The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut (American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century)

215 Pages·2008·2.56 MB·English

by  David Simmons

The Anti-Hero in the
American Novel
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American Literature Readings
in the 21st Century
Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by
contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of
the nineteenth and twentieth century in the United States.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Freak Shows in Modern American Imagination: Constructing the
Damaged Body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote
By Thomas Fahy
Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics
By Steven Salaita
Women & Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to Morrison
By Kelly Lynch Reames
American Political Poetry in the 21st Century
By Michael Dowdy
Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and
James: Thinking and Writing Electricity
By Sam Halliday
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Racial Angles and the Business of Literary Greatness
By Michael Nowlin
Sex, Race, and Family in Contemporary American Short Stories
By Melissa Bostrom
Democracy in Contemporary U.S. Women’s Poetry
By Nicky Marsh
James Merrill and W.H. Auden: Homosexuality and Poetic Influence
By Piotr K. Gwiazda
Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism
Edited by Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez
The Hero in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Saul Bellow
and Don DeLillo
By Stephanie S. Halldorson
Race and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction
By Amy L. Strong
Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism
By Jennifer Haytock
The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut
By David Simmons
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The Anti-Hero in the
American Novel
From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut
David Simmons
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THE ANTI-HERO IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL
Copyright © David Simmons, 2008.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2008 by
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Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978–0–230–60323–3
ISBN-10: 0–230–60323–8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simmons, David, 1979–
The anti-hero in the American novel : from Joseph Heller to Kurt
Vonnegut / David Simmons.
p. cm.—(American literature readings in the twenty-first century)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–230–60323–8 (alk. paper)
1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Antiheroes in literature. I. Title.
PS374.A57S56 2008
8139.5409352—dc22 2007044445
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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To the memory of Kenneth A. Yeoman. A Good Friend.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 The Rebel with a Cause? The Anti-Heroic Figure
in American Fiction of the 1960s 1
2 Individualism and the Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Heroic
Figure in American Fiction of the 1960s 43
3 The Outlaw Returns: The Cowboy in American
Fiction of the 1960s 81
4 Sinner or Saint? The Anti-Hero as Christ Figure
in the American Novel of the 1960s 113
Conclusion 147
Notes 153
Bibliography 183
Index 197
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Preface
The national tradition of the anti-hero is crucial to the American
novel of the 1960s. Events such as the Vietnam War and the subse-
quent peacenik movement, the civil rights crusade, the wide-scale use
of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, and the emergence of the hip-
pies all suggest that the 1960s was a highpoint for rebellion against
the state. Indeed, so great was the amount of opposition to the
American hegemony during the 1960s that the anti-state movement
was termed the ‘counterculture’1 by Theodore Roszak, an American
professor and social critic. The concept of the counterculture quickly
entered the national vernacular, being written about by a range of
theorists and philosophers such as Herbert Marcuse, whose work
came to dominate intellectual discussion of the period.
Given the tumultuous climate of the 1960s, it is perhaps not sur-
prising that the novel should reflect the rebelliousness of the public.
Books such as Catch-22 (1961), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
(1962), The Graduate (1963), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963),
Little Big Man (1964), Midnight Cowboy (1965), Cool Hand Luke
(1966), and Slaughterhouse Five (1969) found immense popularity
for their depictions of dissident, subversive individuals opposed to
the ideological mores of the establishment. Such was the audience for
the anti-heroic that many of these characters quickly transcended the
confines of the page to become cultural icons, with novels translated
into other mediums such as film and theater.
The sheer breadth of rebellion that occurred during the 1960s
makes it clear that it is impossible for a single work to cover every
figure classifiable as anti-heroic in the fiction of the period.2 Instead,
each chapter of this book analyzes a 1960s utilization of the anti-
hero, and explores, with reference to specific textual examples, how
writers criticize the value systems of society through the subversion of
traditional heroic exemplars. In accordance with this purpose I single
out three of what I consider to be the most important heroic exem-
plars within American culture: the capitalist or entrepreneurial indi-
vidual, the cowboy, and the Christ figure. I devote a chapter to
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