American Modernist Fiction: Psychoanalytic Recitations of Identity

American Modernist Fiction: Psychoanalytic Recitations of Identity addresses five American Modernist novels in light of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory: Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, Kay Boyle's Process, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, Thornton Wilder's The Cabala, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. Dolis's dynamic readings constitute a spirited "performance" of the narrative, deploying his own innovative form of literary analysis, what he calls "performance criticism". These psychoanalytic studies simultaneously stage the narrative and re-enact its putative significance, provoke and question its intent, thereby establishing a dialectics of desire—what both affects the body of the narrative and, equally, the critic's subjectivity.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Apéritif: Performance Criticism, Revisited Chapter 1: Amuse-bouche: Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts Chapter 2: Entrée: Kay Boyle, Process Chapter 3: Plat principal: Djuna Barnes, Nightwood Chapter 4: Dessert: Thornton Wilder, The Cabala Chapter 5: Digestif: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night Bibliography About the Author

About the Author :
John Dolis is professor emeritus of English and American Studies at Penn State University, Scranton.

Review :
From the jump, Dolis makes clear his disdain for contemporary literary theory for what he terms “its sociological disposition,” taking his work into a critical space once inhabited by the likes of Harold Bloom. Dolis focuses on six American novels of the early 20th century that have fallen below the radar and that need, according to him, to be kept as part of the conversation—novels including Nathanael West's Miss Lonely hearts, Thornton Wilder's The Cabala, and, perhaps most important, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night. Dolis offers a lively Lacanian close reading of the novels, landing most effectively, despite some purple prose, on the final chapter on Fitzgerald’s novel. Though this psychoanalytical approach has lost its appeal in recent decades, the study of literature is a big-tent discipline, and such framing is not without merit and should continue to be part of the conversation. Definitely for those who still find value in the schools of criticism of the mid-20th century. Recommended. Researchers and faculty. I can think of no better example of what a gifted reader can do, in a post-modern tradition of reading, of drawing us into the life of a text, and opening and immersing us in all its wonderful animation. Here description and meta-description at once illuminate the work’s subject itself as layers on layers of “drive,” a drive which Dolis steers as we go along for the ride. The book is insightful. The book is illuminating. The book is fun.