Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Beginnings
2. Travels
3. Autobiography
4. Narrative Voice and the Short Story
5. Poetry
6. The Drama of the Everyday
7. The Great American Novel
8. Endings
Timeline

Index

About the Author

Kevin J. Hayes is Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson.

Reviews

"Hayes has read widely and deeply and commands his material always. Organizing the material by genre and sub-genre rather than strictly by chronology makes the work highly readable and original." --Jerome Loving, author of Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens
"Reading Kevin Hayes's personal tour through American literature is like chatting with a one-person book club, whose knowledge comes across in discussing the famous as well as overlooked and interesting writers. Rather than a chronological approach, Hayes takes us on a journey through different genres, making it easy to see how works cluster together by forms and themes. This is an enjoyable and informative read." --Joel Myerson, coeditor of The Oxford
Handbook to Transcendentalism
"Hayes' argument that American writing is obsessed with inventing the American person neatly and impressively comprehends the majority of American texts. " -- First Things
"A Journey Through American Literature is a delightful collection of insight, excerpts, and advice. With the book as a guide, readers are likely to approach American writing with better understanding and appreciation, sampling Faulkner with less fear and viewing Seinfeld with more respect." -- ForeWord
"Valuing concision and clarity, [Hayes] offers reasonable, clear critical assessments. And his canvas is comprehensive, covering both iconic texts and obscure works often relegated to the historical footnote...Recommended." --Choice
"I would like put this book into the hands of graduate and undergraduate students of American literature to help them develop a sense of the scope of possibility for future scholarship in the field--and into the hands of many of my colleagues, to remind us what we used to stay up late talking about." --Studies in American Naturalism

Hayes (English, Univ. of Central Oklahoma; The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson) takes the reader on a journey that is impressive in scope but necessarily limited in depth. In his time line at the end of the book, Hayes starts with a 1608 work by John Smith and concludes with Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. He attempts to cover the territory between those works as he considers everything from travel literature to autobiographies, short stories, poetry, drama, and novels. The pace is somewhat frenetic as he discusses, thematically, Mary Rowlandson's famous 1682 captivity narrative and only a few pages later comments on DNA scientist James D. Watson's autobiography of almost 300 years later. In the chapter on short stories, he spends about as much time on the work of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet as he does on that of Ernest Hemingway. Given the shortcomings of such a cursory view, Hayes offers some provocative statements that might spark debate or motivate further reading. In his chapter on drama, for example, he considers the writers of The Simpsons as among the most creative in America today. VERDICT This easy read is a quick overview of writing in America that will appeal primarily to teachers and introductory literature students.-Anthony J. Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.