Recent American Fiction : A Critical Survey

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

To speak of contemporary American fiction in 1979 is to speak almost exclusively of the novel. The demise of such commercial journals as the Saturday Evening Post has left virtually no paying market for the short story for which reason only established writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Joyce Carol Cates can today publish their short fiction either in book-length collections or in the very few popular magazines that occasionally still accept short fiction but only from writers whose names will attract buyers to their publications. In fact, the proliferation of more easily digestible media like television and the cinema, along with an increasing American preference for books conveying practical information and nonfiction(e. g., Toffler's Future Shock, Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men) have led many scholars to question whether the novel can survive as a viable art form.