Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 417
May 5, 2012
May 5-6, 2012: Great Historical Fiction, Part 5
[Fifth and final entry in the week’s series on great American historical fiction! But I’m always thinking about this genre, so continued nominations, feedback, and other responses still very welcome as always!]For the fifth post, quick hits on five more nominees for amazing American historical novels (all of which I’ll probably write more about in future posts!):1) E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971)2) Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (1974)3) David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (1981)4) Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996)5) Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (2002)Next series this coming week,BenPS. Any historical novels or novelists you’d highlight?5/5 Memory Day nominee: Nellie Bly, the pioneering and hugely talented investigative reporter and muckraking journalist who changed American media, writing, and narratives of gender and identity.5/6 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two titanic 20th century Americans who need no introduction, Orson Welles and Willie Mays.
May 4, 2012
May 4, 2012: Great Historical Fiction, Part 4
[Fourth in the week’s series on great American historical fiction! Nominations, feedback, and other responses very welcome as always!]Today’s nominee for an amazing American historical novel is James Michener’s
Hawaii (1959) .
It’s fair to say, using the categories for which I argued in Tuesday’s post, that Michener’s best-selling historical epics are more period fiction than historical fiction—he’s certainly most interested in human experiences and relationships, rather than in thorny questions of American history per se. But on the other hand, his novels are multi-period, tracing centuries of community and identity in each of his focal places, and that makes them both unique and in and of themselves historically grounded (and researched) in every effective ways. Most any of those epics could have been my focus here, but Hawaii was really his first in this category, and exemplifies his talents and successes for sure.
Final nominee tomorrow,BenPS. You know the question!5/4 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering 19th century American thinkers and writers, both born in 1796: Horace Mann, considered “The Father of American Public Education” for his innovative and seminal ideas about public education, teacher training, and other key educational questions; and William H. Prescott, considered the first scientifically analytical American historian and one of the most significant pioneers in writing the history of the Americas.
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012: Great Historical Fiction, Part 3
[Third in the week’s series on great American historical fiction! Nominations, feedback, and other responses very welcome as always!]Today’s nominee for an amazing American historical novel is Russell Banks’s Cloudsplitter (1998). I’ll admit it, for a long time I hated Banks’ novel; not because of anything really about it, but because my fallback plan had always been to write a historical novel about John Brown from the point of view of one of his sons, and then Banks went ahead and did that and did it amazingly well. But you can only hold onto your hate for so long before you realize that an amazing historical novel about fathers and sons, family and nation, violence and spirituality, the coming of the Civil War, and heroism and villainy in American identity is worth celebrating. Even if it did crush your dreams a bit.Next nominee tomorrow,BenPS. Any novelists or novels you’d highlight? 5/3 Memory Day nominee: Jacob Riis, who remains, more than a century later, one of the most complex and important voices to engage with American poverty in our history.
May 2, 2012
May 2, 2012: Great Historical Fiction, Part 2
[Second in the week’s series on great American historical fiction! Nominations, feedback, and other responses very welcome as always!]Today’s nominee for an amazing American historical novel is Octavia Butler’s
Kindred (1979).
The premise of Butler’s science fiction historical novel is simple enough: a 1970s African American woman suddenly finds herself time traveling back into the antebellum South, where she becomes (or rather, is) a slave. But without spoiling the many amazing places where Butler takes her story from there, I’ll just say that she is centrally concerned with some of the most genuinely historical and American themes: family and legacies, race and its continuous yet shifting presence and meanings, love and hope and hatred and death, community and identity in our past, present, and (it is science fiction after all!) future. One of our most unique, significant, and compelling American novels, historical or otherwise.
Next nominee tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any nominations?
5/2 Memory Day nominee: Albion Tourgée, who’s on my short list of most inspiring Americans, for all the reasons detailed in that post and more.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012: Great Historical Fiction, Part I
[Starting a week’s series on great American historical fiction! Nominations, feedback, and other responses very welcome as always!]
One of the central questions with which any scholar or reader (or even any writer) of historical fiction has to engage is what works in the genre hope to accomplish. There are lots of potential answers to that question, but the fundamental divide is, it seems to me, between accuracy or authenticity on the one hand and effectiveness or readability on the other; between, that is, doing justice to the historical details and periods and events on which a particular novel focuses and doing right by the readers who have picked up said novel. Obviously the choice is not an either/or, but I would argue that as a matter of emphasis and priority these are two very different starting points; and I would go further and argue that much of what we have called historical fiction over the years has chosen very fully to focus on creating entertaining novels for which the history is a backdrop, rather than on creating historical worlds for which the novel is a foreground. If that has been the emphasis much of the time, it’s an entirely understandable one; readers who seek historical accuracy can always turn to works of historical narrative and scholarship, after all, and a historical novelist who does not connect to his or her readers is likely to produce few sales and a short career. So long as the historical focus is not being explicitly falsified or mythologized, as I have elsewhere argued that the historical details surrounding Reconstruction explicitly and destructively (to the book’s contemporary moment and for our overarching national narratives) are in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a historical novelist focusing mostly on creating compelling characters and story rather than on exploring all of the nuances of that historical world. But if and when a novelist makes that choice, I think it would be very useful for us to have a separate generic category in which we could place the resulting work: not historical fiction but, perhaps, period fiction? If we were to employ that second category in that way, it would allow the term “historical fiction” to be used solely for those novels that do work to create historical worlds first and foremost—and would hopefully likewise allow us to make clear that many such novels and novelists have been able to do so without sacrificing any of their engaging and entertaining qualities in the process.
At or near the top of that list, for me, are the novels in Gore Vidal’s American Chronicle, a series which Vidal has been writing since the late 1960s and which now includes at least six novels (which I will list in chronological rather than publication order; not included here is the recent The Golden Age [2000], only because I haven’t read it and so don’t feel able to comment on whether it’s really part of the series or not): Burr (1973); Lincoln (1984); 1876 (1976); Empire(1987); Hollywood (1990); and Washington, DC (1967). The novels certainly vary in quality, and the more recent novels in the series seem somewhat more explicitly driven by Vidal’s own contemporary political agenda and purposes (a charge that, from what I can tell, applies even more directly to Golden Age); it’s fair to say that a decent percentage of even the kind of genuinely historical fiction about which I’m writing here does feature such central political purposes, and while they don’t necessarily diminish the texts’ success at creating historical worlds, they do often provide the lenses through which we view those worlds. But the earlier books in Vidal’s series, and most especially Burr, are among America’s most fully realized and successful historical novels: both because of how richly they construct their historical worlds (Burr imagines no fewer than three such worlds: the Revolution, the turn of the 19th century, and the 1830s); and because of how immensely readable and fun they are. To coin a phrase, Burr made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think long and hard about—and in fact even do further research into—its historical and national subjects and stories, and that’s a pretty successful historical novel if you ask me.Next nominee tomorrow.
BenPS. Two more links:
1) Empire, one of the few in the series that you can preview through Google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=RiYadJIIy80C&printsec=frontcover&dq=gore+vidal&hl=en&ei=cLOHTfG3CozUgQfsq5jVCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=9&ved=0CFgQuwUwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false
2) One of the more interesting books on historical fiction, in which scholars write about historical novels and the novelists write back (two excerpts included through this site): http://books.simonandschuster.com/Novel-History/Mark-C-Carnes/9780684857664/excerpt_with_id/5185
PPS. Any historical novels or novelists you’d recommend?5/1 Memory Day nominee: Joseph Heller, who never equaled the scathing satire and biteof his great Catch-22 (although few other American authors have equaled it either), but whose later novels reflect an evolving and complex satirical and humanistic perspective for sure.
One of the central questions with which any scholar or reader (or even any writer) of historical fiction has to engage is what works in the genre hope to accomplish. There are lots of potential answers to that question, but the fundamental divide is, it seems to me, between accuracy or authenticity on the one hand and effectiveness or readability on the other; between, that is, doing justice to the historical details and periods and events on which a particular novel focuses and doing right by the readers who have picked up said novel. Obviously the choice is not an either/or, but I would argue that as a matter of emphasis and priority these are two very different starting points; and I would go further and argue that much of what we have called historical fiction over the years has chosen very fully to focus on creating entertaining novels for which the history is a backdrop, rather than on creating historical worlds for which the novel is a foreground. If that has been the emphasis much of the time, it’s an entirely understandable one; readers who seek historical accuracy can always turn to works of historical narrative and scholarship, after all, and a historical novelist who does not connect to his or her readers is likely to produce few sales and a short career. So long as the historical focus is not being explicitly falsified or mythologized, as I have elsewhere argued that the historical details surrounding Reconstruction explicitly and destructively (to the book’s contemporary moment and for our overarching national narratives) are in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a historical novelist focusing mostly on creating compelling characters and story rather than on exploring all of the nuances of that historical world. But if and when a novelist makes that choice, I think it would be very useful for us to have a separate generic category in which we could place the resulting work: not historical fiction but, perhaps, period fiction? If we were to employ that second category in that way, it would allow the term “historical fiction” to be used solely for those novels that do work to create historical worlds first and foremost—and would hopefully likewise allow us to make clear that many such novels and novelists have been able to do so without sacrificing any of their engaging and entertaining qualities in the process.
At or near the top of that list, for me, are the novels in Gore Vidal’s American Chronicle, a series which Vidal has been writing since the late 1960s and which now includes at least six novels (which I will list in chronological rather than publication order; not included here is the recent The Golden Age [2000], only because I haven’t read it and so don’t feel able to comment on whether it’s really part of the series or not): Burr (1973); Lincoln (1984); 1876 (1976); Empire(1987); Hollywood (1990); and Washington, DC (1967). The novels certainly vary in quality, and the more recent novels in the series seem somewhat more explicitly driven by Vidal’s own contemporary political agenda and purposes (a charge that, from what I can tell, applies even more directly to Golden Age); it’s fair to say that a decent percentage of even the kind of genuinely historical fiction about which I’m writing here does feature such central political purposes, and while they don’t necessarily diminish the texts’ success at creating historical worlds, they do often provide the lenses through which we view those worlds. But the earlier books in Vidal’s series, and most especially Burr, are among America’s most fully realized and successful historical novels: both because of how richly they construct their historical worlds (Burr imagines no fewer than three such worlds: the Revolution, the turn of the 19th century, and the 1830s); and because of how immensely readable and fun they are. To coin a phrase, Burr made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think long and hard about—and in fact even do further research into—its historical and national subjects and stories, and that’s a pretty successful historical novel if you ask me.Next nominee tomorrow.
BenPS. Two more links:
1) Empire, one of the few in the series that you can preview through Google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=RiYadJIIy80C&printsec=frontcover&dq=gore+vidal&hl=en&ei=cLOHTfG3CozUgQfsq5jVCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-preview-link&resnum=9&ved=0CFgQuwUwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false
2) One of the more interesting books on historical fiction, in which scholars write about historical novels and the novelists write back (two excerpts included through this site): http://books.simonandschuster.com/Novel-History/Mark-C-Carnes/9780684857664/excerpt_with_id/5185
PPS. Any historical novels or novelists you’d recommend?5/1 Memory Day nominee: Joseph Heller, who never equaled the scathing satire and biteof his great Catch-22 (although few other American authors have equaled it either), but whose later novels reflect an evolving and complex satirical and humanistic perspective for sure.
April 30, 2012
April 30, 2012: April 2012 Recap
The month that was in American Studying:
April 2: Fools Rush In: A week of April Fool’s-inspired posts starts with one on fighting the good fight, Albion Tourgée, and A Fool’s Errand.
April 3: Seward’s Folly: On what we can learn from how, when, and why Alaska, Hawai’I, and Maine entered the U.S.
April 4: Melville’s Confidence Man: On the funny and significant American takeaways from Herman Melville’s complex satirical novel.
April 5: Nobody’s Fool: On some American Studies lessons from the funny and touching Paul Newman-starring film.
April 6: American Satire: The April Fool’s series ends with five great works of American satire from across the centuries.
April 7-8: March 2012 Recap: A belated recap of March on the blog.
April 9: Poems I Love, Part One: A National Poetry Month series kicks off with Randall Jarrell.
April 10: Poems I Love, Part Two: The series continues with my vote for most underrated American poet, Sarah Piatt.
April 11: Poems I Love, Part Three: Stephen Crane’s dark and cynical, yet perhaps still hopeful, entry in the series.
April 12: Poems I Love, Part Four: Joy Harjo and a poem that’s just pitch-perfect.
April 13: Poems I Love, Part Five: My amazing colleague and friend Ian Williams rounds out the week.
April 14-15: Taxing Poems: To follow up the week but also in honor of Tax Day, five more poems that’ll tax you in the best sense.
April 16: The Hard Way: In honor of Patriot’s Day, a repeat of one of my favorite posts, on George R.R. Martin and patriotism.
April 17: How Would a Patriot Act? Part One: A series on genuine American patriots kicks off with my 17th century nominee, Squanto.
April 18: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Two: An 18th century genuine American patriot, Quock Walker.
April 19: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Three: A 19th century genuine American patriot, Yung Wing.
April 20: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Four: A 20th century genuine American patriot, César Chávez.
April 21-22: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Five: A 21st century genuine American patriot, you!
April 23: Great American Stories, Part One: Joyce Carol Oates kicks off a series on great American short stories.
April 24: Great American Stories, Part Two: The week’s next great short story, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri.
April 25: Great American Stories, Part Three: Kate Chopin’s ambiguous, controversial, and sexy as hell entry in the week’s series.
April 26: Great American Stories, Part Four: Sui Sin Far’s tragic, biting, and deeply significant contribution to the series.
April 27: Great American Stories, Part Five: F. Scott Fitzgerald ends the week with a very representative and moving story.
April 28-29: Great American Writers, Right Now: Five talented, up-and-coming young writers who also happen to be students of mine at Fitchburg State University!
The week’s series starts tomorrow!
Ben
PS. Any subjects you’d like to see in this space? Or that you’d like to contribute guest posts on?
4/30 Memory Day Nominee: Muddy Waters, the blues and rhythm & blues guitarist and legendwithout whom rock and roll, popular music, and 20th century American culture would likely have been very different, and much less interesting.
April 2: Fools Rush In: A week of April Fool’s-inspired posts starts with one on fighting the good fight, Albion Tourgée, and A Fool’s Errand.
April 3: Seward’s Folly: On what we can learn from how, when, and why Alaska, Hawai’I, and Maine entered the U.S.
April 4: Melville’s Confidence Man: On the funny and significant American takeaways from Herman Melville’s complex satirical novel.
April 5: Nobody’s Fool: On some American Studies lessons from the funny and touching Paul Newman-starring film.
April 6: American Satire: The April Fool’s series ends with five great works of American satire from across the centuries.
April 7-8: March 2012 Recap: A belated recap of March on the blog.
April 9: Poems I Love, Part One: A National Poetry Month series kicks off with Randall Jarrell.
April 10: Poems I Love, Part Two: The series continues with my vote for most underrated American poet, Sarah Piatt.
April 11: Poems I Love, Part Three: Stephen Crane’s dark and cynical, yet perhaps still hopeful, entry in the series.
April 12: Poems I Love, Part Four: Joy Harjo and a poem that’s just pitch-perfect.
April 13: Poems I Love, Part Five: My amazing colleague and friend Ian Williams rounds out the week.
April 14-15: Taxing Poems: To follow up the week but also in honor of Tax Day, five more poems that’ll tax you in the best sense.
April 16: The Hard Way: In honor of Patriot’s Day, a repeat of one of my favorite posts, on George R.R. Martin and patriotism.
April 17: How Would a Patriot Act? Part One: A series on genuine American patriots kicks off with my 17th century nominee, Squanto.
April 18: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Two: An 18th century genuine American patriot, Quock Walker.
April 19: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Three: A 19th century genuine American patriot, Yung Wing.
April 20: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Four: A 20th century genuine American patriot, César Chávez.
April 21-22: How Would a Patriot Act? Part Five: A 21st century genuine American patriot, you!
April 23: Great American Stories, Part One: Joyce Carol Oates kicks off a series on great American short stories.
April 24: Great American Stories, Part Two: The week’s next great short story, courtesy of Jhumpa Lahiri.
April 25: Great American Stories, Part Three: Kate Chopin’s ambiguous, controversial, and sexy as hell entry in the week’s series.
April 26: Great American Stories, Part Four: Sui Sin Far’s tragic, biting, and deeply significant contribution to the series.
April 27: Great American Stories, Part Five: F. Scott Fitzgerald ends the week with a very representative and moving story.
April 28-29: Great American Writers, Right Now: Five talented, up-and-coming young writers who also happen to be students of mine at Fitchburg State University!
The week’s series starts tomorrow!
Ben
PS. Any subjects you’d like to see in this space? Or that you’d like to contribute guest posts on?
4/30 Memory Day Nominee: Muddy Waters, the blues and rhythm & blues guitarist and legendwithout whom rock and roll, popular music, and 20th century American culture would likely have been very different, and much less interesting.
April 28, 2012
April 28-29, 2012: Great American Writers, Right Now
To follow up this week’s series on five very talented American authors and five of their best short stories, and make clear how much these traditions continue—as well as how lucky I am to have the gig I do—here, in no particular order, are five great young authors who happen to be students of mine to boot:
1) Maranda Cucchiara: Like each of the first four student writers here, Maranda is a graduating senior in our English Studies department; her focus has been on Professional Writing, and as that website and her soon-to-be released novel Vivian, Falling reflect, she’s already well on her way to the professional part (having been working on the writing part for a long time now).2) Tyler Welsh: Tyler is many things—a very talented actor and director who has been an integral part of our FSU Theater program throughout his time here, a funny funny guy whose podcasts make excellent use of that sense of humor, a pop culture connoisseur and critic, and just a unique and compelling voice. I expect big things!3) Kristina Testagrossa: As is the case for a lot of the talented young writers and artists I’ve met, Kristina’s creative writing is developing alongside a number of other interests—her candlemaking company, her journalistic work (such as the pieces for the Fitchburg State student newspaper linked at her site), her blogging. Old-school writers might see that as a description of someone focused too broadly—but I see it as a body of work that she’ll carry forward into her future career, whatever it includes.4) Rob Gosselin: Rob’s a seriously multi-talented guy too, as that website reflects. But if I had to bet on what he’ll be most successful doing (while still doing all these other things too, ‘cause that’s how he rolls), I’d go with poet. He’s hugely talented, but most of all what I see is the passion he has for it—for writing it, for reading it, for hearing it, for being around it. Rob had another career before coming back to school, and I think his poetry feels like a gift to him—and it does to me too!5) Jessica Gemmell Afshar: Jessica doesn’t have a website yet, but we’re working on that. She’s been a student in the Fitchburg State MA in English program for a few years now, and is about ready to finish her Master’s and figure out what’s next. I guarantee a couple things about that answer-in-progress: it’ll include writing across many genres (short fiction, creative non-fiction, literary and cultural analysis, poetry); and it’ll be compelling and engaging and fresh and well worth your time. Watch this space for more!One of the best things about being a teacher is feeling that America’s future is in very good hands—and I’d say the same about American literature, thanks to folks like these young writers.More next week,BenPS. Any writers, young or not, whose work or voice you’d highlight?4/28 Memory Day nominee: Harper Lee, who only published one novel, but what a powerful and significant American novel it is!4/29 Memory Day nominee: Iwao Takamoto, the Japanese American animator who went from a childhood in the Manzanar internment camp to designing Scooby-Doo and Fred Flintstone, directing Charlotte’s Web , and positively influencing the lives and imaginations of countless millions of American children.
1) Maranda Cucchiara: Like each of the first four student writers here, Maranda is a graduating senior in our English Studies department; her focus has been on Professional Writing, and as that website and her soon-to-be released novel Vivian, Falling reflect, she’s already well on her way to the professional part (having been working on the writing part for a long time now).2) Tyler Welsh: Tyler is many things—a very talented actor and director who has been an integral part of our FSU Theater program throughout his time here, a funny funny guy whose podcasts make excellent use of that sense of humor, a pop culture connoisseur and critic, and just a unique and compelling voice. I expect big things!3) Kristina Testagrossa: As is the case for a lot of the talented young writers and artists I’ve met, Kristina’s creative writing is developing alongside a number of other interests—her candlemaking company, her journalistic work (such as the pieces for the Fitchburg State student newspaper linked at her site), her blogging. Old-school writers might see that as a description of someone focused too broadly—but I see it as a body of work that she’ll carry forward into her future career, whatever it includes.4) Rob Gosselin: Rob’s a seriously multi-talented guy too, as that website reflects. But if I had to bet on what he’ll be most successful doing (while still doing all these other things too, ‘cause that’s how he rolls), I’d go with poet. He’s hugely talented, but most of all what I see is the passion he has for it—for writing it, for reading it, for hearing it, for being around it. Rob had another career before coming back to school, and I think his poetry feels like a gift to him—and it does to me too!5) Jessica Gemmell Afshar: Jessica doesn’t have a website yet, but we’re working on that. She’s been a student in the Fitchburg State MA in English program for a few years now, and is about ready to finish her Master’s and figure out what’s next. I guarantee a couple things about that answer-in-progress: it’ll include writing across many genres (short fiction, creative non-fiction, literary and cultural analysis, poetry); and it’ll be compelling and engaging and fresh and well worth your time. Watch this space for more!One of the best things about being a teacher is feeling that America’s future is in very good hands—and I’d say the same about American literature, thanks to folks like these young writers.More next week,BenPS. Any writers, young or not, whose work or voice you’d highlight?4/28 Memory Day nominee: Harper Lee, who only published one novel, but what a powerful and significant American novel it is!4/29 Memory Day nominee: Iwao Takamoto, the Japanese American animator who went from a childhood in the Manzanar internment camp to designing Scooby-Doo and Fred Flintstone, directing Charlotte’s Web , and positively influencing the lives and imaginations of countless millions of American children.
April 27, 2012
April 27, 2012: Great American Stories, Part Five
[As work on the writing project continues, this week’s brief posts will highlight some of my favorite American short stories, by some of our most talented authors in this unique and compelling genre. Suggestions, and even guest posts, very welcome as always!]
Today’s great American story is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
”Babylon Revisited” (1931).
A perfect coda to the Roaring 20s, a pitch-perfect summation of the Lost Generation, and one of the most heartbreaking and compelling character portraits ever created.
Follow up post this weekend,
Ben
PS. Last chance for nominations that I can highlight this weekend!
4/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Ulysses S. Grant, not for his scandal-ridden and partially failed presidency, but for his crucial military savvy, his highly readable and powerful memoirs, and his impressive honesty and candor on complex national issues; and Coretta Scott King, whose work with her husband Martin Luther King, Jr., was only the beginning of her inspiring American life.
Today’s great American story is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
”Babylon Revisited” (1931).
A perfect coda to the Roaring 20s, a pitch-perfect summation of the Lost Generation, and one of the most heartbreaking and compelling character portraits ever created.
Follow up post this weekend,
Ben
PS. Last chance for nominations that I can highlight this weekend!
4/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Ulysses S. Grant, not for his scandal-ridden and partially failed presidency, but for his crucial military savvy, his highly readable and powerful memoirs, and his impressive honesty and candor on complex national issues; and Coretta Scott King, whose work with her husband Martin Luther King, Jr., was only the beginning of her inspiring American life.
April 26, 2012
April 26, 2012: Great American Stories, Part Four
[As work on the writing project continues, this week’s brief posts will highlight some of my favorite American short stories, by some of our most talented authors in this unique and compelling genre. Suggestions, and even guest posts, very welcome as always!]
Today’s great American story is Sui Sin Far’s
“In the Land of the Free” (1912; starts on page 93 of that book).
Far wasn’t the most talented prose stylist, but I don’t know any American stories that capture America’s darker histories and realities, and their intersections with our ideals and hopes, better than this one. And if the last line doesn’t rip your heart out, then god, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.
Next story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Almost your last chance for nominations!
4/26 Memory Day nominee: Frederick Law Olmstead, for all the reasons elucidated in that post!
Today’s great American story is Sui Sin Far’s
“In the Land of the Free” (1912; starts on page 93 of that book).
Far wasn’t the most talented prose stylist, but I don’t know any American stories that capture America’s darker histories and realities, and their intersections with our ideals and hopes, better than this one. And if the last line doesn’t rip your heart out, then god, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.
Next story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Almost your last chance for nominations!
4/26 Memory Day nominee: Frederick Law Olmstead, for all the reasons elucidated in that post!
April 25, 2012
April 25, 2012: Great American Stories, Part Three
[As work on the writing project continues, this week’s brief posts will highlight some of my favorite American short stories, by some of our most talented authors in this unique and compelling genre. Suggestions, and even guest posts, very welcome as always!]
Today’s great American story is Kate Chopin’s
“The Storm” (1898).
Chopin’s most famous story is “The Story of an Hour,” and it’s great too. But “The Storm” was so controversially great that it was never published in Chopin’s lifetime. Her final line certainly pushes on lots of boundaries, as does her story overall. But it’s also just amazingly rich and dense for such a short short story. What’s your take on the end?
Next story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Again, what do you think? And nominations?
4/25 Memory Day nominee: Ella Fitzgerald! What else do I need to say?!
Today’s great American story is Kate Chopin’s
“The Storm” (1898).
Chopin’s most famous story is “The Story of an Hour,” and it’s great too. But “The Storm” was so controversially great that it was never published in Chopin’s lifetime. Her final line certainly pushes on lots of boundaries, as does her story overall. But it’s also just amazingly rich and dense for such a short short story. What’s your take on the end?
Next story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Again, what do you think? And nominations?
4/25 Memory Day nominee: Ella Fitzgerald! What else do I need to say?!
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