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A Concise Companion to American Fiction, 1900–1950
University of Central Lancashire
A Concise Companion to American Fiction, 1900–1950. Edited by Peter Stoneley and Cindy Weinstein. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. ISBN 9781405133678. £55.
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IN HIS essay, ‘Racial Uplift and the Politics of African American Fiction’, the tenth chapter of this companion, Gene Andrew Jarrett declares: ‘I do not consider 1900 and 1950 the ideal bookends’. He thus signals both his exasperation and his willingness to work within the ‘arbitrary’ limitations imposed by what the editors call their ‘temporal umbrella’. The decade marker, like the century marker, has become increasingly challenged in literary and cultural criticism, even as editors – often taking their directives from publishers – acknowledge the marketing value of such easily identifiable packages for undergraduate purchasers. Fortunately, fealty to the 1900 and 1950 ‘bookends’ does not detract from the value of this volume, in part because of the contributing scholars' mature decision to ignore