Round trips in the fiction of Salinger, Bellow and Barth during the nineteen fifties

This study addresses the literary and cultural significance of the round-trip journey as it recurs in the fiction of J. D. Salinger, Saul Bellow and John Barth in the historical setting of the 1950s. The motif of a protagonist launching outward, only to return home, has its roots in both ancient myth and in the traditional mode of Comedy. During the 1950s, however, Salinger, Bellow and Barth depict a round trip that is enhanced by certain cold-war issues--specifically the repercussions of the atomic bomb, the rise of materialism, and the widespread uneasiness about Communism.; Further, the narrative round trips are thematic images that have implications for both high and popular culture. The theories of cultural criticism from Pierre Bourdieu assist in demonstrating how Salinger, Bellow and Barth at first distance their work from American popular culture as they position it in a context of high culture. For example, in such works as Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories, Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and Henderson the Rain King, and Barth's The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, the protagonists begin their trips by fleeing outward, often in acts of rebellion against mainstream society.; Yet, just as these protagonists--without exception--make a variety of outward journeys that finally return home, so too do the narratives themselves inscribe round trips which ultimately arc back to endorse, or at least accept, traditional values shared by mainstream, popular culture. Through the narrative homecoming, these three authors break from earlier, more elitist, works of literary "modernism"; as a result, the final sense of accommodation of opposing cultural forces ultimately contributes to the diminishment of barriers between high and popular culture.