Category: american-literature
- Faulkner at his Knottiest(The Faulkner Project) Go Down, Moses from Faulkner Novels 1942-1954 Library of America pp. 1-281 ***** I had an odd thought when I began this novel, the thirteenth in my survey of Faulkner’s work: This is the real Faulkner. It’s a strange thing to say about a man who had already written four or five masterpieces, ...Read more
- Healing Our WoundsRobert Bly (1926-2021) In 1988, the North Carolina Independent asked me to attend and write about a Robert Bly Day for Men, the first such event to take place in the Triangle. I’m not much of one for workshops and other public events, so I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise, but in many ways that day ...Read more
- They’d Even Cheat Another Snopes(The Faulkner Project) The Hamlet from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America pp.727-1075 ***** The most surprising thing about Faulkner’s Snopes novels is that he took so long to get around to them. He was apparently writing sketches about the Snopes in his twenties, before his career really began, and wrote several versions of the story ...Read more
- Living for Love(The Faulkner Project) If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America. **** Somewhat to my surprise, this is my least favorite of all the novels I’ve reread in the Faulkner Project. I had read it only once, and I think I was still in college, because I remember telling a friend about ...Read more
- Faulkner to the Nth Degree(The Faulkner Project) Absalom, Absalom! from Faulkner Novels 1936-1940. Library of America. ***** I have a long-ago memory of a PBS documentary that I watched about Faulkner—I guess it was an American Masters—in which he supposedly said to someone, after completing Absalom, Absalom!, “This is the greatest novel ever written by an American.” An oddly revealing ...Read more
- Yair (and No)(The Faulkner Project) Pylon from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935 pp. 775-992. Library of America. **** Years after the fact, Faulkner told a class at the University of Virginia that he wrote Pylon because Absalom, Absalom! had become “inchoate” and he needed to take a break from it. Only William Faulkner would take a break from writing a ...Read more
- Caught Between Two Worlds(The Faulkner Project) Light in August from Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. Library of America. pp. 399-774. ***** Of Faulkner’s great novels, this is the one I like the least. I don’t believe I’d previously read it more than once, though I was shocked at how much of it I remembered, including whole paragraphs and sentences that stuck ...Read more
- Signifying Everything(The Faulkner Project) The Sound and the Fury from Faulkner Novels 1926-1929 Library of America pp. 877-1141. ***** I think of this as Faulkner’s greatest novel, which means that no one in America has written a better one. If there is a Great American Novel (there isn’t), this is it. This is my fifth or sixth reading ...Read more
- The World Opens Like a Flower (The Faulkner Project) Flags in the Dust from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 541-875. ***** In October of 1927, in the rush and enthusiasm of finishing his third novel, his longest and most ambitious by far, William Faulkner sent this note to his publisher, Horace Liveright. “At last and certainly, * * * I ...Read more
- You Can Go Home Again. You Have To.(The Faulkner Project) Mosquitoes from William Faulkner Novels 1926-1929. Library of America. pp. 257-541. **** My first semester at Duke University, I had the great good fortune to encounter the two best professors of my life, Reynolds Price and Wallace Fowlie. I had courses with both of them (and it was all downhill from there). Price ...Read more
- Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go(The Faulkner Project) Soldiers’ Pay a novel by William Faulkner. Library of America William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929. pp. 1-257. ***1/2 I’ve always been haunted by the fact that my father read Faulkner at the end of his life. He was only 47 when he died, and had had leukemia for six years; in the final years ...Read more
- Not the One Who Likes SpinachSanctuary by William Faulkner. Library of America Faulkner Novels 1930-1935. pp. 179-399 **** The official version of the genesis of Sanctuary—which Faulkner told in the preface to the Modern Library edition—is that, after publishing four novels, he was tired of making no money (how he thought The Sound and the Fury would make money I do ...Read more
- As Much as Ere a ManAs I Lay Dying a novel by William Faulkner. Faulkner Novels 1930-1935 in the Library of America. Pages 1-178. ***** I picked up As I Lay Dying almost on a whim—I’d read the early stories and novels of Hemingway and had this Library of America volume of Faulkner, so I thought it might be interesting to ...Read more
- Prof Meets CopIn the Cut a novel by Susanna Moore. Random House. ***** The end of this novel is so startling—and so nervy on the part of the author—that I almost couldn’t believe it. It’s one of those books where you think you’re missing the final pages, they’ve been ripped out (which is tough when you’re reading the ...Read more
- Memo to Jake Barnes: It’s Called Oral SexThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918-1926. Library of America, pp 369-570. ***** One of the mildly annoying facts about the Hemingway oeuvre is that the Hemingway stand-in—easy to identify in every book—is always irresistible to women. Maybe Hemingway himself was irresistible; at least four wives that we ...Read more
- Hem IIIHemingway | The Blank Page | 1944-1961 a film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Streaming on PBS **** The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings 1918-1926 by Ernest Hemingway. Library of America. 850 pp. ***** There’s nothing about the writing or production values that makes this third episode of Hemingway not as good as the others, ...Read more
- Hem IIHemingway: The Avatar (1929-1944) A film by Ken Burns and Kim Novick. Available on PBS Streaming. ***** Once again, in this second episode, I was stuck by Hemingway’s youth (he was already calling himself Papa in 1929, at the age of thirty). By the end of this episode he’s just 45 years old, and he’s already ...Read more
- HemHemingway | A Writer (1899-1929) a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Available on PBS streaming. ***** Hemingway was the first writer I loved and the primary inspiration for my becoming a writer. When I was fifteen years old my English teacher told us to read a biography of a writer, and I chose a ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artists Through a Boozy HazeEarly Novels and Stories by James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country. Library of America. 970 pp. In the midst of the endless current theorizing about race and sexuality and gender identity, and talk of all the books we must read (I hate to be told I must read a book), ...Read more
- I Like IkeThe Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Volume II: A Friend of Kafka to Passions. Library of America. 856 pp. ***** Back in the days when Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories appeared in the New Yorker, I never missed one. It was a thrill to read the work of a man who wrote so vividly, who seemed ...Read more
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View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)