Since the 1960s, Donald Pizer has been writing about late-19th-century American literature, with an emphasis on the major fiction of Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. Most academics whose interests lie primarily in the preparation of scholarly editions are attracted to the paradoxical mix of adherence to a rigorous process and an opportunity for speculative thinking that is distinctive to this branch of literary studies. And they often find appealing the notion that the end product of th...

Frank Norris is a seminal figure in the history of American literary naturalism despite the brevity of his career. Frank Norris and American Naturalism brings together in one volume Donald Pizer’s lifelong exploration of the naturalist’s work, ranging from his 1955 discussion of point of view in The Octopus to his 2010 essay on the thematic unity of that novel. The essays in Frank Norris and American Naturalism as a whole seek to demonstrate both the coherence of Norris’s thought and his c...

The book collects Pizer’s late career essays on various writers and subjects related to American naturalism. Of these, two seek to describe the movement as a whole, six are on specific writers or works (with an emphasis on Theodore Dreiser), and two reprint informative interviews by Pizer on the subject. The essays reflect Pizer’s mature engagement of the subject he has spent a lifetime exploring.

The four initial essays in the “Specific Writers and Works” section display Pizer’s critical style in its characteristic varied and incisive form. The initial essay, an exercise in cross-discipline analysis, discusses the ways specific works by Crane, Dreiser, and Steinbeck reveal their author’s response to specific contemporary visual art works and reportage. The seconds offers a novel way of interpreting the naturalism of London’ archetypal story “To Light a Fire” by pointing out the wea...

‘Frank Norris and American Naturalism’ brings together in one volume Donald Pizer’s lifelong exploration of Frank Norris’s work, ranging from his 1955 discussion of point of view in ‘The Octopus’ to his 2010 essay on the thematic unity of that novel. The essays as a whole seek to demonstrate both the coherence of Norris’s thought and his contribution toward the establishment of a specific form of naturalism in America. The collection’s principal focus is Norris’s most enduring works, the n...

‘Frank Norris and American Naturalism’ brings together in one volume Donald Pizer’s lifelong exploration of Frank Norris’s work, ranging from his 1955 discussion of point of view in ‘The Octopus’ to his 2010 essay on the thematic unity of that novel. The essays as a whole seek to demonstrate both the coherence of Norris’s thought and his contribution toward the establishment of a specific form of naturalism in America. The collection’s principal focus is Norris’s most enduring works, the n...

The four initial essays in the “Specific Writers and Works” section display Pizer’s critical style in its characteristic varied and incisive form. The initial essay, an exercise in cross-discipline analysis, discusses the ways specific works by Crane, Dreiser, and Steinbeck reveal their author’s response to specific contemporary visual art works and reportage. The seconds offers a novel way of interpreting the naturalism of London’ archetypal story “To Light a Fire” by pointing out the wea...

A new appraisal of Dos Passos's work and life, Toward a Modernist Style describes both the central currents in his early work, and his full participation in literary modernism, culminating in his U.S.A. trilogy, as well as the relationship of these currents to those of an especially vibrant period in American expression.Donald Pizer charts the evolution of Dos Passos's artistic sensibility from its largely conventional expression at the start of the 1920s to the r...

Lynching in American Literature and Journalism consists of twelve essays investigating the history and development of writing about lynching as an American tragedy and the ugliest element of national character. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 European Americans. More than 73 percent of the lynchings in the Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. The Lync...

All of American author Frank Norris’s significant critical writings have been compiled in this book, including his articles for the San Francisco Wave during 1896–1897 and selections from his “Weekly Letter” column for the Chicago American in 1901. Essays from these two previously unexploited sources, comprising almost half the book, reveal certain areas of Norris’s thought which heretofore had been overlooked by scholars.This book was compiled in order to clarify...

This Companion examines a number of issues related to the terms realism and naturalism. The introduction seeks both to discuss the problems in the use of these two terms in relation to late nineteenth-century fiction and to describe the history of previous efforts to make the terms expressive of American writing of this period. The Companion includes ten essays which fall into four categories: essays on the historical context of realism and naturalism by Louis Budd and Richard Lehan; essay...