Introduction: The possibility of fiction -- [1.] Theodore Dreiser: Dreiser's An American tragedy: a critical study / Richard Lehan -- [2.] Sherwood Anderson: The book of the grotesque / Irving Howe -- [3.] Sinclair Lewis: Sinclair Lewis: the cosmic Bourjoyce / Maxwel Geismar -- [4.] F. Scott Fitzgerald: The great Gatsby: style and myth / Douglas Taylor -- [5.] Thomas Wolfe: Thomas Wolfe and death / J. Russell Reaver and Robert I. Strozier -- [6.] Ernest Hemingway: Tristan or Jacob: the choice of The sun also rises / Robert W. Lewis Jr. -- Criticism and A farewell to arms / Norman Friedman -- The old man and the sea: Hemingway's tragic vision of man / Clinton S. Burhans, Jr. -- [7.] William Faulkner: Mirror analogues in The sound and the fury / Lawrance Thompson -- As I lay dying: Faulkner's inner reporter / William J. Handy -- [8.] John Steinbeck: The grapes of wrath as fiction / Peter Lisca -- [9.] Robert Pen Warren: Humpty Dumpty and all the king's men: a note on Robert Penn Warren's teleology / James Ruoff -- [10.] J.D. Salinger: No Catcher in the rye / J.D. O'Hara -- [11.] Saul Bellow: Quest and affirmation in Henderson the rain king / Ihab Hassan.