Capturing America: Mark Lawson's History of Modern American Literature - Landscapes, Interiors, Underworlds

Mark Lawson tells the story of how American writing became the literary superpower of the 20th century, telling the nation's stories of money, power, sex, religion and war. John Updike, author of the Rabbit quartet of novels, always remembered being inspired by the 1960s Pop Art of Andy Warhol and others: an attempt to catch the visual reality of modern America. Updike responded by trying to achieve something similar in fiction, depicting the lives of people from places and backgrounds which had often been ignored. Richard Ford (The Sportswriter trilogy), John Irving (The Cider House Rules), Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead) and Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) also reflect on this mission to describe the external and internal nature of life in the United States in all its regional and personal variety.