Trickster Lives

At once criminal and savior, clown and creator, antagonist and mediator, the character of trickster has made frequent appearances in works by writers the world over. As Margaret Atwood observed, trickster gods "stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands; they operate where things are joined together and, thus, can also fall apart." A shaping force in American literature, trickster has appeared in such characters as Huckleberry Finn, Rinehart, Sula, and Nanapush. Usually a figure both culturally specific and transcendent, trickster leads the way to the unconscious, the concealed, and the seemingly unattainable.

Trickster Lives offers thirteen new and challenging interpretations of trickster in American writing, including essays on works by African American, Native American, Pacific Rim, and Latino writers, as well as an examination of trickster politics. This innovative collection of work conveys the trickster’s unmistakable imprint on the modern world.

Jeanne Campbell Reesman is a professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of American Designs: The Late Novels of James and Faulkner and Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction. She is coediting a major collection of London's photographs that will be published by the University of Georgia Press. Her other books include Trickster Lives and Speaking the Other Self (both Georgia).