Again, as a small-town expose, Tight White Collar can be included in the ongoing traditions of the debunking of rural and village life which has formed such an enduring part of contemporary American literature. Given the strong mythology surrounding this way of life and its central position in the formation of what it means to be American, such attacks seem especially crucial in the redefinition of our national character. All of Metalious's novels can be seen as an assault on conventional values and attitudes which is one of the main reasons for her success. The period of rapid social change which developed after the Second World War produced a number of writers bent on re-examining society. The beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, as well as Afro-American authors James Baldwin, and the rediscovery of earlier writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, did...