At a glance:
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Literary criticism
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Literature, Science or scientists, Alienation, Writing, Novelists, Ecology, Naturalism
Tom LeClair’s The Art of Excess is an important contribution to American literary criticism. In an age of minimalist art and, consequently, of minimalist criticism, LeClair tackles seven of the longest works that have been produced in American fiction in the 1970’s and 1980’s: Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Joseph Heller’s Something Happened (1974), William Gaddis’ J R (1975), Robert Coover’s The Public Burning (1977), John Barth’s Letters (1979), Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming...
(The entire page is 1661 words.)
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