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Alone in America : the stories that matter / Robert A. Ferguson.

by Ferguson, Robert A., 1942-

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Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2013.

American fiction -- History and criticism.

Loneliness in literature.

9780674066762 ((cloth; alk. paper) : alk. paper)

0674066766 ((cloth; alk. paper) : alk. paper)

x, 283 p. ; 20 cm.

Prologue: the lords of life -- Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle? -- Nathaniel Hawthorne dissects betrayal -- Louisa May Alcott meets Mark Twain over the young face of change -- Henry James and Zora Neale Hurston answer defeat -- Edith Wharton's anatomy of breakdown -- Midpoint: the lords of life revisited -- The immigrant novel: fear in America -- William Faulkner and Toni Morrison plot racial difference -- Saul Bellow observes old age -- Don DeLillo and Marilynne Robinson mourn loss -- Walt Whitman finds the courage to be.

With more people living alone today than at any time in U.S. history, Ferguson investigates loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. Ferguson shows that we can learn, from our literature, how to live alone.

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