Olivia Carr Edenfield – författare

This collection of essays by leading scholars insists on a larger recognition of the importance and diversity of crime fiction in U.S. literary traditions. Instead of presenting the genre as the property of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, this book maps a larger territory which includes the domains of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy and other masters of fiction.The essays in this collection pay detailed attention to both the genuine artistry and the cultural significance of crime fiction in the United States. It emphasizes American crime fiction’s inquiry into the nature of democratic society and its exploration of injustices based on race, class, and/or gender that are specifically located in the details of American experience.Each of these essays exists on its own terms as a significant contribution to scholarship, but when brought together, the collection becomes larger than the sum of its pieces in detailing the centrality of crime fiction to American literature. This is a crucial book for all students of American fiction as well as for those interested in the literary treatment of crime and detection, and also has broad appeal for classes in American popular culture and American modernism.

This collection of essays by leading scholars insists on a larger recognition of the importance and diversity of crime fiction in U.S. literary traditions. Instead of presenting the genre as the property of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, this book maps a larger territory which includes the domains of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy and other masters of fiction.The essays in this collection pay detailed attention to both the genuine artistry and the cultural significance of crime fiction in the United States. It emphasizes American crime fiction’s inquiry into the nature of democratic society and its exploration of injustices based on race, class, and/or gender that are specifically located in the details of American experience.Each of these essays exists on its own terms as a significant contribution to scholarship, but when brought together, the collection becomes larger than the sum of its pieces in detailing the centrality of crime fiction to American literature. This is a crucial book for all students of American fiction as well as for those interested in the literary treatment of crime and detection, and also has broad appeal for classes in American popular culture and American modernism.

An overview of a canon influenced by military service, faith, and a life-changing accident

Andre Dubus (1936–1999), the author of short stories, novellas, essays, and two novels, is perhaps best known as the author of the story "Killings," which was adapted into the film In the Bedroom, a nominee for five Academy Awards in 2001. His work received many awards, including the PEN New England Award, the PEN Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Jean Stein Award. In Understanding Andre Dubus, Olivia Carr Edenfield focuses on the major influences that span Dubus''s canon—his Catholic upbringing, Marine Corps service, and turn to fiction at the University of Iowa Writers'' Workshop, as well as the influence that a life-threatening accident had on his work.

Edenfield traces how Dubus''s experiences serve as a backdrop for the major themes that run through his work: faith, family, and infidelity. His marriages, the complex relationships with his children, and his difficult recovery from a car accident exerted a powerful influence on his work. Dubus also took up the complicated themes of love and marriage, fatherhood and faith, and despair and spiritual healing; his subjects and style were influenced significantly by Ernest Hemingway.

After Dubus''s novel Broken Vessels was named a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, he returned to writing short stories, the genre for which he is still renowned. He focused on a character much like himself who had to learn to navigate the world while afflicted with physical and spiritual disability. In 1996 he published his critically acclaimed short story cycle Dancing after Hours, an appropriate ending to a career that celebrated the healing power of the human heart.