When William Faulkner (1897-1962) accepted the Nobel Prize in December, 1950, he made a speech that has become a justly famous statement of his perception of the modern world and of his particular place in it. In the address, Faulkner speaks… Read More ›
Thomas Pynchon’s early short story “Entropy” heralds many of the thematic concerns and stylistic features that were to make his novels The Crying of Lot 49, V., and Gravity’s Rainbow central to the canon of American Postmodernism. Most notable of… Read More ›
America became a subject for literature after the Revolutionary War, when writers began the exploration of themes and motifs distinctly American. Continuing the Puritan belief in America as the New Eden, writers stressed the millennial nature of settlement and progress…. Read More ›
Just as fiction in general has opened up to a diverse ethnic spectrum of writers, so too has short fiction, and Louise Erdrich’s (born Karen Louise Erdrich, June 7, 1954) stories stand as excellent examples of contemporary Native American literature…. Read More ›
James Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) is best known as the author of humorous sketches, stories, and reminiscences dealing with urban bourgeois American life. To discuss Thurber as an artist in the short-story form is difficult, however,… Read More ›
Parody, satire, and verbal wit characterize S. J. Perelman’s (February 1, 1904 – October 17, 1979) works. Most of them are very short and tend to begin as conversational essays that develop into narrative or mock dramatic episodes and sometimes… Read More ›
Many of Robert Penn Warren’s (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) stories feature an adult protagonist’s introspective, guilty recollections of imperishable childhood events, of things done or left undone or simply witnessed with childish innocence. Blackberry Winter “Blackberry Winter”… Read More ›
One way to understand the modern novel is to show its development in the work of writers such as Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner. This list is by no means exclusive, but… Read More ›
Aestheticism European literary movement, with its roots in France, that was predominant in the 1890’s. It denied that art needed to have any utilitarian purpose and focused on the slogan “art for art’s sake.” The doctrines of aestheticism were introduced… Read More ›
Hermann Broch must surely be counted among such other major German novelists of the twentieth century as Franz Kafka, Mann, Robert Musil, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass, alongside such other creative artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav… Read More ›
Cynthia Ozick’s (born April 17, 1928) thesis for her master’s degree was titled “Parable in the Later Novels of Henry James,” an exercise that she later thought of as a first step in an act of devotion that resulted in… Read More ›
The most obvious testimony to Shirley Ann Grau’s (July 8, 1929 – August 3, 2020) success is the Pulitzer Prize for fiction that she received in 1965 for The Keepers of the House. Significantly enough, the same novel appeared in condensed… Read More ›
When a young reader wrote to Sarah Orne Jewett (September 3, 1849 – June 24, 1909) in 1899 to express admiration of her stories for girls, Jewett encouraged her to continue reading: You will always have the happiness of finding friendships… Read More ›
Although some dominant themes and characteristics appear regularly in Eudora Welty’s (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) fiction, her work resists categorization. The majority of her stories are set in her beloved Mississippi Delta country, of which she paints… Read More ›
Garcıa Márquez’s (1927-2014) first novella, Leaf Storm, was translated into English in 1972, eighteen years after it was published in Spanish and two years after the English-speaking public first read his acclaimed masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. As might… Read More ›
Nearly everything written about Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) begins with two observations: He is a minimalist, and he writes about working-class people. Even when the critic is sympathetic, this dual categorization tends to stigmatize Carver… Read More ›
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is a very American writer. Early in her career, she drew comparisons with such predecessors as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. The chiefly rural and small-town milieu of her earlier work expanded over… Read More ›
Modernism comprised a broad series of movements in Europe and America that came to fruition roughly between 1910 and 1930. Its major exponents and practitioners included Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Luigi… Read More ›
Woody Allen is one of the most prolific artists of the twentieth century. He is a highly praised director and scriptwriter, a successful actor, a dedicated clarinettist, an appreciated playwright, and an awarded short fiction writer. His entire work testifies… Read More ›
Like many novels, Catherine Carmier is about change and its effects. It is a young man’s novel asking questions of place and purpose that young people in particular wrestle with: Why aren’t things the way they were? What am I… Read More ›
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