Cinematic fictions

The phrase cinematic fiction' has now been generally accepted into critical discourse, but is usually applied to post-war novels. This book asks a simple question: given their fascination with the new medium of film, did American novelists attempt to apply cinematic methods in their own writings? From its very beginnings the cinema has played a special role in defining American culture. Covering the period from the 1910s up to the Second World War, "Cinematic Fictions" offers new insights into classics like "The Great Gatsby" and "The Grapes of Wrath" discussing major writers' critical writings on film and active participation in film-making. "Cinematic Fictions" is also careful not to portray cinema' as a single or stable entity. Some novelists drew on silent film; others looked to the Russian theorists for inspiration; and, yet others turned to continental film-makers rather than to Hollywood. Film itself was constantly evolving during the first decades of the twentieth century and the writers discussed here engaged in a kind of dialogue with the new medium, selectively pursuing strategies of montage, limited point of view and scenic composition towards their different ends. Contrasting a diverse range of cinematic and literary movements, this will be compulsory reading for scholars of American literature and film

Index ; bibliogr.

Introduction; 1. Beginnings; 2. Modernist Experiments: Gertrude Stein and Others; 3. H.D. and the Limits of Vision; 4. Ernest Hemingway: The Observer's Visual Field; 5. Success and Stardom in F. Scott Fitzgerald; 6. William Faulkner: Perspective Experiments; 7. John Dos Passos and the Art of Montage; 8. Dreiser, Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair; 9. 1930s Documentary; 10. John Steinbeck: Extensions of Documentary; 11. Taking Possession of the Images: African American Writers; 12. Into the Night Life: Henry Miller and Anais Nin; 13. Nathanael West and the Hollywood Novel; 14. Bibliography