America Shosetsu wo Sagashite (Quest for American Novels)

This book is a compilation of the author’s early essays.
 
Part I includes ten papers published before the author’s first-ever publication, William Faulkner’s Poetics: 1930-1936 (Shohakusha Publishing, 2008), presented in the order of publishing.
 
Part I discusses a variety of writers, from the mid-19th-century Romantic Literature (Nathaniel Hawthorne) through late-19th-century Realism (Henry James), the Modernist Literature during the interwar period of the 20th century (Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald [twice], Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner [twice]), to late-20th-century Postmodern Literature (John Irving and Steve Erickson).
 
While the first paper in Chapter 1 was written in 1996, the last paper in Chapter 10 was published in 2009, with more than 10 years of time passing between the two. Therefore, the argumentation has inevitably undergone various changes. However, there is a consistent perspective in which American novels are characterized by the dilemma between Romanticism and self-consciousness. I discuss each novel with this perspective as the warp, as if it were weaving, and address various themes, such as gender and race, as well as techniques such as the use of a narrator and metafiction.
 
Part I gives readers an insight into the process through which the author has become established as a researcher in American literature as they read the papers in the presented order.
 
Part II contains texts relating to shogi, or Japanese chess, written between 2013 and 2016. This part illustrates how the author, who once aspired to be a professional shogi player, came to be a researcher in American literature. Chapter 11 presents an essay on the Denou Match, a high-profile shogi match between a human player and a computer. Chapter 12 includes two journals on watching the Ouza Match, a title match, and Chapters 13 and 14 present my lectures on shogi (autobiographical). Each of these texts conveys how a scholar of American literature approaches the theme of shogi.
 
Some of the papers included in this book are dated, which may diverge from the methods the author would currently employ in his arguments, but they are left unedited, as the book should represent his early essays. It will be an interesting read for those who have affinity with American literature as well as for students who aspire to become researchers in this academic field.
 

(Written by SUWABE Koichi, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2018)