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Dennis Vannatta (essay date 1980)

SOURCE: Vannatta, Dennis. “Satiric Gestures in Max Apple's The Oranging of America.” Studies in Contemporary Satire 7 (spring 1980): 1–7.

[In the following essay, Vannatta considers the satirical elements of The Oranging of America.]

Satires on the banality of the American dream are by this time such literary commonplaces that they threaten to become triter than the cliches which they attack. Vietnam, inflation, and Nathanael West's A Cool Million have done in America quite well, thank you; why kick a tired old fellow when he's down? Yet on they come, novels such as Rob Swiggart's Little America (1977), at a time when the American dream is little more than an historical relic. Why then the striking critical and popular success of a first collection of short stories by Max Apple—stories which take on yet again the punch-drunk myth of America?

Reviewers of Apple's The...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Carole Cook (review date 1977)
   2. Celia Betsky (review date 1977)
   3. Dennis Vannatta (essay date 1980)
   4. Alan Wilde (essay date 1981)
   5. Wayne Glausser (essay date 1983)
   6. Max Apple with Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory (interview date 1983)
   7. Tom LeClair (review date 1984)
   8. Max Apple with Allan Vorda (interview date 1987)
   9. Alan Wilde (essay date 1987)
   10. Jerome Klinkowitz (essay date 1992)
   11. Joe David Bellamy (essay date 1995)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright