By the Bay: A Literary Tour of San Francisco

By Nick Ostdick. Feb 21, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Literary travel

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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Robert Coover and the Great American Novel You've Never Heard Of

By Matt Reimann. Feb 4, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American History, American Literature

Many great artists live rather modest, obscure lives. Of course there are those individuals, the Casanovas, the Byrons, and the Goethes of the world, who write interesting books and are interesting when written about. But this is not so much the case with Robert Coover, who turns 84 today. Prolific, soft-spoken, and wise, the author taught electronic writing at Brown University for years. No, Coover has not earned the publicity of his equals, such as Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Thomas Pynchon. But to his readers, Coover has left behind a trove of books that are as vital and boisterous as any voice in American letters today.

     
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Zane Grey: Father of the Western Genre

By Adrienne Rivera. Jan 31, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, History

Throughout his extremely prolific career, Zane Grey wrote nearly 100 booksincluding over 50 Westernsbaseball stories, books on hunting, young adult books, autobiographies, books on fishing, and a handful of books set in Australia. Grey is widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of the Western genre. His seminal work, Riders of the Purple Sage, is considered the best example of what the Western genre has to offer: a sweeping plot and detailed descriptions of the character of both the people and landscape of the American frontier. In effect, Zane Grey created the vision of pop culture's American West.

     
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Richard Brautigan and a One-Man Counter Culture

By Matt Reimann. Jan 30, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Modern First Editions

Counter culture is an interesting phenomenon. Many may be dissatisfied with the current state of things, but this doesn’t mean they agree in their response. In the 1960s, some executed their discontent by protesting on campuses, while others departed from society at large to join communes. We tend to remember the groups that emerged during this formative era. But, writer Richard Brautigan created a counter cultural presence all his own.

     
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I Love L.A.: Five Writers Who Call Los Angeles Home

By Nick Ostdick. Jan 16, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Literary travel

It’s a town well-known for the Silver Screena place where dreamers flock in search of stardom, celebrity, fame, and fortune. But beyond the glitz and glam of Hollywood Boulevard, Rodeo Drive, and movie studio backlots, the City of Angels possesses a rich, complex literary history that transcends genres, styles, and aesthetics. While perhaps not quite the powerhouse of arts and letters as some of the city’s East Coast rivals, L.A. has been home to some of the most creative, interesting, and influential writers of the last century.

     
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Five Things To Know About the Horatio Alger Myth

By Nick Ostdick. Jan 13, 2016. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, Literature

If you’re confused after reading the title of this article, odds are you’re not alone. Even the most savvy, in-tune reader might not be able to explain the Horatio Alger Myth or its significance in late 19th Century American literature. And that’s strange given how prevalent the Horatio Alger Myth is and how it managed to permeate modern American storytelling in ways that today ring as cliché, tired, and uninspired.

     
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A Brief History of Banned Books in America

By Matt Reimann. Dec 26, 2015. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature, History, Modern First Editions

Books encourage people to ask questions. They equip people to understand lives different from their own. They encourage people to seek the truth, to reject what is false and convenient. It is no surprise reading is a powerful thing. For this reason, paranoid governments have always been suspicious of what people might be learning from between the covers of a book. Men might become corrupted. Women might become unchaste. So censors have defamed and condemned them, burned them and banned them—but there will always be people who believe books to be worth fighting for.

     
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How New is New? Tom Wolfe and the New Journalism

By Brian Hoey. Dec 5, 2015. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Legendary Authors, American Literature, Literature

In the 1880s, the term "new journalism" was sometimes used to refer to the new yellow print newspapers that were being popularized at the time. In 1923, Robert E. Park referred to the penny-newspaper trend of the 1830s as the advent of "new journalism." In 1973, Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) author Tom Wolfe edited an anthology containing works by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion, fashioned as both a collection of admirable pieces of writing and as a sort of manifesto for what Wolfe saw as the a groundbreaking trend in American letters. Its title? The New Journalism. Third time’s the charm.

     
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Sweet Home Chicago: A Literary Tour of the Windy City

By Nick Ostdick. Nov 22, 2015. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

Though often referred to as the Second City, Chicago is second to none in terms of its rich cultural heritage, iconic architecture, sports fandom, and inventive takes on comfort food staples like the pizza hotdog and the red hot. But The Windy City is also home to a literary tradition rivaled by very few cities across the country, with some of America’s most renowned writers calling Chicago their home.

     
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Rudolfo Anaya and Chicano Literature

By Matt Reimann. Oct 30, 2015. 9:00 AM.

Topics: American Literature

On the whole, the term Chicano describes the culture of a people who live within the mixing currents of Mexican and American life. Other than that, the Chicano identity is predictably hard to pin down. Nonetheless, writers of the Chicano tradition have played a vital role in giving a voice to a people who have not easily found one. The Chicano tradition is notably vast and hybridized, coming from two already diverse nations. While there have been Mexican-American writers since the age of exploration, Chicano culture truly came into being after the Mexican American War, when many Mexicans found their home suddenly under the red, white, and blue flag. Since its inception, Chicano literature has helped an entire culture forge its identity by letting its stories be told. Today, we'd like to explore some of voices of the Chicano literary tradition.

     
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