Making Conversation in Modernist Fictionampampnbspexamines the role of character dialogue in key works of AngloAmerican modernism. Through close analysis of texts includingampampnbspThe Ambassadors The Sun Also RisesampampnbspThe DeadampampnbspThe Sound and the Fury Absalom Absalom The Waves Between the ActsampampnbspMelanctha andampampnbspCaneampampnbspthe book documents the ways in which some of the most canonical British and American modernist authors transformed the conventions traditionally used to render talk in fiction. If historically dialogue had been treated as a subordinate element in fictiona tool for developing character or advancing plotthis book demonstrates that writers such as Henry James Ernest Hemingway James Joyce William Faulkner Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein would increasingly emphasize it as a poetic structure in its own right. In this way Alsop argues modernist writers make conversation in radically new ways and for a diverse range of expressive and communicative ends. Over the course of five chapters that explore this previously overlooked avenue of modernist innovationampampnbspMaking Conversationampampnbspoffers readers a radical new paradigm not only for understanding fictional talk but also for interpreting some of the most celebrated examples of early twentiethcentury narrative. ampampnbsp