Introduction 1
1 Family Values 8
The Bluest Eye&Toni Morrison 10
Affliction&Russell Banks 16
The Shipping News&E.A.Proulx 22
Bright Lights,Big City&Jay Mclnerney 30
The Bean Trees&Barbara Kingsolver 35
Louisiana Power & Light&John Dufresne 38
2 Gender and History 42
In Country&Bobbie Ann Mason 44
Machine Dreams&Jayne Anne Phillips 54
A Thousand Acres&Jane Smiley 62
The Color Purple&Alice Walker 70
3 The West 78
Blood Meridian&Cormac McCarthy 80
Close Range&E.A.Proulx 88
The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven&Sherman Alexie 96
Northern Lights&Tim O'Brien 104
Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World&Donald Antrim 108
4 Consumerism,Media,Technology 111
Ragtime&E.L.Doctorow 113
White Noise&Don DeLillo 122
Mao II&Don DeLillo 131
Underworld&Don DeLillo 138
Bombardiers&Po Bronson 146
5 Language and Power 153
Typical American&Gish Jen 155
Native Speaker&Chang-rae Lee 163
Philadelphia Fire&John Edgar Wideman 169
The New York Trilogy&Paul Auster 180
High Lonesome&Barry Hannah 186
6 Sport 200
The Sportswriter&Richard Ford 203
Billy Phelan's Greatest Game&William Kennedy 213
Fat City&Leonard Gardner 217
End Zone&Don DeLillo 221
The Universal Baseball Association,inc. J.Henry Waugh,PROP.&Robert Coover 225
7 Imagining Subjectivity 231
Memories of the Ford Administration&John Updike 233
American Pastoral&Philip Roth 239
Billy Bathgate&E.L.Doctorow 248
Tales of Burning Love&Louise Erdrich 254
Conclusion 263
Bibliography 271