Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace (Literature Now)

How do genres develop? In what ways do they reflect changing political and cultural trends? What do they tell us about the motivations of publishers and readers? Combining close readings and formal analysis with a sociology of literary institutions and markets, __Minor Characters Have Their Day__ offers a compelling new approach to genre study and contemporary fiction. Focusing on the booming genre of books that transform minor characters from canonical literary texts into the protagonists of new works, Jeremy Rosen makes broader claims about the state of contemporary fiction, the strategies of the publishing industry over recent decades, and the function of literary characters. Rosen traces the recent surge in “minor-character elaboration” to the late 1960s and works such as Jean Rhys’s __Wide Sargasso Sea__ and Tom Stoppard’s __Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead__. These early examples often recover the voices of marginalized individuals and groups. As the genre has exploded between the 1980s and the present, with novels about Ahab’s wife, Huck Finn’s father, and Mr. Dalloway, it has begun to embody the neoliberal commitments of subjective experience, individual expression, and agency. Eventually, large-scale publishers capitalized on the genre as a way to appeal to educated audiences aware of the prestige of the classics and to draw in identity-based niche markets. Rosen’s conclusion ties the understudied evolution of minor-character elaboration to the theory of literary character.

A deeply moving recasting of one of the most controversial characters in American literature, Huckleberry Finn’s Jim

Written in the great literary tradition of novels of American slavery, My Jim is told in the incantatory voice of Sadie Watson, an ex-slave who schools her granddaughter with lessons of love she learned in bondage. To help her granddaughter confront the decisions she needs to make, Sadie mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie’s Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck. Sadie is suddenly left alone. Worried about her children, convinced her husband is dead, reviled as a witch, and punished for Jim’s escape, Sadie’s will and her love for Jim, even in absentia, animate her life and see her through.

Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim re-creates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim stands on its own as a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love.

The New York Times - Helen Schulman

In a spare, naturalistic style that's reminiscent of oral history (the story is largely told by Jim's wife, Sadie, to her granddaughter), Rawles covers territory Twain did not: Jim's early life in captivity, his seemingly endless struggle for freedom, his love for his wife and children, his impossible anguish upon separation. But more of the book is focused on Sadie's story, and it is, in its particulars, as heart-wrenching a personal history as any recorded in American literature.… Certainly if The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is presented to school children as their introduction to American slavery, as it sometimes has been in the past, then the deeply felt and moving My Jim would be a welcome accompaniment.

In a poignant meditation on love and loss, Sadie, the abandoned wife of the slave Jim from Mark Twain's the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn details her romance with Jim, an ambitious young slave. His decision to run away with a young white boy named Huck Finn, and the bleak repercussions of that decision for her and their children. A deeply moving recasting of one of the most controversial characters in American literature, Huckleberry Finn's Jim, written in the great literary tradition of novels of American slavery. My Jim is told in the incantatory voice of Sadie Watson, an ex-slave who schools her granddaughter with lessons of love she learned in bondage. To help her granddaughter confront the decisions she needs to make, Sadie mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie's Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck. Sadie is suddenly left alone. Worried about her children, convinced her husband is dead, reviled as a witch, and punished for Jim's escape, Sadie's will and her love for Jim, even in absentia, animate her life and see her through. Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim recreates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim stands on its own as a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love To help her granddaughter accept the risks of loving, Sadie Watson mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadies Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck Finn. Sadie is suddenly left alone, worried about her children, reviled as a witch, punished for Jims escape, and convinced her husband is dead. But Sadies will and her love for Jim animate her life and see her through. Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim recreates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim is a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love. Look for the Readers Group Guide at the back of this book.

E-Book extras: ONE: An Interview with Sena Jeter Naslund: "The Ship of My Book"; TWO: Author's Note: "The Surprise and Pleasure of It"; THREE: Reading Group Guide: Discussion Points.

The famous international bestseller is now a special-features-packed e-book.

Wally Lamb

"Line up the literary prizes. Rendered in language both lush and luminous, Ahab's Wife is sustenance for the mind and soul."

Jeremy Rosen traces the recent surge books that transform minor characters from canonical literary texts into the protagonists of new work. A genre that sought to recover the voices of marginalized individuals and groups has begun to embody the neoliberal commitments of subjective experience, individual expression, and agency. Jeremy Rosen is an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. His work has been published in New Literary History, Contemporary Literature, and Post45. LIT006000,Literary Criticism/Semiotics & Theory,LIT004020,Literary Criticism/American/General The adventures of Una Spenser who went to sea disguised as a cabin boy. Shipwrecked, she marries one of the survivors, then falls in love with Captain Ahab, a man obsessed with a white whale. She becomes involved in fighting slavery and in women's rights A companion to Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," in which Una Spenser tells the story of her life, and discusses her loving marriage to Captain Ahab before the white whale took his leg and drove him into madness Ex-slave Sadie Watson reveals to her granddaughter her experiences while in bondage and the love she had for her husband, Jim, who escaped down the Mississippi with Huck Finn when he learned he was to be sold