American Writing Today: Its Independence and Vigor

Table of contents

• Title Page iii
• Acknowledgments v
• Preface vii
• Contents xiii
• Introduction xvii
• Part 1. Poetry and Drama 1
• The Rising Generation 3
• Poetic Background - A Period of Consolidation 8
• Thirty Years of Theatrical Enterprise 23
• Part 2. Critical Appreciation 31
• Literary Criticism - The Minds Behind the Written Word 33
• The Living American Classics 45
• The Passing of English Influence 65
• The Southern Revival - A Land and its Interpreters 71
• Rival Approaches to History - Gentlemen Versus Players 80
• Negro Writing - A Literature of Protest 96
• Part 3. Intellectual Opinion 111
• Authorized and Revised Versions - The Movement of History in the United States 113
• Philosophical Speculation 124
• Philosophical Speculation 129
• The Two Cities 134
• Part 4. The Craft of Fiction 155
• A Search for the Conscience of a People 157
• American Fiction Since the First World War 163
• The Art of the Short Story 176
• Part 5. Modes of Feeling 193
• Castles and Culture - America and the Gothic Tradition 195
• Three Vision - The traditions of Innocense and Horror 202
• Place and Time - The Southern Writer's Inheritance 212
• The Dominant Theme of Violence - Man Versus Nature and Society 220
• Prophets Without Honor? - The Public Status of American Writers 230
• The Common Reader's Choice 238
• Part 6. Literary Methods 245
• The Serious Literary Review 247
• Book Reviewing for Middle-brows 253
• Publishing Problems and Responsibilities 259
• Paperback Publishing 266
• Religious Book Publishing 271
• Printing and Production 278
• Science as Friend of the Printer 281
• Part 7. Communications 289
• Obstacles to the Free Flow Of Books 291
• Radio, Television, and the Writer 295
• The American Press 300
• The Comic Strip in American Life 314
• Part 8. Opinions at the Time 321
• Joaquin Miller 323
• Mr. Pounds as Critic 332
• Smoke and Steel: The Poetry of Carl Sandburg 335
• American Dramatist: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill 341
• The American Frontier 348
• Sherwood Anderson 351
• Edwin Arlington Robinson 354
• John Crowe Ransom 357
• The Great Gatsby 360
• An American Tragedy 362
• Manhattan Transfer 364
• The Poems of Ezra Pound 365
• Dodsworth 368
• A Farewell to Arms 370
• Soldier's Pay 372
• Robert Frost's Poems 377
• Lincoln Steffens 380
• Man and the Machine 382
• Marianne Moore's Poems 387
• Allen Tate's Poems 391
• The Trouble with Tigers 393
• The Theory of Inquire 395
• Grapes of Wrath 398
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider 399
• The Ides of March 402
• American Unification 403
• Index 407
• Colophon 434

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