Status anxiety and conspicuous consumption generate a dazzling, often surreal poetry in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. But Gatsby’s rise and fall exposes deep fissures underlying the American Dream.
While clear-eyed about the country’s injustices, Melville never succumbed to cynicism. On the author’s bicentennial, American readers could use a dose of his ability to fuse realism with idealism.
Walt Whitman is perhaps America’s most admired poet. His work, now praised for its themes of equality and democracy, was once shunned for its experimental verse and discussion of sexuality.
Spanish-speaking writers have made exceptional contributions to American literature. Here are the best Latin American and Latino authors you probably haven’t heard of.
Slated to be demolished this year, a crumbling brick building on Ole Miss’ campus once operated as a power plant where novelist William Faulkner shoveled coal – and feverishly wrote.