outline_us_lit

was set in Mexico during the revo- EUDORA WELTY nuanced work on Porter, but the
lution. The beautifully crafted short younger woman was more interest-
stories that gained her renown sub- Photo © Nancy Crampton ed in the comic and grotesque.
tly unveil personal lives. “The Jilting Like fellow southerner Flannery
of Granny Weatherall” (1930), for O’Connor, Welty often took subnor-
example, conveys large emotions mal, eccentric, or exceptional char-
with precision. Often she reveals acters for subjects.
women’s inner experiences and
their dependence on men. Despite violence in her work,
Welty’s wit was essentially humane
Porter’s nuances owe much to and affirmative, as, for example, in
the stories of the New Zealand- her frequently anthologized story
born story writer Katherine “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941), in
Mansfield. Porter’s story collec- which a stubborn and independent
tions include Flowering Judas daughter moves out of her house to
(1930), Noon Wine (1937), Pale live in a tiny post office. Her collec-
Horse, Pale Rider (1939), The tions of stories include The Wide
Leaning Tower (1944), and Net (1943), The Golden Apples
Collected Stories (1965). In the (1949), The Bride of the Innisfallen
early 1960s, she produced a long, (1955), and Moon Lake (1980).
allegorical novel with a timeless Welty also wrote novels such as
theme — the responsibility of Delta Wedding (1946), which is
humans for each other. Titled Ship focused on a plantation family in
of Fools (1962), it was set in the modern times, and The Optimist’s
late 1930s aboard a passenger liner Daughter (1972).
carrying members of the German
upper class and German refugees THE 1950s
alike from the Nazi nation.
The 1950s saw the delayed
Not a prolific writer, Porter impact of modernization and tech-
nonetheless influenced nology in everyday life. Not only did
generations of authors, World War II defeat fascism, it
among them her southern col- brought the United States out of
leagues Eudora Welty and Flannery the Depression, and the 1950s pro-
O’Connor. vided most Americans with time to
enjoy long-awaited material pros-
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) perity. Business, especially in the
corporate world, seemed to offer
Born in Mississippi to a well-to- the good life (usually in the sub-
do family of transplanted northern- urbs), with its real and symbolic
ers, Eudora Welty was guided by marks of success — house, car,
Robert Penn Warren and Katherine television, and home appliances.
Anne Porter. Porter, in fact, wrote
an introduction to Welty’s first col- Yet loneliness at the top was a
lection of short stories, A Curtain dominant theme for many writers;
of Green (1941). Welty modeled her the faceless corporate man

100

became a cultural stereotype in Day. African-American Lorraine
Hansberry (1930-1965) revealed
Sloan Wilson’s best-selling novel he 1950s in racism as a continuing undercur-
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit rent in her moving 1959 play A
(1955). Generalized American Raisin in the Sun, in which a black
alienation came under the scrutiny family encounters a threatening
“welcome committee” when it tries
Tof sociologist David Riesman in The to move into a white neighborhood.
Lonely Crowd (1950). literary terms
Some writers went further by
Other popular, more or less sci- actually was a focusing on characters who
entific studies followed, ranging dropped out of mainstream society,
from Vance Packard’s The Hidden decade of subtle as did J.D. Salinger in The Catcher
in the Rye, Ralph Ellison in Invisible
Persuaders (1957) and The Status and pervasive Man, and Jack Kerouac in On the
Road. And in the waning days of the
Seekers (1959) to William Whyte’s unease. Novels by decade, Philip Roth arrived with a
The Organization Man (1956) and series of short stories reflecting a
C. Wright Mills’s more intellectual John O’Hara, certain alienation from his Jewish
heritage (Goodbye, Columbus). His
formulations — White Collar (1951) John Cheever, and psychological ruminations provided
fodder for fiction, and later autobi-
and The Power Elite (1956). John Updike ography, into the new millennium.

Economist and academician John explore the stress The fiction of American-Jewish
Kenneth Galbraith contributed writers Bellow, Bernard Malamud,
The Affluent Society (1958). lurking in and Isaac Bashevis Singer — among
others prominent in the 1950s and
Most of these works sup- the shadows of the years following — are also wor-
ported the 1950s assump- seeming thy, compelling additions to the
tion that all Americans compendium of American litera-
shared a common lifestyle. The satisfaction. ture. The output of these three
authors is most noted for its
studies spoke in general terms, humor, ethical concern, and por-
traits of Jewish communities in the
criticizing citizens for losing fron- Old and New Worlds.

tier individualism and becoming John O’Hara (1905-1970)

too conformist (for example, Trained as a journalist, John
O’Hara was a prolific writer of
Riesman and Mills) or advising plays, stories, and novels. He was a
master of careful, telling detail and
people to become members of the is best remembered for several
realistic novels, mostly written in
“New Class” that technology and the 1950s, about outwardly success-

leisure time created (as seen in

Galbraith’s works).

The 1950s in literary terms actu-

ally was a decade of subtle and per-

vasive unease. Novels by John

O’Hara, John Cheever, and John

Updike explore the stress lurking

in the shadows of seeming satisfac-

tion. Some of the best work por-

trays men who fail in the struggle to

succeed, as in Arthur Miller’s

Death of a Salesman and Saul

Bellow’s novella Seize the

101

ful people whose inner faults JAMES BALDWIN Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)
and dissatisfaction leave them vul-
nerable. These titles include Photo © Nancy Crampton Ralph Ellison was a Midwesterner,
Appointment in Samarra (1934), born in Oklahoma, who studied at
Ten North Frederick (1955), and Tuskegee Institute in the southern
From the Terrace (1959). United States. He had one of the
strangest careers in American let-
James Baldwin (1924-1987) ters — consisting of one highly
acclaimed book and little more.
James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison
mirror the African-American expe- The novel is Invisible Man
rience of the 1950s. Their charac- (1952), the story of a black man
ters suffer from a lack of identity, who lives a subterranean existence
rather than from over-ambition. in a cellar brightly illuminated by
electricity stolen from a utility com-
Baldwin, the oldest of nine chil- pany. The book recounts his
dren born to a Harlem, New York, grotesque, disenchanting experi-
family, was the foster son of a min- ences. When he wins a scholarship
ister. As a youth, Baldwin occasion- to an all-black college, he is humili-
ally preached in the church. This ated by whites; when he gets to the
experience helped shape the com- college, he witnesses the school’s
pelling, oral quality of his prose, president spurning black American
most clearly seen in his excellent concerns. Life is corrupt outside
essays such as “Letter From a college, too. For example, even
Region of My Mind,” from the col- religion is no consolation: A
lection The Fire Next Time (1963). preacher turns out to be a criminal.
In this work, he argued movingly for The novel indicts society for failing
an end to separation between the to provide its citizens — black and
races. white — with viable ideals and
institutions for realizing them. It
Baldwin’s first novel, the embodies a powerful racial theme
autobiographical Go Tell It because the “invisible man” is
on the Mountain (1953), is invisible not in himself but because
probably his best known. It is the others, blinded by prejudice, can-
story of a 14-year-old boy who seeks not see him for who he is.
self-knowledge and religious faith
as he wrestles with issues of Juneteenth (1999), Ellison’s
Christian conversion in a storefront sprawling, unfinished novel, edited
church. Other important Baldwin posthumously, reveals his continu-
works include Another Country ing concern with race and identity.
(1962) and Nobody Knows My
Name (1961), a collection of pas- Flannery O’Connor
sionate personal essays about (1925-1964)
racism, the role of the artist, and
literature. Flannery O’Connor, a native of
Georgia, lived a life cut short by
lupus, a blood disease. Still, she

102

refused sentimentality, as is evi- RALPH ELLISON lege, he studied anthropology and
dent in her extremely humorous sociology, which greatly influenced
yet bleak and uncompromising sto- Photo © Nancy Crampton his writing. He once expressed a
ries. profound debt to Theodore Dreiser
for his openness to a wide range of
Unlike Katherine Anne Porter, experience and his emotional
Eudora Welty, and Zora Neale engagement with it. Highly respect-
Hurston, O’Connor most often held ed, Bellow received the Nobel Prize
her characters at arm’s length, for Literature in 1976.
revealing their inadequacy and silli-
ness. The uneducated southern Bellow’s early, somewhat grim
characters who people her novels existentialist novels include
often create violence through Dangling Man (1944), a Kafkaesque
superstition or religion, as we see study of a man waiting to be drafted
in her novel Wise Blood (1952), into the army, and The Victim
about a religious fanatic who estab- (1947), about relations between
lishes his own church. Jews and Gentiles. In the 1950s, his
vision became more comic: He
Sometimes violence arises out used a series of energetic and
of prejudice, as in “The adventurous first-person narrators
Displaced Person” (1955), in The Adventures of Augie March
about an immigrant killed by igno- (1953) — the study of a Huck Finn-
rant country people who are threat- like urban entrepreneur who
ened by his hard work and strange becomes a black marketeer in
ways. Often, cruel events simply Europe — and in Henderson the
happen to the characters, as in Rain King (1959), a brilliant and
“Good Country People” (1955), the exuberant serio-comic novel about
story of a girl seduced by a man who a middle-aged millionaire whose
steals her artificial leg. unsatisfied ambitions drive him to
Africa.
The black humor of O’Connor
links her with Nathanael West and Bellow’s later works include
Joseph Heller. Her works include Herzog (1964), about the troubled
short story collections A Good life of a neurotic English professor
Man Is Hard To Find (1955), and who specializes in the idea of the
Everything That Rises Must romantic self; Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Converge (1965); the novel The (1970); Humboldt’s Gift (1975); and
Violent Bear It Away (1960); and a the autobiographical The Dean’s
volume of letters, The Habit of December (1982).
Being (1979). The Complete Stories
came out in 1971. In the late 1980s, Bellow wrote
two novellas in which elderly pro-
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) tagonists search for ultimate veri-
ties, Something To Remember Me
Born in Canada and raised in By (1991) and The Actual (1997).
Chicago, Saul Bellow was of His novel Ravelstein (2000) is a
Russian-Jewish background. In col-

103

veiled account of the life of BERNARD MALAMUD stories in collections such as The
Bellow’s friend Alan Bloom, the Magic Barrel (1958), Idiots First
best-selling author of The Closing Photo © Nancy Crampton (1963), and Rembrandt’s Hat
of the American Mind (1987), a (1973), he conveyed — more than
conservative attack on the academy any other American-born writer —
for a perceived erosion of stan- a sense of the Jewish present and
dards in American cultural life. past, the real and the surreal, fact
and legend.
Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) is
a brilliant novella centered on a Malamud’s monumental work —
failed businessman, Tommy for which he was awarded the
Wilhelm, who is so consumed by Pulitzer Prize and National Book
feelings of inadequacy that he Award — is The Fixer. Set in Russia
becomes totally inadequate — a around the turn of the 20th century,
failure with women, jobs, it is a thinly veiled look at an actual
machines, and the commodities case of blood libel — the infamous
market, where he loses all his 1913 trial of Mendel Beiliss, a dark,
money. Wilhelm is an example of anti-Semitic blotch on modern his-
the schlemiel of Jewish folklore — tory. As in many of his writings,
one to whom unlucky things Malamud underscores the suffering
inevitably happen. of his hero, Yakob Bok, and the
struggle against all odds to endure.
Bernard Malamud
(1914-1986) Isaac Bashevis Singer
(1904-1991)
Bernard Malamud was born in
New York City to Russian-Jewish Nobel Prize-winning novelist and
immigrant parents. In his second short story master Isaac Bashevis
novel, The Assistant (1957), Singer — a native of Poland who
Malamud found his characteristic immigrated to the United States in
themes — man’s struggle to sur- 1935 — was the son of the promi-
vive against all odds, and the ethi- nent head of a rabbinical court in
cal underpinnings of recent Jewish Warsaw. Writing in Yiddish all his
immigrants. life, he dealt in mythic and realistic
terms with two specific groups of
Malamud’s first published Jews — the denizens of the Old
work was The Natural World shtetls (small villages) and
(1952), a combination of the ocean-tossed 20th-century emi-
realism and fantasy set in the myth- grés of the pre-World War II and
ic world of professional baseball. postwar eras.
Other novels include A New Life
(1961), The Fixer (1966), Pictures Singer’s writings served as book-
of Fidelman (1969), and The ends for the Holocaust. On the one
Tenants (1971). hand, he described — in novels such
as The Manor (1967) and The Estate
Malamud also was a prolific mas- (1969), set in 19th-century Russia,
ter of short fiction. Through his

104

and The Family Moskat (1950), of his role as a mediator between
focused on a Polish-Jewish family the Russian and American literary
between the world wars — the worlds; he wrote a book on Gogol
world of European Jewry that no and translated Pushkin’s Eugene
longer exists. Complementing these Onegin. His daring, somewhat
works were his writings set after the expressionist subjects helped
war, such as Enemies, A Love Story introduce 20th-century European
(1972), whose protagonists were currents into the essentially realist
survivors of the Holocaust seeking to American fictional tradition.
create new lives for themselves. Nabokov’s tone, partly satirical and
partly nostalgic, also suggested a
Vladimir Nabokov new serio-comic emotional regis-
(1889-1977) ter made use of by writers such as
Thomas Pynchon, who combines
Like Singer, Vladimir Nabokov the opposing notes of wit and fear.
was an Eastern European immi-
grant. Born into an affluent JOHN CHEEVER John Cheever (1912-1982)
family in Czarist Russia, he came to
the United States in 1940 and Photo © Nancy Crampton John Cheever often has been
gained U.S. citizenship five years called a “novelist of manners.” He
later. From 1948 to 1959, he taught is also known for his elegant, sug-
literature at Cornell University in gestive short stories, which scruti-
upstate New York; in 1960 he moved nize the New York business world
permanently to Switzerland. through its effects on the busi-
nessmen, their wives, children, and
Nabokov is best known for his friends.
novels, which include the autobio-
graphical Pnin (1957), about an A wry melancholy and never quite
ineffectual Russian emigré profes- quenched but seemingly hopeless
sor, and Lolita (U.S. edition, 1958), desire for passion or metaphysical
about an educated, middle-aged certainty lurks in the shadows of
European who becomes infatuated Cheever’s finely drawn, Chekhovian
with a 12-year-old American girl. tales, collected in The Way Some
Nabokov’s pastiche novel, Pale Fire People Live (1943), The House-
(1962), another successful venture, breaker of Shady Hill (1958), Some
focuses on a long poem by an imag- People, Places, and Things That Will
inary dead poet and the commen- Not Appear in My Next Novel
taries on it by a critic whose writ- (1961), The Brigadier and the Golf
ings overwhelm the poem and take Widow (1964), and The World of
on unexpected lives of their own. Apples (1973). His titles reveal his
characteristic nonchalance, play-
Nabokov is an important writer fulness, and irreverence, and hint
for his stylistic subtlety, deft satire, at his subject matter.
and ingenious innovations in form,
which have inspired such novelists Cheever also published several
as John Barth. Nabokov was aware novels — The Wapshot Scandal

105

(1964), Bullet Park (1969), and JOHN UPDIKE (l988). Updike creates an alter ego
Falconer (1977) — the last of — a writer whose fame ironically
which was largely autobiographical. Photo © Nancy Crampton threatens to silence him — in
another series of novels: Bech: A
John Updike (1932- ) Book (l970), Bech Is Back (1982),
and Bech at Bay (1998).
John Updike, like Cheever, is also
regarded as a writer of manners Updike possesses the most
with his suburban settings, domes- brilliant style of any writer
tic themes, reflections of ennui today, and his short stories
and wistfulness, and, particularly, offer scintillating examples of
his fictional locales on the eastern its range and inventiveness.
seaboard of the United States, in Collections include The Same Door
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. (1959), The Music School (1966),
Museums and Women (1972), Too
Updike is best known for his five Far To Go (1979), and Problems
Rabbit books, depictions of the (1979). He has also written several
life of a man — Harry “Rabbit” volumes of poetry and essays.
Angstrom — through the ebbs and
flows of his existence across four J.D. Salinger (1919- )
decades of American social and
political history. Rabbit, Run (1960) A harbinger of things to come in
is a mirror of the 1950s, with the 1960s, J.D. Salinger has por-
Angstrom an aimless, disaffected trayed attempts to drop out of soci-
young husband. Rabbit Redux ety. Born in New York City, he
(1971) — spotlighting the counter- achieved huge literary success with
culture of the 1960s — finds the publication of his novel The
Angstrom still without a clear goal Catcher in the Rye (1951), centered
or purpose or viable escape route on a sensitive 16-year-old, Holden
from the banal. In Rabbit Is Rich Caulfield, who flees his elite board-
(1981), Harry has become a pros- ing school for the outside world of
perous businessman during the adulthood, only to become disillu-
1970s, as the Vietnam era wanes. sioned by its materialism and
The final novel, Rabbit at Rest phoniness.
(1990), glimpses Angstrom’s rec-
onciliation with life, before his When asked what he would like to
death from a heart attack, against be, Caulfield answers “the catcher
the backdrop of the 1980s. In in the rye,” misquoting a poem by
Updike’s 1995 novella Rabbit Robert Burns. In his vision, he is a
Remembered, his adult children modern version of a white knight,
recall Rabbit. the sole preserver of innocence. He
imagines a big field of rye so tall
Among Updike’s other novels are that a group of young children can-
The Centaur (1963), Couples not see where they are running as
(1968), A Month of Sundays (1975), they play their games. He is the only
Roger’s Version (1986), and S. big person there. “I’m standing on

106

the edge of some crazy cliff. What I The novelist William Burroughs and
have to do, I have to catch every- poet Allen Ginsberg.
body if they start to go over the alienation and
cliff.” The fall over the cliff is stress underlying THE TURBULENT BUT
equated with the loss of childhood the 1950s found CREATIVE 1960s
innocence — a persistent theme outward
of the era. expression in the The alienation and stress under-
1960s in lying the 1950s found outward
Other works by this reclusive, the United States expression in the 1960s in the
spare writer include Nine Stories in the civil rights United States in the civil rights
(1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), movement, movement, feminism, antiwar
and Raise High the Roof Beam, feminism, protests, minority activism, and the
Carpenters (1963), a collection of antiwar protests, arrival of a counterculture whose
stories from The New Yorker maga- minority effects are still being worked
zine. Since the appearance of one activism, and the through American society. Notable
story in 1965, Salinger — who lives in arrival of a political and social works of the era
New Hampshire — has been absent counterculture include the speeches of civil rights
from the American literary scene. whose effects leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
are still the early writings of feminist
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) being worked leader Betty Friedan (The
through Feminine Mystique), and Norman
The son of an impoverished American society. Mailer’s The Armies of the Night
French-Canadian family, Jack (1968), about a 1967 antiwar march.
Kerouac also questioned the values
of middle-class life. He met mem- The 1960s were marked by a blur-
bers of the Beat literary under- ring of the line between fiction and
ground as an undergraduate at fact, novels and reportage that has
Columbia University in New York carried through the present day.
City. His fiction was much influ- Novelist Truman Capote (1924-
enced by the loosely autobiographi- 1984) — who had dazzled readers
cal work of southern novelist as an enfant terrible of the late
Thomas Wolfe. 1940s and 1950s in such works as
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) —
Kerouac’s best-known novel, stunned audiences with In Cold
On the Road (1957), Blood (1965), a riveting analysis of
describes beatniks wan- a brutal mass murder in the
dering through America seeking an American heartland that read like a
idealistic dream of communal life work of detective fiction.
and beauty. The Dharma Bums
(1958) also focuses on peripatetic At the same time, the New
counterculture intellectuals and Journalism emerged — volumes of
their infatuation with Zen nonfiction that combined journal-
Buddhism. Kerouac also penned a ism with techniques of fiction, or
book of poetry, Mexico City Blues that frequently played with the
(1959), and volumes about his life facts, reshaping them to add to the
with such beatniks as experimental drama and immediacy of the story

107

being reported. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test who builds up a phony business empire from
(1968), Tom Wolfe (1931- ) celebrated the coun- junk bonds, eerily forecasts Wall Street excesses
terculture wanderlust of novelist Ken Kesey to come. His shorter, more accessible
(1935-2001); Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Carpenter’s Gothic (1985) combines romance
Flak Catchers (1970) ridiculed many aspects of with menace. Gaddis is often linked with mid-
left-wing activism. Wolfe later wrote an exuber- western philosopher/novelist William Gass
ant and insightful history of the initial phase of (1924- ), best known for his early, thoughtful
the U.S. space program, The Right Stuff (1979), novel Omensetter’s Luck (1966), and for stories
and a novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), a collected in In the Heart of the Heart of the
panoramic portrayal of American society in the Country (1968).
1980s.
Robert Coover (1932- ) is another metafiction
As the 1960s evolved, literature flowed with the writer. His collection of stories Pricksongs &
turbulence of the era. An ironic, comic vision also Descants (1969) plays with plots familiar from
came into view, reflected in the fabulism of sev- folktales and popular culture, while his novel The
eral writers. Examples include Ken Kesey’s dark- Public Burning (1977) deconstructs the execu-
ly comic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), tion of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were
a novel about life in a mental hospital in which convicted of espionage.
the wardens are more disturbed than the
inmates, and the whimsical, fantastic Trout Thomas Pynchon (1937- )
Fishing in America (1967) by Richard Brautigan
(1935-1984). Thomas Pynchon, a mysterious, publicity-shun-
ning author, was born in New York and graduated
The comical and fantastic yielded a new mode, from Cornell University in 1958, where he may
half comic and half metaphysical, in Thomas have come under the influence of Vladimir
Pynchon’s paranoid, brilliant V and The Crying of Nabokov. Certainly, his innovative fantasies use
Lot 49, John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, and the themes of translating clues, games, and codes
grotesque short stories of Donald Barthelme that could derive from Nabokov. Pynchon’s flexi-
(1931-1989), whose first collection, Come Back, ble tone can modulate paranoia into poetry.
Dr. Caligari, was published in 1964.
All of Pynchon’s fiction is similarly structured. A
This new mode came to be called metafiction vast plot is unknown to at least one of the
— self-conscious or reflexive fiction that calls main characters, whose task it then
attention to its own technique. Such “fiction becomes to render order out of chaos and deci-
about fiction” emphasizes language and style, pher the world. This project, exactly the job of
and departs from the conventions of realism the traditional artist, devolves also upon the
such as rounded characters, a believable plot reader, who must follow along and watch for
enabling a character’s development, and appro- clues and meanings. This paranoid vision is
priate settings. In metafiction, the writer’s style extended across continents and time itself, for
attracts the reader’s attention. The true subject Pynchon employs the metaphor of entropy, the
is not the characters, but rather the writer’s own gradual running down of the universe. The mas-
consciousness. terful use of popular culture — particularly sci-
ence fiction and detective fiction — is evident in
Critics of the time commonly grouped his works.
Pynchon, Barth, and Barthelme as metafiction-
ists, along with William Gaddis (1922-1998), Pynchon’s work V (1963) is loosely structured
whose long novel JR (l975), about a young boy around Benny Profane — a failure who engages in

108

pointless wanderings and various “ o matter Realism is the enemy for Barth,
the author of Lost in the Funhouse
weird enterprises — and his oppo- (1968), 14 stories that constantly
site, the educated Herbert Stencil, refer to the processes of writing
who seeks a mysterious female spy, and reading. Barth’s intent is to
V (alternatively Venus, Virgin, Void). alert the reader to the artificial
nature of reading and writing and
NThe Crying of Lot 49 (1966), a short to prevent him or her from being
work, deals with a secret system where…we go, drawn into the story as if it were
real. To explode the illusion of real-
associated with the U.S. Postal shall we find all ism, Barth uses a panoply of reflex-
Service. Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) the World ive devices to remind his audience
takes place during World War II in Tyrants and that they are reading.
London, when rockets were falling
Barth’s earlier works, like Saul
on the city, and concerns a farcical Slaves?” Despite Bellow’s, were questioning and
existential, and took up the 1950s
yet symbolic search for Nazis and its range, the themes of escape and wandering.
other disguised figures. violence, In The Floating Opera (1956), a
comedy, and flair man considers suicide. The End of
In Pynchon’s comic novel the Road (1958) concerns a com-
Vineland (l990), set in northern plex love affair. Works of the 1960s
became more comical and less
California, shadowy forces within for innovation realistic. The Sot-Weed Factor
federal agencies endanger individu- in his work (1960) parodies an 18th-century
als. In the novel Mason & Dixon inexorably link picaresque style, while Giles Goat-
(1997), partly set in the wilderness Boy (1966) is a parody of the world
seen as a university.
of 1765, two English explorers sur- Pynchon with
vey the line that would come to the 1960s. Chimera (1972) retells tales
from Greek mythology, and Letters
divide the North and South in the (1979) uses Barth himself as a
character, as Norman Mailer does
United States. Again, Pynchon sees in The Armies of the Night. In
Sabbatical: A Romance (1982),
power wielded unjustly. Dixon asks: Barth uses the popular fiction
motif of the spy; this is the story of
“No matter where…we go, shall we a woman college professor and her
husband, a retired secret agent
find all the World Tyrants and turned novelist. Later novels —
The Tidewater Tales (1987), The
Slaves?” Despite its range, the vio- Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor
(1991), and Once Upon a Time: A
lence, comedy, and flair for innova- Floating Opera (1994) reveal
Barth’s “passionate virtuosity” (his
tion in his work inexorably link

Pynchon with the 1960s.

John Barth (1930- )

John Barth, a native of Maryland,
is more interested in how a story is
told than in the story itself, but
where Pynchon deludes the reader
by false trails and possible clues
out of detective novels, Barth
entices his audience into a carnival
fun house full of distorting mirrors
that exaggerate some features
while minimizing others.

109

own phrase) in negotiating the NORMAN MAILER Executioner’s Song (1979), Mailer
chaotic, oceanic world with the has turned to writing such ambi-
bright rigging of language. Photo © Nancy Crampton tious, if flawed, novels as Ancient
Evenings (1983), set in the Egypt of
Norman Mailer (1923- ) antiquity, and Harlot’s Ghost (1991),
revolving around the U.S. Central
Norman Mailer made himself the Intelligence Agency.
most visible novelist of the l960s
and l970s. Co-founder of the anti- Philip Roth (1933- )
establishment New York City
weekly The Village Voice, Mailer Like Norman Mailer, Philip Roth
publicized himself along with his has provoked controversy by min-
political views. In his appetite for ing his life for fiction. In Roth’s
experience, vigorous style, and a case, his treatments of sexual
dramatic public persona, Mailer fol- themes and ironic analysis of
lows in the tradition of Ernest Jewish life have drawn popular and
Hemingway. To gain a vantage point critical attention, as well as criti-
on the assassination of President cism.
John F. Kennedy, Vietnam War
protests, black liberation, and the Roth’s first book, Goodbye,
women’s movement, he construct- Columbus (1959), satirized provin-
ed hip, existentialist, macho male cial Jewish suburbanites. In his
personae (in her book Sexual best-known novel, the outrageous,
Politics, Kate Millett identified best-selling Portnoy’s Complaint
Mailer as an archetypal male chau- (1969), a New York City administra-
vinist). The irrepressible Mailer tor regales his taciturn psychoana-
went on to marry six times and run lyst with off-color stories of his
for mayor of New York. boyhood.

Mailer is the reverse of a writer Although The Great American
like John Barth, for whom the sub- Novel (1973) delves into baseball
ject is not as important as the way it lore, most of Roth’s novels remain
is handled. Unlike the invisible resolutely, even defiantly, autobio-
Thomas Pynchon, Mailer constantly graphical. In My Life As a Man
courts and demands attention. (1974), under the stress of divorce,
a man resorts to creating an alter-
A novelist, essayist, sometime ego, Nathan Zuckerman, whose sto-
politician, literary activist, and ries constitute one pole of the nar-
occasional actor, Mailer is always rative, the other pole being the dif-
on the scene. From such New ferent kinds of readers’ responses.
Journalism exercises as Miami and Zuckerman seemingly takes over in
the Siege of Chicago (1968), a series of subsequent novels. The
an analysis of the 1968 U.S. presi- most successful is probably the
dential conventions, and his first, The Ghost Writer (1979). It is
compelling study about the execu- told by Zuckerman as a young writer
tion of a condemned murderer, The criticized by Jewish elders for fan-

110

ning anti-Semitism. In Zuckerman PHILIP ROTH SOUTHERN WRITERS
Bound (1985), a novel has made
Zuckerman rich but notorious. In Photo © Nancy Crampton Southern writing of the l960s
The Counterlife (1986), the fifth tended, like the then still largely
Zuckerman novel, stories vie with agrarian southern region, to
stories, as Nathan’s supposed life is adhere to time-honored traditions.
contrasted with other imaginable It remained rooted in realism and
lives. Roth’s memoir The Facts an ethical, if not religious, vision
(1988) twists the screw further; in during this decade of radical
it, Zuckerman criticizes Roth’s own change. Recurring southern
narrative style. themes include family, the family
home, history, the land, religion,
Roth continues wavering on guilt, identity, death, and the search
the border between fact and for redemptive meaning in life.
fiction in Patrimony: A True Like William Faulkner and Thomas
Story (1991), a memoir about the Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel,
death of his father. His recent nov- 1929), who inspired the “southern
els include American Pastoral renaissance” in literature, many
(1997), in which a daughter’s 1960s southern writers of the 1960s were
radicalism wounds a father, and The scholars and elaborate stylists,
Human Stain (2000), about a pro- revering the written word as a link
fessor whose career is ruined by a with traditions rooted in the classi-
racial misunderstanding based on cal world.
language.
Many have been influential
Roth is a profound analyst of teachers. Kentucky-born Caroline
Jewish strengths and weaknesses. Gordon (1895-1981), who married
His characterizations are nuanced; southern poet Allen Tate, was a
his protagonists are complex, indi- respected professor of writing.
vidualized, and deeply human. She set her novels in her native
Roth’s series of autobiographical Kentucky. Truman Capote was born
novels about a writer recalls John in New Orleans and spent part of
Updike’s recent Bech series, and it his childhood in small towns in
is master-stylist Updike with whom Louisiana and Alabama, the set-
Roth — widely admired for his sup- tings for many of his early works in
ple, ingenious style — is most the elegant, decadent, southern
often compared. gothic vein.

Despite its brilliance and wit, African-American writing profes-
some readers find Roth’s work sor Ernest Gaines (1933- ), also
self-absorbed. Still, his vigorous born in New Orleans, set many of
accomplishment over almost 50 his moving, thoughtful works in the
years has earned him a place among largely black rural bayou country of
the most distinguished of American Louisiana. Perhaps his best known
novelists. novel, The Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman (1971), reflects on

111

the sweep of time from the end of the Civil War New novelists like John Gardner, John Irving
in 1865 up to 1960. Concerned with human issues (The World According to Garp, 1978), Paul
deeper than skin color, Gaines handles racial Theroux (The Mosquito Coast, 1981), William
relations subtly. Kennedy (Ironweed, 1983), and Alice Walker (The
Color Purple, 1982) surfaced with stylistically
Reynolds Price (1933- ), a long-time professor brilliant novels to portray moving human dramas.
at Duke University, was born in North Carolina, Concern with setting, character, and themes
which furnishes the scenes for many of his associated with realism returned, along with
works, such as A Long and Happy Life (1961). renewed interest in history, as in works by E.L.
Like William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren, Doctorow.
he peoples his southern terrain with interlinked
families close to their roots and broods on the Realism, abandoned by experimental
passing of time and the imperative to expiate writers in the 1960s, also crept back,
ancient wrongs. His meditative, poetic style often mingled with bold original
recalls the classical literary tradition of the old elements — a daring structure like a novel with-
South. Partially paralyzed due to cancer, Price has in a novel, as in John Gardner’s October Light, or
explored physical suffering in The Promise of black American dialect as in Alice Walker’s The
Rest (1995), about a father tending his son who is Color Purple. Minority literature began to flour-
dying of AIDS. His highly regarded novel Kate ish. Drama shifted from realism to more
Vaiden (1986) reveals his ability to evoke a cinematic, kinetic techniques. At the same time,
woman’s life. however, the Me Decade was reflected in such
brash new talents as Jay McInerney (Bright
Walker Percy (1916-1990), a resident of Lights, Big City, 1984), Bret Easton Ellis (Less
Louisiana, was raised as a member of the south- Than Zero, 1985), and Tama Janowitz (Slaves of
ern aristocracy. His very readable novels — by New York, 1986).
turns comic, lyrical, moralizing, and satirical —
reveal his awareness of social class and his con- E.L. Doctorow (1931- )
version to Catholicism. His best novel is his first,
The Moviegoer (l961). This story of a charming The novels of E.L. Doctorow demonstrate the
but aimless young New Orleans stockbroker transition from metafiction to a new and more
shows the influence of French existentialism human sensibility. His critically acclaimed novel
transplanted to the booming and often brash about the high human cost of the Cold War, The
New South that burgeoned after World War II. Book of Daniel (1971), is based on the execution
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, told
THE 1970s AND 1980s: CONSOLIDATION in the voice of the bereaved son. Robert Coover’s
The Public Burning treats the same topic, but
By the mid-1970s, an era of consolidation had Doctorow’s book conveys more warmth and
begun. The Vietnam conflict was over, followed emotion.
soon afterward by U.S. recognition of the
People’s Republic of China and America’s bicen- Doctorow’s Ragtime (1975) is a rich, kaleido-
tennial celebration. Soon the 1980s — the “Me scopic collage of the United States beginning in
Decade” in Tom Wolfe’s phrase — ensued, in 1906. As John Dos Passos had done several
which individuals tended to focus more on per- decades earlier in his trilogy U.S.A., Doctorow
sonal concerns than on larger social issues. mingles fictional characters with real ones to
capture the era’s flavor and complexity.
In literature, old currents remained, but the Doctorow’s fictional history of the United States
force behind pure experimentation dwindled.

112

is continued in Loon Lake (1979), set in the lished his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Confessions
1930s, about a ruthless capitalist who dominates of Nat Turner (1967). This novel re-creates the
and destroys idealistic people. most violent slave uprising in U.S. history, as
seen through the eyes of its leader. The book
Later Doctorow novels are the autobiographi- came out at the height of the “black power”
cal World’s Fair (1985), about an eight-year-old movement, and, unsurprisingly, the depiction of
boy growing up in the Depression of the 1930s; Nat Turner drew sharp criticism from many
Billy Bathgate (l989), about Dutch Schultz, a real African-American observers, although some
New York gangster; and The Waterworks (1994), came to Styron’s defense.
set in New York during the 1870s. City of God
(2000) — the title referencing St. Augustine — Styron’s fascination with individual human acts
turns to New York in the present. A Christian cler- set against backdrops of larger racial injustice
ic’s consciousness interweaves the city’s general- continues in Sophie’s Choice (1979), another
ized poverty, crime, and loneliness with stories of tour de force about the doom of a lovely woman
people whose lives touch his. The book hints at — the topic that Edgar Allan Poe, the presiding
Doctorow’s abiding belief that writing — a form of spirit of southern writers, found the most mov-
witnessing — is a mode of human survival. ing of all possible subjects. In this novel, a beau-
tiful Polish woman who has survived Auschwitz is
Doctorow’s techniques are eclectic. His stylis- defeated by its remembered agonies, summed
tic exuberance and formal inventiveness link him up in the moment she was made to choose which
with metafiction writers like Thomas Pynchon one of her children would live and which one
and John Barth, but his novels remain rooted in would die. The book makes complex parallels
realism and history. His use of real people and between the racism of the South and the
events links him with the New Journalism of the Holocaust.
l960s and with Norman Mailer, Truman Capote,
and Tom Wolfe, while his use of fictional memoir, More recently Styron, like many other writers,
as in World’s Fair, looks forward to writers like turned to the memoir form. His short account of
Maxine Hong Kingston and the flowering of the his near-suicidal depression, Darkness Visible:
memoir in the 1990s. A Memoir of Madness (1990), recalls the terrible
undertow that his own doomed characters must
William Styron (1925-2006) have felt. In the autobiographical fictions in
A Tidewater Morning (1993), the shimmering,
From the Tidewater area of Virginia, south- oppressively hot Virginia coast where he grew up
erner William Styron wrote ambitious mirrors and extends the speaker’s shifting
novels that set individuals in places and consciousness.
times that test the limits of their humanity. His
early works include the acclaimed Lie Down in John Gardner (1933-1982)
Darkness (1951), which begins with the suicide
of a beautiful southern woman — who leaps John Gardner, from a farming background in
from a New York skyscraper — and works back- New York State, was his era’s most important
ward in time to explore the dark forces within spokesperson for ethical values in literature
her family that drew her to her death. until his death in a motorcycle accident. He was a
professor of English specializing in the medieval
The Faulknerian treatment, including dark period; his most popular novel, Grendel (1971),
southern gothic themes, flashbacks, and stream retells the Old English epic Beowulf from the
of consciousness monologues, brought Styron monster’s existentialist point of view. The short,
fame that turned to controversy when he pub-

113

vivid, and often comic novel is a TONI MORRISON Joyce Carol Oates (1938- )
subtle argument against the exis-
tentialism that fills its protagonist Photo © Nancy Crampton Joyce Carol Oates is the most
with self-destructive despair and prolific serious novelist of recent
cynicism. decades, having published novels,
short stories, poetry, nonfiction,
A prolific and popular novelist, plays, critical studies, and essays.
Gardner used a realistic approach She uses what she has called “psy-
but employed innovative techniques chological realism” on a panoramic
— such as flashbacks, stories within range of subjects and forms.
stories, retellings of myths, and con-
trasting stories — to bring out the Oates has authored a Gothic tril-
truth of a human situation. His ogy consisting of Bellefleur (1980),
strengths are characterization (par- A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982), and
ticularly his sympathetic portraits of Mysteries of Winterthurn (l984); a
ordinary people) and colorful style. nonfiction book, On Boxing (l987);
Major works include The and a study of Marilyn Monroe
Resurrection (1966), The Sunlight (Blonde, 2000). Her plots are dark
Dialogues (1972), Nickel Mountain and often hinge on violence, which
(1973), October Light (1976), and she finds to be deeply rooted in the
Mickelsson’s Ghosts (1982). American psyche.

Gardner’s fictional patterns sug- Toni Morrison (1931- )
gest the curative powers of fellow-
ship, duty, and family obligations, African-American novelist Toni
and in this sense Gardner was a Morrison was born in Ohio to a
profoundly traditional and conserv- spiritually oriented family. She
ative author. He endeavored to attended Howard University in
demonstrate that certain values Washington, D.C., and has worked
and acts lead to fulfilling lives. His as a senior editor in a major
book On Moral Fiction (1978) calls Washington publishing house and
for novels that embody ethical val- as a distinguished professor at var-
ues rather than dazzle with empty ious universities.
technical innovation. The book cre-
ated a furor, largely because Morrison’s richly woven fiction
Gardner bluntly criticized impor- has gained her international
tant living authors — especially acclaim. In compelling, large-spirit-
writers of metafiction — for failing ed novels, she treats the complex
to reflect ethical concerns. Gardner identities of black people in a uni-
argued for a warm, human, ulti- versal manner. In her early work
mately more realistic and socially The Bluest Eye (1970), a strong-
engaged fiction, such as that of willed young black girl tells the
Joyce Carol Oates and Toni story of Pecola Breedlove, who is
Morrison. driven mad by an abusive father.
Pecola believes that her dark eyes
have magically become blue and
that they will make her lovable.

114

Morrison has said that she was cre- not interested in indulging myself
ating her own sense of identity as a in some private exercise of my
writer through this novel: “I was orrison’s imagination...yes, the work must be
Pecola, Claudia, everybody.” political.” In 1993, Morrison won
the Nobel Prize for Literature.
MSula (1973) describes the strong
friendship of two women. Morrison Alice Walker (1944- )
paints African-American women as richly woven
Alice Walker, an African-
unique, fully individual characters fiction has gained American and the child of a share-
cropper family in rural Georgia,
rather than as stereotypes. her international graduated from Sarah Lawrence
Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) College, where one of her teachers
has won several awards. It follows a acclaim. In was the politically committed
female poet Muriel Rukeyser.
black man, Milkman Dead, and his compelling, Other influences on her work have
been Flannery O’Connor and Zora
complex relations with his family large-spirited Neale Hurston.
and community. In Tar Baby (1981)
Morrison deals with black and novels, she treats A “womanist” writer, as Walker
calls herself, she has long been
white relations. Beloved (1987) is the complex associated with feminism, present-
ing black existence from the female
the wrenching story of a woman identities of black perspective. Like Toni Morrison,
Jamaica Kincaid, the late Toni Cade
who murders her children rather people in a Bambara, and other accomplished
than allow them to live as slaves. It contemporary black novelists,
employs the dreamlike techniques universal manner. Walker uses heightened, lyrical
realism to center on the dreams
of magical realism in depicting a and failures of accessible, credible
people. Her work underscores the
mysterious figure, Beloved, who quest for dignity in human life. A
fine stylist, particularly in her epis-
returns to live with the mother who tolary dialect novel The Color
Purple, her work seeks to educate.
has slit her throat. In this she resembles the black
American novelist Ishmael Reed,
Jazz (1992), set in 1920s Harlem, whose satires expose social prob-
lems and racial issues.
is a story of love and murder; in
Walker’s The Color Purple is the
Paradise (1998), males of the all- story of the love between two poor
black sisters that survives a separa-
black Oklahoma town of Ruby kill tion over years, interwoven with the
story of how, during that same peri-
neighbors from an all-women’s set- od, the shy, ugly, and uneducated

tlement. Morrison reveals that

exclusion, whether by sex or race,

however appealing it may seem,

leads ultimately not to paradise but

to a hell of human devising.

In her accessible nonfiction book

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and

the Literary Imagination (1992),

Morrison discerns a defining cur-

rent of racial consciousness in

American literature. Morrison has

suggested that though her novels

are consummate works of art, they

contain political meanings: “I am

115

sister discovers her inner strength through the understanding multiethnic literature and its
support of a female friend. The theme of the meanings.
support women give each other recalls Maya
Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Asian Americans also took their place on the
Bird Sings, which celebrates the mother-daugh- scene. Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The
ter connection, and the work of white feminists Woman Warrior (1976), carved out a place for
such as Adrienne Rich. The Color Purple portrays her fellow Asian Americans. Among them is Amy
men as basically unaware of the needs and reali- Tan (1952- ), whose luminous novels of Chinese
ty of women. life transposed to post-World War II America
(The Joy Luck Club, 1989, and The Kitchen God’s
Although many critics find Walker’s work too Wife, 1991) captivated readers. David Henry
didactic or ideological, a large general reader- Hwang (1957- ), a California-born son of Chinese
ship appreciates her bold explorations of immigrants, made his mark in drama, with plays
African-American womanhood. Her novels shed such as F.O.B. (1981) and M. Butterfly (1986).
light on festering issues such as the harsh legacy
of sharecropping (The Third Life of Grange A relatively new group on the literary horizon
Copeland, 1970) and female circumcision were the Latino-American writers, including the
(Possessing the Secret Joy, 1992). Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos,
the Cuban-born author of The Mambo Kings Play
THE RISE OF MULTIETHNIC FICTION Songs of Love (1989). Leading writers of
Mexican-American descent include Sandra
Jewish-American writers like Saul Bellow, Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek and Other
Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Stories, 1991); and Rudolfo Anaya, author of the
Arthur Miller, Philip Roth, and Norman poetic novel Bless Me, Ultima (1972).
Mailer were the first since the 19th-century abo-
litionists and African-American writers of slave Native-American fiction flowered. Most often
narratives to address ethnic prejudice and the the authors evoked the loss of traditional life
plight of the outsider. They explored new ways of based in nature, the stressful attempt to adapt to
projecting an awareness that was both American modern life, and their struggles with poverty,
and specific to a subculture. In this, they opened unemployment, and alcoholism. The Pulitzer
the door for the flowering of multiethnic writing Prize-winning House Made of Dawn (1968), by N.
in the decades to come. Scott Momaday (1934- ), and his poetic The Way
to Rainy Mountain (1969) evoke the beauty and
The close of the 1980s and the beginnings of despair of Kiowa Indian life. Of mixed Pueblo
the 1990s saw minority writing become a major descent, Leslie Marmon Silko wrote the critical-
fixture on the American literary landscape. This ly esteemed novel Ceremony (1977), which
is true in drama as well as in prose. The late gained a large general audience. Like Momaday’s
August Wilson (1945-2005) wrote an acclaimed works, hers is a “chant novel” structured on
cycle of plays about the 20th-century black expe- Native-American healing rituals.
rience that stands alongside the work of novel-
ists Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, and Toni Blackfoot poet and novelist James Welch
Morrison. Scholars such as Lawrence Levine (1940-2003) detailed the struggles of Native
(The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Americans in his slender, nearly flawless novels
Culture and History, 1996) and Ronald Takaki (A Winter in the Blood (1974), The Death of Jim
Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural Loney (1979), Fools Crow (1986), and The Indian
America, 1993) provide invaluable context for Lawyer (1990). Louise Erdrich, part Chippewa,
has written a powerful series of novels inaugu-

116

rated by Love Medicine (1984) that EDWARD ALBEE family that had owned vaudeville
capture the tangled lives of theaters and counted actors among
dysfunctional reservation families Photo: Scott Gries / Getty their friends. Helping produce
with a poignant blend of stoicism Images European absurdist theater, Albee
and humor. actively brought new European cur-
rents into U.S. drama. In The
AMERICAN DRAMA American Dream (1960), stick fig-
ures of Mommy, Daddy, and
After World War I, popular and Grandma recite platitudes that car-
lucrative musicals had icature a loveless, conventional
increasingly dominated the family.
Broadway theatrical scene. Serious
theater retreated to smaller, less Loss of identity and consequent
expensive theaters “off Broadway” struggles for power to fill the void
or outside New York City. propel Albee’s plays, such as Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (l962). In
This situation repeated itself this controversial drama, made into
after World War II. American drama a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and
had languished in the l950s, con- Richard Burton, an unhappily mar-
strained by the Cold War and ried couple’s shared fantasy —
McCarthyism. The energy of the that they have a child, that their
l960s revived it. The off-off- lives have meaning — is violently
Broadway movement presented an exposed as an untruth.
innovative alternative to commer-
cialized popular theater. Albee has continued to produce
distinguished work over several
Many of the major dramatists decades, including Tiny Alice
after 1960 produced their work in (l964); A Delicate Balance (l966);
small venues. Freed from the need Seascape (l975); Marriage Play
to make enough money to pay for (1987); and Three Tall Women
expensive playhouses, they were (1991), which follows the main
newly inspired by European exis- character, who resembles Albee's
tentialism and the so-called overbearing adoptive mother,
Theater of the Absurd associated through three stages of life.
with European playwrights Samuel
Beckett, Jean Genet, and Eugene Amiri Baraka (1934- )
Ionesco, as well as by Harold Pinter.
The best dramatists became innov- Poet Amiri Baraka, known for
ative and even surreal, rejecting supple, speech-oriented poetry
realistic theater to attack with an affinity to improvisational
superficial social conventions. jazz, turned to drama in the l960s.
Always searching to find himself,
Edward Albee (1928- ) Baraka has changed his name sev-
eral times as he has sought to
The most influential dramatist of define his identity as a black
the early 1960s was Edward Albee, American. Baraka explored various
who was adopted into a well-off

117

paths of life in his early years, AMIRI BARAKA 1964. They prefigure his mature
flunking out of Howard University works in their western motifs and
and becoming dishonorably dis- Photo © Nancy Crampton theme of male competition.
charged from the U.S. Air Force for
alleged Communism. During these Of almost 50 works for stage and
years, his true vocation of writing screen, Shepard’s most esteemed
emerged. are three interrelated plays evoking
love and violence in the family: Curse
During the l960s, Baraka lived in of the Starving Class (1976), Buried
New York City’s Greenwich Village, Child (1978), and True West (1980),
where he knew many artists and his best-known work. In True West,
writers including Frank O’Hara and two middle-aged brothers, an edu-
Allen Ginsberg. cated screenwriter and a drifting
thief, compete to write a true-to-life
By 1965, Baraka had started the western play for a rich, urban movie
Black Arts Repertory Theater in producer. Each thinking he needs
Harlem, the black section of New what the other has — success,
York City. He portrayed black freedom — the two brothers
nationalist views of racism in dis- change places in an atmosphere of
turbing plays such as Dutchman increasing violence fueled by alco-
(1964), in which a white woman hol. The play registers Shepard’s
flirts with and eventually kills a concern with loss of freedom,
younger black man on a New York authenticity, and autonomy in
City subway. The realistic first half American life. It dramatizes the van-
of the play sparkles with witty dia- ishing frontier (the drifter) and the
logue and subtle characterization. American imagination (the writer),
The shocking ending risks melodra- seduced by money, the media, and
ma to dramatize racial misunder- commercial forces, personified by
standing and the victimization of the producer.
the black male protagonist.
In his writing process, Shepard
Sam Shepard (1943- ) tries to re-create a zone of freedom
by allowing his characters to act in
Actor/dramatist Sam Shepard unpredictable, spontaneous, some-
spent his childhood moving with his times illogical ways. The most
family from army base to army base famous example comes from True
following his father, who had been a West. In a gesture meant to suggest
pilot in World War II. He spent his lawless freedom, the distraught
teen years on a ranch in the barren writer steals numerous toasters.
desert east of Los Angeles, Totally unrealistic yet oddly believ-
California. In secondary school, able on an emotional level, the
Shepard found solace in the Beat scene works as comedy, absurd
poets; he learned jazz drumming drama, and irony.
and later played in a rock band.
Shepard produced his first plays, Shepard lets his characters guide
Cowboys and The Rock Garden, in his writing, rather than beginning

118

with a pre-planned plot, and his Photo: Sara Krulwich / for older workers; competition
plays are fresh and lifelike. His sur- The New York Times between older and younger genera-
realistic flair and experimentalism tions in the workplace; intense
link him with Edward Albee, but his SAM SHEPARD focus on profits at the expense of
plays are earthier and funnier, and the welfare of workers; and —
his characters are drawn more real- DAVID MAMET enveloping all — the corrosive
istically. They convey a bold West atmosphere of competition carried
Coast consciousness and make Photo © Robin Holland / to abusive lengths.
comments on America in their use CORBIS OUTLINE
of landscape motifs and specific Mamet’s Oleanna (l991) effec-
settings and contexts. tively dissects sexual harassment
in a university setting. The
David Mamet (1947- ) Cryptogram (1994) imagines a
child’s horrific vision of family life.
Equally important is David Recent plays include The Old
Mamet, raised in Chicago, whose Neighborhood (1991) and Boston
writing was influenced by the Marriage (1999).
Stanislavsky method of acting that
revealed to him the way “the lan- David Rabe (1940- )
guage we use...determines the way
we behave, more than the other way Another noted dramatist is David
around.” His emphasis on language Rabe, a Vietnam veteran who was
not as communication but as a one of the first to explore that
weapon, evasion, and manipulation war’s upheaval and violence in The
of reality give Mamet a contempo- Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
rary, postmodern sensibility. (l971) and Sticks and Bones (l969).
Subsequent plays include The
Mamet’s hard-hitting plays Orphan (l973), based on
include American Buffalo (l975), a Aeschylus’s Oresteia; In the Boom
two-act play of increasingly violent Boom Room (1973), about the rape
language involving a drug addict, a of a dancer; and Hurlyburly (1984)
junk store, and an attempted theft; and Those the River Keeps (l990),
and Speed-the-Plow (1987). The both about Hollywood disillusion-
acclaimed and frequently antholo- ment. Rabe’s recent works include
gized Glengarry Glen Ross (l982), The Crossing Guard (l994) and
about real estate salesmen, was Corners (1998), about the concept
made into an outstanding 1992 of honor in the Mafia.
movie with an all-star cast. This
play, like most of Mamet’s work, August Wilson (1945-2005)
reveals his intense engagement
with some of America’s unresolved The distinguished African-
issues — here, as if in an update of American dramatist August Wilson,
Arthur Miller’s Death of a born Frederick August Kittel, was
Salesman, one sees the need for the son of a German immigrant who
dignity and job security, especially did not concern himself with his
family. Wilson endured poverty and

119

racism and adopted the surname of conflict between a father and a son,
his African-American mother as a touching on the all-American
teenager. Influenced by the black themes of baseball and the
arts movement of the late 1960s, American dream of success. Joe
Wilson co-founded Pittsburgh's Turner's Come and Gone (1986)
Black Horizons Theater. concerns boarding-house residents
in 1911. The Piano Lesson (1987),
Wilson’s plays explore African- set in the 1930s, crystallizes a fami-
American experience, organized by ly’s dynamic by focusing on the heir-
decades. Ma Rainey's Black loom piano. Two Trains Running
Bottom (l984), set in 1927 Chicago, (1990) takes place in a coffeehouse
depicts the famous blues singer. in the 1960s, while Seven Guitars
His acclaimed play Fences (1985), (1995) explores the 1940s. ■
set in the 1950s, dramatizes the

AUGUST WILSON

Photo © Cori Wells Braun /
CORBIS OUTLINE
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CHAPTER magazines, and enterprising authors mount Web
sites. American poetry at present is a vast terri-
9 tory of free imagination, a pot on the boil, a
dynamic work in progress.
CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN The ferment of American poetry since l990
POETRY makes the field decentralized and hard to define.
Most anthologies showcase only one dimension
U.S. poetry since 1990 has been in the midst of poetry, for example, women’s writing — or
of a kaleidoscopic renaissance. In the lat- groupings of ethnic writers, or poetry with a
ter half of the 20th century, there was, if common inspiration — jazz poetry, cowboy poet-
not a consensus, at least a discernible shape to ry, Buddhist-influenced poems, hip-hop.
the poetic field, complete with well-defended
positions. Well-defined schools dominated the The few anthologists aspiring to represent the
scene, and critical discussions tended to the whole of contemporary American poetry begin
binary: formalism versus free verse, academic with copious disclaimers and dwell on its dis-
versus experimental. parate impulses: postmodernism, the expansion
of the canon, ethnicities, immigration (with spe-
Looking back, some have seen the post-World cial mention of new voices out of South and
War II years as a heroic age in which American Southeast Asia and the Middle East), the dawn-
poetry broke free from constraints such as ing of global literature, the elaboration of
rhyme and meter and flung itself heart-first into women’s continuing contributions, the rise of
new dimensions alongside the abstract expres- Internet technology, the influence of specific
sionists in American painting. Others — experi- teachers or writing programs or regional impuls-
mentalists, multiethnic and global authors, and es, the ubiquitous media, and the role of the poet
feminist writers among them — recall the era’s as the lone individual voice raised against the din
blindness to issues of race and gender. These of commercialism and conformity.
writers experience diversity as a present bless-
ing and look forward to freedoms yet unimag- Poets themselves struggle to make sense of
ined. Their contributions have made the poetry the flood of poetry. It is possible to envision a
of the present a rich cornucopia with a genuine- continuum, with poetry of the speaking, subjec-
ly popular base. tive self on one end, poetry of the world on the
other, and a large middle range in which self and
Among the general public, interest in poetry is world merge.
at an all-time high. Poetry slams generate com-
petitive camaraderie among beginning writers, Poetry of the speaking self tends to focus on
informal writing groups provide support and cri- vivid expression and exploration of deep, often
tiques, and reading clubs proliferate. Writing buried, emotion. It is psychological and intense,
programs flourish at all levels, brisk poetic and its settings are secondary. In the last half of
exchanges zip over the Internet, and universities, the 20th century, the most influential poet of this
sort was Robert Lowell, whose descents into his
own psyche and his disturbed family background
inspired confessional writing.

Poetry of the world, on the other hand, tends
to build up meaning from narrative drive, detail,
and context. It sets careful scenes. One of the
most influential poets of the world was Elizabeth

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Bishop, generally considered the finest …underneath the talk lies
American woman poet of later 20th century. The moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose
Meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.
Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop were life-
long friends; both taught at Harvard University. The enigmatic, classically trained W.S. Merwin
Like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in the (1927- ) continues to produce volumes of haunting
19th century, Lowell and Bishop are presiding subjective poetry. Merwin’s poem “The River of
generative spirits for later poets. And although Bees” (1967) ends:
they shared a kindred vision, their approaches
were polar opposites. Lowell’s knotty, subjective, On the door it says what to do to survive
rhetorical poetry wrests meaning from self-pre- But we were not born to survive
sentation and heightened language, while Bishop Only to live
offers, instead, detailed landscapes in a decep-
tively simple prosaic style. Only on rereading The word “only” ironically underscores how
does her precision and depth make itself felt. difficult it is to live fully as human beings, a
nobler pursuit than mere survival. Both Ashbery
Most poets hover somewhere between the two and Merwin, precursors of the current genera-
poles. Ultimately, great poetry — whether of the tion of poets of self, characteristically write
self or the world — overcomes such divisions; the monologues detached from explicit contexts or
self and the world becoming mirrors of each other. narratives. Merwin’s haunting existential lyrics
Nevertheless, for purposes of discussion, the two plumb psychological depths, while Ashbery’s
may be provisionally distinguished. unexpected use of words from many registers of
human endeavor — psychology, farming, philos-
THE POETRY OF SELF ophy — looks forward to the Language School.

Poetry of self tends toward direct address or Recent poets of self have pushed more deeply
monologue. At its most intense, it states a into a phenomenological awareness of con-
condition of soul. The settings, though pre- sciousness played out moment by moment. For
sent, do not play definitive roles. This poetry may Ann Lauterbach (1942- ), the poem is an exten-
be psychological or spiritual, aspiring to a time- sion of the mind in action; she has said that her
less realm. It may also, however, undercut spiri- poetry is “an act of self-construction, the voice
tual certainty by referring all meaning back to its threshold.” Language poet Lyn Hejinian
language. Within this large grouping, therefore, (1941- ) expresses the movement of conscious-
one may find somewhat romantic, expressive ness in her autobiographical prose poem My Life
poetry, but also language-based poems that (1987), which employs disjunction, surprising
question the very concepts of identity and mean- leaps, and chance intersections: “I picture an
ing, seeing these as constructs. idea at the moment I come to it, our collision.”
Balancing these concerns, John Ashbery has Rae Armantrout (1947- ) uses silences and sub-
said that he is interested in “the experience of tle, oblique associative clusters; the title poem
experience,” or what filters through his con- of her volume Necromance (1991) warns that
sciousness, rather than what actually happened. “emphatic / precision / is revealed as / hostility.”
His “Soonest Mended” (1970) depicts a reality Another experimental poet, Leslie Scalapino
“out there” lying loose and seemingly simple, but (1947- ), writes poems as an “examination of the
lethal as a floor on which wheat and chaff (like mind in the process of whatever it’s creating.”
human lives, or Walt Whitman’s leaves of grass)
are winnowed:

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Much experimental poetry of self JORIE GRAHAM and changing history. The poem
is elliptical, nonlinear, nonnarrative, brings together disparate ele-
and nonobjective; at its best, it is, Photo: Estate of ments in large-gestured free asso-
however, not solipsistic but rather Thomas Victor ciation — the poet’s walk through
circles around an “absent center.” the white flecks of a snowstorm to
Poetry of self often involves a public 123 return a friend’s black dance leo-
performance. In the case of women tard, a flock of black starlings
poets, the erasures, notions of (birds that drive out native
silence, and disjunctions are often species), a single black crow (a
associated with Julia Kristeva and protagonist of Native-American
other French feminist theoreti- oral tradition) evoked as “one ink-
cians. Poet Susan Howe (1937- ), streak on the early evening snowlit
who has developed a complex visu- scene.”
al poetics to interweave the histori-
cal and personal, has noted the dif- These sense impressions sum-
ficulty of tracing back female lines mon up the poet’s childhood mem-
in archives and genealogies and the ories of Europe and her black-
erasure of women in cultural histo- garbed dance teacher, and broaden
ry. For her, as a woman, “the gaps out into the history of the New
and silences are where you find World. Christopher Columbus’s
yourself.” contact with Native Americans on a
white sandy beach is likened to the
Jorie Graham (1950- ) poet’s white snowstorm: “He
thought he saw Indians fleeing
One of the most accomplished through the white before the ship,”
poets of the subjective self is Jorie and “In the white swirl, he placed a
Graham. Born in New York, she large cross.”
grew up in Italy and studied at the
Sorbonne in France, at New York All these elements are subordi-
University (specializing in film, nated to the moving mind that con-
which continues to influence her tains them and that constantly
work), and at the Iowa Writers’ questions itself. This mind, or “uni-
Workshop, where she later taught. fied field” (a set of theories in
Since then, she has been a profes- physics that attempt to relate all
sor at Harvard University. forces in the universe), is likened
to the snowstorm of the beginning:
Graham’s work is suffused with
cosmopolitan references, and she Nothing true or false in itself. Just
sees the history of the United motion. Many strips of
States as a part of a larger interna-
tional engagement over time. The motion. Filaments of falling marked
title poem in her Pulitzer Prize-win- by the tiny certainties of flakes.
ning collection The Dream of the
Unified Field: Selected Poems, 1974- Graham focuses on the mind as
1994 (1995) addresses this complex a portal of meaning and distortion,
both a part of the world and a sep-

arate vantage point. As in a film’s LOUISE GLÜCK their humble lives with dignity.
montage, her voice threads togeth- Thomas’s first job, as a laborer on
er disparate visions and experi- Photo: Associated Press / the third shift, requires him to live
ences. Swarm (2000) deepens Library of Congress in a barracks and share a mattress
Graham’s metaphysical bent, emo- with two men he never meets. His
tional depth, and urgency. work is “a narrow grief,” but music
lifts his spirits like a beautiful
THE POETRY OF VOICE woman (forecasting Beulah, whom
he has not yet met). When Thomas
At its furthest extreme, poetry sings
of self obliterates the self if
it lacks a counterbalancing he closes his eyes.
sensibility. The next stage may be a He never knows when she’ll
poetry of various voices or fictive
selves, breaking the monolithic be coming
idea of self into fragments and but when she leaves, he always
characters. The dramatic mono- tips his hat.
logues of Robert Browning are
19th-century antecedents. The fic- Louise Glück (1943- )
tive “I” feels solid but does not
involve the actual author, whose One of the most impressive
self remains offstage. poets of voice is Louise Glück. Born
in New York City, Glück, the U.S.
This strain of poetry often takes poet laureate for 2003-2004, grew
subjects from myth and popular up with an abiding sense of guilt
culture, typically seeing modern due to the death of a sister born
relationships as redefinitions or before her. At Sarah Lawrence
versions of older patterns. Among College and Columbia University,
contemporary poets of voice or she studied with poets Leonie
monologue are Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Adams and Stanley Kunitz, and she
Alberto Rios, and the Canadian poet has attributed her psychic survival
Margaret Atwood. to psychoanalysis and her studies
in poetry. Much of her poetry deals
Usually, the poetry of voice is with tragic loss.
written in the first person, but the
third person can make a similar Each of Glück’s books attempts
impact if the viewpoint is clearly new techniques, making it difficult
that of the characters, as in Rita to summarize her work. Her early
Dove’s Thomas and Beulah. In this volumes, such as The House on
volume, Dove intertwines biogra- Marshland (l975) and The Triumph
phy and history to dramatize her of Achilles (1985), handle autobio-
grandparents’ lives. Like many graphical material at a psychic dis-
African Americans in the early 20th tance, while in later books she is
century, they fled poverty and more direct. Meadowlands (1996)
racism in the rural South for work employs comic wit and references
in the urban North. Dove endows to the Odyssey to depict a

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failing marriage. THE POETRY OF PLACE
In Glück’s memorable The Wild
Anumber of poets — these are
Iris (1992), different kinds of flow- not groups, but nationwide
ers utter short metaphysical mono- tendencies — find deep
logues. The book’s title poem, an inspiration in specific landscapes.
exploration of resurrection, could Instances are Robert Hass’s lyrical
be an epigraph for Glück’s work as evocations of Northern California,
a whole. The wild iris, a gorgeous Mark Jarman’s Southern California
deep blue flower growing from a coastlines and memories of surf-
bulb that lies dormant all winter, ing, Tess Gallagher’s poems set in
says: “It is terrible to survive / as the Pacific Northwest, and Simon
consciousness / buried in the dark Ortiz’s and Jimmy Santiago Baca’s
earth.” Like Jorie Graham’s vision poems emanating from southwest-
of the self merged in the snow- ern landscapes. Each subregion
storm, Glück’s poem ends with a has inspired poetry: C.D. (Carolyn)
vision of world and self merged — Wright’s hardscrabble upper South
this time in the water of life, blue is far from Yusef Komunyakaa’s
on blue: humid Louisiana Gulf.

You who do not remember Poetry of place is not based on
passage from the other world landscape description; rather, the
I tell you I could speak again: land, and its history, is a generative
force implicated in the way its peo-
whatever ple, including the poet, live and
returns from oblivion returns think. The land is felt as what D.H.
to find a voice; Lawrence called a “spirit of place.”

from the center of my life came Charles Wright (1935- )
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater. One of the most moving poets of
place is Charles Wright. Raised in
Like Graham, Glück merges the CHARLES WRIGHT Tennessee, Wright is a cosmopoli-
self into the world through a fluid tan southerner. He draws on Italian
imagery of water. While Graham’s and ancient Chinese poetry, and
frozen water — snow — resem- infuses his work with southern
bles sand, the earth ground up at themes such as the burden of a
the sea’s edge, Glück’s blue fresh tragic past, seen in his poetic
water — signifying her heart — series “Appalachian Book of the
merges with the salt sea of the Dead,” which is based on the
world. ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.
His works include Country Music:
Photo © Nancy Crampton Selected Early Poems (l982);
Chickamauga (1995); and Negative
Blue: Selected Later Poems (2000).

Wright’s intense poetry offers

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moments of spiritual insight rescued, or rather _____
constructed, from the ravages of time and cir- History handles our past like spoiled fruit.
cumstance. A purposeful awkwardness — seen Mid-morning, late-century light
in his unexpected turns of colloquial phrase and
preference for long, broken lines with odd num- calicoed under the peach trees.
bers of syllables — endows his poems with a Fingers us here. Fingers us here and here.
burnished grace, like that of gnarled old farm
tools polished with the wear of hands. This hand- ______
made, earned, sometimes wry quality makes The poem is a code with no message:
Wright’s poems feel contemporary and prevents The point of the mask is not the mask but the
them from seeming pretentious.
face underneath,
The disparity between transcendent vision and Absolute, incommunicado,
human frailty lies at the heart of Wright’s vision.
He is drawn to grand themes — stars, constella- unhoused and peregrine.
tions, history — on the one hand, and to tiny tac- _____
tile elements — fingers, hairs — on the other. The gill net of history will pluck us soon enough
His title poem “Chickamauga” relies on the read- From the cold waters of self-contentment we
er’s knowledge: Chickamauga, Georgia, on drift in
September 19 and 20, 1862, was the scene of a One by one
decisive battle in the U.S. Civil War between the
North and the South. The South failed to destroy into its suffocating light and air.
the Union (northern) army and opened a way for _____
the North’s scorched-earth invasion of the South Structure becomes an element of belief, syntax
via Atlanta, Georgia. And grammar a catechist,
Their words what the beads say,
“Chickamauga” can be read as a meditation on words thumbed to our discontent.
landscape, but it is also an elegiac lament and the
poet’s ars poetica. It begins with a simple obser- The poem sees history as a construct, a “code
vation: “Dove-twirl in the tall grass.” This seem- with no message.” Each individual exists in itself,
ing idyll is the moment just before a hunter unknowable outside its own terms and time, “not
shoots; the slain soldiers, never mentioned in the mask but the face underneath.” Death is
the poem, have been forgotten, mowed down like inevitable for us as for the fallen soldiers, the
doves or grass. The “conked magnolia tree” Old South, and the caught fish. Nevertheless, poet-
undercuts the romantic “midnight and magnolia” ry offers a partial consolation: Our articulated dis-
stereotype of the antebellum-plantation South. content may yield a measure of immortality.
The poem merges present and past in a powerful
epitaph for lost worlds and ideals. THE POETRY OF FAMILY

Dove-twirl in the tall grass. An even more grounded strain of poetry
End-of-summer glaze next door locates the poetic subject in a matrix of
belonging — to family, community, and
On the gloves and split ends of the conked mag- changing traditions. Often the traditions called
nolia tree. into play are ethnic or international.

Work sounds: truck back-up-beep, wood tin- A few poets, such as Sharon Olds (1942- ),
hammer, cicada, fire horn. expose their own unhealed wounds, resorting to
the confessional mode, but most contemporary
poets write with an affection that, however rue-
ful, is nonetheless genuine. Stephen Dunn

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(1939- ) is an example: In his LI-YOUNG LEE Protestant minister in Pennsylva-
poems, relationships are a means nia. Lee won acclaim for his books
of knowing. In some poets, respect Photo © Dorothy Alexander Rose (1986) and The City in Which I
for family and community carries Love You (1990).
with it a sense of affirmation, if not
an explicitly devotional sensibility. Lee is sensuous, filial — he
This is not a conservative poetry; movingly depicts his family and his
often it confronts change, loss, and father’s decline — and outspoken
struggle with the powers of ethnic in his commitment to the spiritual
or non-Western literary tradition. dimensions of poetry. His most
influential poem, “Persimmons”
Lucille Clifton (1936- ) finds (1986), from his book Rose, evokes
solace in the black community. Her his Asian background through the
colloquial language and strong faith persimmon, a fruit little known in
are a potent combination. The mov- the United States. Fruits and flow-
ing elegies to his mother of Agha ers are traditional subjects of
Shahid Ali (1949-2001) draw on a Chinese art and poetry, but unusual
dazzling array of classical Middle in the West. The poem contains a
Eastern poetic forms, intertwining pointed yet humorous critique of a
his mother’s life with the suffering provincial schoolteacher Lee
of his family’s native Kashmir. encountered in the United States
who presumes to understand per-
Malaysian-Chinese American simmons and language.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim (1944- ) pow-
erfully contrasts her difficult family Lee’s poem “Irises” (1986), from
in Malaysia with her new family in the same volume, suggests that we
California. Chicana poet Lorna Dee drift through a “dream of life” but,
Cervantes memorializes her harsh, like the iris, “waken dying — violet
impoverished family life in becoming blue, growing / black,
California; Louise Erdrich brings black.” The poem and its handling
her unpredictable, tragicomic of color resonate with Glück’s wild
Native-American family members iris.
to vital life.
The title poem of The City in
Li-Young Lee (1957- ) Which I Love You announces Lee’s
affirmative entrance into a larger
Tragic history arches over Li- community of poetry. It ends:
Young Lee, whose Chinese-born
father, at one time a physician to my birthplace vanished, my
Mao Tse-tung, was later imprisoned citizenship earned,
in Indonesia. Born in Jakarta,
Indonesia, Lee lived the life of a in league with stones of the earth, I
refugee, moving with his family to enter, without retreat or help
Hong Kong, Macao, and Japan
before finding refuge in the United from history,
States, where his father became a the days of no day, my earth
of no earth, I re-enter

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the city in which I love you. MARK DOTY the Grass” from Source (2001), a
And I never believed that the dead rabbit provokes a philosophi-
Photo © Miriam Berkley cal meditation. This particular rab-
multitude 128 bit, like a poem, is important in
of dreams and many words were itself and as a text, an “artfully
crafted thing” on whose brow
vain. “some trace / of thought seems
written.” The next poem in Source,
THE POETRY OF THE “Fish R Us,” likens the human com-
BEAUTIFUL munity to a bag of fish in a pet store
tank, “each fry / about the size of
Yet another strain of intensely this line.” Like people, or ideas, the
lyrical, image-driven poetry fish want freedom: They “want to
celebrates beauty despite, or swim forward,” but for now they
in the midst of, modern life in all its “pulse in their golden ball.” The
suffering and confusion. Many poets sense of a shared organic connec-
could be included here — Joy Harjo tion with others is carried through-
(1951- ), Sandra McPherson (1943- ), out the volume. The third poem, “At
Henri Cole (1965- ) — as the strains the Gym,” envisions the imprint of
of poetry are overlapping, not mutu- sweaty heads on exercise equip-
ally exclusive. ment as “some halo / the living
made together.”
Some of the finest contemporary
poets use imagery not as decora- Doty finds in Walt Whitman a per-
tion, but to explore new subjects sonal and poetic guide. Doty has
and terrain. Harjo imagines also written memorably of the trag-
horses as a way of retrieving her ic AIDS epidemic. His works include
Native-American heritage, while My Alexandria (l993), Atlantis
McPherson and Cole create images (l995), and his vivid memoir
that seem to come alive. Firebird (1999). Still Life With
Oysters and Lemon (2001) is a
Mark Doty (l953- ) recent collection.

Since the late l980s, Mark Doty Doty’s poems are both reflexive
has been publishing supple, (referencing themselves as art)
beautiful poetic meditations on art and responsive to the outer world.
and relationships — with lovers, He sees the imperfect yet vital
friends, and a host of communities. body, especially the skin, as the
His vivid, exact, sensory imagery is margin — a kind of text — where
often a mode of knowing, feeling, internal and external meet, as in his
and reaching out. Through images, short poem, also from Source,
Doty makes us feel a kinship with about getting a tattoo, “To the
animals, strangers, and the work of Engraver of My Skin.”
artistic creation, which for him
involves a way of seeing.

It is possible to enjoy Doty by fol-
lowing his evolving ideas of com-
munity. In “A Little Rabbit Dead in

I understand the pact is mortal, JANE HIRSHFIELD eral and seemingly simple observa-
agree to bear this permanence. tions that are also meditations,
Photo © Jerry Bauer such as these lines from “Throwing
I contract with limitation; I say 129 Salt on a Path” (1987): “Shrimp
no and no then yes to you, and sign smoking over a fire. Ah, / the light of
a star never stops, but travels.”
— here, on the dotted line — Shoveling snow, he notes: “The salt
for whatever comes, I do: our time, now clears a path in the snow,
expands the edges of the uni-
our outline, the filling-in of our verse.”
details
Jane Hirshfield (l953- )
(it’s density that hurts, always,
Jane Hirshfield makes almost no
not the original scheme). I’m here explicit references to Buddhism in
for revision, discoloration; here to her poems, yet they breathe the
spirit of her many years of Zen
fade meditation and her translations
from the ancient court poetry of
and last, ineradicable, blue. Write two Japanese women, Ono no
me! Komachi and Izumi Shikibu.
Hirshfield has edited an anthology,
This ink lasts longer than I do. Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43
Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by
THE POETRY OF SPIRIT Women (l994).

Aspiritual focus permeates Hirshfield’s poetry manifests
another strand of contempo- what she calls the “mind of indirec-
rary American poetry. In this tion” in her book about writing
work, the deepest relationship is poetry, Nine Gates: Entering the
that between the individual and a Mind of Poetry (1997). This orienta-
timeless essence beyond — tion draws on a reverence for
though linked with — artistic beau- nature, an economy of language,
ty. Older poets who heralded a spir- and a Buddhist sense of imperma-
itual consciousness include Gary nence. Her own “poetry of indirec-
Snyder, who helped introduce Zen tion” works by nuance, association
to American poetry, and poet-trans- (often to seasons and weathers,
lator Robert Bly, who brought an evocative of world views and
awareness of Latin American surre- moods), and natural imagery.
alism to U.S. poetry. In recent
times, Coleman Barks has translat- Hirshfield’s poem “Mule Heart,”
ed many books of the 13th-century from her poetry collection The
mystic poet Rumi. Lives of the Heart (1997), vividly
evokes a mule without ever men-
Spiritually attuned contemporary tioning it. Hirshfield drew on her
U.S. poets include Arthur Sze memory of a mule used to carry
(1950- ), who is said to have a Zen-
like sensibility. His poems offer lit-

loads up steep hills on the Greek MARY OLIVER tity. Transcendentalism and agrari-
island of Santorini to write this anism focused on America’s rela-
poem, which she has called a kind Photo © Nancy Crampton tion to nature in the 19th and early
of recipe for getting through a dif- 20th centuries.
ficult time. The poem conjures the
reader to take heart. This humble Today environmental concerns
mule has its own beauty (bridle inform a powerful strain of ecologi-
bells) and strength. cally oriented U.S. poetry. The late
A.R. Ammons was one recent
On the days when the rest progenitor, and Native-American
have failed you, poets, such as the late James
let this much be yours — Welch and Leslie Marmon Silko,
flies, dust, an unnameable odor, never lost a reverence for nature.
the two waiting baskets: Contemporary poets rooted in a
one for the lemons and passion, natural vision include Pattiann
the other for all you have lost. Rogers (1940- ) and Maxine Kumin
Both empty, (1925- ). Rogers brings natural his-
it will come to your shoulder, tory into focus, while Kumin writes
breathe slowly against your bare feelingly of her personal life on a
farm and her raising of horses.
arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat. Mary Oliver (1935- )
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask. One of the most celebrated
The little bells of the bridle will poets of nature is Mary Oliver. A
stunning, accessible poet, Oliver
hang evokes plants and animals with
beside you quietly, visionary intensity. Oliver was born
in the heat and the tree’s thin in Ohio but has lived in New
England for years, and her poems,
shade. like those of Robert Frost, draw on
Do not let its sparse mane its varied landscape and changing
seasons. Oliver finds meaning in
deceive you, encounters with nature, continuing
or the way the left ear swivels in the Transcendental tradition of
Henry David Thoreau and Ralph
into dream. Waldo Emerson, and her work has a
This too is a gift of the gods, strong ethical dimension. Oliver’s
calm and complete. works include American Primitive
(1983), New and Selected Poems
THE POETRY OF NATURE (l992), White Pine (1994), Blue
Pastures (1995), and the essays in
The New World riveted the The Leaf and the Cloud (2000).
attention of Americans during
the revolutionary era of the For Oliver, no natural fact is too
late 1700s, when Philip Freneau humble to afford insights, or what
made a point of celebrating flora
and fauna native to the Americas as
a way of forging an American iden-

130

Emerson called “spiritual facts,” as in her poem It is the light at the center of every cell.
“The Black Snake” (1979). Though the speaker, It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
as a driver of an automobile, is implicated in the happily all spring through the green leaves before
snake’s demise, she stops and removes the he came to the road.
snake’s body from the road — an act of respect.
She recognizes the often vilified snake, with its Oliver’s poems find countless ways to cele-
negative associations with the biblical book of brate the simple yet transcendent fact of being
Genesis and death, as a “dead brother,” and she alive. In “Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet
appreciates his gleaming beauty. The snake Vine” (1992), she reminds us that most of exis-
teaches her death, but also a new genesis and tence is “waiting or remembering,” since most
delight in life, and she drives on, thinking about of the world’s time we are “not here, / not born
the “light at the center of every cell” that entices yet, or died.” An intensity reminiscent of the late
all created life “forward / happily all spring” — poet James Wright burns through many of
always unaware of where we will meet our end. Oliver’s poems, such as “Poppies” (1991-1992).
This carpe diem is an invitation to a more rooted, This poem begins with a description of the
celebratory awareness. “orange flares; swaying / in the wind, their con-
gregations are a levitation.” It ends with a taunt
When the black snake at death: “what can you do / about it — deep,
flashed onto the morning road, blue night?”
and the truck could not swerve —
death, that is how it happens. THE POETRY OF WIT

Now he lies looped and useless On the spectrum from poetry of self to
as an old bicycle tire. poetry of the world, wit — including
I stop the car humor, a sense of the incongruous, and
and carry him into the bushes. flights of fancy — lies close to world. Wit
depends on the intersection of two or more
He is as cool and gleaming frames of reference and on acute discrimination;
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet this is a worldly poetry.
as a dead brother.
I leave him under the leaves Poetry of wit locates the poetic occasion in
everyday life raised to a humorous, surrealistic,
and drive on, thinking or allegorical pitch. Usually the language is collo-
about death: its suddenness, quial so that the fantastic situations have the heft
its terrible weight, of reality. Older masters of this vein are Charles
its certain coming. Yet under Simic and Mark Strand; among younger poets, its
practitioners include Stephen Dobyns and Mark
reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones Halliday.
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune. The everyday language, humor, surprising
It says to oblivion: not me! action, and exaggeration of this poetry makes it
unusually accessible, though the best of this
work only gives up its secrets on repeated
rereading.

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Billy Collins (1941- ) Photo © Nancy Crampton moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on
The most influential of the poets BILLY COLLINS
of wit today is Billy Collins. Collins, a couch,
who was the U.S. poet laureate for ROBERT PINSKY drugged perhaps by the hum of a
2001-2003, is refreshing and exhila-
rating, as was Frank O’Hara a gen- Photo © Christopher Felver / warm afternoon,
eration earlier. Like O’Hara, Collins CORBIS they think we are looking back at
uses everyday language to record
the myriad details of everyday life, them,
freely mixing quotidian events (eat-
ing, doing chores, writing) with cul- which makes them lift their oars and
tural references. His humor and fall silent
originality have brought him a wide
audience. Though some have fault- and wait, like parents, for us to close
ed Collins for being too accessible, our eyes.
his unpredictable flights of fancy
open out into mystery. THE POETRY OF HISTORY

Collins’s is a domesticated form Poetry inspired by history is in
of surrealism. His best poems, too some ways the most difficult
long to reproduce here, quickly and ambitious of all. In this
propel the imagination up a stair- vein, poets venture into the world
way of increasingly surrealistic sit- with a lower-case “i,” open to all
uations, at the end offering an emo- that has shaped them. The faith of
tional landing, a mood one can rest these poets is in experience.
on, if temporarily, like a final modu-
lation in music. The short poem An older poet working in this vein
“The Dead,” from Sailing Alone is Michael S. Harper, who inter-
Around the Room: New and Selected weaves African-American history
Poems (2001), gives some sense of with his family’s experiences in a
Collins’s fanciful flight and gentle form of montage. Frank Bidart has
settling down, as if a bird had come similarly merged political events
to rest. such as the assassination of U.S.
President John F. Kennedy with
The dead are always looking down on personal life. Ed Hirsch, Gjertrud
us, they say, Schnackenberg, and Rita Dove
imbue some of their finest poems
while we are putting on our shoes or with similarly irreducible memo-
making a sandwich, ries of their personal pasts, center-
ing on touchstone moments.
they are looking down through the
glass-bottom boats of heaven Robert Pinsky (1940- )

as they row themselves slowly Among the most accomplished of
through eternity. the poets of history is Robert
Pinsky. U.S. poet laureate from 1997
They watch the tops of our heads to 2000, Pinsky links colloquial
speech to technical virtuosity. He is
insistently local and personal, but

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his poems extend into historical and national Infinitesimal mouths bore it away,
contexts. Like the works of Elizabeth Bishop, his
conversational poetry wields seeming artless- The beach scrubbed and etched and pickled it
ness with subtle art. clean.

Pinsky’s influential book of criticism, The But O I love you it sings, my little my country
Situation of Poetry (l976), recommended a poet- My food my parent my child I want you my own
ry with the virtues of prose, and he carried out My flower my fin my life my lightness my O.
that mandate in his book-length poem An
Explanation of America (l979) and in History of THE POETRY OF THE WORLD
My Heart (l984), though later books, including
The Want Bone (l990), unleash a lyricism also On the furthest extreme of the poetic
seen in his impressive collected poems entitled spectrum lies poetry of the world,
The Figured Wheel (1996). presided over by the spirit of Elizabeth
Bishop. This is a downbeat, or outcast, poetry
The title poem from The Figured Wheel is that at first reading seems anti-poetical. It may
among Pinsky’s finest works, but it is difficult to seem too prosaic, too caught up with mere inci-
excerpt. The brief poem “The Want Bone,” sug- dentals, to count for anything lasting. The hesi-
gested by the jaw of a shark seen on a friend’s tant delivery is the opposite of oracular, and the
mantel, displays Pinsky’s technical brilliance subject at first seems lost or merely descriptive.
(internal rhymes like “limber grin,” slant rhymes Nevertheless, the best of this poetry cuts
as in “together” and “pleasure,” and polysylla- through multiple perspectives, questions the
bles pattering lightly against a drum-firm iambic very notion of personal identity, and understands
line). The poem begins by describing the shark suffering from an ethical perspective.
as the “tongue of the waves” and ends with its
singing — from the realm of the dead — a paean Older poets writing in this manner are Richard
of endless desire. The ego or self may be cri- Hugo, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Phil Levine.
tiqued here: It is a pointless hunger, an O or Contemporary voices such as Ellen Bryant Voigt
zero, and its satisfaction a hopeless illusion. and Yusef Komunyakaa have been influenced by
their almost naturalistic vision, and they are
The tongue of the waves tolled in the earth’s bell. drawn to violence and its far-reaching shadow.
Blue rippled and soaked in the fire of blue.
The dried mouthbones of a shark in the hot swale Yusef Komunyakaa (1947- )
Gaped on nothing but sand on either side.
Louisiana-raised Yusef Komunyakaa, born
The bone tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing, James Willie Brown, Jr., served in Vietnam direct-
A scalded toothless harp, uncrushed, unstrung. ly after graduation from secondary school, win-
The joined arcs made the shape of birth and ning a Bronze Star. He was a reporter for the mil-
itary newspaper Southern Cross, and has written
craving vivid poems set in the war. Often, as in
And the welded-open shape kept mouthing O. “Camouflaging the Chimera” (1988), there is an
element of suspense, danger, and ambush.
Ossified cords held the corners together Komunyakaa has spoken of the need for poetry to
In groined spirals pleated like a summer dress. afford a “series of surprises.” Like the poet
But where was the limber grin, the gash of Michael S. Harper, he often uses jazz methods,
and he has written of the poetry’s need for free
pleasure? improvisation and openness to other voices, as

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in a musicians’ “jam session.” He YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA He’s lost his right arm
has co-edited The Jazz Poetry inside the stone. In the black mirror
Anthology (1991, 1996) and pub- Photo: Jamer Keyser / Time a woman’s trying to erase names:
lished a volume of essays entitled Life Pictures / Getty Images No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
Blue Notes (2000), while he first
gained recognition with Neon CYBER-POETRY
Vernacular (1993).
At the extreme end of the poet-
One of Komunyakaa’s enduring ic spectrum, cyber-poetry is
themes concerns identity. His a new worldly poetry. For
poem “Facing It” (1988), set at the many young American adults, the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in book is secondary to the computer
Washington, D.C., begins with a riff monitor, and reading a spoken
that merges his own face with human language comes after expo-
memories and reflected faces: sure to binary codes.

My black face fades, Computer-based literature has
hiding inside the black granite. taken shape since the early 1990s;
I said I wouldn’t, with the advent of the World Wide
dammit: No tears. Web, some experimental poetry
I’m stone. I’m flesh. has shifted its focus to a paperless,
My clouded reflection eyes me virtual, global realm.
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn Recurring motifs in cyber-poetry
this way — the stone lets me go. include self-reflexive critiques of
I turn that way — I’m inside technologically driven work; com-
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial puter icons, graphics, and hypertext
again, depending on the light links festoon vast webs of relation-
to make a difference. ships, while dimensional layers —
I go down the 58,022 names, animation, sonics, hyperlinked
half-expecting to find texts — proliferate in multiple
my own in letters like smoke. directions, sometimes created by
I touch the name Andrew Johnson; multiple and unknown authors.
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s Outlets for this work come and
go; they have included the CD-ROM
blouse poetry magazines The Little
but when she walks away Magazine, Cyberpoetry, Java Poetry,
the names stay on the wall. New River, Parallel, and many oth-
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s ers. Writing From the New Coast:
wings cutting across my stare. Technique (1993), an influential
The sky. A plane in the sky. gathering of poetic statements
A white vet’s image floats accompanied by a collection of
closer to me, then his pale eyes poems edited by Juliana Spahr and
look through mine. I’m a window. Peter Gizzi, helped catalyze experi-
mental poetry in the electronic age.
It celebrates irreducible multiplici-

134

ty and the primacy of historical context, attacking self have arrived at similar viewpoints, coming
the very notions of identity and universality as
repressive bourgeois constructs. from opposite directions. Ultimate or contin-

Jorie Graham and other experimental poets of gent, poems exist at the intersection of word and

world. ■

135

CHAPTER pologist Jared Diamond, popular sociology by The
New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell,
10 and accounts of drug rehabilitation and crime. In
the last category was a reprint of Truman Capote’s
CONTEMPORARY groundbreaking In Cold Blood, a 1965 “nonfiction
AMERICAN novel” that blurs the distinction between high lit-
LITERATURE erature and journalism and had recently been
made into a film.
The United States is one of the most
diverse nations in the world. Its dynamic Books by non-American authors and books on
population of about 300 million boasts more international themes were also prominent on the
than 30 million foreign-born individuals who list. Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini’s searing
speak numerous languages and dialects. Some novel, The Kite Runner, tells of childhood friends
one million new immigrants arrive each year, in Kabul separated by the rule of the Taliban,
many from Asia and Latin America. while Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in
Teheran, poignantly recalls teaching great works
Literature in the United States today is like- of western literature to young women in Iran. A
wise dazzlingly diverse, exciting, and evolving. third novel, Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha
New voices have arisen from many quarters, (made into a movie), recounts a Japanese
challenging old ideas and adapting literary tradi- woman’s life during World War II.
tions to suit changing conditions of the national
life. Social and economic advances have enabled In addition, the best-seller list reveals the
previously underrepresented groups to express popularity of religious themes. According to
themselves more fully, while technological inno- Publishers Weekly, 2001 was the first year that
vations have created a fast-moving public forum. Christian-themed books topped the sales lists in
Reading clubs proliferate, and book fairs, literary both fiction and nonfiction. Among the hardcover
festivals, and “poetry slams” (events where best-sellers of that exemplary Sunday in 2006, we
youthful poets compete in performing their find Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code and
poetry) attract enthusiastic audiences. Selection Anne Rice’s tale Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.
of a new work for a book club can launch an
unknown writer into the limelight overnight. Beyond the Times’ best-seller list, chain book-
stores offer separate sections for major reli-
On a typical Sunday the list of best-selling books gions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
in the New York Times Book Review testifies to the Buddhism, and sometimes Hinduism.
extraordinary diversity of the current American lit-
erary scene. In January, 2006, for example, the list In the Women’s Literature section of book-
of paperback best-sellers included “genre” fic- stores one finds works by a “Third Wave” of fem-
tion — steamy romances by Nora Roberts, a new inists, a movement that usually refers to young
thriller by John Grisham, murder mysteries — women in their 20s and 30s who have grown up in
alongside nonfiction science books by the anthro- an era of widely accepted social equality in the
United States. Third Wave feminists feel suffi-
ciently empowered to emphasize the individuali-
ty of choices women make. Often associated in
the popular mind with a return to tradition and
child-rearing, lipstick, and “feminine” styles,
these young women have reclaimed the word
“girl” — some decline to call themselves femi-

136

nist. What is often called “chick lit” story genre has gained luster, and
the “short” short story has taken
is a flourishing offshoot. Bridget root. A new generation of play-
wrights continues the American tra-
Jones’s Diary by the British writer ostmodern dition of exploring current social
Helen Fielding and Candace issues on stage. There is not space
Bushnell’s Sex and the City featur- here in this brief survey to do jus-
ing urban single women with tice to the glittering diversity of
American literature today. Instead,
Promance in mind have spawned a one must consider general develop-
popular genre among young authors ments and representative figures.

women. question external POSTMODERNISM,
CULTURE AND IDENTITY
Nonfiction writers also examine structures,
the phenomenon of post-feminism. Postmodernism suggests frag-
mentation: collage, hybridity,
The Mommy Myth (2004) by Susan whether political, and the use of various voices,
scenes, and identities. Postmodern
Douglas and Meredith Michaels philosophical, or authors question external struc-
analyzes the role of the media in tures, whether political, philo-
the “mommy wars,” while Jennifer artistic. They sophical, or artistic. They tend to
distrust the master-narratives of
Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ tend to distrust modernist thought, which they
see as politically suspect.
lively ManifestA: Young Women, the master- Instead, they mine popular cul-
ture genres, especially science
Feminism, and the Future (2000) narratives of fiction, spy, and detective stories,
discusses women’s activism in becoming, in effect, archaeolo-
the age of the Internet. Caitlin modernist gists of pop culture.

Flanagan, a magazine writer who thought, which Don DeLillo’s White Noise,
structured in 40 sections like
calls herself an “anti-feminist,” they see video clips, highlights the dilem-
explores conflicts between domes- mas of representation: “Were
tic life and professional life for as politically people this dumb before televi-
sion?” one character wonders.
women. Her 2004 essay in The suspect. David Foster Wallace’s gargantuan
(1,000 pages, 900 footnotes)
Atlantic, “How Serfdom Saved the Infinite Jest mixes up wheelchair-
bound terrorists, drug addicts,
Women’s Movement,” an account and futuristic descriptions of a
country like the United States. In
of how professional women Galatea 2.2, Richard Powers inter-
weaves sophisticated technology
depend on immigrant women of a

lower class for their childcare, trig-

gered an enormous debate.

It is clear that American litera-

ture at the turn of the 21st century

has become democratic and het-

erogeneous. Regionalism has flow-

ered, and international, or “global,”

writers refract U.S. culture through

foreign perspectives. Multiethnic

writing continues to mine rich

veins, and as each ethnic literature

matures, it creates its own tradi-

tions. Creative nonfiction and

memoir have flourished. The short

137

with private lives. childhood of poverty, family alcoholism, and
Influenced by Thomas Pynchon, postmodern intolerance in Ireland with a surprising warmth
and humor. Paul Auster’s Hand to Mouth (1997)
authors fabricate complex plots that demand tells of poverty that blocked his writing and poi-
imaginative leaps. Often they flatten historical soned his soul.
depth into one dimension; William Vollmann’s
novels slide between vastly different times The Short Story: New Directions
and places as easily as a computer mouse
moves between texts. The story genre had to a degree lost its lus-
ter by the late l970s. Experimental metafiction
Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and stories had been penned by Donald Barthelme,
Autobiography Robert Coover, John Barth, and William Gass
and were no longer on the cutting edge. Large-
Many writers hunger for open, less circulation weekly magazines that had show-
canonical genres as vehicles for their cased short fiction, such as the Saturday
postmodern visions. The rise of global, Evening Post, had collapsed.
multiethnic, and women’s literature — works
in which writers reflect on experiences shaped It took an outsider from the Pacific
by culture, color, and gender — has endowed Northwest — a gritty realist in the tradition of
autobiography and memoir with special allure. Ernest Hemingway — to revitalize the genre.
While the boundaries of the terms are debated, Raymond Carver (l938-l988) had studied under
a memoir is typically shorter or more limited in the late novelist John Gardner, absorbing
scope, while an autobiography makes some Gardner’s passion for accessible artistry fused
attempt at a comprehensive overview of the with moral vision. Carver rose above alcoholism
writer’s life. and harsh poverty to become the most influen-
tial story writer in the United States. In his col-
Postmodern fragmentation has rendered lections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
problematic for many writers the idea of a fin- (l976), What We Talk About When We Talk About
ished self that can be articulated successfully Love (l981), Cathedral (l983), and Where I’m
in one sweep. Many turn to the memoir in their Calling From (l988), Carver follows confused
struggles to ground an authentic self. What working people through dead-end jobs, alco-
constitutes authenticity, and to what extent the holic binges, and rented rooms with an under-
writer is allowed to embroider upon his or her stated, minimalist style of writing that carries
memories of experience in works of nonfiction, tremendous impact.
are hotly contested subjects of writers’
conferences. Linked with Carver is novelist and story
writer Ann Beattie (1947- ), whose middle-class
Writers themselves have contributed pene- characters often lead aimless lives. Her stories
trating observations on such questions in reference political events and popular songs,
books about writing, such as The Writing Life and offer distilled glimpses of life decade by
(1989) by Annie Dillard. Noteworthy memoirs decade in the changing United States. Recent
include The Stolen Light (1989) by Ved Mehta. collections are Park City (l998) and Perfect
Born in India, Mehta was blinded at the age of Recall (2001).
three. His account of flying alone as a young
blind person to study in the United States is Inspired by Carver and Beattie, writers craft-
unforgettable. Irish American Frank McCourt’s ed impressive neorealist story collections in the
mesmerizing Angela’s Ashes (1996) recalls his mid-l980s, including Amy Hempel’s Reasons to

138

Live (1985), David Leavitt’s Family RAYMOND CARVER prose poem.
Dancing (l984), Richard Ford’s Supporters claim that short
Rock Springs (l987), Bobbie Ann Photo © Marion Ettlinger /
Mason’s Shiloh and Other Stories CORBIS OUTLINE shorts’ “reduced geographies”
(1982), and Lorrie Moore’s Self- mirror postmodern conditions in
Help (l985). Other noteworthy fig- which borders seem closer togeth-
ures include the late Andre Dubus, er. They find elegant simplicity in
author of Dancing After Hours these brief fictions. Detractors see
(l996), and the prolific John short shorts as a symptom of cul-
Updike, whose recent story collec- tural decay, a general loss of read-
tions include The Afterlife and ing ability, and a limited attention
Other Stories (l994). span. In any event, short shorts
have found a certain niche: They
Today, as is discussed later in are easy to forward in an e-mail,
this chapter, writers with ethnic and they lend themselves to elec-
and global roots are informing the tronic distribution. They make man-
story genre with non-Western and ageable in-class readings and mod-
tribal approaches, and storytelling els for writing assignments.
has commanded critical and popu-
lar attention. The versatile, primal Drama
tale is the basis of several
hybridized forms: novels that are Contemporary drama mingles
constructed of interlinking short realism with fantasy in postmodern
stories or vignettes, and creative works that fuse the personal and
nonfictions that interweave history the political. The exuberant Tony
and personal history with fiction. Kushner (l956- ) has won acclaim
for his prize-winning Angels in
The Short Short Story: America plays, which vividly render
Sudden or Flash Fiction the AIDS epidemic and the psychic
cost of closeted homosexuality in
The short short is a very brief the 1980s and 1990s. Part One:
story, often only one or two pages Millennium Approaches (1991) and
long. It is sometimes called “flash its companion piece, Part Two:
fiction” or “sudden fiction” after Perestroika (1992), together last
the l986 anthology Sudden Fiction, seven hours. Combining comedy,
edited by Robert Shapard and melodrama, political commentary,
James Thomas. and special effects, they inter-
weave various plots and marginal-
In short short stories, there is ized characters.
little space to develop a character.
Rather, the element of plot is cen- Women dramatists have attained
tral: A crisis occurs, and a particular success in recent years.
sketched-in character simply has to Prominent among them is Beth
react. Authors deploy clever narra- Henley (1952- ), from Mississippi,
tive or linguistic patterns; in some known for her portraits of southern
cases, the short short resembles a women. Henley gained national

139

recognition for her Crimes of the Heart (l978), have arisen in many cities, and electronic tech-
which was made into a film in l986, a warm play nology has de-centered literary life.
about three eccentric sisters whose affection
helps them survive disappointment and despair. As economic shifts and social change redefine
Later plays, including The Miss Firecracker America, a yearning for tradition has set in. The
Contest (1980), The Wake of Jamey Foster (l982), most sustaining and distinctively American myths
The Debutante Ball (l985), and The Lucky Spot partake of the land, and writers are turning to the
(l986), explore southern forms of socializing — Civil War South, the Wild West of the rancher, the
beauty contests, funerals, coming-out parties, rooted life of the midwestern farmer, the south-
and dance halls. western tribal homeland, and other localized
realms where the real and the mythic mingle. Of
Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006), from New course, more than one region has inspired many
York, wrote early comedies including When writers; they are included here in regions forma-
Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth (l975), a parody of tive to their vision or characteristic of their
beauty contests. She is best known for The Heidi mature work.
Chronicles (l988), about a successful woman
professor who confesses to deep unhappiness The Northeast
and adopts a baby. Wasserstein continued
exploring women’s aspirations in The Sisters The scenic Northeast, region of lengthy win-
Rosensweig (l991), An American Daughter ters, dense deciduous forests, and low rugged
(1997), and Old Money (2000). mountain chains, was the first English-speaking
colonial area, and it retains the feel of England.
Younger dramatists such as African American Boston, Massachusetts, is the cultural power-
Suzan-Lori Parks (1964- ) build on the successes house, boasting research institutions and scores
of earlier women. Parks, who grew up on various of universities. Many New England writers depict
army bases in the United States and Germany, characters that continue the Puritan legacy,
deals with political issues in experimental works embodying the middle-class Protestant work
whose timelessness and ritualism recall Irish- ethic and progressive commitment to social
born writer Samuel Beckett. Her best-known reform. In the rural areas, small, independent
work, The America Play (1991), revolves around farmers struggle to survive in the world of global
the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln marketing.
by John Wilkes Booth. She returns to this theme
in Topdog/Underdog (2001), which tells the story Novelist Joyce Carol Oates sets many of her
of two African-American brothers named Lincoln gothic works in upstate New York. Richard Russo
and Booth and their lifetime of sibling rivalry. (1949- ), in his appealing Empire Falls (2001),
evokes life in a dying mill town in Maine, the state
REGIONALISM where Stephen King (1947- ) locates his popular
horror novels.
Apervasive regionalist sensibility has gained
strength in American literature in the past The bittersweet fictions of Massachusetts-
two decades. Decentralization expresses based Sue Miller (1943- ), such as The Good
the postmodern U.S. condition, a trend most evi- Mother (1986), examine counterculture
dent in fiction writing; no longer does any one lifestyles in Cambridge, a city known for cultural
viewpoint or code successfully express the and social diversity, intellectual vitality, and tech-
nation. No one city defines artistic movements, nological innovation. Another writer from
as New York City once did. Vital arts communities Massachusetts, Anita Diamant (1951- ), earned
popular acclaim with The Red Tent (1997), a fem-

140

inist historical novel based on the biblical story less people. Rick Moody (1961- ) is best known
of Dinah. for his novel The Ice Storm (1994). The novels of
Jeffrey Eugenides (1960- ) include Middlesex
Russell Banks (1940- ), from poor, rural New (2002), which narrates the experience of a her-
Hampshire, has turned from experimental writ- maphrodite. Impressive stylists with off-center
ing to more realistic works, such as Affliction visions bordering on the absurd, Antrim, Moody,
(1989), his novel about working-class New and Eugenides carry further the opposite tradi-
Hampshire characters. For Banks, acknowledg- tions of John Updike and Thomas Pynchon. Often
ing one’s roots is a fundamental part of one’s linked with these three younger novelists is the
identity. In Affliction, the narrator scorns people exuberant postmodernist David Foster Wallace
who have “gone to Florida, Arizona, and (1962- ). Wallace, who was born in Ithaca, New
California, bought a trailer or a condo, turned York, gained acclaim for his complex serio-comic
their skin to leather playing shuffleboard all day novel The Broom of the System (1987) and the
and waited to die.” Banks’s recent works include pop culture-saturated stories in Girl With
Cloudsplitter (1998), a historical novel about the Curious Hair (1989).
19th-century abolitionist John Brown.
The Mid-Atlantic
The striking stylist Annie Proulx (1935- ) crafts
stories of struggling northern New Englanders in The fertile Mid-Atlantic states, dominated by
Heart Songs (1988). Her best novel, The Shipping New York City with its great harbor, remain a
News (1993), is set even further north, in gateway for waves of immigrants. Today the
Newfoundland, Canada. Proulx has also spent region’s varied economy encompasses finance,
years in the West, and one of her short stories commerce, and shipping, as well as advertising
inspired the 2006 movie “Brokeback Mountain.” and fashion. New York City is the home of the
publishing industry, as well as prestigious art gal-
William Kennedy (1928- ) has written a dense leries and museums.
and entwined cycle of novels set in Albany, in
northern New York State, including his acclaimed Don DeLillo (1936- ), from New York City,
Ironweed. The title of his insider’s history of began as an advertising writer, and his novels
Albany gives some idea of his gritty, colloquial explore consumerism among their many themes.
style and teeming cast of often unsavory charac- Americana (1971) concludes: “To consume in
ters: O Albany! Improbable City of Political America is not to buy, it is to dream.” DeLillo’s
Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular protagonists seek identities based on images.
Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated White Noise (1985) concerns Jack Gladney and
Scoundrels (1983). Kennedy has been hailed as his family, whose experience is mediated by
an elder statesman of a small Irish-American lit- various texts, especially advertisements. One
erary movement that includes the late Mary passage suggests DeLillo’s style: “…the empti-
McCarthy, Mary Gordon, Alice McDermott, and ness, the sense of cosmic darkness. Master-
Frank McCourt. card, Visa, American Express.” Fragments of
advertisements that drift unattached through the
Three writers who studied at Brown University book emerge from Gladney’s media-parroting
in Rhode Island around the same time and took subconscious, generating the subliminal white
classes with British writer Angela Carter are noise of the title. DeLillo’s later novels include
often mentioned as the nucleus of a “next gen- politics and historical figures: Libra (1988) envi-
eration.” Donald Antrim (1959- ) satirizes acade- sions the assassination of President John F.
mic life in The Hundred Brothers (1997), set in an
enormous library from which one can see home-

141

Kennedy as an explosion of frus- DON DELILLO Younger writers associated with
trated consumerism; Underworld life in the fast lane are Jay
(1997) spins a web of interconnec- Photo © Nancy Crampton McInerney (1955- ), whose Story of
tions between a baseball game and My Life (1988) is set in the drug-
a nuclear bomb in Kazakhstan. driven youth culture of the boom-
time 1980s, and satirist Tama
In multidimensional, polyglot Janowitz (1957- ). Their portraits of
New York, fictions featuring a shad- loneliness and addiction in the
owy postmodern city abound. An anonymous hard-driving city recall
example is the labyrinthine New the works of John Cheever.
York trilogy City of Glass (1985),
Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Nearby suburbs claim the imagi-
Room (1986) by Paul Auster (1947- ). nations of still other writers. Mary
In this work, inspired by Samuel Gordon (1949- ) sets many of her
Beckett and the detective novel, an female-centered works in her
isolated writer at work on a detec- birthplace, Long Island, as does
tive story addresses Paul Auster, Alice McDermott (l953- ), whose
who is writing about Cervantes. The novel Charming Billy (1998)
trilogy suggests that “reality” is but dissects the failed promise of an
a text constructed via fiction, thus alcoholic.
erasing the traditional border
between reality and illusion. Mid-Atlantic domestic realists
Auster’s trilogy, in effect, self- include Richard Bausch (1945- ),
deconstructs. Similarly, Kathy Acker from Baltimore, author of In the
(1948-1997) juxtaposed passages Night Season (1998) and the stories
from works by Cervantes and in Someone to Watch Over Me
Charles Dickens with science fic- (l999). Bausch writes of fragment-
tion in postmodern pastiches such ed families, as does Anne Tyler
as Empire of the Senseless (1988), a (1941- ), also from Baltimore,
quest through time and space for whose eccentric characters negoti-
an individual voice. ate disorganized, isolated lives. A
master of detail and understated
New York City hosts many groups wit, Tyler writes in spare, quiet lan-
of writers with shared interests. guage. Her best-known novels
Jewish women include noted essay- include Dinner at the Homesick
ist Cynthia Ozick (1928- ), who hails Restaurant (1982) and The
from the Bronx, the setting of her Accidental Tourist (1985), which
novel The Puttermesser Papers was made into a film in l988. The
(l997). Her haunting novel The Amateur Marriage (2004) sets a
Shawl (1989) gives a young moth- divorce against a panorama of
er’s viewpoint on the Holocaust. American life over 60 years.
The droll, conversational Collected
Stories (l994) of Grace Paley (1922- ) African Americans have made
capture the syncopated rhythms of distinctive contributions. Feminist
the city. essayist and poet Audre Lorde’s
autobiographical Zami: A New

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Spelling of My Name (l982) is an ANNE TYLER Right Now (1999), screenplays
earthy account of a black woman’s including “The Tuskegee Airmen”
experience in the United States. Photo: Diana Walker / (1995), and a l989 essay “The New
Bebe Moore Campbell (l950- ), Getty Images Black Aesthetic” discerning a new
from Philadelphia, writes feisty 143 multiethnic sensibility among the
domestic novels including Your younger generation.
Blues Ain’t Like Mine (l992). Gloria
Naylor (l950- ), from New York City, Writers from Washington, D.C.,
explores different women’s lives in four hours’ drive south from New
The Women of Brewster Place York City, include Ann Beattie
(1982), the novel that made her (1947- ), whose short stories were
name. mentioned earlier. Her slice-of-life
novels include Picturing Will
Critically acclaimed John Edgar (1989), Another You (l995), and My
Wideman (l941- ) grew up in Life, Starring Dara Falcon (1997).
Homewood, a black section of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His America’s capital city is home to
Faulknerian Homewood Trilogy — many political novelists. Ward Just
Hiding Place (1981), Damballah (1935- ) sets his novels in
(1981), and Sent for You Yesterday Washington’s swirling military,
(1983) — uses shifting viewpoints political, and intellectual circles.
and linguistic play to render black Christopher Buckley (1952- )
experience. His best-known short spikes his humorous political satire
piece, “Brothers and Keepers” with local details; his Little Green
(1984), concerns his relationship Men (1999) is a spoof about official
with his imprisoned brother. In The responses to aliens from outer
Cattle Killing (l996), Wideman space. Michael Chabon (1963- ),
returns to the subject of his who grew up in the Washington
famous early story “Fever” (l989). suburbs but later moved to
His novel Two Cities (l998) takes California, depicts youths on the
place in Pittsburgh and dazzling brink of adulthood in The
Philadelphia. Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988); his
novel inspired by a comic book, The
David Bradley (1950- ), also from Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
Pennsylvania, set his historical and Clay (2000), mixes glamour
novel The Chaneysville Incident and craft in the manner of F. Scott
(l981) on the “underground rail- Fitzgerald.
road,” a network of citizens who
provided opportunity and assis- The South
tance for southern black slaves to
find freedom in the North at the The South comprises disparate
time of the U.S. Civil War. regions in the southeastern United
States, from the cool Appalachian
Trey Ellis (1962 - ) has written Mountain chain and the broad
the novels Platitudes (1988), Home Mississippi River valley to the
Repairs (1993), and Right Here, steamy cypress bayous of the Gulf

Coast. Cotton and the plantation BOBBIE ANN MASON (1952- ) writes stories of misfits —
culture of slavery made the South Black Tickets (1979) — and a
the richest section in the country Photo: Jymi Bolden / novel, Machine Dreams (1984), set
before the U.S. Civil War (1860- CityBeat in the hardscrabble mountains of
1865). But after the war, the region West Virginia.
sank into poverty and isolation that
lasted a century. Today, the South is The novels of Jill McCorkle
part of what is called the Sun Belt, (1958- ) capture her North Carolina
the fastest growing part of the background. Her mystery-en-
United States. shrouded love story Carolina Moon
(1996) explores a years-old suicide
The most traditional of the in a coastal village where relentless
regions, the South is proud of its waves erode the foundations from
distinctive heritage. Enduring derelict beach houses. The lush
themes include family, land, histo- native South Carolina of Dorothy
ry, religion, and race. Much south- Allison (1949- ) features in her
ern writing has a depth and human- tough autobiographical novel
ity arising from the devastating Bastard Out of Carolina (1992),
losses of the Civil War and soul seen through the eyes of a
searching over the region’s legacy dirt-poor, illegitimate 12-year-old
of slavery. tomboy nicknamed Bone. Missis-
sippian Ellen Gilchrist (1935- ) sets
The South, with its rich oral most of her colloquial Collected
tradition, has nourished many Stories (2000) in small hamlets
women storytellers. In the along the Mississippi River and in
upper South, Bobbie Ann Mason New Orleans, Louisiana.
(1940- ) from Kentucky, writes of
the changes wrought by mass cul- Southern novelists mining male
ture. In her most famous story, experience include the acclaimed
“Shiloh” (1982), a couple must Cormac McCarthy (l933- ), whose
change their relationship or sepa- early novels such as Suttree (1979)
rate as housing subdivisions are archetypically southern tales of
spread “across western Kentucky dark emotional depths, ignorance,
like an oil slick.” Mason’s and poverty, set against the green
acclaimed short novel In Country hills and valleys of eastern
(1985) depicts the effects of the Tennessee. In l974, McCarthy
Vietnam War by focusing on an moved to El Paso, Texas, and began
innocent young girl whose father to plumb western landscapes and
died in the conflict. traditions. Blood Meridian: Or the
Evening of Redness in the West
Lee Smith (1944- ) brings the (1985) is an unsparing vision of The
people of the Appalachian Kid, a 14-year-old from Tennessee
Mountains into poignant focus, who becomes a cold-hearted killer
drawing on the well of American in Mexico in the 1840s. McCarthy’s
folk music in her novel The Devil’s best-selling epic Border Trilogy —
Dream (l992). Jayne Anne Phillips

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All the Pretty Horses (1992), The RICHARD FORD Watching God, is considered to be
Crossing (1994), and Cities of the the first feminist novel by an
Plain (1998) — invests the desert Photo © Don MacLellan / African American. Hurston, who
between Texas and Mexico with CORBIS SYGMA died in the 1960s, underwent a crit-
mythic grandeur. ical revival in the 1990s. Ishmael
Reed, born in Tennessee,
Other noted authors are North set Mumbo Jumbo (1972) in
Carolinian Charles Frazier (1950- ), New Orleans. Margaret Walker
author of the Civil War novel Cold (1915-1998), from Alabama,
Mountain (1997); Georgia-born Pat authored the novel Jubilee (1966)
Conroy (1945- ), author of The and essays On Being Female, Black,
Great Santini (1976) and Beach and Free (1997).
Music (1995); and Mississippi nov-
elist Barry Hannah (1942- ), known Story writer James Alan
for his violent plots and risk-taking McPherson (l943- ), from Georgia,
style. depicts working-class people in
Elbow Room (1977); A Region Not
A very different Mississippi-born Home: Reflections From Exile
writer is Richard Ford (1944- ), who (2000), whose title reflects his
began writing in a Faulknerian vein move to Iowa, is a memoir. Chicago-
but is best known for his subtle born ZZ Packer (1973- ),
novel set in New Jersey, The McPherson’s student at the Iowa
Sportswriter (1986), and its sequel, Writers’ Workshop, was raised in
Independence Day (l995). The lat- the South, studied in the mid-
ter is about Frank Bascombe, a Atlantic, and now lives in California.
dreamy, evasive drifter who loses Her first work, a volume of stories
all the things that give his life titled Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
meaning – a son, his dream of writ- (2003), has made her a rising star.
ing fiction, his marriage, lovers and Prolific feminist writer bell hooks
friends, and his job. Bascombe is (born Gloria Watkins in Kentucky in
sensitive and intelligent — his 1952) gained fame for cultural cri-
choices, he says, are made “to tiques including Black Looks: Race
deflect the pain of terrible regret” and Representation (l992) and
— and his emptiness, along with autobiographies beginning with
the anonymous malls and bald new Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
housing developments that he end- (1996).
lessly cruises through, mutely tes-
tify to Ford’s vision of a national Experimental poet and scholar
malaise. of slave narratives (Freeing the
Soul, l999), Harryette Mullen (1953- )
Many African-American writers writes multivocal poetry collec-
hail from the South, including tions such as Muse & Drudge
Ernest Gaines from Louisiana, (1995). Novelist and story writer
Alice Walker from Georgia, and Percival Everett (1956- ), who was
Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, originally from Georgia, writes sub-
whose 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were

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tle, open-ended fiction; recent volumes are are a concatenation of the personal and the polit-
Frenzy (l997) and Glyph (1999). ical. Kent Haruf (1943- ) creates stronger char-
acters in his sweeping novel of the prairie,
Many African-American writers whose families Plainsong (1999).
followed patterns of internal migration were
born outside the South but return to it for inspi- Michael Cunningham (1952- ), from Ohio,
ration. Famed science-fiction novelist Octavia began as a domestic novelist in A Home at the
Butler (l947- ), from California, draws on the End of the World (1990). The Hours (1998), made
theme of bondage and the slave narrative tradi- into a movie, brilliantly interweaves Virginia
tion in Wild Seed (l980); her Parable of the Sower Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with two women’s lives in
(l993) treats addiction. Sherley Anne Williams different eras. Stuart Dybek (1942- ) has written
(l944- ), also from California, writes of interracial sparkling story collections including I Sailed With
friendship between southern women in slave Magellan (2003), about his childhood on the
times in her fact-based historical novel Dessa South Side of Chicago.
Rose (l986). New York-born Randall Kenan (l963- )
was raised in North Carolina, the setting of his Younger urban novelists include Jonathan
novel A Visitation of Spirits (l989) and his stories Franzen (1959- ), who was born in Missouri and
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (l992). His Walking raised in Illinois. Franzen’s best-selling
on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the panoramic novel The Corrections (2001) — titled
Twenty-First Century (1999) is nonfiction. for a downturn in the stock market — evokes
midwestern family life over several generations.
The Midwest The novel chronicles the physical and mental
deterioration of a patriarch suffering from
The vast plains of America’s midsection — Parkinson’s disease; as in Smiley’s A Thousand
much of it between the Rocky Mountains and the Acres, the entire family is affected. Franzen pits
Mississippi River — scorch in summer and freeze individuals against large conspiracies in The
in scouring winter storms. The area was opened Twenty-Seventh City (1988) and Strong Motion
up with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, (1992). Some critics link Franzen with Don
attracting Northern European settlers eager for DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster
land. Early 20th-century writers with roots in the Wallace as a writer of conspiracy novels.
Midwest include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser. The Midwest has produced a wide variety of
writing, much of it informed by international
Midwestern fiction is grounded in realism. influences. Richard Powers (1957- ), from
The domestic novel has flourished in recent Illinois, has lived in Thailand and The
years, portraying webs of relationships between Netherlands. His challenging postmodern novels
kin, the local community, and the environment. interweave personal lives with technology.
Agribusiness and development threaten family Galatea 2.2 (1995) updates the mad scientist
farms in some parts of the region, and some nov- theme; the scientists in this case are computer
els sound the death knell of farming as a way programmers.
of life.
African-American novelist Charles Johnson
Domestic novelists include Jane Smiley (1949-), (1948- ), an ex-cartoonist who was born in
whose A Thousand Acres (1991) is a contempo- Illinois and moved to Seattle,
rary, feminist version of the King Lear story. The Washington, draws on disparate traditions such
lost kingdom is a large family farm held for four as Zen and the slave narrative in novels such as
generations, and the forces that undermine it Oxherding Tale (1982). Johnson’s accomplished,

146

picaresque novel Middle Passage (1990) blends include the oilman versus the ecologist, the
the international history of slavery with a sea tale developer versus the archaeologist, and the citi-
echoing Moby-Dick. Dreamer (1998) re-imagines zen activist versus the representative of nuclear
the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and military facilities, many of which are housed
in the sparsely populated West.
Robert Olen Butler (1945- ), born in Illinois and
a veteran of the Vietnam War, writes about One writer has cast a long shadow over west-
Vietnamese refugees in Louisiana in their own ern writing, much as William Faulkner did in the
voices in A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain South. Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) records the
(1992). His stories in Tabloid Dreams (1996) — passing of the western wilderness. In his mas-
inspired by zany news headlines — were enlarged terpiece Angle of Repose (1971), a historian
into the humorous novel Mr. Spaceman (2000), in imagines his educated grandparents’ move to the
which a space alien learns English from watching “wild” West. His last book surveys his life in the
television and abducts a bus full of tourists in West as a writer: Where the Bluebird Sings to the
order to interview them on his spaceship. Lemonade Springs (1992). For a quarter century,
Stegner directed Stanford University’s writing
Native-American authors from the region program; his list of students reads like a “who’s
include part-Chippewa Louise Erdrich, who has who” of western writing: Raymond Carver, Ken
set a series of novels in her native North Dakota. Kesey, Thomas McGuane, Larry McMurtry, N.
Gerald Vizenor (1935- ) gives a comic, postmod- Scott Momaday, Tillie Olsen, and Robert Stone.
ern portrait of contemporary Native-American Stegner also influenced the contemporary
life in Darkness at Saint Louis Bearheart (1978) Montana school of writers associated with
and Griever: An American Monkey King in China McGuane, Jim Harrison, and some works of
(1987). Vizenor’s Chancers (2000) deals with Richard Ford, as well as Texas writers like
skeletons buried outside of their homelands. McMurtry.

Popular Syrian-American novelist Mona Novelist Thomas McGuane (1939- ) typically
Simpson (1957- ), who was born in Wisconsin, is depicts one man going alone into a wild
the author of Anywhere But Here (1986), a look at area, where he engages in an escalating
mother-daughter relationships. conflict. His works include The Sporting Club
(1968) and The Bushwacked Piano (1971), in
The Mountain West which the hero travels from Michigan to Montana
on a demented mission of courtship. McGuane’s
The western interior of the United States is a enthusiasm for hunting and fishing has led critics
largely wild area that stretches along the majes- to compare him with Ernest Hemingway.
tic Rocky Mountains running slantwise from Michigan-born Jim Harrison (1937- ), like
Montana at the Canadian border to the hills of McGuane, spent many years living on a ranch. In
Texas on the U.S. border with Mexico. Ranching his first novel, Wolf: A False Memoir (1971), a
and mining have long provided the region’s man seeks to view a wolf in the wild in hopes of
economic backbone, and the Anglo tradition in changing his life. His later, more pessimistic fic-
the region emphasizes an independent frontier tion includes Legends of the Fall (1979) and The
spirit. Road Home (1998).

Western literature often incorporates con- In Richard Ford’s Montana novel Wildlife
flict. Traditional enemies in the 19th-century (1990), the desolate landscape counterpoints a
West are the cowboy versus the Indian, the family’s breakup. Story writer, eco-critic, and
farmer/settler versus the outlaw, the rancher
versus the cattle rustler. Recent antagonists

147

nature essayist Rick Bass (1958- ), LARRY MCMURTRY Cisneros extended her vignettes of
born in Texas and educated as a Chicana women’s lives in Woman
petroleum geologist, writes of ele- Photo © Richard Robinson Hollering Creek (1991). Pat Mora
mental confrontations between (1942- ) offers a Chicana view in
outdoorsmen and nature in his Nepantla: Essays From the Land in
story collection In the Loyal the Middle (1993), which addresses
Mountains (1995) and the novel issues of cultural conservation.
Where the Sea Used To Be (1998).
Native Americans from the
Texan Larry McMurtry (1936- ) region include the late James
draws on his ranch childhood in Welch, whose The Heartsong of
Horseman, Pass By (1961), made Charging Elk (2000) imagines a
into the movie Hud in 1963, an young Sioux who survives the Battle
unsentimental portrait of the of Little Bighorn and makes a life in
rancher’s world. Leaving Cheyenne France. Linda Hogan (l947- ), from
(1963) and its successor, The Last Colorado and of Chickasaw her-
Picture Show (1966), which was itage, reflects on Native-American
also made into a film, evoke the women and nature in novels includ-
fading of a way of life in Texas small ing Mean Spirit (1990), about the oil
towns. McMurtry’s best-known rush on Indian lands in the 1920s,
work is Lonesome Dove (1985), an and Power (1998), in which an
archetypal western epic novel Indian woman discovers her own
about a cattle drive in the 1870s inner natural resources.
that became a successful television
miniseries. His recent works The Southwest
include Comanche Moon (1997).
For centuries, the desert
The West of multiethnic writers Southwest developed under
is less heroic and often more for- Spanish rule, and much of the pop-
ward looking. One of the best- ulation continues to speak Spanish,
known Chicana writers is Sandra while some Native-American tribes
Cisneros (1954- ). Born in Chicago, reside on ancestral lands. Rainfall
Cisneros has lived in Mexico and is unreliable, and agriculture has
Texas; she focuses on the large cul- always been precarious in the
tural border between Mexico and region. Today, massive irrigation
the United States as a creative, projects have boosted agricultural
contradictory zone in which production, and air conditioning
Mexican-American women must attracts more and more people to
reinvent themselves. Her best-sell- sprawling cities like Salt Lake City
ing The House on Mango Street in Utah and Phoenix in Arizona.
(1984), a series of interlocking
vignettes told from a young girl’s In a region where the desert
viewpoint, blazed the trail for other ecology is so fragile, it is not sur-
Latina writers and introduced read- prising that there are many environ-
ers to the vital Chicago barrio. mentally oriented writers. The
activist Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

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celebrated the desert wilderness SANDRA CISNEROS white woman at the turn of the
of Utah in Desert Solitaire: A Season 20th century.
in the Wilderness (1968). Photo: Associated Press /
Wide World Photos Numerous Mexican-American
Trained as a biologist, Barbara writers reside in the Southwest, as
Kingsolver (1955- ) offers a they have for centuries. Distinctive
woman’s viewpoint on the concerns include the Spanish lan-
Southwest in her popular trilogy guage, the Catholic tradition, folk-
set in Arizona: The Bean Trees loric forms, and, in recent years,
(1988), featuring Taylor Greer, a race and gender inequality, genera-
tomboyish young woman who takes tional conflict, and political
in a Cherokee child; Animal Dreams activism. The culture is strongly
(1990); and Pigs in Heaven (1993). patriarchal, but new female Chicana
The Poisonwood Bible (1998) con- voices have arisen.
cerns a missionary family in Africa.
Kingsolver addresses political The poetic nonfiction book
themes unapologetically, admitting, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
“I want to change the world.” Mestiza (1987), by Gloria Anzaldúa
(1942- ), passionately imagines a
The Southwest is home to the hybrid feminine consciousness of
greatest number of Native- the borderlands made up of strands
American writers, whose works from Mexican, Native-American,
reveal rich mythical storytelling, a and Anglo cultures. Also noteworthy
spiritual treatment of nature, and is New Mexican writer Denise
deep respect for the spoken word. Chavez (1948- ), author of the story
The most important fictional collection The Last of the Menu
theme is healing, understood as Girls (l986). Her Face of an Angel
restoration of harmony. Other top- (1994), about a waitress who has
ics include poverty, unemployment, been working on a manual for wait-
alcoholism, and white crimes resses for 30 years, has been called
against Indians. an authentically Latino novel in
English.
Native-American writing is more
philosophical than angry, however, California Literature
and it projects a strong ecological
vision. Major authors include the California could be a country all
distinguished N. Scott Momaday, its own with its enormous multieth-
who inaugurated the contemporary nic population and huge economy.
Native-American novel with House The state is known for spawning
Made of Dawn; his recent works social experiments, youth move-
include The Man Made of Words ments (the Beats, hippies,
(1997). Part-Laguna novelist Leslie techies), and new technologies
Marmon Silko, the author of (the “dot-coms” of Silicon Valley)
Ceremony, has also published that can have unexpected
Gardens in the Dunes (1999), evok- consequences.
ing Indigo, an orphan cared for by a
Northern California, centered on

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