Joyce Oates EDITOR
Robert Atwan COEDITOR
This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America’s tumultuous modern age, as experienced by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. Joyce Carol Oates has collected a group of works that are both intimate and important, essays that move from personal experience to larger significance without severing the connection between speaker and audience.
From Ernest Hemingway covering bullfights in Pamplona to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, “into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we’ve come from, and who we are, and where we are going.” Among those whose work is included are Mark Twain, John Muir, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Hoagland, and Annie Dillard.
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company
Introduction copyright © 2000 by The Ontario Review Inc.
ISBN 0-618-04370-5
Contents
Foreword by Robert Atwan x
Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates xvii
1901 : MARK TWAIN
Corn-pone Opinions 1
1903 : W.E.B. DU BOIS
Of the Coming of John 6
1906 : HENRY ADAMS
A Law of Acceleration 20
1909 : JOHN MUIR
Stickeen 28
1910 : WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War 45
1911 : RANDOLPH BOURNE
The Handicapped 57
1912 : JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
Coatesville 71
1916 : JANE ADDAMS
The Devil Baby at Hull-House 75
1919 : T.S. ELIOT
Tradition and the Individual Talent 90
1923 : ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Pamplona in July 98
1925 : H.L. MENCKEN
The Hills of Zion 107
1928 : ZORA NEALE HURSTON
How It Feels to Be Colored Me 114
1933 : EDMUND WILSON
The Old Stone House 118
1935 : GERTRUDE STEIN
What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them 131
1936 : F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Crack-Up 139
1937 : JAMES THURBER
Sex Ex Machina 153
1937 : RICHARD WRIGHT
The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch 159
1938 : JAMES AGEE
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 171
1939 : ROBERT FROST
The Figure a Poem Makes 176
1941 : E.B. WHITE
Once More to the Lake 179
1944 : S.J. PERELMAN
Insert Flap "A" and Throw Away 186
1949 : LANGSTON HUGHES
Bop 190
1950 : KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
The Future Is Now 193
1953 : MARY McCARTHY
Artists in Uniform 199
1955 : RACHEL CARSON
The Marginal World 214
1955 : JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son 220
1956 : LOREN EISELEY
The Brown Wasps 239
1957 : EUDORA WELTY
A Sweet Devouring 246
1961 : DONALD HALL
A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails 252
1963 : MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Letter from Birmingham Jail 263
1964 : TOM WOLFE
Putting Daddy On 280
1964 : SUSAN SONTAG
Notes on "Camp" 288
1966 : VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Perfect Past 303
1967 : N. SCOTT MOMADAY
The Way to Rainy Mountain 313
1968 : ELIZABETH HARDWICK
The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King 319
1969 : MICHAEL HERR
Illumination Rounds 327
1970 : MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 342
1971 : LEWIS THOMAS
The Lives of a Cell 358
1972 : JOHN McPHEE
The Search for Marvin Gardens 361
1972 : WILLIAM H. GASS
The Doomed in Their Sinking 373
1975 : MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
No Name Woman 383
1975 : ALICE WALKER
Looking for Zora 395
1977 : ADRIENNE RICH
Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying 412
1979 : JOAN DIDION
The White Album 421
1980 : RICHARD RODRIGUEZ
Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood 447
1981 : GRETEL EHRLICH
The Solace of Open Spaces 467
1982 : ANNIE DILLARD
Total Eclipse 477
1982 : CYNTHIA OZICK
A Drugstore in Winter 490
1987 : WILLIAM MANCHESTER
Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All 497
1988 : EDWARD HOAGLAND
Heaven and Nature 507
1989 : STEPHEN JAY GOULD
The Creation Myths of Cooperstown 520
1990 : GERALD EARLY
Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant 532
1993 : JOHN UPDIKE
The Disposable Rocket 549
1995 : JOYCE CAROL OATES
They All Just Went Away 553
1997 : SAUL BELLOW
Graven Images 564
Biographical Notes : 569
Appendix: Notable Twentieth-Century American Literary Nonfiction : 591
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