Category Archives: Twentieth century literature

Nonsecular: William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison

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

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Adrienne Rich’s ghazals

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 , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

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 , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Not New York

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

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New James Baldwin letters

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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ilium, Iowa City: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five

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 , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ann Petry, Katharine Hepburn: the 1938 Hurricane

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

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Housemates: Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, John Hersey

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

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Bono on Seamus Heaney

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

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March on Washington: unsung

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

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