{"product_id":"understanding-thomas-berger-understanding-contemporary-american-literature","title":"Understanding Thomas Berger (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA comprehensive survey of the genrejumping authors impressive body of workUnderstanding Thomas Berger introduces readers to a veteran novelist best known for his wry explorations of the dialectic between the great American dream and the realities of middleclass American life, a frustrating nexus where characters might win knowledge and language but still lack opportunity for action. As Brooks Landon notes in this survey of Bergers impressive body of work, this author openly resists easy classification. Indeed Bergers uncanny ability to satirize literary genres while participating in them has defined his career and led to such novels as his classic Westerns Little Big Man and The Return of Little Big Man, his hardboiled detective story Who Is Teddy Villanova?, his Arthurian romance Arthur Rex, and his epic Reinhart series. Landon approaches these works thematically to advance understanding of Bergers motives, influences, techniques, style, and languageand it is language that seems key to unlocking Bergers puzzle. According to Landon, the limitations of language and its competition with thought are most central to the conflict for Bergers characters.Having written twentythree novels since 1958, Berger is remarkably productive and has garnered a loyal following of devotees willing to travel with him from genre to genre, but he has always been a bit too intelligent, too edgy, and too hard to indentify to attract a wide audience of mainstream readers. Landons approaches to Berger in the present volume carve fresh inroads for readers into the complex literary landscape of this grimly comic moralist and master of fictions many forms.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of South Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Landon, Brooks \/ hardcover","offer_id":47838223204597,"sku":"SONG1570038287","price":42.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/5804\/8501\/files\/71PX9d5wm-L.jpg?v=1773727945","url":"https:\/\/ergodebooks.com\/products\/understanding-thomas-berger-understanding-contemporary-american-literature","provider":"Ergodebooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}