To cover all of twentieth century fiction in 200 pages is no easy task; Professor Bradbury's survey ['The Modern American Novel'] does it smoothly and well. The necessary chronological structure is livened up by the trick of starting each decade with a key moment….

The literary 'isms' of these decades are clearly defined….

Bradbury is surely right to take Crane's 'The Red Badge of Courage,' Norris's 'McTeague' and Dreiser's 'Sister Carrie' as the crucial turn-of-the-century novels, to give prominence to the innovations of Gertrude Stein and Dos Passos, to promote Henry Roth's 'Call It Sleep' (1935) as a major precursor of later Jewish-American fiction, and to rate Pynchon as the outstanding writer of the early Sixties group that included Barth, Heller, Vonnegut and Kesey. There is an interesting comparison of James and Dreiser; there are expressive passages on writers such as Hemingway and Dos Passos, and some good quips...