America as a Scriptural culture -- Style in America and the King James version -- Moby-Dick : polyphony -- Absalom! Absalom! : lexicon -- Seize the day : American amalgam -- The world through parataxis
Summary
In this book, biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. --from publisher description
