Noticed initially as a Native American author, Sherman Alexie has since achieved a reputation as a significant figure in the American literary landscape. The essays in this set discuss many different aspects of Alexie's works. Original essays include a comparison of Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Other essays discuss the juxtaposition of poetry and prose fiction in an examination of Reservation Blues, a close reading of The Summer of the BlackWidows, and an overview of his work as writer and director of two films, Smoke...

Includes four new essays commissioned especially for this volume as well as fourteen previously published essays.

Throughout his career and in the decades following his premature death in 1960, Albert Camus gained a large and avid international readership. He has also attracted the interest of scholars from many disciplines, specialists in literature, theater, philosophy, theology, political science, history, psychology, medicine, and law. This volume offers original contributions, while also reprinting a sampling of some of the more trenchant earlier essays about the man and his work. Essays discuss the reception of Camus's oeuvre, themes that have inspired discussion, points of continuing controversy,...

This collection provides broad coverage of Cheever and his work. Original essays discuss the basic facts of Cheever's life and critical reputation. Providing these facts is especially important in the case of the biography of a man who was not only prone to self-invention and self-mythologizing but whose version of his life was for so long accepted as fact and that has posthumously been complicated by often unflattering revelations about his personal life in his daughter's memoirs, in his published journals and in two biographies. Other essays discuss Cheever's decorous style and fragmented...

This volume is unique in the series in that it is one of the few books which collects criticism on an author who is usually identified as writing popular fiction and is part of the popular culture. Essays discuss Ellison's push-pull relationship with the science fiction and fantasy community, his sense that mainstream critics slighted his work because it was identified with genre fiction or popular fiction, his easy postmodern accommodation of popular culture references and images, and his ambiguous standing in the literary establishment. Also included is a comparison of Ellison's vision of...

This title in the series concentrates on those plays and books that remain part of a vibrant scholarly and popular literature about Hellman's life and affairs. Several essays address Hellman's most famous work The Children's Hour. These essays address the controversial theme of lesbianism as well as the roles of good and evil in the play. Also included is an examination of both of the film versions of the play. Other essays address the accuracy of the portrayal of the CivilWar in The Little Foxes, a commentary on the comparison of Toys in the Attic to the plays of Tennessee Williams and the...

This volume in the Critical Insights series begins with an essay entitled "On Jack London," which is a brief discussion of his life and works. A longer biographical section follows. Original essays include a discussion of the literary careers of Jack London and Mark Twain and a close examination of the critical reception of London's works. Other essays discuss London's use of Carl Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, his use of Naturalism in his early works and the themes of androgyny throughout his novels.

This volume is an effort to introduce O'Connor to a new generation of readers by including previously published essays that clarify her religious ideas, her narrative technique, her use of humor, and the regional and social context of her fiction. Original essays commissioned especially for this volume make significant new contributions to the understanding and appreciation of her work. Essays discuss the religious context of such stories as "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People." Other essays explore O'Connor's use of humor in the story "Temple of the Holy Ghost" as well as...

John Updike's extensive body of work is the focus of this volume. New essays include a discussion of the social and historical context of Updike's work and a consideration of Updike's recurrent Jewish-American character, the blocked writer Henry Bech, as a vehicle for his creator to treat the relationship between an author and his work and narratively perform the other. Several republished essays discuss Updike's Harry Rabbit Angstrom novels, his Scarlet Letter Trilogy and the novels featuring Harry Bech.

The purpose of this collection of essays is to provide the reader who has read or is about to read William Faulkner's novel with as much of a multi-faceted perspective as space will allow. Original essays include a close reading of the novel from the critical standpoint of feminist theory, an analysis of the novel's cultural and historical context and a discussion of the critical reception of Absalom, Absalom! The carefully chosen previously published essays provide a wide range of perspectives on such subjects as theme, protagonists, feminism, storytelling, race, style, Civil War, and time,...