Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3

By Facts On File

Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3 is a collection of scholarly essays and recent reviews of the best of contemporary American literary fiction, including the following titles:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• News of the World by Paulette Jiles
• Moonglow by Michael Chabon
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Facts On File
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781438181998

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Contemporary American Fiction, Volume 3

Copyright © 2019 by Infobase

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Contents

Chapters

Young Adult Cancer Story

Review of News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Michael Chabon Flirts with Truth and Lies in 'Moonglow'

Injuries and Usurpations: The Sellout & The Underground Railroad

An American Sutra: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Interview with Amor Towles (Author of A Gentleman in Moscow)

Support Materials

Acknowledgments

Chapters

Young Adult Cancer Story

2014

On the Monday when The Fault in Our Stars was the #1 movie in America, I spent the morning at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven learning about the intricate physics of intersecting radiation beams and marveling at an animated scan of the inside of my friend Ash's body: a Rorschach image of irregular black-and-white shapes that each emerged and grew and shrank and vanished as we moved down from her shoulders through her healthy heart, spotted lungs, scarred gastro-esophageal junction, stabilized liver, and newly enlarged lymph node.

It was the lymph node's fault that Ash and I couldn't go see The Fault in Our Stars together that week as we'd planned. The node wasn't responding to treatment, which meant that Ash was headed to the city for a second opinion at Weill Cornell Medical College plus some quality time with her friend Ritu in Brooklyn.

Ritu and I, along with Ash's friends Annette and Sarah, had read The Fault In Our Stars this spring at Ash's insistence. During a rough bout of chemo when she could barely eat or drink, Ash read it ravenously, immersing herself in the story of Hazel Grace Lancaster, a teenager who has incurable Stage IV cancer, a hot boyfriend, and a distinctively wise and nerdy voice combining perceptiveness and snark. Afterwards Ash bought extra copies to give away. "You have to read it!" she kept telling us.

Ash, Annette, Ri, and I once had a conversation about what makes writers different than other people. We concluded that non-writers worry that writing about their lives will get in the way of actually experiencing their lives, whereas writers worry that if they don't write about something then they'll fail to fully live it. By this definition and many others, Ash is a born writer, and thousands of people have been moved by her ability to write about her cancer through images of lit-up leaves, sunsets streaked and broken like egg yolks, and the swift-moving shadows of birds in flight. Like Hazel's, Ash's illness has always been text as well as flesh; ever since her first chemo spring when she would write at the infusion center with the toxins flowing in and the words flowing out as she sat and scribbled by a sunny window that overlooked a graveyard.

Most of Ash's experiences with cancer can't be shared: even when we are with her, her cells and side effects remain hers alone. But we try to share what we can, and so we've all been reading and watching The Fault In Our Stars. Ritu read it on her Kindle in New York while she was visiting another loved one with cancer, and went to see