Critical Angles: European Views of Contemporary American Literature

The cultural rate of exchange cheats both sides of the Atlantic, leaving first-rate Eu­ropean writers unknown in America, ex­cellent American authors unread outside their native shores. Through these 13 essays by European critics, Chénetier seeks to remedy this, to encourage the cultural exchange between American and European writers. The au­thors discussed are living innovators, the critics contemporary and diverse. The es­sayists were asked to write as idiosyncratic a piece as they could think of, to do it with no holds barred, to indulge their particular critical manias or preferences, and to do so on the subject of their choice.” The book is divided into two parts, Part 1 providing a general European view of American literature today. The essays in Part 2 focus on individual au­thors—Walker Percy, William Gaddis and Gilbert Sorrentino, Nabokov and Balthus, Guy Davenport, Donald Bar­thelme, Raymond Carver, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard.