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English Literature / Modernism / Postmodernism


 

Father and Son
Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel since 1950
Gavin Keulks


"Father and Son will be important to specialists in the field as well as to students of the twentieth-century novel generally. It provides the only extended treatment of a unique literary genealogy."
—James Diedrick, Albion College

Now also in paperback, this innovative study of two of England's most popular, controversial, and influential writers breaks new ground in examining the relationship between Kingsley Amis and his son, Martin Amis. Through intertextual readings of their essays and novels, Gavin Keulks examines how the Amises' work negotiated the boundaries of their personal relationship while claiming territory in the literary debate between mimesis and modernist aesthetics. Theirs was a battle over the nature of reality itself, a twentieth-century realism war conducted by loving family members and rival, antithetical writers. Keulks argues that the Amises' relationship functioned as a source of literary inspiration and that their work illuminates many of the structural and stylistic shifts that have characterized the British novel since 1950.

"Keulks' book is holding and absorbing, filled with excellently shrewd and steady analysis of selected novels, essays and interviews set in the context of the status and future of the realistic novel, the transition from modernism to postmodernism, and the existential condition of post-World War II life."
—Dale Salwak, Citrus College

Gavin Keulks is professor of English at Western Oregon University.

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purple cover has photos of Amis, father and son

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
January 2005

LC: 2003007228 PR
336 pp. 6 x 9

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Paper $21.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-19214-3
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