Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo.

Abstract

In Nobody's Home, Arnold Weinstein defies the current trends of cultural studies and postmodern criticism to create a sweeping account of American fiction. From Hawthorne's Wakefield to Don deLillo's novels, the book pursues the idea of freedom of speech in the work of American writers. Though many contemporary critics emphasize the ways in which we are bound by the limitations of culture, history and language, Weinstein sees the issue of freedom (to speak, to create a self, to overcome repression) as central to the enterprise of American fiction in the past two centuries. Weinstein brings together canonical American texts by Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Twain, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway with contemporary fiction by John Hawkes, Toni Morrison, Robert Coover and Don deLillo. This broad historical continuum is charted in a critical style that is lucid and engaging. The book's superb readings of individual texts, together form a coherent and inspiring vision of the great achievements of American fiction.