How, he asks, has literature reflected and shaped American culture? In the wake of “the havoc” wreaked by the Trump era, he attends particularly to the connection of literature to democracy, asserting that literature “is about the lab where democracy gets tested.” In four chapters, whose “organizing logic,” Stavans admits, is “based on stream of consciousness,” as well as in long, digressive footnotes, he considers myriad topics, including America’s identity as a nation without a past, where the future is open to possibility the meaning of the “American Dream” belief in American exceptionalism traditions of protest the evolution of American English and enduring tensions over race, religion, and ideology. Mexican-American cultural critic Stavans ranges widely through fiction, poetry, and essays to offer a thoughtful meditation on the meaning and use of literature in America. A self-described “compulsive reader” assesses America through its books.
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