Between Dream Houses and "God's Own Junkyard": Architecture and the Built Environment in American Suburban Fiction

Know about the book -

Between Dream Houses and "God's Own Junkyard": Architecture and the Built Environment in American Suburban Fiction is written by Stefanie Strebel and published by Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 3772001467 (ISBN 10) and 9783772001468 (ISBN 13).

The American suburb is a space dominated by architectural mass production, sprawl, as well as a monotonous aesthetic eclecticism, and many critics argue that it has developed from a postwar utopia into a disorienting environment with which it is difficult to identify. The typical suburb has come to display characteristics of an atopia, that is, a space without borders or even a non-place, a generic space of transience. Dealing with the representation of architecture and the built environment in suburban literature and film from the 1920s until present, this study demonstrates that in its fictional representations, too, suburbia has largely turned into a place of non-architecture. A lack of architectural ethos and an abundance of "Junkspace" define suburban narratives, causing an increasing sense of disorientation and entropy in fictional characters.