A New Literary History of America

To kill time until Larry Kramer finishes his monumental history The American People (said to be twenty years in the making and ranging from the Stone Age to the present) you can read this just published 1,128 page anthology of over 200 all new essays, A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Spanning 1507 to 2008, topics cover Spanish explorers, the Salem witch trials, and Jefferson's first inaugural address to Alcoholics Anonymous, Malcolm X, and Maya Lin. Obvious icons get their due: Huck Finn, Henry Ford, Jay Gatsby, Mickey Mouse. Essays on Melville and Henry James avoid their sexuality, but Angus Fletcher does acknowledge the homoeroticism throughout Walt Whitman's work. I read the four gay essays, each of which was particularly smart.

Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams

William J. Mann on Some Like It Hot

Maureen McLane on Adrienne Rich

Sarah Bynum on Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story

Because this is a literary history of America rather than a history of literary America, the absence of Stonewall or Aids is glaring. The ratio of essayists is more balanced but their subjects skew too male. And the index is unhelpful; it's more of a concordance. The entry for "Jews" lists exactly five pages excluding most of the Jewish authors discussed like Saul Bellow. Despite the excellent essays above, there's no entry for lesbian or gay or homosexuality or sexuality. Included, but hard to find.

You can read the editors' introduction here.

Comments

[fraught]

I did not know that Jefferson's first inaugural was given to a group of AA members. It's very interesting that Malcolm X and Maya Lin were in that same group. That's one meeting I wish I had gone to.;)

[edoliver]

To kill time until Larry Kramer finishes his monumental history....

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity-- Thoreau

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