Jane Smiley Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Jane S. Bakerman

Critical Essay by Jane S. Bakerman

SOURCE: “Renovating the House of Fiction: Structural Diversity in Jane Smiley's Duplicate Keys,” in Midamerica, Vol. 15, 1988, pp. 111–20.

In the following essay, Bakerman draws comparisons between Smiley's Duplicate Keys and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, including the tension between the characters’ Midwestern values and city life in the East.

As every student of American literature knows, Nick Carraway went home again, abandoning the perplexities of life among the very rich and forswearing the confusion of life in and on the fringes of New York City. Furthermore, every student of American literature agrees, despite Thomas Wolfe's dictum, that Nick Carraway made the right decision. And, every student of American literature realizes that in the process of sending Nick home, Scott Fitzgerald voiced some serious doubts about the American Dream.¹

If a young person had, as advised gone West and enjoyed great success and happiness, could that young person's...
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