Essays on the Literature of American Novelist John Marquand (1893-1960)

Description

This study is intended for a general academic audience, from advanced undergraduate students to professional literary scholars. The book aims to reintroduce Marquand, a respected and critically-received author of the 1930’s, 1940s, and 1950s, to a modern (or postmodern) audience. Marquand was considered a master of the “novel of manners”, a type of fiction that examines the cultural and social milieu of the author, usually (but not always) in a contemporary setting. Thus, for example, while The Late George Apley begins in the 1800s, it concludes in the 1930s (the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1837). This edited work contains eight diverse treatments of Marquand, his career, and his novels and stories. Thomas Kuhlman discusses Marquands mentoring of Nebraska author Carl Jonas through their epistolary correspondence, while Millicent Bell discusses the ways that Marquand and his agents handled 1he “business” of being a noted, and commercial, author. Will and Mimosa Stephenson examine in detail the cultural setting for the protagonist in H.M. Pulliam, Esquire, and show its similarities to the biography of another notable Yankee, Henry Adams. John Regan turns readers back to the “classic” upper-class/immigrant class dichotomy that is critical to an understanding of The Late George Apley. While Randall Waller examines the structures of knowledge systems evident in Point of No Return, Richard Wires discusses the heroic characters in the popular Mr. Moto series of stories and novels. Fred Tarpley and Mark Noe discuss the ways that labeling of one or another sort can shape perception in the general body of Marquand’s work, , as Tarpley discusses the effect of names in Marquand’s work, and Noe examines the less-than-perfect role of women in Marquand’s fiction. Together, the essays examine a wide selection of Marquand’s work from a variety of viewpoints.