The Modernist Period (1910-1945)

Color

A collection of poetry by African-American poet, Countee Cullen. His first published collection of poetry. Discusses heavy topics regarding race and the distance of ones heritage from their motherland and how it is lost.

The Black Christ

A collection of poetry by African-American poet, Countee Cullen. Published at the height of his career, the poems examine the relationship of faith and justice among African Americans. In some of the poems, Cullen equates the suffering of Christ in his crucifixion and the suffering of African Americans.

Copper Sun

A collection of poetry by African-American poet, Countee Cullen. The collection examines the sense of love, particularly a love or unity between white and black people. In some poems, love is ominous and leads to death. However, in general, the love extends not only to people but to natural elements like plants, trees, etc.

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers In red weather. The poem's message is fairly simple. Stevens believed that poetry and literature in general had the ability to excite and inspire. He believed that the imagination was an overlooked tool with the innate capability of distinguishing a mundane life (i.e. the lives of those who wore 'white night gowns' to bed) from an exciting and fulfilling one. Essentially, he believed that the only limit on a person's life was a weak imagination.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A novel and the best known work by, African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Has come to be regarded as a seminal work in both African-American literature and women's literature. TIME included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. The main character Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her early forties, tells the story of her life to her best friend Pheoby Watson through an extended flashback. Readers receive the story of her life in three major periods corresponding to her marriages to three very different men. The flashback in the book begins with Janie's sexual awakening which she compares to a pear blossom in spring. Not long after, Janie allows a local boy, Johnny Taylor, to kiss her, which Janie's grandmother, Nanny, witnesses. Nanny is an elderly woman who, as a slave, was raped by her owner and gave birth to a mixed-race daughter Leafy. Nanny escaped from her jealous mistress and found a good home after the end of the American Civil War. Nanny tried to create a good life for her daughter, but Leafy was raped by her school teacher and became pregnant with Janie. Shortly after Janie's birth, Leafy began to drink and stay out at night. Eventually, she ran away, leaving her daughter Janie with Nanny. Nanny, afraid Janie's life may follow Leafy's or her own, transfers all the hopes she had for Leafy to Janie and arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older farmer looking for a wife. Although Janie is not interested in either Logan or marriage, her grandmother wants her to have the stability she never had; legal marriage to Killicks, Nanny believes, will give Janie opportunities. Nanny feels that Janie will be unable to take care of herself, so she must marry a man who will take care of her.[11] Janie marries Logan Killicks. Janie's image of the pear tree causes her to imagine that marriage must involve love—in Janie's pear tree scene, she sees bees pollinating a pear tree and believes that marriage is the human equivalent to this natural process. However, Killicks wants a domestic helper rather than a lover or partner; he thinks Janie does not do enough around the farm and that she is ungrateful. Janie speaks to Nanny about how she feels, but Nanny, too, accuses her of being spoiled. And so, Janie's idea of the pear tree is tarnished. Soon afterward, Nanny dies. Unhappy, disillusioned, and lonely, Janie chooses to leave Killicks and runs off with the glib Jody (Joe) Starks, who takes her to Eatonville, Florida. Finding the small town residents unambitious, Starks arranges to buy more land, establishes a general store which he has built by local residents, and is soon elected as mayor of the town. Janie soon realises that Starks wants her as a trophy wife, to reinforce his powerful position in town. He asks her to run the store, but forbids her from participating in the substantial social life that occurs on the store's front porch. He treats her as his property, controlling what she wears and says, and criticizes her mistakes. He also begins to strike her occasionally. As time passes, he teases her in public about being old, even though she is only in her thirties. Eventually, she cannot bear it and snaps back at Joe to look at himself. Starks hits her as hard as he can. Later, he gets sick, and refuses to let Janie see him. He does not realize that he has a failing kidney, a likely fatal illness. When Janie learns that he might die, she goes to talk to him. She tells him who she really is and says that he never knew because he would not let her be free. After Starks dies, Janie becomes financially independent through his estate. She is beset with suitors, some of whom are men of some means or have prestigious occupations, and all of whom she turns down. She meets a young drifter and gambler named Vergible Woods who goes by the name "Tea Cake". Tea Cake plays the guitar for her and initially treats her with kindness and respect. At first Janie is doubtful of his affections, as she is older and has wealth, but eventually falls in love with him. Deciding to run away with him, Janie has a friend look after the store, and the two head to Jacksonville to marry. They move to the Everglades region ("the muck") where they find work planting and harvesting beans. While their relationship has its ups and downs, including mutual bouts of jealousy and an episode in which Tea Cake whips Janie in order to demonstrate his possession of her, Janie realizes she now has the marriage with love that she's always wanted; her image of the pear tree blossom is revived. However, the area is hit by the great Okeechobee hurricane, and in the chaos of surviving, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog while saving Janie from drowning, and he contracts the disease. While the disease runs its course, he becomes increasingly jealous and unpredictable despite Janie's best efforts. He ultimately tries to shoot Janie with his pistol, and she is forced to shoot him first with a rifle in self-defense. She is charged with murder. At the trial, Tea Cake's black male friends show up to oppose her, but a group of local white women arrive to support Janie. The all-white jury acquits Janie, and she gives Tea Cake a lavish funeral. Tea Cake's friends are apologetic and forgive her, wanting her to remain in the Everglades. However, she decides to return to Eatonville. As she expected, the residents gossip about her when she arrives back in town. The story ends where it started, and Janie finishes telling her story to Pheoby.

Cane

A novel by African American, Harlem Renaissance poet and novelist Jean Toomer. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes(short, descriptive passage) revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been classified as a composite novel or as a short story cycle.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

A novel by African-American Harlem Renaissance author James Weldon Johnson. the novel is the account of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man," living in post-Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lives through a variety of experiences, including witnessing a lynching, that convince him to "pass" as white to secure his safety and advancement, but he feels as if he has given up his dream of "glorifying" the black race by composing ragtime music.

Passing

A novel by African-American author Nella Larsen. Set primarily in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the story centers on the reunion of two childhood friends. The title refers to the practice of "racial passing"-[When a person is accepted in multiple racial groups], and is a key element of the novel. The story is written as a third person narrative from the perspective of Irene Redfield, a mixed-race woman who lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Part One of the book, titled "Encounter," opens with Irene receiving a letter from Clare Kendry, causing her to recall a chance encounter she had had with her, at the roof restaurant of the Drayton Hotel in Chicago, during a brief stay in the city. The women grew up together but lost touch when Clare's white father died and she was taken to live with her two paternal white aunts. Irene learns that Clare "passes" for white, living primarily in Europe with her unsuspecting, rich, white husband and their daughter. Although Irene tries to avoid further engagement with Clare, she never is able to fully exclude her from her life as she later visits Clare for tea along with another childhood friend, Gertrude Martin. Toward the end of the visit, Clare's white husband John (Jack) Bellew arrives. Unaware that all three women are black, Jack expresses some very racist views and makes the women uneasy. However, the women play along in an effort to maintain Clare's secret identity. Afterward, Irene and Gertrude decide that Clare's situation is too dangerous for them to continue associating with her and are uncomfortable around Clare and her husband. Irene receives a letter of apology from Clare but destroys it in her quest to try and forget about Clare and get her out of her life. Instead Irene wants to focus on her life with her husband, Brian, and her two sons, Theodore and Brian Jr.. Part Two of the book, "Re-encounter," returns to the present, with Irene having received the new letter from Clare. After Irene ignores Clare's letter, Clare visits in person so Irene reluctantly agrees to see her. When it is brought up that Irene serves on the committee for the "Negro Welfare League" (NWL) Clare invites herself to their upcoming dance despite Irene's advice against it for fear that Jack will find out. Clare attends the dance and enjoys herself without her husband finding out, which encourages her to continue spending time in Harlem. Irene and Clare resume their childhood companionship, and Clare frequently visits Irene's home. The third and final part of the novel begins before Christmas, as Irene's relationship with her husband has become increasingly fraught. Aware of her friend's appeal, Irene becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair with Clare. During a shopping trip with her visibly black friend Felise Freeland, Irene encounters Jack, who becomes aware of her and, by extension, Clare's, racial status. Irene considers warning Clare about Jack's new-found knowledge but decides against it, worried that the pair's divorce might encourage her husband to leave her for Clare. Later, Clare accompanies Irene and Brian to a party hosted by Felise. The gathering is interrupted by Jack, who accuses Clare of being a "damned dirty ******!" Irene rushes to Clare, who is standing by an open window. Suddenly, Clare falls out of the window from the top floor of the building to the ground below, where she is pronounced dead by the guests who eventually gather at the site. Whether she has fallen accidentally, was pushed by either Irene or Bellew, or committed suicide, is unclear. The book ends with Irene's fragmented anguish at Clare's death.

Native Son

A novel by African-American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. Book One: Fear Bigger Thomas awakens in a dark, small room to the sound of the alarm clock. He lives in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears. The room turns into a maelstrom, and after a violent chase, Bigger claims the life of the animal with an iron skillet and terrorizes Vera with the dead rodent. Vera faints, and Mrs. Thomas scolds Bigger, who hates his family because they suffer and he cannot do anything about it. That evening, Bigger has to see Mr. Dalton for a new job. Bigger's family depends on him. He would like to leave his responsibilities forever, but when he thinks of what to do, he only sees a blank wall. Bigger walks to the poolroom and meets his friend, Gus. Bigger tells him that every time he thinks about whites, he feels something terrible will happen to him. They meet other friends, G.H. and Jack, and plan a robbery of the white wealth. They are all afraid of attacking and stealing from a white man, but none of them wants to admit his concerns. Before the robbery, Bigger and Jack go to the movies. They are attracted to the world of wealthy whites in the newsreel and feel strangely moved by the tom-toms and the primitive black people in the film, but they also feel they are equal to those worlds. After the film, Bigger returns to the poolroom and attacks Gus violently, forcing him to lick his blade in a demeaning way to hide Bigger's own cowardice. The fight ends any chance of the robbery's occurring, and Bigger is obscurely conscious that he has done this intentionally. When he finally gets the job, Bigger does not know how to behave in Dalton's large and luxurious house. Mr. Dalton and his blind wife use strange words. They try to be kind to Bigger, but they actually make him very uncomfortable; Bigger does not know what they expect of him. Then their daughter, Mary, enters the room, asks Bigger why he does not belong to a union, and calls her father a "capitalist". Bigger does not know that word and is even more confused and afraid to lose the job. After the conversation, Peggy, an Irish cook, takes Bigger to his room and tells him the Daltons are a nice family, but he must avoid Mary's Communist friends. Bigger has never had a room for himself before. That night, he drives Mary around and meets her Communist boyfriend Jan. Throughout the evening, Jan and Mary talk to Bigger, oblige him to take them to the diner where his friends are, invite him to sit at their table, and tell him to call them by their first names. Bigger does not know how to respond to their requests and becomes very frustrated, as he is simply their chauffeur for the night. At the diner, they buy a bottle of rum. Bigger drives throughout Washington Park, and Jan and Mary drink the rum and make out in the back seat. Jan and Mary part, but Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her bedroom when they arrive home. He is terrified someone will see him with her in his arms; however, he cannot resist the temptation of the forbidden, and he kisses her. Just then, the bedroom door opens, and Mrs. Dalton enters. Bigger knows she is blind but is terrified she will sense him there. He silences Mary by pressing a pillow into her face. Mary claws at Bigger's hands while Mrs. Dalton is in the room, trying to alert Bigger that she cannot breathe. Mrs. Dalton approaches the bed, smells alcohol in the air, scolds her daughter, and leaves. As Bigger removes the pillow, he realizes that Mary has suffocated. Bigger starts thinking frantically, and decides he will tell everyone that Jan, her Communist boyfriend, took Mary into the house that night. Thinking it will be better if Mary disappears and everyone thinks she has left Chicago, he decides in desperation to burn her body in the house's furnace. Her body would not originally fit through the furnace opening, but after decapitating it, Bigger finally manages to put the corpse inside. He adds extra coal to the furnace, leaves the corpse to burn, and goes home. Book Two: Flight Bigger's current girlfriend Bessie suspects him of having done something to Mary. Bigger goes back to work. Mr. Dalton has called a private detective, Mr. Britten. Britten interrogates Bigger accusingly, but Dalton vouches for Bigger. Bigger relates the events of the previous evening in a way calculated to throw suspicion on Jan, knowing Mr. Dalton dislikes Jan because Jan is a Communist. When Britten finds Jan, he puts the boy and Bigger in the same room and confronts them with their conflicting stories. Jan is surprised by Bigger's story but offers him help. Bigger storms away from the Daltons'. He decides to write a false kidnapping note when he discovers Mr. Dalton owns the rat-infested flat Bigger's family rents. Bigger slips the note under the Daltons' front door and then returns to his room. When the Daltons receive the note, they contact the police, who take over the investigation from Britten, and journalists soon arrive at the house. Bigger is afraid, but he does not want to leave. In the afternoon, he is ordered to take the ashes out of the furnace and make a new fire. He is terrified and starts poking the ashes with the shovel until the whole room is full of smoke. Furious, one of the journalists takes the shovel and pushes Bigger aside. He immediately finds the remains of Mary's bones and an earring in the furnace, and Bigger flees. Bigger goes directly to Bessie and tells her the whole story. Bessie realizes that white people will think he raped the girl before killing her. They leave together, but Bigger has to drag Bessie around because she is paralyzed by fear. When they lie down together in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides he has to kill her in her sleep. He hits Bessie on the head with a brick before throwing her through a window and into an air shaft. He quickly realizes that the only money he had was in her pocket. Bigger runs through the city. He sees newspaper headlines concerning the crime and overhears different conversations about it. Whites hate him and blacks hate him because he brought shame on the black race. After a wild chase over the rooftops of the city, the police catch him. Book Three: Fate During his first few days in prison, Bigger does not eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Then Jan comes to visit him. He says Bigger has taught him a lot about black-white relationships and offers him the help of a Communist lawyer named Boris Max. In the long hours Max and Bigger spend hours talking, Bigger starts understanding his relationships with his family and with the world. He acknowledges his fury, his need for a future, and his wish for a meaningful life. He reconsiders his attitudes about white people, whether they are aggressive like Britten, or accepting like Jan. Bigger is found guilty in front of the court and sentenced to death for murder. However, at the end of the novel, he appears to come to terms with his fate.

The Outsider

A novel by African-American author Richard Wright. His second installment in a story of epic proportions, a complex master narrative to show American racism in raw and ugly terms. The kind of racism that Wright knew and experienced, a racism from which most black people of his own time could not escape, remained the central element in his fiction. The novel's central character, symbolically named Cross Damon, represents the 20th century man in frenzied pursuit of freedom. Cross is an intellectual Negro, the product of a culture which rejects him. He is further alienated by his "habit of incessant reflection", his feeling that the experiences and actions of his life have so far taken place without his free assent, and a profound conviction that there must be more to life, some meaning and justification which have hitherto eluded him. When Cross is introduced (in "Book One: Dread") he is drinking too much, partly in an effort to forget his problems (of which he has many) but mostly to deaden the pain caused by his urgent and frustrated sense of life. There is an accident in which he is reported dead and so he sets out to create his own identity, and thus, he hopes, to discover truth. This search for the absolute compels him to commit four murders and ends in his despair and violent death. En route, he encounters totalitarianism in its most-likely-to-succeed form, Communism. Though he agrees with these other "outsiders" that power is the central reality of society and that "man is nothing in particular", he is outraged by their acceptance and cynical exploitation of these "facts". "That's enough", he screams before he kills a Communist who has just told him that there is no more to life. Having rejected religion, the past and present organization of society, the proposed totalitarian alternative and the kindred uncontrollable violence of his own behavior as a "free" man, Cross abandons ideas and pins his last hope on love. But his mistress commits suicide when she sees him as he is. There follows a chapter in which the Law, personified by a hunchbacked district attorney who understands Cross Damon, convicts him of a crime and condemns him, but is powerless to give his life significance by punishment. After this Cross is murdered. The district attorney comes to his death bed and asks how was life and Cross dies murmuring, "It was horrible."

Poetry

A poem by a female American Pulitzer Prize winning, Modernist poet, Marianne Moore. Considered her most famous poem.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

A poem by ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet, T.S. Eliot. His first professionally published poem. Eliot narrates the experience using the "stream of consciousness" technique developed by his fellow Modernist writers. The poem, described as a "drama of literary anguish", is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man, stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment".

The Hollow Men

A poem by ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet, T.S. Eliot. Seems to follow the otherworldly journey of the spiritually dead. These "hollow men" have the realization, humility and acknowledgement of their guilt and their status as broken, lost souls. The poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines of which the last four are "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English": This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Broken Tower

A poem by homosexual, modernist poet, Hart Crane. His last published poem, widely acknowledged as on of the best poems. Semi-biographical of Crane's first heterosexual affair with Peggy Cowley; estranged wife of Malcolm Cowley.

Sunday Morning

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, . . . . And in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

The Flowering of the Rod

Third poetry book of her "Trilogy" by the female Imagist-poet, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle).

Gertrude Stein

(1874-1946) A lesbian American Modernist novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in the US, but spent the remainder of her adult life in France. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art would meet. Published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas". Two quotes from her works have become widely known: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" and "there is no there there" Her books include: "Q.E.D, Fernhurst, Three Lives, The Making of Americans, and Tender Buttons". Collected cubist paintings, especially those of Picasso, the largest visual arts influence on her literary work is that of Cézanne. Died after stomach cancer surgery at 72.

James Weldon Johnson

(1871-1938) An African-American educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, civil rights activist, and Harlem Renaissance author. Best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Notable works include: "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, God's Trombones, and Along This Way." Died at 67 from his car being struck by a train.

Amy Lowell

(1874-1925) A female American poet. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Was a short, fat lesbian. Erza Pound was a major influence and critic of her work. Died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 51. She was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for, "What's O'Clock."

Robert Frost

(1874-1963) An American poet. He received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. Considered a New England regionalist poet. Notable works include: New Hampshire: "A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes, Collected Poems, A Further Range, and A Witness Tree." Died, at 88, from complications after prostate surgery.

Sherwood Anderson

(1876-1941) A Self-educated American Modernist novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Was a successful copywriter and business owner in Ohio. Had a nervous breakdown, abandoned his family and business to become a writer. His most enduring work is "Winesburg, Ohio", which launched his career. Though his books sold reasonably well, "Dark Laughter" was the only bestseller of his career. Died on a cruise to South America at 64.

Susan Glaspell

(1876-1948) a female American-modernist-playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. Together with, her husband, George Cram Cook she founded the Provincetown Players; the first modern American theatre company. Her stories are often in the Midwest, these semi-autobiographical tales typically explore contemporary social issues, such as gender, ethics, and dissent, while featuring deep, sympathetic characters who make principled stands. Her play, "Alison's House" earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Additional, popular for her one-act play, "Trifles". Died of viral pneumonia at 72.

Carl Sandburg

(1878-1967) An American poet, writer, and Chicago Daily News journalist. Considered a regional poet of Chicago. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry, "The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg and Corn Huskers," and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Wallace Stevens

(1879-1955) An American Modernist poet. Spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his "Collected Poems" in 1955. Notable works include: "The Auroras of Autumn" "Anecdote of the Jar" "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" "The Idea of Order at Key West" "Sunday Morning" "The Snow Man" "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

William Carlos Williams

(1883-1963) An American Modernist poet and physician. Had a long career as a physician practicing both pediatrics and general medicine. Won the first National Book Award for Poetry for his epic poem, "Paterson." He was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962)" Notable works include: "The Red Wheelbarrow" "Spring and All"

Ezra Pound

(1885-1972) An American Modernist poet, critic, and antisemite. Lived much of his life in Europe. During World War II, he was paid by the Italian government to make hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jews, as a result of which he was arrested in 1945 by American forces on charges of treason. He spent months in detention, which triggered a mental breakdown. The following year he was deemed unfit to stand trial, and was incarcerated in St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., for over 12 years. His works include: "Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and The Cantos."

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

(1886-1961) A female American poet associated with the early 20th century Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. From 1916-17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. During the First World War, H.D. suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to the poet Richard Aldington,[1] and these events weighed heavily on her later poetry. She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to emote a particular feeling or mood. She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality, her residual war trauma, her writing, and her spiritual experiences. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus became an icon for both the LGBT rights and feminist movements during the 1970s and 1980s. First book of poetry was titled, "Sea Garden." Some of her later works include: "The Walls Do Not Fall, Tribute to the Angels, and The Flowering of the Rod."

Marianne Moore

(1887-1972) A female American Pulitzer Prize winning, Modernist poet. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Acquaintance of other popular poets (H.D., Wallace Stevens, William Carlos William, etc.) In 1951, her "Collected Poems" won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize. Editor of the journal Dial. Her most famous poem is entitled, "Poetry".

Eugene O'Neill

(1888-1953) An American Modernist playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His masterpiece is considered, "Long Day's Journey into Night". Involved with Susan Glaspell's Provincetown Players. His first published play, "Beyond the Horizon"; opened on Broadway to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His best-known plays include: "Anna Christie, Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra", and his only well-known comedy, "Ah, Wilderness!". Suffered from severe Parkinson's disease and died in a hotel room at 65.

T.S. Eliot

(1888-1965) An ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet. He moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. Became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American passport. Notable Poems: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets."

Claude McKay

(1889-1948) A Harlem Renaissance writer and poet. Born in Jamaica, went to the USA to study and eventually went to Harlem (became an American citizen in 1940). Notable novel: "Home to Harlem".

Katherine Anne Porter

(1890-1980) A female American Modernist journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her only novel, "Ship of Fools" was a best-selling novel; but her short stories received more critical acclaim. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for, "The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter". She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.

Zora Neale Hurston

(1891-1960) An African-American female author of African-American literature and anthropologist, who portrayed racial struggles in the early 20th century American South, and published research on Haitian voodoo. Her most popular novel being, "Their Eyes Were Watching God". Many of her stories were set in Eatonville, Florida; her hometown. While in New York she became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Nella Larsen

(1891-1964) An African-American novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels, "Quicksand and Passing." Her works have been the subjects of numerous academic studies, and she is now widely lauded as "not only the premier novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, but also an important figure in American modernism."

Elmer Rice

(1892 -1967) An American Modernist playwright. He is best known for his plays "The Adding Machine" and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, "Street Scene". Of his later plays, the most successful was the fantasy "Dream Girl". Died of pneumonia after suffering a heart attack at 74.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

(1892-1950) A female Pulitzer Prize winning, Modernist poet. Third woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Known for her feminist activism. Used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. Poems include: "I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently", "I, Being Born Woman and Distressed."

E. E. Cummings

(1894-1962) A Modernist poet and painter. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. Much of his work has original syntax and uses lower case spellings for poetic expression. His use of lower case extended to rendering even the personal pronoun I as i, as in the phrase "i shall go". Also, known for his controversial subject matter; as he wrote numerous erotic poems and sometimes included ethnic slurs in his writing. He taught briefly at Harvard University in the 1950s. First published work was a collection of poems, "Tulips and Chimneys".

Jean Toomer

(1894-1967) An African American, Harlem Renaissance poet and novelist. His first book, "Cane", is considered by many to be his most significant.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

(1896-1940) An American fiction writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. An alcoholic since college, became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking which would undermine his health by the late 1930s. Died of a heart attack at age 44.

William Faulkner

(1897-1962) An American writer and Nobel Prize winner from Oxford, Mississippi. Primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. He is one of the most celebrated writers in American and Southern literature. Two of his works, "A Fable" and his last novel "The Reivers," won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other notable works include, "The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom Absalom, and A Rose for Emily." Suffered a serious injury in a fall from his horse, which led to thrombosis. Led up to a fatal heart attack at 64.

Hart Crane

(1899-1932) A homosexual, modernist poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, he wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. Tumultuous and unstable lifestyle lead to suicide; by throwing himself overboard and drowning. Notable works: "The Bridge" and "The Broken Tower."

Ernest Hemingway

(1899-1961) An American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Worked for The Kansas City Star and later enlisted as an ambulance driver in WW1. Popular for His debut novel, "The Sun Also Rises," His wartime experiences novel, "A Farewell to Arms," His Spanish Civil War novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Old Man and the Sea." At 61 committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with shotgun.

Sterling Brown

(1901-1989) A black professor, poet, and literary critic of the Harlem Renaissance. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a full professor at Howard University for most of his career. His first book of poetry was titled, "Southern Road."

Langston Hughes

(1902-1967) An african american poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Originally from Joplin, Missouri; He moved to New York City where he made his career. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. Connected to the communist party (like others in the group) because of it's promotion of equality His first book of poetry was titled, "The Weary Blues".

John Steinbeck

(1902-1968) A regionalist Nobel Prize winning author. Most of his work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. He frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists. He is widely known for the comic novels, "Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row," the multi-generation epic, "East of Eden," and the novellas "Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony." "The Grapes of Wrath", is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. It won the Pulitzer Prize and sold 14 million copies. Died from heart disease and heart failure at 66.

Countee Cullen

(1903-1946) An African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. He excelled academically at the school graduated New York University(NYU), and Harvard. Major works include: "Color, The Black Christ, and Copper Sun."

Richard Wright

(1908-1960) An African-American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction during the Harlem Renaissance. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence in the South and the North. Joined the Communist Party. Notable works include: "Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, Black Boy, and The Outsider." Died of a heart attack at 52.

God's Trombones

A book of poems by African-American Harlem Renaissance author James Weldon Johnson. The book consists of seven poems.

The Weary Blues

A book of poetry by african american poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes. Takes place at an old Harlem bar on Lenox Avenue. There is a piano player playing the blues. As he plays, the speaker observes his body movement and the tone of his voice. Throughout the poem, several literary devices are used to guide the reader through the mixture of emotions the blues player is feeling. The vivid imagery and use of language gives the reader a more personal glimpse into the life of the man playing the blues.

Home to Harlem

A Novel by Harlem Renaissance writer and poet, Claude McKay. Was a best-seller that was written about how people lived in Harlem at the time. It was written to help readers understand African American identity, but came under fire from some critics, like W.E.B. du Bois, for its depictions.

As I Lay Dying

A Southern Gothic novel by, American author William Faulkner. Faulkner's fifth novel overall, said to have been written from midnight to 4AM over the course of 6 weeks. It is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th-century literature. The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the book opens, Addie is alive, though in ill health. Addie and others expect her to die soon, and she sits at a window watching as her firstborn, Cash, builds her coffin. Anse, Addie's husband, waits on the porch, while their daughter, Dewey Dell, fans her mother in the July heat. The night after Addie dies a heavy rainstorm sets in; rivers rise and wash out bridges the family will need to cross to get to Jefferson. The family's trek by wagon begins, with Addie's non-embalmed body in the coffin. Along the way, Anse and the five children encounter various difficulties. Anse frequently rejects any offers of assistance, including meals or lodging, so at times the family goes hungry and sleeps in barns. At other times he refuses to accept loans from people, claiming he wishes to "be beholden to no man", thus manipulating the would-be-lender into giving him charity as a gift not to be repaid. Jewel, Addie's middle child, tries to leave his dysfunctional family, yet cannot turn his back on them through the trials. Cash breaks a leg and winds up riding atop the coffin. He refuses to admit to any discomfort, but the family eventually puts a makeshift cast of concrete on his leg. Twice, the family almost loses Addie's coffin — first, while crossing a river on a washed-out bridge (two mules are lost), and second, when a fire of suspicious origin starts in the barn where the coffin is being stored for a night. After nine days, the family finally arrives in Jefferson, where the stench from the coffin is quickly smelled by the townspeople. In town, family members have different items of business to take care of. Cash's broken leg needs attention. Dewey Dell, for the second time in the novel, goes to a pharmacy, trying to obtain an abortion that she does not know how to ask for. First, though, Anse wants to borrow some shovels to bury Addie, because that was the purpose of the trip and the family should be together for that. Before that happens, however, Darl, the second eldest, is seized for the arson of the barn and sent to the Mississippi State Insane Asylum in Jackson. With Addie only just buried, Anse forces Dewey Dell to give up her money, which he spends on getting "new teeth", and marries the woman from whom he borrowed the spades.

Light in August

A Southern gothic novel by William Faulkner. The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young pregnant white woman from Doane's Mill, Alabama, who is trying to find Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. He has been fired from his job at Doane's Mill and moved to Mississippi, promising to send word to her when he has a new job. Not hearing from Burch and harassed by her older brother for her illegitimate pregnancy, Lena walks and hitchhikes to Jefferson, Mississippi, a town in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County. There she expects to find Lucas working at another planing mill, ready to marry her. Those who help her along her four-week trek are skeptical that Lucas Burch will be found, or that he will keep his promise when she catches up with him. When she arrives in Jefferson, Lucas is there, but he has changed his name to Joe Brown. Looking for Lucas, sweet, trusting Lena meets shy, mild-mannered Byron Bunch, who falls in love with Lena but feels honor-bound to help her find Joe Brown. Thoughtful and quietly religious, Byron is superior to Brown in every way but his shyness prevents him from revealing his feelings to Lena. The novel then switches to the second plot strand, the story of Lucas Burch/Joe Brown's partner Joe Christmas. The surly, psychopathic Christmas has been on the run for years, ever since presumably killing his strict Methodist adopted father. Although he has light skin, Christmas suspects that he is of African American ancestry. Consumed with rage, he is a bitter outcast who wanders between black and white society, constantly provoking fights with blacks and whites alike. Christmas comes to Jefferson three years prior to the central events of the novel and gets a job at the mill where Byron, and later Joe Brown, works. The job at the mill is a cover for Christmas's bootlegging operation, which is illegal under Prohibition. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, an older woman who descended from a formerly powerful abolitionist family whom the town despises as carpetbaggers. Though their relationship is passionate at first, Joanna begins menopause and turns to religion, which frustrates and angers Christmas. At the end of her relationship with Christmas, Joanna tries to force him, at gunpoint, to kneel and pray. Joanna is murdered soon after: her throat is slit and she is nearly decapitated. The novel leaves readers uncertain whether Joe Christmas or Joe Brown is the murderer. Brown is Christmas' business partner in bootlegging and is leaving Joanna's burning house when a passing farmer stops to investigate and pull Joanna's body from the fire. The sheriff at first suspects Joe Brown, but initiates a manhunt for Christmas after Brown claims that Christmas is black. The manhunt is fruitless until Christmas arrives undisguised in Mottstown, a neighboring town; he is on his way back to Jefferson, no longer running. In Mottstown, he is arrested and jailed, then moved to Jefferson. His grandparents arrive in town and visit Gail Hightower, the disgraced former minister of the town and friend of Byron Bunch. Bunch tries to convince Hightower to give the imprisoned Joe Christmas an alibi, but Hightower initially refuses. Though his grandfather wants Christmas lynched, his grandmother visits him in the Jefferson jail and advises him to seek help from Hightower. As police escort him to the local court, Christmas breaks free and runs to Hightower's house. A childishly cruel white vigilante, Percy Grimm, follows him there and, over Hightower's protest, shoots and castrates Christmas. Having redeemed himself at last, Hightower is then depicted as falling into a deathlike swoon, his whole life flashing before his eyes, including the past adventures of his Confederate grandfather, who was killed while stealing chickens from a farmer's shed. Before Christmas' escape attempt, Hightower delivers Lena's child in the cabin where Brown and Christmas had been staying before the murder, and Byron arranges for Brown/Burch to come and see her. Brown deserts Lena once again, but Byron follows him and challenges him to a fight. Brown beats the braver, smaller Bunch, then skilfully hops a moving train and disappears. At the end of the story, an anonymous man is talking to his wife about two strangers he picked up on a trip to Tennessee, recounting that the woman had a child and the man was not the father. This was Lena and Byron, who were conducting a half-hearted search for Brown, and they are eventually dropped off in Tennessee.

Southern Road

A book of poetry by black professor, poet, and literary critic of the Harlem Renaissance; Hart Crane. Was a collection of poems with rural themes and treated the simple lives of poor, black, country folk with extra poignancy and dignity. It also used authentic dialect and structures.

Ripostes

A collection of 25 poems by American Modernist, ex-patriot poet, Erza Pound. Is the first collection in which Pound moves toward the economy of language and clarity of imagery of the Imagism movement, and was the first time he used the word "Imagiste."

Uncle Tom's Children

A collection of novellas and the first book published by African-American author Richard Wright.

What's O'Clock

A collection of poems by Amy Lowell. She was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this collection. Included the popular patriotic poem "Lilacs".

A Witness Tree

A collection of poems by Pulitzer Prize[x4] winner Robert Frost. The collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1943. The most popular poem of this volume is "The Gift Outright", a patriotic poem that was recited at the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

A Further Range

A collection of poems by Pulitzer Prize[x4] winner Robert Frost. This collection is divided into 6 parts. The collection was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

A collection of short stories and novellas by, Katherine Anne Porter. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. In addition to four exclusive new stories, contains all stories previously collected in Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower.

Ah, Wilderness!

A comedy by American Modernist playwright Eugene O'Neill. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a happy family in turn of the century America. Also, noted for being O'Neills only well-known comedy. The play takes place on the Fourth of July 1906 and focuses on the Miller family, presumably of New London, Connecticut. The main plot deals with the middle son, 16-year-old Richard, and his coming of age in turn-of-the-century America. "Perhaps the most atypical of the author's works, the play presents a sentimental tale of youthful indiscretion in a turn-of-the-century New England town."

Alison's House

A drama in three acts by American playwright Susan Glaspell. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1931. Inspired by the life and work of the American poet Emily Dickinson(recluse obsessed with the color white), the play is set by Glaspell in her native Iowa. It is 18 years since Alison Stanhope, the country's foremost poet, died. Now the house she lived in must be sold, but it holds secrets. Did Alison sacrifice the man she loved for the sake of her family's reputation? And whom do such sacrifices benefit?

Long Day's Journey into Night

A drama play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. Widely considered to be his magnum opus and one of the finest American plays of the 20th century. O'Neill posthumously received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play takes place on a single day in August 1912, from around 8:30 a.m. to midnight. The setting is the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones' Monte Cristo Cottage. The four main characters are the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents. This play portrays a family in a ferociously negative light as the parents and two sons express accusations, blame, and resentments - qualities which are often paired with pathetic and self-defeating attempts at affection, encouragement, tenderness, and yearnings for things to be otherwise. The pain of this family is made worse by their depth of self-understanding and self-analysis, combined with a brutal honesty, as they see it, and an ability to boldly express themselves. The story deals with the mother's addiction to morphine, the family's addiction to whiskey, the father's miserliness, the older brother's licentiousness, and younger brother's illness.

The Cantos

A long incomplete poem by American Modernist, ex-patriot poet, Erza Pound. Consists of 116 sections, each of which is a canto (song). Generally considered one of the most significant works of modernist poetry in the 20th century. The most striking feature of the text, to a casual browser, is the inclusion of Chinese characters, as well as, quotations in foreign European languages.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

A long poem by American Modernist, ex-patriot poet, Erza Pound. The poem addresses Pound's alleged failure as a poet. F.R. Leavis considered it "quintessential autobiography." Speaking of himself in the third person, Pound criticises his earlier works as attempts to "wring lilies from the acorn", that is to pursue aesthetic goals and art for art's sake in a rough setting, America, which he calls "a half-savage country". "For three years, out of key with his time/He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry" resonates with Pound's efforts to write in traditional forms (e.g., Canzoni, 1911) and subsequent disillusionment. Pound in his mock-epitaph is said to be "wrong from the start", but this is quickly qualified: "No, hardly-". The rest of the poem is essentially a defense of Pound.

The Waste Land

A long poem by ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet, T.S. Eliot. Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society.

Ash Wednesday

A long poem by ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet, T.S. Eliot. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation.

The Bridge

A long poem by homosexual, modernist poet, Hart Crane. His first and only attempt at long form poetry. The poem was inspired by New York City's; Brooklyn Bridge, and is comprised of 15 lyric poems of varying length and scope.

Black Boy

A memoir(collection of memories) by African-American author Richard Wright. Detailing his youth in the South: Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, and his eventual move to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party in the United States. It is split into two sections, "Southern Night" (concerning his childhood in the south) and "The Horror and the Glory" (concerning his early adult years in Chicago). "Southern Night" The book begins with a mischievous four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandmother's house and continues in that vein. Wright is a curious child living in a household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of agnosticism at a young age. He feels more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the Jim Crow racism of the 1920s South. He finds it generally unjust and fights against whites' and other blacks' desire to squash his intellectual curiosity and potential. After his father deserts the family, young Wright is shuffled back and forth among his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother, and various maternal aunts and uncles. As he ventures into the white world to find jobs, he encounters extreme racism and brutal violence, experiences which stay with him the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the family is starving and suffering from severe poverty. "The Horror and the Glory" His family had always viewed the North as a place of opportunity, so as soon as they can scrape together enough money, Richard and his aunt go to Chicago, promising to send for his mother and brother. In order to go to Chicago and to survive daily life, Richard resorts to lying and stealing money. The youth finds the North less racist than the South and begins forming concrete ideas about American race relations. He holds many jobs, most of them menial. He washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals by night. At this time, his family is still very poor, his mother is disabled by a stroke, and his relatives constantly annoy him about his atheism and his "pointless" reading. He finds a job at the post office and meets white men who share his cynical view of the world and religion in particular. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front. He slowly becomes immersed in the Communist Party, organizing its writers and artists. At first he thinks he will find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as afraid of change as the southern whites he had left behind. The Communists fear anyone who disagrees with their ideas and quickly brand Wright, who has always been inclined to question and speak his mind, a "counter-revolutionary." When he tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it. After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. He remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. He does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. Wright ends the book by resolving to use his writing as a way to start a revolution: he thinks that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled, and for him, writing is his way to the human heart.

A Farewell to Arms

A novel by Ernest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of World War I. The novel is divided into five sections. In the first, Frederic Henry, an American paramedic serving in the Italian Army, is introduced to Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, by his good friend and roommate, Rinaldi, a surgeon. Frederic attempts to seduce her; although he doesn't want a serious relationship, his feelings for Catherine build. Frederic is wounded in the knee by a mortar on the Italian Front and sent to a hospital in Milan, where Catherine is also sent. The second section shows the growth of Frederic and Catherine's relationship as they spend time together in Milan over the summer. Frederic and Catherine gradually fall in love. After his knee heals, Frederic is diagnosed with jaundice but is soon kicked out of the hospital and sent back to the front after it is discovered he concealed alcohol. By the time he is sent back, Catherine is three months pregnant. In the third section, Frederic returns to his unit, and discovers morale has severely dropped. Not long afterwards, the Austro-Hungarians break through the Italian lines in the Battle of Caporetto, and the Italians retreat. Due to a slow and chaotic retreat, Frederic and his men go off trail and quickly get lost, and a frustrated Frederic kills a sergeant for insubordination. After catching up to the main retreat, Frederic is taken to a place by the "battle police," where officers are being interrogated and executed for the "treachery" that supposedly led to the Italian defeat. However, after seeing and hearing that everyone interrogated has been killed, Frederic escapes by jumping into a river. He heads to Milan to find Catherine only to discover that she has been sent to Stresa. In the fourth section, Catherine and Frederic reunite and spend some time in Stresa before Frederic learns he will soon be arrested. He and Catherine then flee to neutral Switzerland in a rowboat given to him by a barkeep. After interrogation by Swiss authorities, they are allowed to stay in Switzerland. In the final section, Frederic and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labor. After a long and painful birth, their son is stillborn. Catherine begins to hemorrhage and soon dies, leaving Frederic to return to their hotel in the rain.

The Sun Also Rises

A novel by Ernest Hemingway. On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him impotent—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett Ashley. Barnes is an expatriate American journalist living in Paris, while Brett is a twice-divorced Englishwoman with bobbed hair and numerous love affairs, and embodies the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona. Book One is set in the café society of young American expatriates in Paris. In the opening scenes, Jake plays tennis with his college friend Robert Cohn, picks up a prostitute (Georgette), and runs into Brett and Count Mippipopolous in a nightclub. Later, Brett tells Jake she loves him, but they both know that they have no chance at a stable relationship. In Book Two, Jake is joined by Bill Gorton, recently arrived from New York, and Brett's fiancé Mike Campbell, who arrives from Scotland. Jake and Bill travel south and meet Robert Cohn at Bayonne for a fishing trip in the hills northeast of Pamplona. Instead of fishing, Cohn stays in Pamplona to wait for the overdue Brett and Mike. Cohn had an affair with Brett a few weeks earlier and still feels possessive of her despite her engagement to Mike. After Jake and Bill enjoy five days of fishing the streams near Burguete, they rejoin the group in Pamplona. All begin to drink heavily. Cohn is resented by the others, who taunt him with anti-semitic remarks. During the fiesta the characters drink, eat, watch the running of the bulls, attend bullfights, and bicker with each other. Jake introduces Brett to the 19-year-old matador Romero at the Hotel Montoya; she is smitten with him and seduces him. The jealous tension among the men builds—Jake, Campbell, Cohn, and Romero each want Brett. Cohn, who had been a champion boxer in college, has a fistfight with Jake and Mike, and another with Romero, whom he beats up. Despite his injuries, Romero continues to perform brilliantly in the bullring. Book Three shows the characters in the aftermath of the fiesta. Sober again, they leave Pamplona; Bill returns to Paris, Mike stays in Bayonne, and Jake goes to San Sebastián on the northern coast of Spain. As Jake is about to return to Paris, he receives a telegram from Brett asking for help; she had gone to Madrid with Romero. He finds her there in a cheap hotel, without money, and without Romero. She announces she has decided to go back to Mike. The novel ends with Jake and Brett in a taxi speaking of the things that might have been.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

A novel by Ernest Hemingway. The novel graphically describes the brutality of the civil war in Spain during this time. It is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. It draws on Hemingway's own experiences in the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Jordan is an American who had lived in Spain during the pre-war period, and fights as an irregular soldier for the Republic against Francisco Franco's fascist forces. An experienced dynamiter, he is ordered by a Russian general to travel behind enemy lines and destroy a bridge with the aid of a band of local anti-fascist guerrillas, in order to prevent enemy troops from responding to an upcoming offensive. On his mission, Jordan meets the rebel Anselmo who brings him to the hidden guerrilla camp and initially acts as an intermediary between Jordan and the other guerrilla fighters. In the camp, Jordan encounters María, a young Spanish woman whose life had been shattered by her parents' execution and her rape at the hands of the Falangists (part of the fascist coalition) at the outbreak of the war. His strong sense of duty clashes with both the unwillingness of the guerrilla leader Pablo to commit to an operation that would endanger himself and his band, and Jordan's own new-found lust for life which arises from his love for María. Pablo's wife, Pilar, with the support of the other guerillas, displaces Pablo as the group leader and pledges the allegiance of the guerrillas to Jordan's mission. When another band of anti-fascist guerrillas, led by El Sordo, is surrounded and killed during a raid they conducted in support of Jordan's mission, Pablo steals the dynamite detonators and exploder, hoping to prevent the demolition and thereby avoid fascist reprisals. Although he disposes of the detonators and exploder by throwing them down a gorge into the river, Pablo regrets abandoning his comrades and returns to assist in the operation. The enemy, apprised of the coming offensive, has prepared to ambush it in force and it seems unlikely that the blown bridge will do much to prevent a rout. Regardless of this, Jordan understands that he must still demolish the bridge unless he receives explicit orders not to. Lacking the detonation equipment stolen by Pablo, Jordan plans an alternative method to explode the dynamite by using hand grenades with wires attached so that their pins can be pulled from a distance. This improvised plan is considerably more dangerous because the men must be nearer to the explosion. While Pilar, Pablo, and other guerrilla members attack the posts at the two ends of the bridge, Jordan and Anselmo plant and detonate the dynamite, costing Anselmo his life when he is hit by a piece of shrapnel. While escaping, Jordan is maimed when a tank shoots his horse out from under him. Knowing that his wound is severe enough that he is highly unlikely to survive, and that he would slow the others down, he bids goodbye to María and ensures that she escapes to safety with the surviving guerrillas. He refuses an offer from Agustín to shoot him and lies in agony, hoping to kill an enemy officer and delay their pursuit of his comrades before dying. The narrative ends right before Jordan launches his ambush.

East of Eden

A novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of World War I, though some chapters are set in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War. In the beginning of the novel, before introducing his characters, Steinbeck carefully establishes the setting with a description of the Salinas Valley in Central California. Then he outlines the story of the warmhearted inventor and farmer Samuel Hamilton and his wife Liza, immigrants from Ireland. He describes how they raise their nine children on a rough, infertile piece of land. As the Hamilton children begin to grow up and leave the nest, a wealthy stranger, Adam Trask, purchases the best ranch in the Valley. Adam's life is seen in a long, intricate flashback. We see his tumultuous childhood on a farm in Connecticut and the brutal treatment he endured from his younger but stronger half-brother, Charles. Adam and Charles's father, Cyrus, was a Union Civil War veteran who was wounded in his very first battle and unable (or perhaps unwilling) to return to service; he nonetheless becomes an expert "armchair general" who uses his intellectual knowledge of military affairs and wounded-veteran status to become a military adviser in Washington, D.C. As a young man, Adam spent his time first in the military and then wandering the country. He was caught for vagrancy, escaped from a chain gang, and burgled a store for clothing to use as a disguise. Later, he wires Charles for $100 to pay for the clothes he stole. After Adam finally makes his way home to their farm, Charles reveals that Cyrus had died and left them an inheritance of $50,000 each. Charles is torn with fear that Cyrus did not come by the money honestly. A parallel story introduces a girl named Cathy Ames, who grows up in a town not far from the brothers' family farm. Cathy is described as having a "malformed soul"; she is evil and delights in using and destroying people. She leaves home one evening after setting fire to her family's home, killing both of her parents. She becomes a whoremaster's mistress, but he beats her viciously upon realizing that she is using him and leaves her to die on Adam and Charles's doorstep. Although Charles is repulsed by her, Adam, unaware of her past, falls in love with and marries her. However, unbeknownst to Adam, Cathy seduces Charles at the time of her marriage and the beginning of Cathy's pregnancy with twins, leaving open the question of whether Adam or Charles is the twins' father. Adam - newly wed and newly rich - now arrives in California and settles with the pregnant Cathy in the Salinas Valley, near the Hamilton family ranch. Cathy neither wants to be a mother nor to stay in California, but Adam is so happy with his new life that he does not realize there is any problem. Shortly after Cathy gives birth to twin boys, she shoots Adam in the shoulder and flees. Adam recovers but falls into a deep depression. He is roused out of it enough to name and raise his sons with the help of his Cantonese cook, Lee, and Samuel, who helps Adam name the boys Aron and Caleb, after different characters in the Bible. Lee becomes a good friend and adopted family member. Lee, Adam, and Samuel have long philosophical talks, particularly about the story of Cain and Abel, which Lee maintains has been incorrectly translated in English-language bibles. Lee tells about how his relatives in San Francisco, a group of Chinese scholars, spent two years studying Hebrew so they might discover what the moral of the Cain and Abel story actually was. Their discovery that the Hebrew word "Timshel" means "thou mayest" becomes an important symbol in the novel, meaning that mankind is neither compelled to pursue sainthood nor doomed to sin, but rather has the power to choose. Meanwhile, Cathy has become a prostitute at the most respectable brothel in the city of Salinas. She renames herself "Kate Albey" and embarks on a devious - and successful - plan to ingratiate herself with the madam, murder her, and inherit the business. She makes her new brothel infamous as a den of sexual sadism. After Charles dies of natural causes, Adam visits her to give her money Charles left her. Kate renounces him and the entire human race, and shows him pictures of the brothel's customers, all pillars of the community. Adam finally sees her for what she is and pities her, leaving Kate to hate him. Adam's sons, Caleb "Cal" and Aron - echoing Cain and Abel - grow up oblivious of their mother's situation. They are opposites: Aron is virtuous and dutiful, Cal wild and rebellious. At a very early age, Aron meets a girl, Abra Bacon, who is from a well-to-do family, and the two fall in love. Although there are rumors around town that Cal and Aron's mother is not dead but is actually still in Salinas, the boys do not yet know that she is Kate. Samuel finally dies of old age and is mourned by the entire town. Inspired by Samuel's inventiveness, Adam starts an ill-fated business venture and loses almost all of the family fortune. The boys, particularly Aron, are horrified that their father is now the town laughingstock and that they are now mocked by their peers for his failure. As the boys reach the end of their school days, Cal decides to pursue a career in farming, and Aron goes to college to become an Episcopal priest. Cal, restless and tortured by guilt about his very human failings, shuns everyone around him and takes to wandering around town late at night. During one of these ramblings, he discovers that his mother is alive and the madam of a brothel. He goes to see her, and she spitefully tells him they are just alike. Cal replies that she is simply afraid and leaves. Cal decides to "buy his father's love" by going into business with Samuel's son Will, who is now a successful automobile dealer. Cal's plan is to make his father's money back, capitalizing on World War I by selling beans grown in the Salinas Valley to nations in Europe, for a considerable premium. He succeeds beyond his wildest expectations and wraps up a gift of $15,000 in cash which he plans to give to Adam at Thanksgiving. Aron returns from Stanford University for the holiday. There is tension in the air, because Aron has not yet told their father that he intends to drop out of college. Rather than let Aron steal the moment, Cal gives Adam the money at dinner, expecting his father to be proud of him. Adam refuses to accept it, however, and tells Cal to give it back to the poor farmers he exploited. Adam explains by saying, I would have been so happy if you could have given me - well, what your brother has - pride in the thing he's doing, gladness in his progress. Money, even clean money, doesn't stack up with that. In a fit of jealousy, Cal takes Aron to see their mother, knowing it will be a shock to him. Sure enough, Aron immediately sees Kate for who she is and recoils from her in disgust. Wracked with self-hatred, Kate signs her estate over to Aron and commits suicide. Aron, his idealistic worldview shattered, enlists in the Army to fight in World War I. He is killed in battle in the last year of the war, and Adam suffers a stroke upon hearing the news from Lee. Cal, who began a relationship with Aron's idealised girl friend, Abra Bacon, after Aron went to war, tries to convince her to run away with him. She instead persuades him to return home. The novel ends with Lee pleading with a bedridden and dying Adam to forgive his only remaining son. Adam responds by forgiving Cal nonverbally and then saying the word "Timshel", giving Cal the choice to break the cycle and conquer sin.

Cannery Row

A novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries, known as Cannery Row. The novel has a simple premise: Mack and his friends are trying to do something nice for their friend Doc, who has been good to them without asking for reward. Mack hits on the idea that they should throw a thank-you party, and the entire community quickly becomes involved. Unfortunately, the party rages out of control, and Doc's lab and home are ruined—and so is Doc's mood. In an effort to return to Doc's good graces, Mack and the boys decide to throw another party—but make it work this time. A procession of linked vignettes describes the denizens' lives on Cannery Row. These constitute subplots that unfold concurrently with the main plot.

The Grapes of Wrath

A novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they seek jobs, land, dignity, and a future. The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been imprisoned after being convicted of homicide. On his return to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at Tom's childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, who tells them the family has gone to stay at Uncle John Joad's home nearby. Graves tells them that the banks have evicted all the farmers, but he refuses to leave the area. The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle John's. Tom finds his family loading their remaining possessions into a Hudson Motor Car Company sedan converted to a truck; with their crops destroyed by the Dust Bowl, the family has defaulted on their bank loans, and their farm has been repossessed. Consequently, the Joads see no option but to seek work in California, described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey. Although leaving Oklahoma would violate his parole, Tom decides it is worth the risk, and invites Casy to join him and his family. Traveling west on Route 66, the Joad family find the road crowded with other migrants. In makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California, and the group worries about lessening prospects. The family dwindles as well: Grandpa dies along the road, and they bury him in a field; Grandma dies close to the California state line; and both Noah (the eldest Joad son) and Connie Rivers (the husband of the pregnant Joad daughter, Rose of Sharon) leave the family. Led by Ma, the remaining members realize they can only continue, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma. Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor; wages are low, and workers are exploited to the point of starvation. The big corporate farmers are in collusion and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. Weedpatch Camp, one of the clean, utility-supplied camps operated by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency, offers better conditions but does not have enough resources to care for all the needy families. Nonetheless, as a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by California deputies. In response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The remaining Joads work as strikebreakers in a peach orchard, where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. When Tom Joad witnesses Casy's fatal beating, he kills the attacker and flees as a fugitive. The Joads later leave the orchard for a cotton farm, where Tom is at risk of being arrested for the homicide. Tom bids his mother farewell and promises to work for the oppressed. Rose of Sharon's baby is stillborn. Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With rain, the Joads' dwelling is flooded and they move to higher ground. In the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside they find a young boy and his father, who is dying of starvation. Rose of Sharon takes pity on the man and offers him her breast milk to save him from starvation.

Dark Laughter

A novel by the American Modernist author Sherwood Anderson and was the only bestseller during his lifetime. It dealt with the new sexual freedom of the 1920s. Bruce Dudley's name is really John Stockton. He grows tired of being John Stockton, reporter on a Chicago paper and married to Bernice. His wife, who works on the same paper and writes magazine stories on the side, thinks him flighty, and he admits it. He wants adventure, and he wants to go back to Old Harbor, the river town in Indiana where he spent his childhood. With less than three hundred dollars, he leaves Chicago, Bernice, and his job on the paper. He picks up the name Bruce Dudley from two store signs in an Illinois town. After a trip down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, he goes to Old Harbor and gets a job varnishing automobile wheels in the Grey Wheel Company, which is owned by Fred Grey. Working in the same room with Bruce is Sponge Martin, a wiry old fellow with a black mustache who lives a simple, elemental life. That is the reason, perhaps, why Bruce likes him so much. Sometimes when the nights are fair and the fish are biting, Sponge and his wife pack up sandwiches and moonshine whiskey and go down to the river. They fish for a while and get drunk, and then Sponge's wife makes him feel like a young man again. Bruce wishes he could be as happy and carefree as Sponge. When Bruce was making his way down the Mississippi, he stayed for five months in an old house in New Orleans, where he watched African Americans and listened to their songs and laughter. It seemed to him, listening to their dark laughter, that they lived as simply as children and were happy. Aline, the wife of Fred, sees Bruce walking out the factory door one evening as she sits in her car waiting for her husband. She does not know who he is, but she remembers another man to whom she felt attracted in the same way. In Paris, after the war, she saw a man at Rose Frank's apartment whom she desired. Then she married Fred, who was recovering from the shock of the war, even though he was not the man for whom she wished. One evening, Bruce passes by the Grey home as Aline stands in the yard. He stops and looks first at the house and then at Aline. Neither speaks, but something passes between them. They find each other. Aline, who advertised for a gardener, hires Bruce after turning down several other applicants. Bruce quit his job at the factory shortly before seeing her...

Absalom, Absalom!

A novel by the American author William Faulkner. Taking place before, during, and after the Civil War, it is a story about three families of the American South, with a focus on the life of Thomas Sutpen. The novel details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a white man born into poverty in West Virginia who comes to Mississippi with the complementary aims of gaining wealth and becoming a powerful family patriarch. The story is told entirely in flashbacks narrated mostly by Quentin Compson to his roommate at Harvard University, Shreve, who frequently contributes his own suggestions and surmises. The narration of Rosa Coldfield, and Quentin's father and grandfather, are also included and re-interpreted by Shreve and Quentin, with the total events of the story unfolding in nonchronological order and often with differing details. This results in a peeling-back-the-onion revelation of the true story of the Sutpens. Rosa initially narrates the story, with long digressions and a biased memory, to Quentin Compson, whose grandfather was a friend of Sutpen's. Quentin's father then fills in some of the details to Quentin. Finally, Quentin relates the story to his roommate Shreve, and in each retelling, the reader receives more details as the parties flesh out the story by adding layers. The final effect leaves the reader more certain about the attitudes and biases of the characters than about the facts of Sutpen's story. Thomas Sutpen arrives in Jefferson, Mississippi, with some slaves and a French architect who has been somehow forced into working for him. Sutpen obtains one hundred square miles of land from a local Native American tribe and immediately begins building a large plantation called Sutpen's Hundred, including an ostentatious mansion. All he needs to complete his plan is a wife to bear him a few children (particularly a son to be his heir), so he ingratiates himself with a local merchant and marries the man's daughter, Ellen Coldfield. Ellen bears Sutpen two children, a son named Henry and a daughter named Judith, both of whom are destined for tragedy. Henry goes to the University of Mississippi and meets fellow student Charles Bon, who is ten years his senior. Henry brings Charles home for Christmas, and Charles and Judith begin a quiet romance that leads to a presumed engagement. However, Thomas Sutpen realizes that Charles Bon is his son from an earlier marriage and moves to stop the proposed union. Sutpen had worked on a plantation in the French West Indies as overseer and, after subduing a slave uprising, was offered the hand of the plantation owner's daughter, Eulalia Bon. She bore him a son, Charles. Sutpen had not known that Eulalia was of mixed race until after the marriage and birth of Charles, but when he found out that he had been deceived, he renounced the marriage as void and left his wife and child (though leaving them his fortune as part of his own moral recompense). The reader also later learns of Sutpen's childhood, when young Thomas learned that society could base human worth on material worth. It is this episode that sets into motion Thomas' plan to start a dynasty. When Sutpen tells Henry that Charles is his half-brother and that Judith must not be allowed to marry him, Henry refuses to believe it, repudiates his birthright, and accompanies Charles to his home in New Orleans. They then return to Mississippi to enlist in their University company, joining the Confederate Army to fight in the Civil War. During the war, Henry wrestles with his conscience until he presumably resolves to allow the marriage of half-brother and sister; this resolution changes, however, when Sutpen reveals to Henry that Charles is part black. At the conclusion of the war, Henry enacts his father's interdiction of marriage between Charles and Judith, killing Charles at the gates to the mansion and then fleeing into self-exile. Thomas Sutpen returns from the war and begins to repair his dynasty and his home, whose hundred square miles have been reduced by carpetbaggers and punitive northern action to one. He proposes to Rosa Coldfield, his dead wife's younger sister, and she accepts. However, Sutpen insults Rosa by demanding that she bear him a son before the wedding takes place, prompting her to leave Sutpen's Hundred. Sutpen then begins an affair with Milly, the 15-year-old granddaughter of Wash Jones, a squatter who lives on the Sutpen property. The affair continues until Milly becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. Sutpen is terribly disappointed, because the last hope of repairing his Sutpen dynasty rested on Milly giving birth to a son. Sutpen casts Milly and the child aside, telling them that they are not worthy of sleeping in the stables with his horse, who had just sired a male. An enraged Wash Jones kills Sutpen, his own granddaughter, Sutpen's newborn daughter, and finally himself by resisting arrest. The story of Thomas Sutpen's legacy ends with Quentin taking Rosa back to the seemingly abandoned Sutpen's Hundred plantation, where they find Henry Sutpen and Clytemnestra (Clytie), the daughter of Thomas Sutpen by a slave woman. Henry has returned to the estate to die. Three months later, when Rosa returns with medical help for Henry, Clytie mistakes them for law enforcement and starts a fire that consumes the plantation and kills Henry and herself. The only remaining Sutpen is Jim Bond, Charles Bon's black grandson, a young man with severe mental handicaps, who remains on Sutpen's Hundred.

The Red Wheelbarrow

A poem by American modernist poet and physician William Carlos Williams So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

Of Mice and Men

A novella by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. It tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a bulky, strong man but mentally disabled—are in Soledad on their way to another part of California. They hope to one day attain the dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream is merely to tend and pet rabbits on the farm, as he loves touching soft animals, although he always kills them. This dream is one of Lennie's favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They had fled from Weed after Lennie touched a young woman's dress and wouldn't let go, leading to an accusation of rape. It soon becomes clear that the two are close and George is Lennie's protector, despite his antics. After being hired at a farm, the pair are confronted by Curley—The Boss's small, aggressive son with a Napoleon complex who dislikes larger men, and starts to target Lennie. Curley's flirtatious and provocative wife, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, poses a problem as well. In contrast, the pair also meets Candy, an elderly ranch handyman with one hand and a loyal dog, and Slim, an intelligent and gentle jerkline-skinner whose dog has recently had a litter of puppies. Slim gives a puppy to Lennie and Candy, whose loyal, accomplished sheep dog was put down by fellow ranch-hand Carlson. In spite of problems, their dream leaps towards reality when Candy offers to pitch in $350 with George and Lennie so that they can buy a farm at the end of the month, in return for permission to live with them. The trio are ecstatic, but their joy is overshadowed when Curley attacks Lennie, who defends himself by easily crushing Curley's fist while urged on by George. Nevertheless, George feels more relaxed, to the extent that he even leaves Lennie behind on the ranch while he goes into town with the other ranch hands. Lennie wanders into the stable, and chats with Crooks, the bitter, yet educated stable buck, who is isolated from the other workers racially. Candy finds them and they discuss their plans for the farm with Crooks, who cannot resist asking them if he can hoe a garden patch on the farm albeit scorning its possibility. Curley's wife makes another appearance and flirts with the men, especially Lennie. However, her spiteful side is shown when she belittles them and threatens Crooks to have him lynched. The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. Curley's wife enters the barn and tries to speak to Lennie, admitting that she is lonely and how her dreams of becoming a movie star are crushed, revealing her personality. After finding out about Lennie's habit, she offers to let him stroke her hair, but panics and begins to scream when she feels his strength. Lennie becomes frightened, and unintentionally breaks her neck thereafter and runs away. When the other ranch hands find the corpse, George realizes that their dream is at an end. George hurries to find Lennie, hoping he will be at the meeting place they designated in case he got into trouble. George meets Lennie at the place, their camping spot before they came to the ranch. The two sit together and George retells the beloved story of the dream, knowing it is something they'll never share. He then shoots and kills Lennie, with Curley, Slim, and Carlson arriving seconds after. Only Slim realizes what happened, and consolingly leads him away. Curley and Carlson look on, unable to comprehend the subdued mood of the two men.

Modernism

A philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped this movement were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. It also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many religious beliefs.

Dream Girl

A play by Elmer Rice. At its core is Georgina Allerton, a young woman whose efforts to run a bookstore are undermined severely by her tendency to drift off into Walter Mitty-like flights of fancy on a regular basis. The play's time span covers a single day of her life, during which several successive extravagant and often comic daydreams are portrayed.

The Adding Machine

A play by Elmer Rice. Considered a landmark of American Expressionism.(Modernist movement) The play takes us through Mr. Zero's trial, execution, excursion and arrest going into the afterlife. During the whole series of this episodic journey Mr. Zero is surprisingly oblivious to his deepest needs, wants and desires. The story focuses on Mr. Zero, an accountant at a large, faceless company. After 25 years at his job, he discovers that he will be replaced by an adding machine. In anger and pain, he snaps and kills his boss. Mr. Zero is then tried for murder, is found guilty and hanged. He wakes up in a heaven-like setting known as the "Elysian Fields".[Greek Afterlife] Mr. Zero meets a man named Shrdlu, then begins to operate an adding machine until Lieutenant Charles, the boss of the Elysian Fields, comes to tell Zero that he is a waste of space and his soul is going to be sent back to the earth to be reused. The play ends with Zero following a very attractive girl named Hope (who may not actually exist) off stage.

Mourning Becomes Electra

A play cycle(group of common stories) written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. As a Greek tragedy made modern, the play features murder, adultery, incestuous love and revenge, and even a group of townspeople who function as a kind of Greek chorus. Divided into three plays with themes that correspond to the Oresteia trilogy. Each of these plays contains four to five acts making an extraordinarily lengthy drama.

Anna Christie

A play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. He received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Is the story of a former prostitute who falls in love, but runs into difficulty in turning her life around.

Desire Under the Elms

A play written by Eugene O'Neill. the play attempts to adapt plot elements and themes of Greek tragedy to a rural New England setting. It was inspired by the myth of Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Theseus.

Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing

A poem by African-American Harlem Renaissance author James Weldon Johnson. is often referred to as the "Black American National Anthem" chosen by the NAACP. It is has become a song, one of the authorized hymns in the Episcopal hymnal.

The Snow Man

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Anecdote of the Jar

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. "Stevens knows the corruptions of coldness as well as its beauties. Chief among them is the heartless selfishness, represented by the sweet sinister cold of 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream.' In the kitchen a cigar-rolling man whips 'concupiscent curds' of ice cream as the wenches come and go; in the adjoining bedroom, a dead woman lies in undignified discard, 'cold ... and dumb' under a sheet, her horny feet protruding. Both rooms teach the cynical wisdom that 'The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream': what you see is what you get; look out for Number One; enjoy the sweet cold before the bitter cold claims you"

The Idea of Order at Key West

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. The narrator and his friend watch as a woman "sang beyond the genius of the sea". As she sings, the narrator compares her voice to the ocean's; though the woman mimicked the ocean, "it was she and not the sea we heard". While he ponders over this observation, the woman eventually leaves. Her singing left a strong impression on him: as he and friend turn towards the town, he sees the world differently.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

A popular poem by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens. The poem consists of thirteen short, separate sections, each of which mentions blackbirds in some way. Although inspired by haiku, none of the sections meets the traditional definition of haiku.

Four Quartets

A set of four poems by ex-patriot, Noble Prize winning, Modernist-British poet, T.S. Eliot. Contains poems, "Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding." Common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine.

The Old Man and the Sea

A short novel by Ernest Hemingway. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as "salao", the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told instead to fish with successful fishermen. The boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, talking about American baseball and his favorite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end. On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the line. Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin. On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. On his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Santiago knows that he is defeated and tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep. A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands. Manolin brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth—of lions on an African beach.

A Rose for Emily

A short story by American author William Faulkner. The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern woman whose funeral is the obligation of their small town. It then proceeds in a non-linear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly strange behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family of the antebellum Southern aristocracy. After the Civil War, the family falls into hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; Emily's father refuses for her to marry. Her father dies when Emily is about the age of 30, which takes her by surprise. She refuses to give up his corpse, and the townspeople write it off as her grieving process. The townspeople pity Emily not only after her father's death but also during his life when he wouldn't let Emily marry. After her father's death, the only person seen moving about Emily's home is Tobe- a black man, serving as Emily's butler, going in and out with a market basket. Although Emily did not have a strong relationship with her community, she did give art lessons to young children within her town. The townspeople even referred to her as Miss Emily as a sign of the respect that they had for her. With the acceptance of her father's death, Emily somewhat revives, even changing the style of her hair and becomes friendly with Homer Barron. He is a Northern laborer who comes to town shortly after Mr. Grierson's death. The connection surprises some of the community while others are glad she is taking an interest. However, Homer claims that he is not a marrying man, but a bachelor. Emily shortly buys arsenic from a druggist in town, telling him that it will be used to kill rats. However, the townspeople are convinced that she will use it to poison herself. Emily's distant cousins are called into town by the minister's wife to supervise Miss Emily and Homer Barron. Homer leaves town for some time, reputedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of her cousins, and returns three days later after the cousins have left. Homer is never seen again. Despite these turnabouts in her social status, Emily continues to behave haughtily, as she had before her father died. Her reputation is such that the city council finds itself unable to confront her about a strong smell that has begun to emanate from the house. Instead, they decide to send men to her house under the cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, after which the smell dissipates. The mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris, made a gentleman's agreement to overlook her taxes as an act of charity, though it was done under a pretense of repayment towards her father to assuage Emily's pride after her father had died. Years later, when the next generation has come to power, Emily insists on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing that she owes any taxes; the council declines to press the issue. Emily has become a recluse: she is never seen outside of the house, and only rarely accepts people into it. The community comes to view her as a "hereditary obligation" on the town, who must be humored and tolerated. The funeral is a large affair; Emily had become an institution, so her death sparks a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remains of her house. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enters her house to see what remains of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked; some of the townsfolk break down the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for Homer, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head and a single strand of gray hair, indicating that Emily had slept with Homer's corpse.

Spring and All

A volume of poems by American modernist poet and physician William Carlos Williams. Was cited as one of the 88 "Books That Shaped America" by the Library of Congress in 2012.

The Making of Americans

An American Modernist novel by Gertrude Stein. The novel traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families.

Tortilla Flat

An early novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck set in Monterey, California. The novel was the author's first clear critical and commercial success. Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian-Spanish-Caucasian descent (who typically claim pure Spanish blood). The central character Danny inherits two houses from his grandfather where he and his friends go to live. Danny's house, and Danny's friends, Steinbeck compares to the Round Table, and the Knights of the Round Table. Most of the action is set in the time of Steinbeck's own late teenage and young adult years, shortly after World War I. The following chapter titles from the work, along with short summaries, outline the adventures the dipsomaniacal group endure in order to procure red wine and friendship.

Paterson

An epic poem (lengthy) by American modernist poet and physician William Carlos Williams. The poem is composed of five books and a fragment of a sixth book. William Carlos Williams won the first National Book Award for Poetry for this poem.

The Red Pony

An episodic novella by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. The stories in the book are tales of a boy named Jody Tiflin. The book has four different stories about Jody and his life on his father's California ranch. Other main characters include: Carl Tiflin - Jody's father Billy Buck - an expert in horses and a working hand on the ranch Mrs. Tiflin - Jody's mother Jody's grandfather - Mrs. Tiflin's father, who has a history of crossing the Oregon Trail, and enjoys telling stories about his experiences Gitano - an old man who wishes to die at the Tiflin ranch.

Strange Interlude

An experimental play in nine acts by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. He received the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Makes extensive use of a soliloquy technique, in which the characters speak their inner thoughts to the audience. The plot centers on Nina Leeds, the daughter of a classics professor at a college in New England, who is devastated when her adored fiancé is killed in World War I, before they have a chance to consummate their passion. Ignoring the unconditional love of the novelist Charles Marsden, Nina embarks on a series of sordid affairs before determining to marry an amiable fool, Sam Evans. While Nina is pregnant with Sam's child, she learns a horrifying secret known only to Sam's mother: insanity runs in the Evans family and could be inherited by any child of Sam's. Realizing that a child is essential to her own and to Sam's happiness, Nina decides on a "scientific" solution. She will abort Sam's child and conceive a child with the physician Ned Darrell, letting Sam believe that it is his. The plan backfires when Nina and Ned's intimacy leads to their falling passionately in love. Twenty years later, Sam and Nina's son Gordon Evans is approaching manhood, with only Nina and Ned aware of the boy's true parentage. In the final act, Sam dies of a stroke before he can learn the truth. This leaves Nina free to marry Ned Darrell, but she declines to do so, choosing instead to marry the long-suffering Charlie Marsden, who proclaims that he now has "all the luck at last." The meaning of the title is suggested by the aging Nina in a speech near the end of the play: "Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!"

Tender Buttons

Book by American Modernist writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms". While the short book consists of multiple poems covering the everyday mundane, Stein's experimental use of language renders the poems unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar. Provoked divided critical responses since its publication. Renowned for its Modernist approach to portraying the everyday object and has been lauded as a "masterpiece of verbal Cubism" and criticized as "a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax".

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Book by Gertrude Stein, written in the guise of an autobiography authored by her lesbian life partner. Modern Library ranked it as one of the 20 greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Sea Garden

First book of collected poetry by the female Imagist-poet, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle).

The Walls Do Not Fall

First poetry book of her "Trilogy" by the female Imagist-poet, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). Made up of 43 short, largely unrhymed sections; and is H.D.'s striking response to World War Two.

The Beautiful and Damned

Is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. It explores and portrays New York café society and the American Eastern elite during the Jazz Age before and after "the Great War" and in the early 1920s. The work is generally considered to have drawn upon and be based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with his wife Zelda Fitzgerald. tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1910s socialite(high reputation) and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, and his courtship and relationship with his wife Gloria Gilbert. It describes his brief service in the Army during World War I, and the couple's post-war partying life in New York, and his later alcoholism. Gloria and Anthony's love story is much more than just a couple falling in love. Their story deals with the hardships of a relationship, especially when each character has a tendency to be selfish. Joanna Stolarek suggests, Fitzgerald draws on "Zelda, the object of the writer's literary passion." Toward the end of the novel, Fitzgerald sums up the plot and his intentions in writing it somewhat, even referencing his own first novel, when a financially successful writer friend tells Anthony: You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise'. Are our girls really like that? If it's true to life, which I don't believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I'm sick of all this shoddy realism. I think there's a place for the romanticist in literature.

A Fable

Novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, but critical reviews were mixed and it is considered one of Faulkner's lesser works. The book takes place in France during World War I and stretches through the course of one week in 1918. Corporal Stephan, who represents the reincarnation of Jesus, orders 3,000 troops to disobey orders to attack in the brutally repetitive trench warfare. In return, the Germans do not attack, and the war stops when soldiers realize that it takes two sides to fight a war. The Generalissimo, who represents leaders who use war to gain power, invites his German counterpart to discuss how to restart the war. He then arrests and executes Stefan. Before Stefan's execution, the Generalissimo tries to convince the corporal that war can never be stopped because it is the essence of human nature. Following the execution of the Corporal, his body is returned to his wife and his sisters, and he is buried in Vienne-la-pucelle. However, after the conflict has resumed, the Corporal's grave is destroyed in a barrage of artillery. The spirit of the Corporal has transferred to a British message runner, who eventually confronts the old Generalissimo.

Ship of Fools

Only novel written by, Katherine Anne Porter. Tells the tale of a group of disparate characters sailing from Mexico to Europe aboard a German passenger ship. The large cast of characters includes Germans, a Swiss family, Mexicans, Americans, Spaniards, a group of Cuban medical students, and a Swede. The theme of the novel is the passengers' unavailing withdrawal from a life of disappointment, seeking a kind of utopia, and, "without knowing what to do next", setting out for a long voyage to pre-World War II Europe, a world full of prejudice, racism and evil. Mrs. Treadwell, a nostalgic American divorcee, hopes to find happiness in Paris, where she once spent her youth. Elsa Lutz, the plain daughter of a Swiss hotelkeeper, thinks heaven might be in the Isle of Wight. Jenny, an artist, says the most dangerous and happiest moment in her life was when she was swimming alone in the Gulf of Mexico, confronted with a school of dolphins. At the end of the novel, one of the ship's musicians, a gangly starving boy, feels overjoyed to finally be off the ship and back in his home country, as if Germany were a "human being, a good and dear trusted friend who had come a long way to welcome him". Porter manages to convey that salvation is reality, and evil can be overcome.

Beyond the Horizon

Play written by American Modernist playwright Eugene O'Neill. He received the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play takes place on a farm in the Spring, and then moves forward three years later, in the Summer, and finally five years later, in late Fall. The play focuses on the portrait of a family, and particularly only two brothers Andrew and Robert. In the first act of the play, Robert is about to go off to sea with their uncle Dick, a sea captain, while Andrew looks forward to marrying his sweetheart Ruth and working on the family farm as he starts a family.

Tribute to the Angels

Second poetry book of her "Trilogy" by the female Imagist-poet, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle).

This Side of Paradise

The debut novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and a smashing financial success. The book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status seeking. The book is written in three parts. "Book One: The Romantic Egotist"—The novel centers on Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner who, convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future, attends boarding school and later Princeton University. He leaves behind his eccentric mother Beatrice and befriends a close friend of hers, Monsignor Darcy. While at Princeton he goes back to Minneapolis, where he re-encounters Isabelle Borgé, a young lady whom he had met as a little boy, and starts a romantic relationship with her. At Princeton he repeatedly writes ever more flowery poems, but Amory and Isabelle become disenchanted with each other after meeting again at his prom. "Interlude"—Following their break-up, Amory is shipped overseas, to serve in the army in World War I. (Fitzgerald had been in the army himself, but the war ended while he was still stationed on Long Island.) Amory's experiences in the war are not described, other than to say later in the book that he was a bayonet instructor. "Book Two: The Education of a Personage"—After the war, Amory falls in love with a New York debutante named Rosalind Connage. Because he is poor, however, this relationship collapses as well; Rosalind decides to marry a wealthy man, instead. A devastated Amory is further crushed to learn that his mentor Monsignor Darcy has died. The book ends with Amory's iconic lament, "I know myself, but that is all-"

Tulips and Chimneys

The first collection of poetry by Modernist poet and painter, E. E. Cummings. Features 86 poems. Popular poems include: "All in green went my love riding", "Thy fingers make early flowers of", "Buffalo Bill's", and "Puella Mea".

Tender Is the Night

The fourth and final novel completed by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was Fitzgerald's first novel in nine years and the last that he would complete. When Fitzgerald conceived the book, it was during the darkest years of his life, and the novel's bleakness reflects his own experiences. The novel almost mirrors the events of Fitzgerald and Zelda's lives, as characters are pulled and put back into mental care, and the male figure, Dick Diver, starts his descent into alcoholism. While working on the book, Fitzgerald was beset with financial difficulties. He borrowed money from both his editor and his agent and wrote short stories for commercial magazines. Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who take a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the resort are Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress, and her mother. Rosemary becomes infatuated with Dick and becomes close to Nicole. Dick toys with the idea of having an affair with Rosemary. Rosemary senses something is wrong with the couple, which is brought to light when one of the guests at a party reports having seen something strange in the bathroom. Tommy Barban, another guest, comes loyally to the defense of the Divers. The action involves various other friends, including the Norths, where a frequent occurrence is the drunken behavior of Abe North. The story becomes complicated when Jules Peterson, a black man, is murdered and ends up in Rosemary's bed, in a situation which could destroy Rosemary's career. Dick moves the blood-soaked body to cover up any implied relationship between Rosemary and Peterson. It is revealed that, as a promising young doctor and psychiatrist, Dick had taken on a patient with an especially complex case of neuroses. This patient is Nicole, whose sexual abuse by her father is suggested as the cause of her breakdown. As her treatment progresses, she becomes infatuated with Dick, who in turn develops Florence Nightingale syndrome. He eventually determines to marry Nicole, in part, as a means of providing her with lasting emotional stability. Strong objections are raised by Nicole's sister, who believes Dick is marrying Nicole because of her status as an heiress. Dick is offered a partnership in a Swiss clinic, and Nicole pays for the entire clinic. After his father's death Dick travels to America and then Rome in hopes to see Rosemary. They start a brief affair, which ends abruptly and painfully. Dick gets into an altercation with the police, and Nicole's sister helps him to get out of jail. Dick doesn't see how he can be the same person after such a humiliation. He gradually develops a drinking problem. After this becomes an issue with the patients, Dick's ownership share of the clinic is bought out by American investors following his partner's suggestion. Dick and Nicole's marriage breaks down when he becomes increasingly alcoholic and pines for Rosemary, who is now a successful Hollywood star. Nicole becomes increasingly aware of her independence. She distances herself from Dick as his confidence and friendliness turn into sarcasm and rudeness towards everyone. His constant unhappiness over what he could have been fuels his alcoholism, and Dick becomes increasingly embarrassing in social and familial situations. Nicole enters into an affair with Tommy Barban. Nicole divorces Dick and marries Barban.

The Reivers

The last novel by the American author William Faulkner and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This made him one of only three authors to be awarded it more than once. The basic plot takes place in the first decade of the 20th century. It involves a young boy named Lucius Priest (a distant cousin of the McCaslin/Edmonds family Faulkner wrote about in Go Down, Moses) who accompanies a family friend, employee and protegé named Boon Hogganbeck to Memphis, where Boon hopes to woo into marriage a prostitute called "Miss Corrie", of whom he is a client when he can afford it. Since Boon has no way to get to Memphis, he steals Lucius's grandfather's car, the first car in Yoknapatawpha County. They discover that Ned McCaslin, a black man who works with Boon at Lucius's grandfather's horse stables, has stowed away with them (Ned is also a blood cousin of the Priests). When they reach Memphis, Boon and Lucius stay in the brothel where Miss Corrie lives and works, while Ned disappears into the black part of town. Soon Ned returns, having traded the car for a racehorse. The brothel life is turned upside down with their coming to stay, at the same time as Miss Corrie's nephew that has come there to get some finesse. The brothel is run by Miss Reba, a beautiful and stern mature woman who employs Mr Bindford as pimp and general manager. Miss Reba is probably the same character that appeared in Faulkner's earlier novel Sanctuary. The remainder of the story involves Ned's attempts to race the horse in order to win enough money to help out his relative and buy the car back, and Boon's courtship with Miss Corrie (whose real name is Everbe Corinthia). Lucius, a young, wealthy, and sheltered boy, comes of age in Memphis. He comes into contact for the first time with the underside of society. Much of the novel involves Lucius trying to reconcile his genteel and idealized vision of life with the reality he is faced with on this trip, portrayed in his struggle between Virtue and Non-Virtue. He meets prostitutes old and young, and is impressed by their helplessness in that society. He meets Otis, Corrie's nephew, a boy a few years older than Lucius who acts as his foil and embodies many of the worst aspects of humanity. He degrades women, respects no one, blackmails the brothel owner, steals, and curses. Eventually Lucius, ever the white knight, fights him to defend Corrie's honor when Otis explains that in the town where they come from, he rented a place where men could see Miss Corrie during sexual intercourse with men. Otis carries a penknife and cuts Lucius' hand, but to no avail. Miss Corrie is so touched at his willingness to stand up for her ("I've had men fight over me, but never for me" she says) that she determines to become an "honest" woman. Moreover, it seems that Otis is not her nephew or little brother but her son, since she has been working as a prostitute since she was sixteen. To get to the race course, they (Boon, Lucius, Miss Corrie, Miss Reba, and the horse) have to use Miss Corrie's connections in the railways, much to Boons's regret, and to undergo bullying and abuse by a local marshall that extract sexual favours from Miss Corrie. In order for Lucius to train as jockey, he has to spend a day at a black man's family (a distant relative of Ned's), sharing their beds and food. Lucius is awed by their dignity and integrity. The climax comes when Lucius rides the horse (named Coppermine, but called Lightning by Ned) in an illicit race. Coppermine is a fast horse, but he likes to run just behind the other horses so he can see them at all times. Ned convinces him to make a final burst to win the race by bribing him with what may be a sardine, like another horse he used to have. After they win the race, Lucius's grandfather shows up, and another race is run. This time Ned does not do the sardine trick, and Coppermine loses. Lucius grandfather has to buy his car back from the track owner, a plantation acquaintance. Ned has bet against Coppermine in this race, and the poor black stable hand is able to get the better of the rich white grandfather. The story ends with the news that Boon and Miss Corrie have married and named their first child after Lucius.

The Great Gatsby

The third novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Widely considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus and a contender for the title, "Great American Novel." Follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. The Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period. In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and veteran of the Great War from the Midwest—who serves as the novel's narrator—takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island, in the fictional village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious multi-millionaire who holds extravagant parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes",[11] an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment that Tom uses like a hotel room for Myrtle, as well as other women whom he also sleeps with. At Tom's New York apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place. It ends with Tom physically abusing Myrtle, breaking her nose in the process, after he gets annoyed by the fact that she says Daisy's name several times. Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick from their same division in the Great War. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy through a purely chance meeting in 1917 when Daisy and her friends were doing volunteer services' work with young officers headed to Europe. From their brief meetings and casual encounters at that time, Gatsby became (and still is) deeply in love with Daisy. Gatsby had hoped that his wild parties would attract an unsuspecting Daisy, who lived across the bay, to appear at his doorstep and allow him to present himself as a man of wealth and position. Having developed a budding friendship with Nick, Gatsby uses him to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair over the summer. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' house, Daisy speaks to Gatsby with such undisguised intimacy that Tom realizes she is in love with Gatsby. Though Tom is himself an adulterer, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New York City and confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, asserting that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal whose fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy decides to stay with Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt her. On the way back, Gatsby's car strikes and kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy, not Gatsby himself, was driving the car at the time of the accident. Myrtle's husband, George Wilson, falsely concludes that the driver of the yellow car is the secret lover he suspects she has. He learns that the yellow car is Gatsby's, fatally shoots him, and then turns the gun on himself. Nick stages an unsettlingly small funeral for Gatsby which none of Gatsby's associates attend and only one of his partygoers (besides Nick) attends. Later, Nick runs into Tom in New York and finds out that Tom had told George that the yellow car was Gatsby's and gave him Gatsby's address. Disillusioned with the East, Nick moves back to the Midwest.

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner's fourth novel. It employs a number of narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. It is near-unanimously considered a masterpiece by literary critics and scholars, but the novel's unconventional narrative style frequently alienates new readers. Although the vocabulary is generally basic, the frequent switches in time and setting, as well as the occasional lack of regard for sentence structure grammar have proven it to be a difficult read. Set in Jefferson, Mississippi. The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Over the course of the 30 years or so related in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically. The novel is separated into four distinct sections. The first, April 7, 1928, is written from the perspective of Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, an intellectually disabled 33-year-old man. The characteristics of his impairment are not clear, but it is implied that he has a learning disability. Benjy's section is characterized by a highly disjointed narrative style with frequent chronological leaps. The second section, June 2, 1910, focuses on Quentin Compson, Benjy's older brother, and the events leading up to his suicide. In the third section, set a day before the first, on April 6, 1928, Faulkner writes from the point of view of Jason, Quentin's cynical younger brother. In the fourth and final section, set a day after the first, on April 8, 1928, Faulkner introduces a third person omniscient point of view. The last section primarily focuses on Dilsey, one of the Compsons' black servants. Jason is also a focus in the section, but Faulkner presents glimpses of the thoughts and deeds of everyone in the family.

Street Scene

a American play by Elmer Rice. After a total of 601 performances on Broadway, the production toured the United States and ran for six months in London. He received the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. the plays exterior is of a 'walk-up' apartment house in a mean quarter of New York. The main characters are Anna Maurrant, dealing with issues of infidelity; Rose Maurrant, her daughter, who struggles with the demands of her job and boss and her attraction to a Jewish neighbor, Sam Kaplan; Frank Maurrant, the domineering and sometimes abusive husband and father of Anna and Rose; Sam, a caring and concerned neighbor in love with Rose; and many other neighbors and passersby.

Quicksand

a novel by African-American author Nella Larsen. This is her first novel and explores both cross-cultural and interracial themes. Crane is the haughty, aloof and often arrogant, refined mixed-race daughter of a Danish white mother and a West Indian black father. Her father died soon after she was born. Unable to feel comfortable with her European-American relatives, Crane lives in various places in the United States and visits Denmark, searching for people among whom she feels at home. In her travels she encounters many of the communities which Larsen knew. For example, Crane teaches at Naxos, a Southern Negro boarding school (based on Tuskegee University), where she becomes dissatisfied with its philosophy. She criticizes a sermon by a white preacher, who advocates the segregation of blacks into separate schools and says their striving for social equality would lead blacks to become avaricious. Crane quits teaching and moves to Chicago. Her white maternal uncle, now married to a bigoted woman, shuns her. Crane moves to Harlem, New York, where she finds a refined but often hypocritical black middle-class woman obsessed with the "race problem." Taking her uncle's legacy, Crane visits her maternal aunt in Copenhagen, where she is treated as a highly desirable racial exotic. Missing black people, she returns to New York City. Close to a mental breakdown, Crane happens onto a store-front revival and has a charismatic religious experience. After marrying the preacher who converted her, she moves with him to the rural Deep South. There she is disillusioned by the people's adherence to religion. In each of her moves, Crane fails to find fulfillment. She is looking for more than how to integrate her mixed ancestry. She expresses complex feelings about what she and her friends consider genetic differences between races. The novel develops Crane's search for a marriage partner. As it opens, she has become engaged to marry a prominent Southern Negro man, whom she does not really love, but with whom she can gain social benefits. In Denmark she turns down the proposal of a famous white Danish artist for similar reasons, for lack of feeling. By the final chapters, Crane has married a black Southern preacher. The novel's close is deeply pessimistic. Crane had hoped to find sexual fulfillment in marriage and some success in helping the poor southern blacks she lives among, but instead she has frequent pregnancies and suffering. Disillusioned with religion, her husband, and her life, Crane fantasizes about leaving her husband, but never does.

Trifles

a one-act play by Susan Glaspell. Frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theatre. The play begins as the men, followed by the women, enter the Wright's empty farm house. On command from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his visit to the house the previous day, when he found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and her husband upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead. Mr. Hale notes that when he questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was asleep when someone strangled her husband. While the county attorney, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Peters are searching the house for evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clues in the kitchen and hallway to this unsolved mystery. The men find no clues upstairs in the Wright house that would prove Mrs. Wright guilty, but the women find a dead canary that cracks the case wide open. The wives realize Mr. Wright killed the bird, and that led to Mrs. Wright killing her husband. The wives piece together that Minnie was being abused by her husband, and they understand how it feels to be oppressed by men. Because they feel bad for Minnie, they hide the evidence against her and she is spared the punishment for killing her husband.

Winesburg, Ohio

a short story cycle by the American Modernist author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. The book consists of twenty-two stories. Each of the stories shares a specific character's past and present struggle to overcome the loneliness and isolation that seems to permeate the town. Known as one of the earliest works of Modernist literature. Modern Library ranked the book 24th of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.