Cover 1
Titel 4
Imprint 5
Table of Contents 6
Introduction: America(n) Matters?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 8
Europe and the American Dream 18
“Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way”: The "translatio"-Concept in Popular American Writing and Painting 18
The American Dream?????????????????????????????????????????????????? 54
Fett, sauber und versoffen: Zu drei zeitlosen Konstanten des amerikanischen Deutschlandbildes 78
Americans in Europe???????????????????????????????????????????????????? 102
The Two Cultures: Literature and Science 122
From the Apocalyptic to the Entropic End: From Hope to Despair to New Hope? 122
From “Entropy” to "The Crying of Lot 49": Thomas Pynchon and the Entropic End 150
Invented Religions as Sense-Making Systems in Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels 180
Science and Technology in Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 204
Surviving the End: Apocalypse, Evolution, and Entropy in Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon 228
Changing Forms and Shifting Perspectives 244
Die Story ist tot, es lebe die Story: Von der Short Story über die Anti-Story zur Meta-Story der Gegenwart 244
Doctorow’s “Criminals of Perception,” or What Has Happened to the Historical Novel 274
Universality vs. Ethnocentricity, or the Literary Canon in a Multicultural Society
Teaching American Multiculturalism through Stories about ‘Growing Up Ethnic’ 320
Textual Kaleidoscopes: American Identities 352
Bret Easton Ellis: From "Less Than Zero" (1985) to "Imperial Bedrooms" (2010) 352
Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind”: A New Anthem to New York City? 402
Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Vietnam War: Sam Hughes’s Quest in Bobbie Ann Mason’s "In Country" (1985) 424
Leslie Marmon Silko’s "Ceremony" (1977): Universality versus Ethnocentrism 452
Joe Leaphorn as a Cultural Mediator in Tony Hillerman’s Mysteries 494
Trouble in the House of Fiction: Bernard Malamud’s "The Tenants" (1971) 518
A Medieval Crusader in Twentieth-Century New Orleans: John Kennedy Toole’s "A Confederacy of Dunces" (1980) 534
T. Coraghessan Boyle’s "The Tortilla Curtain" (1995): A Case Study in the Genesis of Xenophobia 572
Reprint Notices???????????????????????????????????????????? 599
Backcover 601