Part blood, part ketchup: Coming of age in America with J. D. Salinger, Philip Roth, John Irving, Edith Wharton and Jamaica Kincaid

The twentieth century American Bildungsroman resonates in curious ways with nineteenth century European criticisms of the American character. Critics perceive the protagonists of Salinger, Roth, Irving, Wharton and Kincaid either as brave, charming and brilliant, or as arrogant, logorrheic and monotonous, echoing Tocqueville and Dickens on their newly minted American hosts. American characters sing wild arias that do not entirely square with the trials they depict, while their global counterparts tend to reveal sorrows at a more modest pitch. "Part Blood" argues that the American Bildungsroman performs the cultural work of transforming maturation into jeremiad.