Author Archives: ron

In the pantheon of Southern literature, the names of Twain and Faulkner stand matched for first place. Thanks to an enjoyable high school experience with As I Lay Dying and an excellent honors seminar on Faulkner as an undergrad, I … Continue reading →

One can hardly undertake a program of American literature without confronting Moby Dick, the quintessential Great American Novel. Perhaps due to its daunting size, or to a dimly remembered aversion to Billy Budd in high school, I have always put … Continue reading →

Last summer, I read The Whole Five Feet by Christopher R. Beha, an account of that author’s journey through the Harvard Classics. I was struck by the fact that the first work in that series was Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, so … Continue reading →

“Of course I move among miracles. It was all phantasmagoric.” This statement by protagonist Lambert Strether sums up the experience of reading The Ambassadors by Henry James. The book is a bundle of contradictions: simple in plot yet endlessly complex … Continue reading →

I had never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett until my friend Brian included her novella The Country of the Pointed Firs on his impromptu list of recommended American works. I don’t think that this work has attained anything close to … Continue reading →

I’m afraid that my foray into American literature is not off to an auspicious start. I have been defeated by James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. It isn’t a terribly long book, and I expected to have the … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking lately about how little I know about the literature of my own country. Of course I read Huckleberry Finn, Billy Budd, and a few others in high school, and I took a seminar on Faulkner in college, … Continue reading →