The Gothic of Non-Gothic American Writers
in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Internet Resources:

Kathy Acker (1948- )

CASTRICANO, C. Jodey. “If a Building Is a Sentence, So Is a Body: Kathy Acker and the Postcolonial Gothic” (pp. 202-14). In The American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative, eds. R.K. Martin and Eric Savoy. Iowa City: University Iowa Press, 1998.

Edward Albee (1928- )

WITHERINGTON, Paul. “Albee’s Gothic: The Resonance of Cliché.” [GGI: 1852A]. 

Imamu Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones] (1934- )

PIGGFORD,  George. “Looking into Black Skulls: American Gothic, the Revolutionary Theatre, and Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman” (pp. 143-66). In The American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative, eds. R.K. Martin and Eric Savoy. Iowa City: University Iowa Press, 1998.

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982)

HORNER, Avril. “‘A Detour of Filthiness’: French Fiction and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood” (pp. 230-51). In European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange 1760-1860, ed. Avril Horner. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002.

 Paul Bowles (1910- )

WALLACE, Mark Dewey. “The End of Time: The Gothic Universe in the Fiction of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs.” Dissertation Abstracts International 55:6 (1994): 1564A (SUNY-Buffalo).

Willa Cather (1876-1947)

MORGENSTERN,  Naomi E. “‘Love is Home-  Sickness’: Nostalgia and Lesbian Desire in Sapphira and the Slave Girl.” Novel 29 (1996): 184-205.

ROSOWSKI, Susan J. “Willa Cather’s American Gothic: Sapphira and the Slave Girl.” [GGII: 1261]. 

SEIVERT, Debra J. “Resounding Voices: Willa Cather’s Literary Braiding of Robert Louis Stevenson, James M. Barrie, and and Edgar Allan Poe.” Dissertation Abstracts International 61:4 (2000): 1409 (University of Nebraska-Lincoln).

WOLFF, Cynthia Griffin. “The Artist’s Palette: Early Cather.” Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. 40:1 (1996): 1.

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

RZEPKA, Charles J. “‘I’m In the Business Too’: Gothic Chivalry, Private Eyes, and Proxy Sex and Violence in Chandler’s The Big Sleep.” Modern Fiction Studies 46 (2000): 695-724.

Fred Chappell (1936-  )

CLAYBOUGH, Casey. "Appropriations of History, Gothicism, and Cthulhu: Fred Chappell's Dagon." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36:3 (2003): 37-53.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

KEHL, Del G. “An American Tragedy and Dreiser’s Cousin, Mr. Poe.” [GGII: 1246]. 

Andrea Dworkin (1946- )

MORGENSTERN, Naomi. “‘There Is Nothing Else Like This’: Sex and Citation in Pornogothic Feminism” (pp. 36-67).In Sex Positives?The Cultural Politics of Dissident Sexualities, eds. Thomas Foster, Carol Siegel, Ellen Berry. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

T.[homas] S.[tearns] Eliot (1888-1965)

FOWLER, Douglas. “The Wasteland as Gothic Fantasy: Theology in Scary Pictures.” In Approaches to Teaching Eliot’s Poetry and Plays. [GGII: 1236]. 

TABACHNICK, Steve. “The Gothic Modernism of T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land and What Martin Rowson’s Graphic Novel Tells Us about It and Other Matters.”  Readerly Writerly Texts: Essays on Literature, Literary Textual Criticism, and Pedagogy (Portales, NM) 8:1-2 (2000): 79-92.

Bret Easton Ellis (1964-  )

HELYER, Ruth. “Parodied to Death: The Postmodern Gothic of American Psycho.” Modern Fiction Studies 46 (2000): 746.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

INGEBRETSEN, Edward J. “‘Design of Darkness to Appall’: Religious Terror in the Poetry of Robert Frost.” Robert Frost Review. (1993): 50-57.

MANSON, Michael L. "Trying to Find the Right Genre for Genocide: Robert Frost and 'The Vanishing Red.'" Robert Frost Review 13 (2003): 82-100.

William Gibson (1948- )

RAPATZIKOU, Tatiani G. Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2004.

WERNER,  Derek  Whitney. “Toward a Model of Performance-Based Critical Reading;  A Study of Ensemble Rehearsal and Performance in a Production of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’” Dissertation Abstracts International 58:11 (1997): 4128A (Northwestern University).

Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945)

DOMINGUEZ-RUE, Emma. "Mad Women in the Drawing Room: Female Invalidism in Ellen Glasgow's Gothic Short Stories." Journal of American Studies 38 (2004): 425-38.

MATTHEWS, Pamela R. “Gothic Imaginings: Five Stories” (pp. 106-51). In Ellen Glasgow and a Woman’s Traditions. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia , 1994.

ZAUGG, Brigette. “Ellen Glasgow’s Gothic Streak: ‘Jordan's End’” (123-140). In Nouvelles de Sud: Hearing Voices, Reading Stories, eds. Marie Liénard-Yetarian, Gérald Préher. Paris: École Polytechnique, 2007. [GGIV: 0000].

                                                                                John Hawkes (1925- )

GREINER, Donald J. Comic Terror: The Novels of John Hawkes. [GGI: 1830]. 

NAKATANI, Hitomi. Erotic Metafiction/Metafic-tional Eroticism: John Hawkes and Neo-Gothic Metafiction. Okayama, Japan: Publication of the School of Letters Okayama University, 2002. 

Patricia Highsmith (1921- )

EVANS, Odette l’Henry. “A Feminist Approach to Patricia Highsmith’s Fiction.” [GGII: 1234].

                                                                                Robert Ervin Howard (0000-0000)

GRAMLICH, Charles A. "Robert E. Howard in the Gothic Tradition." Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies 8 (2004): 13-24.

Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960)

CURREN, Erik D. “Should Their Eyes Have Been Watching God? Hurston’s Use of Religious Experience and Gothic Horror.” African American Review 29:1 (1995): 17-25.

Carolyn Keene [Harriet Stratemeyer Adams] (1892-1981)

RICHARDS, Connie. “Nancy Drew: Gothic or Romance?” Feminisms 3:5 (1990): 18-26.

Grace King (1852-1932)

FALVEY, Ellen Katherine. “Reconstructed Virtue: Grace King’s Gothic Realism.” Dissertation Abstracts International 54:4 (1998): 1163A (New York University).

                                                                                 Harper Lee (1926  )

EARLY, Gerald. “The Madness in the American Haunted House: The New Southern Gothic and the Young Adult Novel of the 1960s: A Personal Reflection” (93-103)> In On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections, eds. Alice Hall Petry, William T. Going. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992)

ADAIR, Gerald M. “Feasting with Banquo: The Ghost Stories of Fritz Leiber.” Master’s Thesis, Florida Atlantic University , 2000.

DZIEMIANOWICZ, Stefan. “LEIBER, Fritz (Reuter, Jr.)” (pp. 358-60). In St. James Guide to Horror, Gothic, and Ghost Writers, ed. David Pringle. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998.

Jack London (1876-1916)

CROW, Charles L. “Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf as Gothic Romance” (pp. 123-31). In Gothick Origins and Innovations, eds. Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith. Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA : Rodopi; Costerus New Series 91, 1994.

CROW, Charles L. “Jack London’s ‘Samuel’ as Gothic Tale: The Terrible and Tragic Involved with Love.” Litteraria Pragensia 11:21 (2001): 81-87.

DEN TANDT, Christophe. “Naturalist Gothic: Populations, Economics, and Urban Genealogies” and “Natu-ralist Gothic and the Regeneration of Artistic Identity” (pp. 195-221). In The Urban Sublime in American Literary Na-turalism. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1998.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)

CORNWELL, Neil. “Notes on Fantastic/Gothic Elements in Nabokov’s Despair” (pp. 168-80). In Neo-Formalist Papers: Contributions to the Silver Jubilee Conference to Mark 25 Years of the Neo-Formalist Circle , Held at Mansfield College, Oxford , 11-13 September, 1995, eds. Joe Andrew and Robert Reid. Amsterdam, Netherlands : Rodopi, 1998.

GIBSON, Jennifer A. “Artificial Perplexities: The Paradigm of Gothic Fiction and Its Post-Modern Survival in the Work of Nabokov, Pynchon, and Beckett.” [GGII: 0078] 

Frank Norris (1870-1902)

MCFATTER, Susan Prothro. “Parody and Dark Projections: Medieval Romance and the Gothic in Mc- Teague.” Western American Literature 26:2 (1996): 119-35.

Louis Owen (1948-2002)

MOGEN, David. "Louis Owens and 'the Indian's Escape from Gothic.'" Southwestern American Literature 28:2 (2003): 21-27.

                                                                            Sara Paretsky (1947   )

FORD, Susan Allen. “Ruined Landscapes, Flooding Tunnels, Dark Paths: Sara Paretsky’s Gothic Vision.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 25:2 (2007): 7-18

                                                                                                    Walker Percy (1916-1990)

WYATT-BROWN, Bertram. “Percy Forerunners, Family History, and the Gothic Tradition” In Walker Per-cy: Novelist and Philosopher. [GGII: 1282]. 

Thomas Pynchon (1937- )

MEIKLE, Jeffrey L. “‘Other Frequencies’: The Parallel Worlds of Thomas Pynchon and H.P. Lovecraft.” [GGI: 1774]. 

Mary Roberts Rinehart  (1876-1958)

FREIER, Mary P. “The Decline of Hilda Adams” (pp. 129-41). In Women Times Three: Writers, Detectives, Readers, ed. Kathleen Gregory Klein. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Popular Press, 1996.

MAIO, Kathleen L. “Had-I-But-Known: The Marriage of Gothic Terror and Detection.” In The Female Gothic. [GGII: 1440].

                                                               Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1886-1941)

PRÉHER, Gérald. “Elizabeth Madox Roberts entre gothique et fantastique: L’Exemple du 'The Haunted Palace” (141-152). In Nouvelles de Sud: Hearing Voices, Reading Stories, eds. Marie Liénard-Yetarian, Gérald Préher. Paris: École Polytechnique, 2007. [Elizabeth Madox Roberts Between Gothic and Fantastic: The Example of  “The Haunted Palace”][GGIV: 0000]. 

O.[le] E.[dvart] Rölvaag (1876-1921)

GROSS, David S. “No Place to Hide: Gothic Naturalism in O.E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth.” In Frontier Gothic: Terror and Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature. [GGII: 1238].

Sax Rohmer [Arthur Sarsfield Ward] (0000-0000)

KINGSBURY, Karen. "Yellow Peril, Dark Hero: Fu Manchu and the 'Gothic Bedevilment' of Racist Intent." (pp. 104-19). in The Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imagination, eds. Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Douglas L. Howard. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004.

J.R. Salamanca (1922-  )

CARTER, Catherine Westbrook. ‘‘That Festive Tu-mult J.R. Salamanca’s Participation in the Postmodern.” Dissertation Abstracts International 60:8 (2000): 2916 (University of Delaware).

Dorothy Scarborough (1878-1935)

KOLLIN, Susan. “Race, Labor, and the Gothic West-ern: Dispelling Frontiers Myths in Dorothy Scarborough’s The Wind.” Modern Fiction Studies 46 (2000): 675-94.

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- )

GIACOPPE, Monika Frances. “Creating a Usable Past: History in Contemporary Inter-American Women’s Fiction.” Dissertation Abstracts International 61:8 (2001): 3159 (Pennsylvania State University).

SANDERS, Scott P. “Southwestern Gothic: On the Frontier Between Landscape and Locale.” In Frontier Gothic: Terror and Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature. [GGII: 0845].

Mark Steadman (1930-  )

BOYD, Molly. “Rural Identity in the Southern Gothic Novels of Mark Steadman.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 27:2 (1994): 41-54. On the Gothicism of Mc-Afee County and Angel Child

William Styron (1925- )

COALE, Samuel. “Styron’s Disguises: A Provisional Rebel in Christian Masquerade” (pp. 109-17). In The Critical Response to William Styron, ed. Daniel W. Ross. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. On the Gothic elements in The Confessions of Nat Turner and other works.  

Jean Toomer (1934- )

JONES, R.B. “Gothic Conventions in Jean Toomer’s The Eye.” [GGII: 1243].

LAMOTHE, Daphne."Cane: Jean Toomer's Gothic Black Modernism." (pp. 54-71) in The Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imagination, eds. Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Douglas L. Howard. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. 

Gerald Vizenor (1934- )

OWENS, Louis. “‘Grinning Aboriginal Demons’: Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart and the Indian’s Escape from Gothic.” In Frontier Gothic: Terror and Wonder at the Frontier in American Literature. [GGII: 1257].

VELIE, Alan R. “Gerald Vizenor’s Indian Gothic.” MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Studies 17:1 (1991): 75-85.

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)

DOUGLAS, Wallace W. “Drug Store Gothic: The Style of Robert Penn Warren.” [GGI: 1825].

LONG, Robert Sterling. “Warren Mounts His Horse: Flood’s Author as Southern Gothic/Grotesque Writer.” In “To Love So Well a World”; A Festscrift in Honor of Robert Penn Warren. [GGII: 1248]. 

PATTISON, Felicia Squires. “‘The Made Thing’:  Self, Community, and Art in the Later Fiction of Robert Penn Warren.” Dissertation Abstracts International 59:4 (1998): 1168A (Catholic University of America).

Eudora Welty (1909- )

ALLEN, Brooke. “A Universal Region: The Fiction of Eudora Welty.” The New Criterion 18:2 (1999): 35-41.

APPEL, Alfred. “The Grotesque and the Gothic.” In A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty. [GGII: 1220]. 

BOGAN, Louise. “The Gothic South” (pp. 35-37). In The Critical Response to Eudora Welty’s Fiction, ed. Laurie Champion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

WESTON, Ruth Deason. “‘Nothing So Mundane as Ghosts’: Eudora Welty and the Gothic.” [GGII: 1279]. 

WESTON, Ruth D. Gothic Traditions and Narrative Techniques in the Fiction of Eudora Welty. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

DERSNAH, James Louis. “The Gothic World of Tennessee Williams.” [GGII: 1230].

PETERS, Brian M. “Queer Semiotics of Expression: Gothic Language and Homosexual Destruction in Tennessee Williams's 'One Arm' and 'Desire and the Black Masseur.'” Tennessee Williams Annual Review 8 (2006): 109-21.