Introduction

1 Family Values

The Bluest Eye&Toni Morrison

Affliction&Russell Banks

The Shipping News&E.A.Proulx

Bright Lights,Big City&Jay Mclnerney

The Bean Trees&Barbara Kingsolver

Louisiana Power & Light&John Dufresne

2 Gender and History

In Country&Bobbie Ann Mason

Machine Dreams&Jayne Anne Phillips

A Thousand Acres&Jane Smiley

The Color Purple&Alice Walker

3 The West

Blood Meridian&Cormac McCarthy

Close Range&E.A.Proulx

The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven&Sherman Alexie

Northern Lights&Tim O'Brien

Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World&Donald Antrim

4 Consumerism,Media,Technology

Ragtime&E.L.Doctorow

White Noise&Don DeLillo

Mao II&Don DeLillo

Underworld&Don DeLillo

Bombardiers&Po Bronson

5 Language and Power

Typical American&Gish Jen

Native Speaker&Chang-rae Lee

Philadelphia Fire&John Edgar Wideman

The New York Trilogy&Paul Auster

High Lonesome&Barry Hannah

6 Sport

The Sportswriter&Richard Ford

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game&William Kennedy

Fat City&Leonard Gardner

End Zone&Don DeLillo

The Universal Baseball Association,inc. J.Henry Waugh,PROP.&Robert Coover

7 Imagining Subjectivity

Memories of the Ford Administration&John Updike

American Pastoral&Philip Roth

Billy Bathgate&E.L.Doctorow

Tales of Burning Love&Louise Erdrich

Conclusion

Bibliography