blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

When you hear the phrase ‘great American novel,’ a few titles immediately jump to mind. The Grapes of Wrath. The Great Gatsby. Catcher in the Rye. But long before these classic novels helped redefine what is meant by the ‘great American novel,’ Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn defined the term in such a way that the novel is still regarded today as perhaps one of the most seminal works in the American literary landscape.

First published in the United States in 1885—the novel was actually released in December 1884 in the U.K.—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn chronicles the title character’s fortunes and friendships in Missouri and neighboring states along the Mississippi River. 

     

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The world was a much bigger place in the early part of the 20th Century. Communication was slower, transportation was relegated primarily to ships and trains, and the odds of connecting and interacting with like-minded creatives were much slimmer in an age without text messages and email. 

Yet even with massive geographical and cultural obstacles, three literary titans managed to influence each other, cross paths, and even collaborate to create some of the most vibrant and interesting contributions to the literary arts. 

     

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It’s often said you can’t have a hero without a villain. Throughout so many of our most beloved stories, novels, and series, what shines just as brightly as the hero is the counterpoint he or she must reckon with and ultimately defeat. These conflicts between the good guy and the bad guy are the meat and potatoes of much of action-adventure literature, and it’s no understatement to say that the James Bond series contains some of the meatiest, most diabolical villains in the spy novel genre.

     

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When you hear the name of certain authors, you immediately draw associations with a style or idea. Hemingway = ex-patriotism. Fitzgerald = The Jazz Age. Kerouac = The Beats and their nomadic existence. And J.R.R. Tolkien = bringing the fantasy and science-fiction genres into the mainstream consciousness.

     

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Children’s book author Virginia Hamilton was a writer of firsts. She was the first to win several major awards and distinctions as a children’s book author, woman, and African American. She was the first person in her family to receive a proper post-secondary education. She was the first writer to chronicle the adolescent African American experience. And she is the first in the minds of many when it comes to black, female writers who have ascended to the top of American literary landscape.

     

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The short story and jazz music have taken quite the similar journey through the cultural consciousness of American society. Now relegated to niche art forms, both flourished in the early and mid-parts of the 20th Century, reaching a level of popularity that transcended age, race, and regionalism. Simply put, everyone listened to jazz and everyone read short stories, and everyone talked about them as important exports of American culture.

     

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The San Francisco Bay Area is something of a puzzle. It’s a massive, sprawling metropolitan center whose topography and landscape is as varied as its residents. Rugged, broken hills give way to sweeping shorelines and sand dunes just as quickly as Silicon Valley life butts up against hipsters and hippies clinging to scraps of a Bohemian lifestyle first introduced by the Beat Generation of the 1950s.

     

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Legendary author Harper Lee passed away today at the age of 89. She leaves behind a legacy that has reverberated through the international literary community since the publication of her landmark novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1960. The novel was an instant sensation worldwide and earned Lee a number of prestigious accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.

     

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It’s February 1952 and aspiring novelist Ian Fleming sits at a desk in his Jamaican, beachfront bungalow with a head full of ideas for a spy novel about gambling, espionage, and international intrigue. The writing comes easy, a little in the morning and a little in the evening, and in less than a month Fleming completes a draft of a novel that would launch a multimedia empire audiences worldwide have adored for more than 50 years.

     

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Philadelphia is one of those great American cities that suffers from a watered-down public perception of its identity. The City of Brotherly Love. The Epicenter of the American Revolution. The cheesesteak. These are things with which Philadelphia is most closely associated.

While certainly true enough associations, Philadelphia has and has always had a grand literary tradition – a vibrant, diverse landscape of writers, poets, playwrights, and literati who made great strides in innovating language, form, style, aesthetics, and narrative.      

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