Michael Kalisch Bücher

How might our friendships shape our politics? This new book examines how contemporary American fiction - from Philip Roth to Dinaw Mengestu - has rediscovered the concept of civic friendship and revived a long tradition of imagining male friendship as interlinked with the promises and paradoxes of democracy in the United States. -- .

Exploring a unique mode of American fiction from the mid-20th century, this book highlights how a group of overlooked writers redefined the novel as a minor form, focusing on its constraints. In response to perceived crises in midcentury fiction, authors like Eleanor Clark and Jean Stafford created works that reflected on their own limitations, paradoxically revitalizing the genre. Blending literary criticism with intellectual history, the text provides in-depth analyses of these writers, enriching our understanding of midcentury American literature's aesthetic diversity.