Examining political novels that have achieved (or been denied) canonical
status, John Whalen-Bridge demonstrates how Herman Melville, Jack London,
Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood have
grappled with the problem of balancing radicalism and art. He shows that
some books are more political than others, that some political novelists
are more skillful than others, and that readers must allow for basic working
distinctions between politics and aesthetics if we are to make useful
judgments about which political novels to read, and why.
"Whalen-Bridge demonstrates with clarity and power that the American
political novel should not be ostracized but celebrated as a genre equal
or superior to poetic and aesthetic ones." -- Tobin Siebers, author
of Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism