came more popular, for travel and as a substitute for
reading. At the same time, large chains (notably Bor-
ders and Barnes & Noble) could do mass marketing
of books that smaller bookstores could not afford.
Finally, book clubs proliferated during the period,
both nationally (Oprah Winfrey’s book club sold
hundreds of thousands of copies of recommended
books) and locally. Publishers began to insert read-
ers’ “book club guides” at the end of books they
hoped might become book club choices.
Long Fiction The decade began with the comple-
tion of a work begun years before: John Updike pub-
lished the last volume in his Rabbit quartet, opened
withRabbit, Runin 1960, withRabbit at Rest, which
won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Critics Circle Award for 1990. Other writers who had
dominated the previous decades of the twentieth
century were also active: Philip Roth won the Na-
tional Book Award in 1995 withSabbath’s Theater, and
the Pulitzer forAmerican Pastoralin 1997.The pro-
lific Joyce Carol Oates producedBecause It Is Bitter
and Because It Is My Heartin 1990, and followed with
another two dozen volumes of fiction, drama, and
poetry, including the novelsFoxfire: Confessions of a
Girl Gang(1993),What I Lived For(1994),We Were the
Mulvaneys(1996), andBroke Heart Blues(1999). T. C.
Boyle published six volumes in the decade, includ-
ingThe Road to Wellville(1993) andThe Tortilla Cur-
tain (1995). Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams,
1990,Pigs in Heaven, 1993, andThe Poisonwood Bible,
1998), Carol Shields (The Stone Diaries, 1993, which
won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Critics Circle Award in 1994), Mark Helprin (A Sol-
dier of the Great War, 1991), Larry McMurtry (Coman-
che Moon, 1997), and other established writers con-
tinued their fictional efforts through the decade.
At the same time, newer writers were emerging,
both traditional fictionists and those who were ex-
panding literary boundaries. Jane Smiley emerged
to national prominence withA Thousand Acres,a
novel set on a farm in Iowa but built around Shake-
speare’sKing Lear(pr. c. 1605-1606), and won the
National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer
Prize in 1991. Annie Proulx followed two years later
with the best-sellingThe Shipping News, which took
both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for
- Richard Ford won the Pulitzer forIndependence
Day (1995), a sequel to The Sportswriter(1986).
Charles Frazier won the National Book Award for
Cold Mountain(1997), a novel about the Civil War
that became a runaway best seller, and Michael
Cunningham won the Pulitzer forThe Hours(1998),
a novel based on Virginia Woolf’sMrs. Dalloway
(1925).
While traditional novelists continued to domi-
nate the decade, writers who more often used the
nonlinear and fragmentary tools of postmodernism
continued to grow in popularity. Cormac McCarthy
won the National Book Award and the National
Book Critics Circle Award withAll the Pretty Horsesin
1992, a novel set in Mexico in the middle of the twen-
tieth century and the first volume in what would be-
come known as The Border Trilogy, with the publi-
cation ofThe Crossingin 1994 andCities of the Plainin
1998, novels that sometimes lose traditional story
lines in linguistic labyrinths. McCarthy became a ma-
jor American writer during the decade and began to
attract not only faithful readers but also scholarly in-
terest. Don DeLillo had already established himself
as a major postmodernist with his novelWhite Noise
in 1985, and he confirmed that rank withMao II
(1991), a novel mixing themes of terrorism and writ-
ing that won the PEN/Faulkner Award, andUnder-
world(1997), a novel that covers baseball, nuclear
threat, and much more in a dazzling fusion of his-
tory and fiction. Jonathan Lethem gained national
prominence, and a National Book Critics Circle
Award, withMotherless Brooklynin 1999, and he be-
came one of a group of younger writers (such as Wil-
liam Vollman and Michael Chabon) bending tradi-
tional genres—here, for example, using detective
fiction (as he had used science fiction in earlier nov-
els) in a mainstream work. Finally, Art Spiegelman
broke all bounds with hisMaus(volume 2, 1991), a
graphic novel that pours family history and the Ho-
locaust into a comic book format with cats, mice,
and other animals as characters. The book was given
a Pulitzer Prize Special Award.Short Fiction The 1990’s can also be noted as the
decade when the short story was infused with new
life. Raymond Carver died in 1988, but his popular-
ity continued to grow during the 1990’s, inspiring
numerous other practitioners of short fiction with
his minimalist, realist style. The decade saw the pub-
lication of important collections of stories from Rob-
ert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,
1992, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993), John
Updike (The Afterlife, and Other Stories, 1994), GraceThe Nineties in America Literature in the United States 521