Beyond Suspicion

A landmark study providing a synthetic view of developments in American fiction between 1960 and the 1990s. Beyond Suspicion focuses principally on the works of Gaddis, Pynchon, Elkin, McElroy, Hawkes, Nabokov, Gass, Barth and Coover, although a host of other writers are also discussed. Chénetier argues that traditional generic approaches to this body of work are misleading.

He rejects the categorisation of works by their writer’s region, race and gender, and suggests instead an examination of works from a variety of artistic and epistemological standpoints. Chénetier’s status as outsider – geographically speaking – fosters this approach; from his critical distance, he is able to look on American letters with a very specific and individual point of view. Beyond Suspicion is notable, too, for the grace with which links the concerns of French literary theory with those of American fiction.