Category Archives: Twentieth century literature

Nonsecular: William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison

Posted on April 19, 2014 by wcd2

April 19, 2014 Toni Morrison says in a Paris Review interview: “I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come.” … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Americas, Comparative literature, Magical realism, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Beloved, The Bluest Eye, The Paris Review | Leave a comment

Adrienne Rich’s ghazals

Posted on February 27, 2014 by wcd2

February 27, 2014 Her earliest ghazals are in Leaflets, at the very end of the volume, which I must have looked at. But I’m reading them seriously only now — because of Agha Shahid Ali and Call Me Ishmael Tonight, … Continue reading →

Posted in Arabic, Black-Jewish alliances, Caribbean literature, Contemporary novel, Indian Ocean, Middle East, Near Eastern poetry, Poetry, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Adrienne Rich, Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight, Frantz Fanon, ghazals, Leaflets, Martinique | Leave a comment

Frank Stella, Agha Shahid Ali: Moby-Dick into ghazals

Posted on February 21, 2014 by wcd2

Feb 20, 2014 Stella’s “Fedallah” isn’t anything like Melville’s: not the “tiger-yellow” apparition “with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips,” but a fluid, dancing figure, with some dark streaks and shadows, it’s true, but otherwise resplendent, impressive. … Continue reading →

Posted in abstract expressionism, adaptation, Arabic, Classics, Middle East, Modern art, Near Eastern poetry, Poetry, twentieth century art, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Agha Shahid Ali, Ain Ghazal Variations, Call Me Ishmael Tonight, Frank Stella, Melville, Moby-Dick, Protractor Series | Leave a comment

Not New York

Posted on January 8, 2014 by wcd2

January 8, 2014 I’m about to head off to Chicago, also about to teach my freshman seminar: “Cities.” Chicago again, New York, San Francisco. The books are the usual suspects, but not all of them (for San Francisco I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, contemporary poetry, Nineteenth-century literature, Twentieth century literature, Uncategorized | Tagged Allen Ginsberg, Bethel Maine, Camden, Chicago, David Jackson, Edidon, Faulkner, Guatemala, James Merrill, Junot Diaz, Maltese Falcon, Mark Neveu, Miami, Michael Chabon, New York, Oxford Mississippi, Patterson, Richard Blano, San Francisco, The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth, Washington DC, Whitman, William Carlos Williams | Leave a comment

New James Baldwin letters

Posted on January 1, 2014 by wcd2

January 1, 2014 The 100 letters recently acquired by the Beinecke Library are not to famous people, just Baldwin’s friends. The letters to Painter began in 1954, when his play “The Amen Corner” opened at Howard, and came up to 1964, … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Europe, Friendship, Libraries, Turkey, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Another Country, Beinecke Library, David Leeming, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene Lerner, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Invisible Man, Istanbul, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Martha Gellhorn, Martin Luther King, Mary Painter, Medgar Evers, No Name in the Street, Ralph Ellison, Rosa Parks, The Fire Next Time, The Panther and the Lash | Leave a comment

Ilium, Iowa City: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five

Posted on October 23, 2013 by wcd2

October 23, 2013 For someone interested in the twentieth-century epic, Slaughterhouse Five is a no-brainer. How else would one call a story set in Ilium, talking about war, about death and the counterfactual? But did I ever stop to think about … Continue reading →

Posted in Boostores, Cities, Climate change, Contemporary novel, Environmentalism, epic, public universities, Science fiction, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Dresden firebombing, Floods 2013, Guggenheim Fellowship, Iliad, Ilium, Iowa City, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Prairie Lights Bookstore, Slaughterhouse-Five, World War II | Leave a comment

Ann Petry, Katharine Hepburn: the 1938 Hurricane

Posted on September 25, 2013 by wcd2

September 25, 2014 I found out only quite recently that Ann Petry had a second novel, very different from her first. And I bet I’m not alone — another version of the Invisible Man syndrome. Except that Country … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Climate change, oceans, Twentieth century literature | Tagged 1938 New England Hurricane, A Paradise Built in Hell, Ann Petry, Audrey Hepburn, Country Place, Rebecca Solnit, The Street | Leave a comment

Housemates: Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, John Hersey

Posted on September 11, 2013 by wcd2

September 11, 2013 I can’t find pictures of them together, just houses that they shared. 713 Windsor Lane, a modest cottage in a writer’s compound in Key West, shared by John Hersey, his wife, and Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Black-Jewish alliances, Ethnicity, Friendship, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Bard College, Henderson the Rain King, Hudson, Hudson River, Invisible Man, John Hersey, Key West, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Twentieth Century Views, Viking, Yale | Leave a comment

Bono on Seamus Heaney

Posted on September 4, 2013 by wcd2

September 4, 2013 He was there at the funeral, of course, with Adam Clayton, and also wrote this short piece in the Guardian: “Every meeting I’ve ever had since I began full-time advocacy, I have brought with me a book … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, African-American music, contemporary poetry, jazz, Music, Race, Rock music, Twentieth century literature | Tagged " Seamus Heaney, Adam Clayton, Bono, Gandhi, Guardian, Invisible Man, James Baldwin, Johnson Sirleaf, Louis Armstrong, Nina Smone, Ralph Ellison | Leave a comment

March on Washington: unsung

Posted on August 28, 2013 by wcd2

August 28, 2013 No, not literally unsung. In fact, the most memorable moments at the microphone, other than Martin Luther King’s “I had a Dream” speech, featured singers: Mahalia Jackson; Marian Anderson; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez and … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, African-American music, Journalism, Media, Music, Twentieth century literature | Tagged Bob Dylan, Ghana, James Baldwin, Joan Baez, Langston Hughes, Mahalia Jackson, Malcolm X, March on Washington, Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King, Norman Mailer, Odetta, Paul and Mary, Peter, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, The Armies of the Night, W. E. B. Du Bois | 2 Comments