Sounding Real: Musicality and American Fiction at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Studies in American Literary Realism & Naturalism (Hardcover)) First Edition, First ed. Edition

“Ruotolo’s interpretation of the ways in which music and musicality–as represented in a number of turn-of-the-century novels–reflect American identity, is intriguing, original, and provocative.”–Kerry Driscoll, professor of English at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut

“Critic and novelist James Huneker–subject of one of the very best chapters in Cristina Ruotolo’s breathtaking book Sounding Real–argued that to write about music is ‘quite hopeless.’ But to write about music in the context of American literary realism, as Ruotolo demonstrates, turns out to be not only possible but also thrilling. Ruotolo establishes convincingly that music was used as a major vehicle for literary realists and musical nationalists launching investigations of racial identity and sexual innovation, ‘Americanness’ and ‘culture.’ Teaching us how to reread (really how to rehear) landmark texts such as Sister Carrie, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and Song of the Lark, and introducing us to less familiar works by Harold Frederic and W. J. Henderson, Ruotolo puts music at the heart of American literature, where it belongs. This is interdisciplinary work of the highest order: it is bound to start productive conversations among and between scholars in literary studies, in American studies, in the emergent field of sound studies, in music history, and in African American and women’s studies.”
–Jeffrey Melnick, coauthor of Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction and coeditor of American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century