The Modern American Novel, Malcolm Bradbury

A monumental critical history that sums up the American literary achievement from Henry James to Thomas Pynchon.
 
Beginning with the 1890s and the seminal novels of Henry James and Theodore Dreiser, this highly acclaimed volume charts the flowering of the American narrative tradition. It takes in Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner; the emergence of Jewish and African-American literatures; and the works of Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, and Kurt Vonnegut. Updated to consider the most important fiction of the 1980s and early ’90s, The Modern American Novel is a comprehensive critical history of American literary achievement.