blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Maybe you visited the Bahamas on a recent vacation. Or perhaps you’ve enrolled in a postcolonial literature course. Whatever the reason, we’re excited anytime readers want to begin collecting the complicated classics of Caribbean literature. Why are the classics complicated, you ask? In short, the Caribbean is a fluid region that has been shaped by many different cultural practices from various regions of the globe. Given that the islands in this part of the world have been subject to colonization by numerous European nations while also playing a key geographic role in the transatlantic slave trade, the layers of Caribbean literary history are deeply entwined in histories of imperialism and violence. Where should you begin if you want to start a collection of literature from this region? We’ll suggest a couple writers and titles to get you started.

When one reads Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854)—which finds Thoreau hosting frequent visitors in a cabin beside a tourist-infested lake—it’s easy to imagine that the author might not be well-suited to real, honest-to-goodness solitude. When one reads Annie Dillard, by contrast, it’s hard to imagine her enjoying anything but solitude. While Dillard—who gained significant acclaim as a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction pursuant to the publication of such works as The Writing Life (1989) and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)—essentially reprises Thoreau’s mission of transcendent solitude in nature with the latter book of nonfiction, her unique and fiery prose imbues all that she sees with fleeting snatches of the divine. This ability has gained her a surprising epithet (‘One of the foremost horror writers of the 20th century’) and, less surprisingly, a devoted readership.

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry...Is there any other way?”

That’s Emily Dickinson in the late 1870s talking about how she defines that inexplicable moment when a poem moves you—when a piece of poetry elicits an emotional, non-rational, sometimes transcendent response as you subconsciously identify with an image, a moment, a phrase, a scene. It’s an experience that’s often difficult to intellectualize and describe, and sadly, one that many casual readers can’t easily access as poetry is pushed more and more to the fringes of contemporary publishing, relegating it to near niche status.

Even when they’re successful, some writers prefer to keep their day jobs. For example, Wallace Stevens was an executive at a Connecticut insurance company, and he believed that work kept the poetic spirit properly anchored. Goethe worked as an enthusiastic civil servant and administrator long after the smashing success of Young Werther. To this camp also belongs Geoffrey Chaucer, who stayed gainfully employed despite being a prolific poet. Chaucer’s day job, however, was far from the typical cubical-and-office grind. He worked in the court of the King.

Rarely can a work be called “unique” and truly earn that qualifier. The Golden Notebook is that unicorn in literature that is recognized as one of a kind, or as the Oxford Companion to English Literature terms it, "inner space fiction." It's a novel in four parts, (or is it one?) that reflect the narrator’s feelings about communism, and include a novel within a novel, a personal diary, and then the final depiction wherein the previous three become one, glorious, Golden Notebook. Each part is revisited, overlapping with one another, and the whole thing is a reading experience like no other.

On April 15, 1931, Tomas Gösta Tranströmer was born in Stockholm, Sweden. Although he passed away in March of last year, this Nobel Prize-wining poet’s legacy lives on in the books and broadsides that reflect a style described in his New York Times obituary of “deceptively spare language, crystalline descriptions of natural beauty, and explorations of the mysteries of identity and creativity.” We’d like to take the opportunity to celebrate Tranströmer’s birthday by looking into some of his most famous (and most collectible) works.

In the last 30 or 40 years, it’s become increasingly rare for a poet to achieve the same massive readerships as poets in the early part of the 20th Century. Yet the work of one 20th Century poet at the height of his popularity accounted for nearly 2/3 of all the book sales of living poets, according to the BBC.  

That poet was Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish national treasure and 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature winner whose work has influenced countless poets, writers, critics, and intellectuals worldwide. Born in Northern Ireland, writer Robert Lowell called Heaney “the most important Irish poet since Yeats.” During his long, illustrious career, he received nearly every prestigious literary award or honor in the English speaking world and taught at some of the world’s finest colleges and universities, including Harvard, Oxford, and a host of others.  

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby gives us one of the most illustrious characters in fiction, Jay Gatsby. Narrated by character Nick Carroway, the novel explores issues of class, decadence, and obsession in the jazz-soaked Roaring Twenties. Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has sold over twenty-five million copies. It has been adapted into plays, ballets, an opera, a radio show, and seven movies, most notably the 2013 Baz Lurhman film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey MacGuire, and Carey Mulligan. Francis Cugat's iconic blue cover art can be found on t-shirts, mugs, and tote bags. The novel is found on syllabi in high schools and colleges alike and is frequently explored by scholars and academics. The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the author's greatest contribution to literature, and it is widely believed to be the quintessential Great American Novel.However, when it was first published, The Great Gatsby was a flop.

Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Bean Trees (1988) and Prodigal Summer (2000), has developed a reputation as one of the most compelling, politically-charged authors of the last 50 years. After a life of activism and travel that included a few childhood years living in the Congo, as well as a significant amount of scientific training, Kingsolver ultimately found much success (and a place on Oprah’s Book Club) with her 1998 novel The Poisonwood Bible, which depicts characters whose lives are impacted by the political strife of the Belgian Congo in the 1960s. Here are some interesting facts about her.  

Donald Barthelme is best known for his surreal and postmodern short fiction and novels which he published from the 196os through the 1980s. His style has been described as concise and humorous and he as a master of irony and form. His father disapproved of the postmodern attitudes Barthelme's works embody to the extent that his novels, The King and The Dead Father, are inspired by their strained relationship. In his lifetime, he published four novels and over one hundred short stories.