FIFTY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN NOVEL

A symposium of critical studies of key American authors by an all Catholic group of critics, this is remarkably restrained in its religious slant, and consequently a very rewarding study of the 20th century American novel. The authors put on the riddle are Edith Wharton who wrote of the decay of a frivolous society; Dreiser who was concerned too much with materialism; Ellen Glasgow whose theme was social change in the -bellum South; Willa Cather and Sinclair Lewis who saw two facets of Mid-Western ; J. P. Marquand, a ""Martini-age victorian""; Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Hemingway; ; Steinbeck, Farrell; and the post-war group of novelists whose theme is largely heir experiences in the last war. An interesting if uncompromising evaluation that finds wanting in the novelists of the last few decades.