This book shows how African American literature emerged as a world-recognized literature: less as the product of a seamless tradition of writers signifying upon their ancestors and more the product of three generations of ambitious, competitive individuals aiming to be the first great African American writer. It charts a canon of fictional landmarks, beginning with The House Behind the Cedars and culminating in the National Book Award-Winner Invisible Man, and tells the compelling stories ...

This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald offers both new and familiar readers an authoritative guide to the full scope of Fitzgerald's literary legacy. Gathering the critical insights of leading Fitzgerald specialists, it includes newly commissioned essays on The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, Zelda Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald's judgment of his peers, and Fitzgerald's screenwriting and Hollywood years, alongside updated and revised vers...

Richard Wright was one of the most influential and complex African American writers of the twentieth century. Best known as the trailblazing, bestselling author of Native Son and Black Boy, he established himself as an experimental literary intellectual in France who creatively drew on some of the leading ideas of his time - Marxism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonialism - to explore the sources and meaning of racism both in the United States and worldwide. Richard Wright in ...

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) exemplified the ideal of the American public intellectual as a writer, educator, songwriter, diplomat, key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and first African American executive of the NAACP. Originally published anonymously in 1912, Johnson’s novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is considered one of the foundational works of twentieth-century African American literature, and its themes and forms have been taken up by other writers, from Ra...

This thought-provoking collection explores significant new facets of an American author of lasting international stature.“Edited by three eminent Fitzgerald scholars, this fine book comprises nineteen incisive and provocative essays (most written for this collection) by . . . well-known Fitzgerald critics. The content is as varied as the international origins of its authors.” —ChoiceAs the author of some of the most compelling short stories ever wr...

“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le CarréNothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if yo...

"Churchwell... has written an excellent book... she’s earned the right to play on [Fitzgerald's] court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page.”—Kirkus (STARRED review)The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America’s carefree younger genera...

A tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of our most distinguished writers, providing valuable insight into her inspiration and her methodJoyce Carol Oates is widely regarded as one of America's greatest contemporary literary figures. Having written in a number of genres -- prose, poetry, personal and critical essays, as well as plays -- she is an artist ideally suited to answer essential questions about what makes a story striking, a novel come alive, a writer an artist as ...

Ebook edition includes full text of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail its relation to the extravagant, scandalous, and chaotic world in which the author lived.With wit and insight, Sarah Churchwell traces the genesis of a masterpiece, mapp...

From the author of the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes a highly entertaining and informative book on the twenty-five works of literature that have most shaped the American character.Thomas C. Foster applies his much-loved combination of wit, know-how, and analysis to explain how each work has shaped our very existence as readers, students, teachers, and Americans. He illuminates how books such as The La...

In Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestselling The Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and ...

Want to find your voice? Learn from the best!In your development as a writer, you've likely been told to develop your own unique writing style, as if it were as simple as pulling it out of thin air. But finding your voice isn't easy--it requires time, practice, and a thorough understanding of how great fiction is written.Fiction Writing Master Class analyzes the writing styles of twenty-one superior novelists including Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Franz Kafka, F...