Epistolary Responses
Epistolary Responses
The Letter in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Criticism
Epistolary Responses explores the transformative nature of epistolary fiction and criticism in letter form from a largely feminist perspective. While most scholarly work to date has focused on 17th- and 18th-century manifestations of this genre, Bower's study concentrates on epistolary fiction by contemporary American writers published between 1912 and 1988. The novels discussed, all featuring women letter writers, include: Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, John Barth's LETTERS, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, John Updike's S., Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, Upton Sinclair's Another Pamela, and Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters.
Bower explores the influence letters have on the act of writing and writing as act, their encoded desire for reply, their incompleteness as units of narrative information, their play on ideas of absence and presence, their apparently personal and private nature, and their foregrounding of the writer's agency and authority, all of which make letters a most useful genre both for novelists and for scholars. Several of the book's "fiction" chapters include a letter from the author of the text (sometimes a critic) that complements and supplements Bower's analysis. The final part of the book explores how seven scholars--men and women--have applied letters to their own critical writing, finding that this formal move allows them to question issues of public and private discourse, the authority of signature, and the "feminine" location.
Bower chooses an admirable variety of popular and literary epistolary novels to discuss. In separate chapters, Bower focuses on Lee Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies (1988), John Barth’s LETTERS: A Novel (1979), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), John Updike’s S. (1988), Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs (1912), Upton Sinclair's Another Pamela, or Virtue Still Rewarded (1950), and Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986). . . . Overall, Bower provides an enlivening discussion about a form frequently and erroneously considered to be in its grave.’
—Modern Fiction Studies
‘Bower relishes a good letter. Her charming introduction to this complex study of twentieth-century epistolary fiction captures the delight that readers, especially women, find in ‘bodied writing,’ in contrast with the e-mail and faxes that are rapidly replacing letters. Using a series of writers who have used letters as the formal basis of their novels, she explores the various voices and critical issues she discovers in each. The author has studied epistolary fiction and scholarship, considered her selections carefully, and even written to a number of authors and critics to elicit epistolary commentary on questions she poses…. The author’s fresh, lucid style and her sense of direct communication with her reader make this an unusually good piece of literary criticism for upper-division undergraduates through faculty.’
—Choice
Bower provides an enlivening discussion about a form frequently and erroneously considered to be in its grave.’
—Modern Fiction Studies
'Anne Bower's Epistolary Responses adds to a growing body of work that validates alternatives to traditional discourse and narrative forms. Bower joins feminist critics in the endeavor to reclaim language and critical discourse and affirms all critics in the search for creative and accessible modes to write about literature. Epistolary Responses reveals the transformative power of writing and reading letters in literature and in life.'
—Olivia Frey, Saint Olaf College
