M&D Duck Read

[alice malice]

The American Mystery: American Literature from Emerson to DeLillo

by Tony Tanner

One of the best essays on M&D is in this little book by Tanner.

Tanner, one of the best readers of American Literature,  suggests that
M&D deals in the Subjunctive. The subjunctive is the key to American
Romance, or, as Tanner names its tradition, The American Mystery.

The subjunctive is a grammatical mood found in many languages.
Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various
states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment,
opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred – the precise
situations in which they are used vary from language to language. The
subjunctive is an irrealis mood (one that does not refer directly to
what is necessarily real) – it is often contrasted with the
indicative, which is a realis mood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood


http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/american-mystery-american-literature-emerson-delillo
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