BIRTH OF DEATH & OTH COMEDIES PA

Yet due in large part to the difficulty of classifying Greenan#xE2;#xAC;"s fiction, many readers are unaware of his other novels. In The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan, Tom Whalen, drawing widely from the American literary tradition, locates Greenan#xE2;#xAC;"s lineage in the work of Hawthorne and Poe #xE2;#xAC;Swhere allegory and dream mingle with and illuminate realism,#xE2;#xAC; as well as in the fiction of Twain, West, Hammett, Cain, and Thompson. Examining Greenan#xE2;#xAC;"s characteristic themes and strategies, Whalen provides perceptive readings of the dark comedies of this criminally neglected American master, and in a coda reflects on Greenan#xE2;#xAC;"s career and the reception of his work.