Alexander H. Pitofsky's Books

American Boarding School Fiction, 1928-1981

A Critical Study

By: Alexander H. Pitofsky

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American Boarding School Fiction, 1928-1981

A Critical Study

By: Alexander H. Pitofsky

When boarding-school fiction became popular in the 19th century, it tended to be warm and nostalgic, filled with sporting events, practical jokes, and schemes to get even with campus bullies. All of that changed in the era discussed in this book. Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, drops out of one prep school and is expelled from two others. The conflicts between students in John Knowles's Devon School novels become so heated that two young men die. And in the controversial novel Good Times/Bad Times, James Kirkwood portrays the headmaster of a private academy as closeted, deeply neurotic, and infatuated with an 18-year-old who has recently enrolled at his school. In spite of their unsettling images of anguish and cruelty, these and other American boarding-school novels have attracted large audiences and influenced countless school narratives in fiction, drama, television and film. Many books have been written about British school stories. This is the first study that explores the history of boarding-school fiction in the United States.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476616620

ISBN 13

9781476616629

American Boarding School Fiction, 1981–2021

Inclusion and Scandal

By: Alexander H. Pitofsky

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American Boarding School Fiction, 1981–2021

Inclusion and Scandal

By: Alexander H. Pitofsky

American Boarding School Fiction, 1981–2021: Inclusion and Scandal is a study of contemporary American boarding-school narratives. Before the 1980s, writers of American boarding-school fiction tended to concentrate on mournful teenagers. When teachers, parents, and other adults appeared, they were usually placed far from the center of the action. The center was filled with white, male, Protestant students at boarding schools. In this book, Alexander H. Pitofsky discusses a new generation of writers—including Richard A. Hawley, Anita Shreve, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Tobias Wolff— that has transformed school fiction by highlighting issues relating to gender, race, scandal, sexuality, education, and social class in unprecedented ways. By turning their attention away from the bruised feelings of teenagers, Pitofsky argues, these authors have reinvented American boarding-school fiction, writing vividly about a host of subjects the genre overlooked in the past.

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