New Literary Quarrels with Tenderness

FAIN: FA-12276-78

Mark Spilka
Brown University (Providence, RI 02912-9100)

To examine the specific difficulties of selected modern writers in coming to terms in their fiction, as often in their lives, with tender feelings, affections, the more personal and considerate forms of intimacy. Taking James's turn-of-the-century impasse as one touchstone for the new difficulties, and Hemingway's 1920s impasse as another, will be followed by a definition of the partial solutions bravely arrived at by Lawrence, Joyce, and Woolf, and the unresolved (and later falsely resolved dilemmas arrived at by Faulkner and Steinbeck. Final chapter will deal with the writings of Salinger, Malumud, and Segal, as well as Rith, Mailer, and Bellow.