UNIT SIX POST WORLD WAR II

 Narrative since World War II resists generalization: It is extremely various and multifaceted. It has been vitalized by international currents such as European existentialism and Latin American magical realism, while the electronic era has brought the global village. The spoken word on television has given new life to oral tradition. Oral genres, media, and popular culture have increasingly influenced narrative. American Prose Since 1945: Realism and Experimentation

 Robert Penn Warren  Arthur Miller  Lillian Hellman  Tennessee Williams  Katherine Anne Porter  Eudora Welty MAIN aUTHORS

THE 1950  John O’hara  James Baldwin  Ralph Ellison  Flannery O’ Connor  Saul Bellow  Bernard Malamud  Isaac Bashevis Singer  Vladimir Nabokov  John Cheever  John Updike 1932  J.D. Salinger 1919  Jack Kerouac

 The alienation and stress underlying the 1950s found outward expression in the 1960s in the United States in the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, antiwar protests, minority activism, and the arrival of a counterculture whose effects are still being worked through American society. Notable political and social works of the era include the speeches of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the early writings of feminist leader Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique, 1963), and Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968), about a 1967 antiwar march. The turbulennt but creative 1960s

 Thomas Pynchon 1937  John Barth 1930  Norman Mailer 1923  Philip Roth 1933 Main authors

 Southern writing of the l960s tended, like the then still largely agrarian southern region, to adhere to time-honored traditions. It remained rooted in realism and an ethical, if not religious, vision during this decade of radical change. Recurring southern themes include family, the family home, history, the land, religion, guilt, identity, death, and the search for redemptive meaning in life. Southern writers

 By the mid-1970s, an era of consolidation had begun. The Vietnam conflict was over, followed soon afterward by U.S. recognition of the People's Republic of China and America's bicentennial celebration. Soon the 1980s -- the "Me Decade" in Tom Wolfe's phrase -- ensued, in which individuals tended to focus more on personal concerns than on larger social issues. THE 1970s AND 1980s: CONSOLIDATION

 E.L. Doctorow 1931  William Styron  John gardner  Joyce Carol Oates 1938  Toni Morrison 1931  Alice Walker 1944 Main authors

 Jewish-American writers like Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud  Asian Americans also took their place on the scene. Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior (1976), the Latino-American writers, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban-born author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989). James Welch ( ) detailed the struggles of Native Americans in his slender, nearly flawless novels Winter in the Blood (1974), THE RISE OF MULTIETHNIC FICTION

 After World War I, popular and lucrative musicals had increasingly dominated the Broadway theatrical scene. Serious theater retreated to smaller, less expensive theaters "off Broadway" or outside New York City. AMERICAN DRAMA

 Edward Albee 1928  Amiri Baraka 1934  Sam Shepard 1943  David Mamet 1947  David Rabe 1940  August Wilson MAIN AUTHORS

Literature in the United States today is likewise dazzlingly diverse, exciting, and evolving. New voices have arisen from many quarters, challenging old ideas and adapting literary traditions to suit changing conditions of the national life. Social and economic advances have enabled previously underrepresented groups to express themselves more fully, while technological innovations have created a fast-moving public forum. Contemporary american literature

According to Publishers Weekly, 2001 was the first year that Christian-themed books topped the sales lists in both fiction and nonfiction. Among the hardcover best-sellers of that exemplary Sunday in 2006, we find Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code and Anne Rice's tale Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

Raymond Carver (l938-l988) had studied under the late novelist John Gardner, absorbing Gardner’s passion for accessible artistry fused with moral vision. Carver rose above alcoholism and harsh poverty to become the most influential story writer in the United States. In his Collections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (l976), What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (l981), Cathedral (l983), and Where I’m Calling From (l988), Carver follows confused working people through dead-end jobs, alcoholic binges, and rented rooms with an understated, minimalist style of writing that carries tremendous impact. The short story: new directions

The short short is a very brief story, often only one or two pages long. It is sometimes called “flash fiction” or “sudden fiction” After the l986 anthology Sudden Fiction, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas. In short short stories, there is little space to develop a character. Rather, the element of plot is central: A crisis occurs, and a sketched-in character simply has to react. The short short story: sudden or flash fiction

Contemporary drama mingles realism with fantasy in Postmodern works that fuse the personal and the political. The exuberant Tony Kushner (l956- ) has won acclaim for his prize-winning Angels in America plays, which vividly render the AIDS epidemic and the psychic cost of closeted homosexuality in the 1980s and 1990s. Drama

Regions

Regionalism  The Northeast  The Mid-Atlantic  The South  The Midwest  The Mountain West  The Southwest  California Literature  The Northwest