In 1976, Saul Bellow became the seventh American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (if you don’t count T.S. Eliot, who had eschewed his American citizenship well before his award). Bellow had just won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Humboldt’s Gift. He had already become the only writer in the history of the award to… Continue reading Saul Bellow’s “Henderson the Rain King”
Author: Jay Ruud
John Barth’s “The Sot-Weed Factor”
When I think of John Barth, I can’t help thinking of those lines in A.E. Housman’s famous poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”: “Now you will not swell the rout / Of lads who wore their honors out, / Runners whom renown outran, / And the name died before the man.” Barth, the darling of… Continue reading John Barth’s “The Sot-Weed Factor”
Lisel Mueller’s “Night Song”
Mark Johnston’s “War Movie in Reverse”
Emily Dickinson’s “I Died for Beauty”
Stacey Margaret Jones’ “Love Is a Far Country”
James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
James Baldwin is one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century, across several genres, but perhaps most importantly in his fiction. His work deals with themes of sexuality, race, and class, and are vivid contributions to the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. His 1962 novel Another Country is, perhaps, his most… Continue reading James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”
This may be a bit of a surprise. It was to me. The #8 book (alphabetically) on my list of “The 100 Most Loveable Novels in the English Language” turns out to be another novel from Jane Austen. One of the unwritten laws I wrote down for myself at the beginning of this project was… Continue reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”
Jane Austen’s “Emma”
I have made no secret of my desire, in my list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language,” to include as many different authors as I could, to spread the love among a variety of periods and styles. But in the end there were two particular novelists whose contributions to English literature were… Continue reading Jane Austen’s “Emma”
Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Margaret Atwood may be the most significant author in world literature who has not yet won the Nobel Prize. Two of her novels (The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) have won the Booker Prize—the elite annual British award for the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. And four other novels have been… Continue reading Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”