John Limon is John Hawley Roberts Professor of English at Williams College, USA. He is the author of The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science (1990), Writing After War (1994), Stand-Up Comedy in Theory (2000), and Death's Following (2012).

If you haven't yet encountered John Limon's work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it's witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we're escaping from but also what we're escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells.

• IntroductionPart I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology1. Notes from Neverland 2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music]Part II: Family Likenesses3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon]4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz]5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer]6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue]7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff]8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead] 9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders] Part III: Foreign Correspondents10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman]11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy] Part IV: Prequel12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass] AcknowledgmentsReferencesIndex

John Limon is John Hawley Roberts Professor of English at Williams College, USA. He is the author of The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science (1990), Writing After War (1994), Stand-Up Comedy in Theory (2000), and Death's Following (2012).

If you haven't yet encountered John Limon's work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it's witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we're escaping from but also what we're escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells.

• IntroductionPart I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology1. Notes from Neverland 2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music]Part II: Family Likenesses3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon]4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz]5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer]6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue]7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff]8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead] 9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders] Part III: Foreign Correspondents10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman]11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy] Part IV: Prequel12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass] AcknowledgmentsReferencesIndex

John Limon is John Hawley Roberts Professor of English at Williams College, USA. He is the author of The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science (1990), Writing After War (1994), Stand-Up Comedy in Theory (2000), and Death's Following (2012).

If you haven't yet encountered John Limon's work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it's witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we're escaping from but also what we're escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells.

• IntroductionPart I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology1. Notes from Neverland 2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music]Part II: Family Likenesses3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon]4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz]5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer]6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue]7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff]8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead] 9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders] Part III: Foreign Correspondents10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman]11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy] Part IV: Prequel12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass] AcknowledgmentsReferencesIndex