Synopses & Reviews
This affordable paperback returns to print an American classic of literary criticism. In American Ambitions, former editor of the Sewanee Review Monroe Spears examines Southern fiction, the controversy over Black English, Jewish intellectuals, and the function of literary quarterlies; writers discussed include James Dickey (Spears' former student), Walker Percy, Ursala K. LeGuin and Helen Vendler. If American ambitions reject the old and demand the new, Spears reminds us that "such rebellions are always ambivalent: they are felt as both emancipation and disinheritance".