Italo Calvino: A Journey toward Postmodernism (Crosscurrents, Comparative Studies in European Literature and Philosophy)

In this work, Jeremy Tambling looks at European reactions to America and American cities in the 19th century. Dickens visited America in 1842 and his "American Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit" set the agenda for future discussions of America. "Lost in American Cities" looks at the Dickens legacy through Henry James in "The American Scene", through H.G. Wells in "The Future in America", and through Kafka, whose novel "America" (or "The Man Who Was Never Heard of Again") tried to re-write Dickens. This volume explores the changes in American 19th century urban culture which made America so different and so impossible to map for the European, and which made American modernity so unreadable and challenging.