American literature
Life’s dark side: the catastrophic world of Stephen Crane
Long before Ernest Hemingway wasted his late career playing the he-man on battlefields and in fishing boats, or Norman Mailer…
No writer was better suited to chronicle the Depression than John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck didn’t believe in God — but he didn’t believe much in humanity either. When push came to shove,…
Jonathan Galassi’s fictional poet made me doubt my knowledge of American literature
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
Eugene O’Neill: the dark genius of American theatre
Sarah Churchwell on how Eugene O’Neill virtually single-handedly revolutionised American theatre in the first half of the 20th century
Up close and personal
In recycling his most intimate encounters as fiction – including amazing feats of promiscuity in small-town New England – John Updike drew unashamedly on his own experiences for inspiration, says Philip Hensher
Samuel Beckett walks into a nail bar
It isn’t very often that a writer’s work is so striking that you can remember exactly where and when you…
William S. Burroughs was a writer – not a painter, prophet, philosopher
William S. Burroughs lived his life in the grand transgressive tradition of Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde and, like all…
The two people who brought us The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck (1902–1968), an ardent propagandist for the exploited underdogs of the Great Depression, had barely enough money for subsistence…
Critics can be creative - look at Malcolm Cowley
Even Spectator book reviewers have to concede that their craft is inferior to the creative travail of authors. Henry James…
The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, edited by Andrew Jewell - review
Richard Davenport-Hines on the tomboy from Red Cloud whose evocation of the vast, unforgiving landscape of the prairies is unrivalled
