Examining political novels that have achieved (or been denied) canonical

status, John Whalen-Bridge demonstrates how Herman Melville, Jack London,

Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood have

grappled with the problem of balancing radicalism and art. He shows that

some books are more political than others, that some political novelists

are more skillful than others, and that readers must allow for basic working

distinctions between politics and aesthetics if we are to make useful

judgments about which political novels to read, and why.

Whalen-Bridge demonstrates with clarity and power that the American

political novel should not be ostracized but celebrated as a genre equal

or superior to poetic and aesthetic ones. – Tobin Siebers, author

of Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism