Mapping Suburban Fiction

Abstract

In spite of the practical importance of commuting to everyday suburban life, moments of commuting are rare in American fiction. While the experience of commuting offers chances for reflection and self-knowledge for the suburbanite’s psyche, that time for introspection comes at the cost of ignoring the built environment. The separation of home and work that the often-elided moments of commuting perpetuate generates a blindness to the suburban built environment and infrastructure. This article redirects an examination of suburban fiction outside and beyond the bounds of houses and workplaces by paying attention to scenes of commuting. Placing the space between home and work at the centre of the analysis allows us to understand and highlight the price of the suburban way of life, and to uncover the hidden structures of exploitation and inequality which a conventional account of post-war suburbia glides over.

Keywords:

• commuting
• suburbanization
• Babbitt
• The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
• The Corrections
• twentieth-century America

I would like to thank Douglas Horrell, Mike Dickison, and Gordon Hutner for their assistance.