{"product_id":"road-book-america-rowland-a-sherrill-9780252025464","title":"Road-Book America: Contemporary Culture and the New Picaresque","description":"In this wide-ranging and sophisticated study, Rowland Sherrill explores the resurgence and transformation of an old literary form--the picaresque narrative--into a new form that he shows to be both responsive and instructive to late twentieth-century American life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eRoad-Book America\u003c\/i\u003e discloses how the old picaresque tradition, embodied in such novels as Henry Fielding's \u003ci\u003eTom Jones\u003c\/i\u003e and Daniel Defoe's \u003ci\u003eMoll Flanders\u003c\/i\u003e, opens to include a number of new American texts, both fiction and nonfiction, that decisively share the characterizing form. Sherrill's discussion encompasses hundreds of American narratives published in the past four decades, including such examples of the genre as William Least Heat-Moon's \u003ci\u003eBlue Highways\u003c\/i\u003e, John Steinbeck's \u003ci\u003eTravels with Charley\u003c\/i\u003e, James Leo Herlihy's \u003ci\u003eMidnight Cowboy\u003c\/i\u003e, Bill Moyers's \u003ci\u003eListening to America\u003c\/i\u003e, and E. L. Doctorow's \u003ci\u003eBilly Bathgate\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Sketching the socially marginal, ingenuous, traveling characters common to both old and new versions, Sherrill shows how the \"new American picaresque\" transforms the satirical aims of the original into an effort to map and catalog the immensity and variety of America. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Open, resilient, perennially hopeful, and endowed with a protean adaptability, the protagonist of the new American picaresque follows a therapeutic path for the alienated modern self. Mining the relevance of the reformulated picaresque for American life, \u003ci\u003eRoad-Book America\u003c\/i\u003e shows how this old form, adaptable as the picaro himself, lays the groundwork for spiritual renewal and a restoration of cultural confidence in some old ways of being American. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Rowland A. Sherrill\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0252025466\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780252025464\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Illinois Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/30\/2000\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 368\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.58lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.32h x 6.34w x 1.16d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/01\/2000 pg. 333","brand":"Rowland A. Sherrill","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48621662601471,"sku":"9780252025464","price":125.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/road-book-america-rowland-a-sherrill-9780252025464","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}