American Literature

Finnley Wren: His Notions and Opinions, Together with a Haphazard History of His Career and Amours in These Moody Years, as Well as Sundry Rhymes, Fables, Diatribes and Literary Misdemeanors stands as one of the greatest American responses to the thrown gauntlet that is Tristram Shandy. An innovative, uproarious sentimental education, this novel marries the mordant satire of Wylie''s Generation of Vipers to what might in other hands have been an ordinary story of frustrated ambition and frustrated love, turning forty-eight hours'' worth of drunken conversation into an emotional and typographical explosion.