As the American left has come to be characterized by a "rueful acquiescence" to an increasingly monolithic and seemingly irresistible capitalist economy, suggests DoCarmo (literature and
composition, Bucks County Community College), leftist novelists have begun to advance newer, more sophisticated modes of dissent better suited to the moment than, say, the socialist defiance
with which Jack London concluded The Jungle. He explores a number of recent novels, all of which take American consumer culture as the primary emblem of a late- capitalist power structure that
demonstrates its seeming unopposability, and seeks to show how they often mirror or echo the theories of contemporary cultural theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Fran癟ois
Lyotard, Gayatri Spivak, and others. The novels that are discussed are John Gardner's October Light, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, Bobbie Ann Mason's In
Country, Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe, and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. Annotation 穢2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
