Category Archives: Twentieth century literature
Muriel Rukeyser, journalist
August 21, 2013 Today, as Bradley Manning is sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents, I think about all the trials that shadowed American literature: Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Case, and, probably not so well-known, the … Continue reading
Zora Neale Hurston: American literature as World Literature?
August 14, 2013 The polemical essay, “World Lite,” just out in n+1, is perhaps generating more heat than light. But it does raise an interesting question: what exactly is “world literature”? How broad its scope, and what could be in … Continue reading
James Baldwin and Richard Wright: What quarrel?
August 7, 2013 It was all very public, well documented. Wright had started out being the central inspiration. Baldwin’s essay, “Notes of a Native Son,” and his essay collection also of that title, are obvious tributes to the long … Continue reading
Gatsby Made Great
I’ve been trying to figure out why the ending of the recent Gatsby film felt so flat to me, and I think it’s because it lacks the animating pathos of the final confrontation of origin stories that drove the plot … Continue reading
Langston Hughes’s Children Literature
May 31, 2013 My class, “Regional, National, Global,” has no special focus on children’s literature, but it does seem to come up a lot. I think it’s because of Langston Hughes — the uncertain borders of his poetry, holding a … Continue reading
Beyond a Boundary: C. L. R. James in Glasgow
May 13, 2013 Scotland and the Caribbean? The architecture of Glasgow tells a dramatic story. Here, in the center of town, is the many-pillared Gallery of Modern Art, monumental even for a museum, which used to be the … Continue reading
Elizabeth Bishop: “Brazil, January 1, 2015” or “Manuelzinho:?
May 1, 2015 The Table of Contents, the print anthology as a finite, bounded object — they loom large. While they do that, though, this blog is going to hold out for a little longer, not going there yet. … Continue reading
Brazil: Karen Tei Yamashita, Elizabeth Bishop
April 24, 2013 Both write about human efforts that come to nothing. Bishop’s Manuelzinho begins bravely, planting gardens that ravish the eye: beds of cabbages edged with red carnations, lettuces with alyssum. But then “silver umbrella ants arrive,/ or it … Continue reading
Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop: Boston Marathons
April 17, 2013 He writes only about the Civil War dead: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers from the all-black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, captured in bronze by August Saint-Gaudens. The sculpture isn’t all that close to the finish … Continue reading