American Unexceptionalism: The Everyman and the Suburban Novel After 9/11

Examines a constellation of post-9/11 novels that revolve around white middle-class male suburbanites. Focusing closely on recent works by Richard Ford, Chang-Rae Lee, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, Anne Tyler, Gish Jen, A. M. Homes, and others, Kathy Knapp demonstrates that these authors revisit this well-trodden turf and revive the familiar everyman character in order to reconsider and reshape American middle-class experience in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.