Beyond Suspicion – New American Fiction Since 196: Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction

In this landmark study, Marc Chenetier provides a synthetic view of developments in American fiction between 1960 and the 1990s. Beyond Suspicion focuses primarily on the works of Gaddis, Pynchon, Elkin, McElroy, Hawkes, Nabokov, Gass, Barth, and Coover, although a host of other writers are discussed as well. Chenetier argues that traditional generic approaches to this body of work are misleading. He rejects the categorization of works by their writer's region, race, and gender, and suggests instead an examination of works from a variety of artistic and epistemological viewpoints. Chenetier's status as outsider - geographically speaking - fosters this approach; from his critical distance, he is able to look on American letters with a very specific and individual point of view. Beyond Suspicion is notable too for the grace with which it links the concerns of French literary theory with those of American fiction.