“The book can’t complete with the screen,” Philip Roth said in a 2009 interview with Tina Brown for The Daily Beast. “It couldn’t compete beginning with the movie screen. it couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen.” When I read that quotation, my first reaction was: A statement… Continue reading Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
Category: The American Novel
American literature, American fiction, American novel, contemporary fiction, Classic fiction
Book Review: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
The European conquest of the United States began in 1492, when Columbus dropped anchor off the coast of an island he named San Salvador. Historians often date the end of the conquest as December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek, when US Cavalry opened fire on a Lakota camp. The government called it a battle,… Continue reading Book Review: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
As a new nation, America lacks a national epic. We do not have an Iliad or a Gilgamesh Epic or a Beowulf to connect us to antiquity, to a time before written language, to the so-called Age of Heroes. As we envy other nations for that connection, we struggle to fill this void with a… Continue reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Holly Golightly as a name is ironic, because everywhere she goes, she goes loudly. She’s a seeker with only a vague idea of what she hopes to find. She’s also a runaway with a clear understanding of what she’s fleeing. She might not know where she’s going to, but she knows where she’s been, and… Continue reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Book Review: It by Stephen King
Halfway through Stephen King’s It, I realized that I find neither clowns nor balloons scary, and since they’re the principle devices King use to suggest the supernatural, that aspect of the novel failed to scare me. But It isn’t about clowns or balloons. It is about childhood fears, both real and imagined, and how we grow… Continue reading Book Review: It by Stephen King
The American Novel: Summer by Edith Wharton
I know the mountain. I lived there for two years. We called it Onion Creek, and it’s not much of a mountain, as mountain goes—more of a foothill—but it was an isolated, rural land populated by outlaws. Everyone carried a firearm, often in Western-styled holsters, and several people were engaged in the then-illegal trade of… Continue reading The American Novel: Summer by Edith Wharton
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
To show a man has nothing, give him everything men want. That formula, it seems, had been in my thoughts for as long as I’ve been writer, but I’m uncertain where it came from. It doesn’t feel like something I created myself. Perhaps one of my writing professors said it, or I read it in… Continue reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The American Novel: The Natural by Bernard Malamud
During one of my writing classes at Eastern Washington University, John Keeble assigned us to read a novel each by three writers whom we had never read before. I do not remember the other two writers I chose, but Bernard Malamud was the third, and I chose to read his debut novel, The Natural. Glad… Continue reading The American Novel: The Natural by Bernard Malamud
Book Review: Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ
Chances are, if you live on Earth, particularly in the United States, when I say Ben-Hur, you think Charlton Heston. He starred in the 1959 movie that might’ve been the favorite of your grandmother. It might even had been a favorite of your parents. Perchance even you consider it a favorite Classic. Since the novel’s… Continue reading Book Review: Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ
5 Compelling Opening Lines in Historical Fiction
At the risk of stubbing my toe against a cliché, let me tell you to never judge a book by its cover. I wish I could brag that I follow that edict to the word, but I know that there are many books in my library that are there for their covers alone. The cover… Continue reading 5 Compelling Opening Lines in Historical Fiction