Joyce Johnson Jack Kerouac’s Journey For On the Road’s author, whose centenary is this month, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote. March 2, 2022
Michael Gorra Jim Crow & William Faulkner Faulkner didn’t enjoy much local popularity when he was alive, not even after he won the Nobel Prize. He told too many inconvenient truths, and even some of his relatives saw him as writing “dirty books for Yankees.” August 28, 2020
Christopher Benfey Bowling with Melville Instead of writing an epic on whaling, could Melville have written the epic of bowling instead? Now that would have been “a ten-stroke” indeed. October 24, 2019
Elaine Showalter A Tale of Three Bicentennials Whitman and Melville were profound and original writers who revolutionized American literature. But the difference between their careers and critical reputations and Julia Howe’s is about gender as well as genius. May 27, 2019