We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Twentieth-century American literary naturalism: an interpretation" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Scorned by critics since birth, decreed dead by many, naturalism, according to Donald Pizer, is one of the most persistent and vital strains in American fiction, perhaps the only modern literary form in America that has been both popular and significant. To define naturalism and explain its tenacious hold throughout the twentieth century on the American creative imagination, Pizer explores six novels: James T. Farrells Studs Lonigan, John Dos Passoss U.S.A., John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, Norman Mailers The Naked and the Dead, William Styrons Lie Down in Darkness, and Saul Bellows The Adventures of Augie March. Pizers approach to these novels is empirical; he does not wrench each novel awkwardly until it fits his framework of generalizations and principles; rather, he approaches the novels as fiction and arrives at his definition through his close reading of the works. Establishing the background of naturalism, Pizer explains that it comes under attack because it is sordid and sensational in subject matter, it challenges mans faith in his innate moral sense and thus his responsibility for his actions, and it is so full of social documentation that it is often dismissed as little more than a photographic record of a life or an era; thus the aesthetic validity of the naturalistic novel has often been questioned. Pizer posits the 1890s, the 1930s, and the late 1940s as the decades when naturalism flourished in America. He concentrates on literary criticism, not on the philosophy of naturalism, to show that literary criticism can make a contribution to a particularly muddled area of literary historya naturalism that is alive and changing, thus resisting the neat definitions reserved for the dead.
