Includes bibliographical references (pages 254-271) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Suspending disbelief -- "Cursed with believing": failed apostasy in Flannery O'Connor's fiction -- Conversion and storefront Pentecostalism in James Baldwin's Harlem -- Secular theodicy: Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, and Philip Roth -- Apocalypse then: eschatology in Don DeLillo's America.
Summary:
From Flannery O'Connor and James Baldwin to the post-9/11 writings of Don DeLillo, imaginative writers have often been the most insightful chroniclers of the USA's changing religious life since the end of World War II. Exploring a wide range of writers from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and secular faiths, this book is an in-depth study of contemporary fiction's engagement with religious belief, identity and practice. Through readings of major writers of our time like Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Philip Roth, Marilynne Robinson and John Updike, Mark Eaton discovers a more nuanced picture of the varieties of American religious experience: that they are more commonplace than cultural ideas of progressive secularisation or faith-based polarization might suggest.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.