Literary criticism and theory investigate "the moral, political, and experiential dimensions of literary traditions, linking form to content, literature to history, (and) the sensuous love of literature to analytic understanding (general preface). It's mission is to describe and provide insight into a literary heritage, helping readers and educators to see literary works in a broader context. Besides canonized authors and literary works, minor authors and works of lesser renown are discussed to convey a broad sense of a cultural development.

Published in the year 2000, American dream, American nightmare. Fiction since 1960 covers the period from 1960 to about 1995. The book aims to be neither a wide-spectrum description of American fiction, nor being too specialized by for instance focusing on race or gender. Instead, this work discusses about one hundred novels which bear on the main theme of disappointment with America, specifically spiritual recoil from America, the failure of the American Dream. In the introduction, the author defines the American Dream as "prosperity for anyone willing to work" (p. 3) and certain liberties. The introduction mentions a number of canonized authors.

The book is divided into nine chapters. Surely, the first seven chapters discuss authors and literary works which are quite well known, Chapter One with some works by Chinese American authors, Chapter Ttwo some African American writers, followed by several chapters which include some of the most well-known American authors, such asd Updike, Bellow, Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Easton Ellis, etc.

But the works selected for Chapters Seven and Eight are almost all new names to me, and rather bewildering. There is hardly a moment of recognition or familiar titles. In Chapter Seven, the main focus is on the following novels: Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel, Dhalgren, Always Coming Home, The Dispossessed, Woman on the Edge of Time, He, She and It, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and in Chapter Eight, Hiding Place, Damballah, Sent for you Yesterday, Tracks, Love Medicine, Ceremony, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, Letourneau's Used Auto Parts, Merry Men, Slapstick or, Lonesome No More！, and Islands in the Net.

The unfamiliarity with so many authors and works is staggering, but perhaps to American readers these authors and works are well-known. ( )