(PQKB)10470462 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse43020 035 $a(DE-B1597)453550 035 $a(OCoLC)979592494 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781400826810 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL457827 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10312430 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL215841 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC457827 035 $a(EXLCZ)992560000000324404 100 $a20041025d2005 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe twilight of the middle class$b[electronic resource] $epost-World War II American fiction and white-collar work /$fAndrew Hoberek 205 $aCourse Book 210 $aPrinceton, N.J. $cPrinceton University Press$dc2005 215 $a1 online resource (169 p.) 225 1 $aPrinceton paperbacks 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-691-12146-X 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [131]-154) and index. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tINTRODUCTION: The Twilight of the Middle Class -- $tCHAPTER ONE: Ayn Rand and the Politics of Property -- $tCHAPTER TWO: Race Man, Organization Man, Invisible Man -- $tCHAPTER THREE: "The So-Called Jewish Novel" -- $tCHAPTER FOUR: Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Origins of Identity Politics -- $tEPILOGUE: The Postmodern Fallacy -- $tNotes -- $tIndex 330 $aIn The Twilight of the Middle Class, Andrew Hoberek challenges the commonly held notion that post-World War II American fiction eschewed the economic for the psychological or the spiritual. Reading works by Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and others, he shows how both the form and content of postwar fiction responded to the transformation of the American middle class from small property owners to white-collar employees. In the process, he produces "compelling new accounts of identity politics and postmodernism that will be of interest to anyone who reads or teaches contemporary fiction. Hoberek argues that despite the financial gains and job security enjoyed by the postwar middle class, the transition to white-collar employment paved the way for its current precarious state in a country marked by increasingly deep class divisions. Postwar fiction provided the middle class with various imaginative substitutes for its former property-owning independence, substitutes that since then have not only allowed but abetted this class's downward mobility. To read this fiction in the light of the middle-class experience is thus not only to restore the severed connections between literary and economic "history in the second half of the twentieth "century, but to explore the roots of the contemporary crisis of the middle class. 410 0$aPrinceton paperbacks. 606 $aAmerican fiction$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aMiddle class in literature 606 $aLiterature and society$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aWorld War, 1939-1945$zUnited States$xLiterature and the war 606 $aWhite collar workers in literature 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aMiddle class in literature. 615 0$aLiterature and society$xHistory 615 0$aWorld War, 1939-1945$xLiterature and the war. 615 0$aWhite collar workers in literature. 676 $a813/.54093552 700 $aHoberek$b Andrew$f1967-$01627675 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910821216403321 996 $aThe twilight of the middle class$93964379 997 $aUNINA