Tag Archive | American Literature
You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke White – A Review
You Have Seen Their Faces Erskine Caldwell, text Margaret Bourke White, photos Modern Age Books, Inc NY, 1937 55 pg You Have Seen Their Faces was a radical book in its time. Perhaps it would still be if time didn’t make it easy to say, good thing things aren’t like that now. The Great Depression [...]
It’s Nobel Time – Time for American to Feel the Annual Naval Gazing Pain?
It is Nobel Prize time again and the requisite articles about the insular nature of American writing are making their annual appearance. As someone who reads an awful lot from around the world and in original languages, I’m, of course, predisposed to enjoy this latest addition to the perennial hand wringing fest. Since I find [...]
Sheppard Lee Written by Himself – by Robert Montgomery Bird – A Review of an American Satire
Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself Robert Montgomery Bird New York Review of Books, 425 pg Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself is a forgotten American classic from the early part of the nation’s history, one that revels in poking fun at the contradictory tendencies in the young democracy. Bird’s vision of its inhabitants isn’t so much [...]
Vertigo – A Graphic Novel In Woodcuts by Lynd Ward – A Review
Vertigo: A Novel in Woodcuts Lynd Ward Dover, 320 pg Lyn Ward’s Vertigo is a beautiful work of wood block artistry and wordless story telling, and is hailed by many as his master work not only because of its sheer size (over 200 wood block) but its ambition. Set during the Great Depression it tells [...]
Two Lebanese American Novels Reviewed at The New York Review of Books
In Colm Tóibín’s The Anger of Exile at The New York Review of Books he reviews two novels by Lebanese exiles living in the North America. They sound like they have some promise. About Rabih Alameddine’s book he writes The Hakawati offers a set of competing narratives, some fabulous, some filled with memory and desire; [...]
The BBC’s American Archive
Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes points out that the has a series of shows on the BBC with interviews with American authors. The interviews were recorded over a ten year period and all shows are about 30 minutes long. Here are some of the authors featured. Playwright Edward Albee discusses his career. Patricia Cornwell discusses [...]
The Group by Mary McCarthy – A Reappraisal at the Guardian
The Guardian UK has a nice appraisal of Mary McCarthy’s The Group. It is a book I had long heard of but could never really understand what the attraction was. It was an artifact of another time—I still remember her obituary in the NY Times and even then she seemed so distant. I tried reading Memories of [...]
Is the Best American Writing of the Last 10 Years Sexist?
Mark Athitakis reports that what have been called the best novels of the last ten years have all had a similar theme: “Men struggling against a society whose rules and limits are defined by women.” If I had actually read some of these works I could comment, but many have never really piqued my interest. [...]
This Side Of Paradise – A Review
The problem with coming of age stories is that once you have come of age and look back at what may have been a small fraction of a life, it may seem just a pacing moment in the larger picture of a life. Moreover, it is such a specific event that others have no way [...]
