Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: the Authors Philip A

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: the Authors Philip A 200 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume One: The Authors Philip A. Greasley, general editor (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 666. Illustrations,suggestions for further reading, appendix, index. $59.95.) This volume presents, in alphabetical (that is, persons with their origins and/ order, approximately four hundred en- or most lasting affiliationswith the area) tries on individual authors. Each entry and “Midwesternliterature.” This ambi- begins with name, birth and death dates, guity has implications for the usefulness and major pseudonyms, and continues of the volume. Who is represented here, with sections on biography, literary sig- and on what basis? nificance, identification of major works, Anderson’s essay, for instance, con- and suggestions for further secondary cludes with the intriguing note that four reading. The entries are signed and in- of the eight American winners of the clude the institutional affiliations of some Nobel Prize in literature are midwest- one hundred contributors,all members erners: Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Heming- of the Society for the Study of Midwest- way, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison. By ern Literature,the project’s sponsor. This geographicaland cultural affiliation and volume is the first of a proposed three by attitude these four belong in this vol- for the Dictionary of Midwestern Litera- ume. The situation is less clear for other ture. Volume two, in encyclopedia-entry figures who also appear: Black Elk, born format, will cover important historical in Wyoming, raised in the northern and research sites, movements, themes, plains, and oblivious to the white man’s and genres; volume three will be a dis- cultural construct of “region”;Joyce Carol cursive, chapter-organized, literary his- Oates, whose connections to the region tory of the Midwest. are a master’s degree in English at the The author entries are prefaced by University of Wisconsin and five years general editor Philip A. Greasley’s intro- of teaching in Detroit; James Norman duction, outlining the definitions and Hall, co-author with Charles Nordhoff organization of the content, and by an of The Mutiny on the Bounty (1932>,born overview essay, “The Origins and Devel- in Iowa but educated in Boston, a Brit- opment of the Literature of the Midwest,” ish soldier, and an English citizen; and by David D. Anderson, a founder of the Upton Sinclair, whose only connection society and a prolific contributor to its is that his muckraking expod TheJungle enterprises.Both essays attempt to define (1906) involves Chcago. “Midwest,”that the geographical and intellectualbound- is to say, is as uncertain a term for the aries of the project, to fix the term “Mid- dictionary’s editors and authors as it is west” and so to clarify the principles of for the rest of us. inclusion and exclusion. Neither piece, The individual entries are generally however, successfully identifies the dif- competent and nicely proportioned.The ference between “Midwestern authors” discussions of major works by an author REVIEWS 201 and the notes on further reading are es- author Robert McCloskey, and Gary Ed- pecially helpful in directing the reader ward (Garrison) Keillor. Readers might to the author’s writings and from there dispute some of the choices, but the vol- to an acquaintance with the secondary ume as a whole suggests the vitality of scholarship. The chosen authors com- the midwestem contribution to litera- prise an effective selection, from histori- ture. cally significant figures like Booth Tar- lungton, Carl Sandburg, Kurt Vonnegut, DAVIDJ. NORDLOHis professor of English and Aldo Leopold, to promising new- at Indiana University Bloomington, co- comers like poet Jonis Agee and novel- editor of American Literary Scholarship: ist Nettie Jones, and to more broadly An Annual (Duke University Press), and popular and influential people like Wil- general editor of A Selected Edition of W liam McGuffey (of the Readers), chldren’s D. Howells (Indiana University Press). Karl BodrnerS Studio Art By W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, and David C. Hunt (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. x, 164. Maps, illustrations, notes, references, index. $45.00.) The publication of Karl Bodmerk Studio souri Rver from St. Louis to Fort McKen- Art coincideswith the 200th anniversary zie, Montana, and assesses the scientific celebration of Lewis and Clark‘s expedi- significance of their work, placing it tion. Although thirty years lapsed before within the context of the ethnographic Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and philosophies of the time. Porter also de- his hired Swiss artist, Karl Bodmer, ar- tails the pair’s unexpected delay in New rived in America to document flora, Harmony In&, the winter before 1833 fauna, and Indian cultures, data from and the effect the long stopover had on Lewis and Clark’s journey still provided both men. Maximilian’s interactions with guidance and inspiration. At the Peale resident naturalists Charles-Alexandre Museum in Philadelphia, the prince Lesueur and Thomas Say turned New viewed natural and ethnographic objects Harmony into the prince’s “finishing gathered during the 1803 expedition. school” for North American exploration, He later met with William Clark in St. whde Bodmer spent h time drawing wa- Louis and received a gift of Clarks “Spe- tercolors and sketches of the settlement cial Map of the Missouri River in the and its vicinity years 1804, 1805 and 1806.” “A Publication History of Karl Bod- The book is divided into three sec- mer’s North American Atlas,” by David tions. “The Eyes of Strangers: ‘Fact’ and C. Hunt, traces where and when the litho- Art on the Ethnographic Frontier, 1832- graphs were published and also includes 34,”by Joseph C. Porter, describes Max- research into the artist’s complex print- imilian and Bodmer’s voyage up the Mis- ing processes and methods of sales, and .
Recommended publications
  • 100 Best Last Lines from Novels
    100 Best Last Lines from Novels 1. …you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. –Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable 22. YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO ARt—RETURN TO LIFE –William H. Gass, (1953; trans. Samuel Beckett) Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife (1968) 2. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? –Ralph Ellison, 23. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your Invisible Man (1952) rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel. –Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900) 3. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) 24. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is. –Russell Banks, Continental Drift (1985) 4. …I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the 25. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with children, only found another orphan. –Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could 26. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
    [Show full text]
  • Ideological Tension in Four Novels by Saul Bellow
    Ideological Tension in Four Novels by Saul Bellow June Jocelyn Sacks Dissertation submitted in fulfilmentTown of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts atCape the Universityof of Cape Town Univesity Department of English April 1987 Supervisor: Dr Ian Glenn The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University Contents Page. Abstract i Acknowledgements vi Introduction Chapter One Dangling Man 15 Chapter Two The Victim 56 Chapter Three Herzog 99 Chapter Four Mr Sammler's Planet 153 Notes 190 Bibliography 212 Abstract This study examines and evaluates critically four novels by Saul Bellow: Dangling Man, The Victim, Herzog and Mr Sammler's Planet. The emphasis is on the tension between certain aspects of modernity to which many of the characters are attracted, and the latent Jewishness of their creator. Bellow's Jewish heritage suggests alternate ways of being to those advocated by the enlightened thought of liberal Humanism, for example, or by one of its offshoots, Existenti'alism, or by "wasteland" ideologies. Bellow propounds certain ideas about the purpose of the novel in various articles, and these are discussed briefly in the introduction. His dismissal of the prophets of doom, those thinkers and writers who are pessimistic about the fate of humankind and the continued existence of the novel, is emphatic and certain.
    [Show full text]
  • English, American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature. INSTITUTION Kansas Univ., Lawrence
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 058 196 TE 002 709 AUTHOR Phillips, James A. TITLE Modular Curriculum: English, American Nobel Prize Winners in Literature. INSTITUTION Kansas Univ., Lawrence. Extramural Independent Study Center. PUB DATE 70 NOTE 54p. AVAILABLE FROMUniversity of Kansas, Extramural Independent Study Center, Coordinator of Secondary Education, Lawrence, Kansas 66044 ($2.00) EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *American Literature; *Authors; College Curriculum; Creative Writing; Curriculum Design; *English Curriculum; Guides; Independent Study; *Literary Genres; *Secondary Education; University Extension IDENTIFIERS *Nobel Prize in Literature ABSTRACT This independent study module treats those Americans who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. They include Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Pearl Buck. Selections from the writings of these authors are included. Their works represent many literary genres and also encompass much that man has had to say about his fellow man. (Editor/CK) I. THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS / AT LAWRENCE "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPY RIGHTED MATERIAL BY MICRDFICHE ONLY 1-14$PEEN GRANTED BY/I NAAJ uo IL)Q U.N/i 14rdS4-S. TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U S OFFICE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PER MISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OF HEALTH. U.S. DEPARTMENT EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EOUCATION HAS BEEN REPRO- THIS DOCUMENT MODULAR CURRICULUM: AS RECEIVEDFROM DUCED EXACTLYORGANIZATION ORIG- THE PERSON OR OPIN- ENGLISH INATING IT. POINTSOF VIEW OR NOT NECESSARILY American Nobel Prize Winners IONS STATEO DO OFFICE OF EDU- REPRESENT OFFICIAL OR POLICY.
    [Show full text]
  • Faulkner & Morrison
    William Faulkner and Toni Morrison are generally understood as two of the most important writers of the twentieth century, and, indeed, the work of each is integral to American literature. But why are Morrison and Faulkner so often Faulkner & mentioned in the same breath—he, born in the South, white and wealthy, she, the Morrison daughter of a working-class black family in the Midwest? Perhaps it is because in a country that works hard to live without a racial past, both Morrison’s and Faulkner’s work bring deep articulation to the often unseen, and more commonly, English 95.03 the unspeakable. This class will make some explorations across each author’s work, Prof. Parham looking for where their texts converge and diverge. As well, we will learn how to [email protected] talk and write about the visions, dreams, and nightmares—all represented as daily life—that these authors offer. Workload & Attendance This is a discussion driven class, and its greatest requirement is that you pay close attention—in class as well as while reading. This also means that we might make changes to the syllabus, adjusting according to our progress through the texts. You will complete 5 three page papers, of which I will drop the lowest grade. You may choose to skip paper #5, but you may not skip papers 1-4. For your final grade, you must submit at least four papers, revised if you like, as a portfolio. I do not give paper topics, but we can build one for you during office hours in 10 Johnson Chapel.
    [Show full text]
  • SINCLAIR LEWIS' Fiction
    MR, FLANAGAN, who is professoT of American literature in. the University of Illinois, here brings to a total of fifteen his mafor contributions to this magazine. The article's appearance appropriately coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of Lewis' birth and the fortieth of the publication of Main Street. The MINNESOTA Backgrounds of SINCLAIR LEWIS' Fiction JOHN T. FLANAGAN SINCLAIR. LEWIS 'was once questioned his picture of Gopher Prairie and Minne­ about the autobiographical elements in sota and the entire Middle W^est became Main Street by a friend 'whose apartment both durable and to a large extent accurate. he 'was temporarily sharing. The novelist A satirist is of course prone to exaggeration. remarked to Charles Breasted that Dr. 'Will Over-emphasis and distortion are his stock Kennicott, the appealing country physician in trade. But despite this tilting of the in his first best seller, 'was a portrait of his balance, his understanding of places and father; and he admitted that Carol, the doc­ events and people must be reliable, other­ tor's 'wife, 'was in many respects indistin­ wise he risks losing touch with reality com­ guishable from himself. Both "Red" Lewis pletely, Lewis was born in Minnesota, he and Carol Kennicott were always groping spent the first seventeen years of his life in for something beyond attainment, always the state, and he returned on frequent visits, dissatisfied, always restless, and although which sometimes involved extensive stays both were frequently scornful of their im­ in Minneapolis, St, Paul, or Duluth, A num­ mediate surroundings they nevertheless ber of his early short stories and six of his lacked any clear vision of what could or twenty-two novels are localized wholly or should be done.
    [Show full text]
  • NOTES on CONTRIBUTORS Thomas La Borie Burns Teaches English
    NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Thomas La Borie Burns teaches English and American literature at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He has published poetry, poetic translations, and essays on literature and other topics, both in Brazil and in the United States, and is currently a doctoral candidate in literature at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Willian Harmon has taught English and American literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapei Hill since 1970. He has published five volumes of poetry, including winners of the Lamont Award and the William Carlos Williams Award. He has published a criticai study of Ezra Pound s work and has edited The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, the fifth and sixth editions of the Macmillan Handbook to Literature, and Columbia University Press anthologies of the top 100 and top 500 poems in English. Robert F. Kiernan is Professor of English and World literature at Manhattan College, in New York City. He was a Fulbright Professor at the Universidade de São Paulo in 1991 and the Universidade Federal de Brasília in 1992. He Lectured at the ABRA PUI conference in Maringá in 1989. He is the author of six books: Katherine Anne Porter and Carson McCullers (1986); Gore Vidal (1982); American Writing Since 1945: A Criticai Survey (1983, translated as A Literatura Americana Pós 1945: Um Ensaio Crítico, 1988); Noel Coward (1986), Saul Bellow (1989), and Frivolity Unbound: Six Masters of the Camp Novel (1990). Barbara Ladd is Assistant Professor of American literature in the English Department at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia. She has published in The Southern Quarterly, The Mississippi Quarterly, and elsewhere.
    [Show full text]
  • Ernest Hemingway Global American Modernist
    Ernest Hemingway Global American Modernist Lisa Tyler Sinclair Community College, USA Iconic American modernist Ernest Hemingway spent his entire adult life in an interna- tional (although primarily English-speaking) modernist milieu interested in breaking with the traditions of the past and creating new art forms. Throughout his lifetime he traveled extensively, especially in France, Spain, Italy, Cuba, and what was then British East Africa (now Kenya and Tanzania), and wrote about all of these places: “For we have been there in the books and out of the books – and where we go, if we are any good, there you can go as we have been” (Hemingway 1935, 109). At the time of his death, he was a global celebrity recognized around the world. His writings were widely translated during his lifetime and are still taught in secondary schools and universities all over the globe. Ernest Hemingway was born 21 July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, also the home of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most famous modernist architects in the world. Hemingway could look across the street from his childhood home and see one of Wright’s innovative designs (Hays 2014, 54). As he was growing up, Hemingway and his family often traveled to nearby Chicago to visit the Field Museum of Natural History and the Chicago Opera House. Because of the 1871 fire that destroyed structures over more than three square miles of the city, a substantial part of Chicago had become a clean slate on which late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century architects could design what a modern city should look like.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Honors a Distinguished Work of Fiction by an American Author, Preferably Dealing with American Life
    Pulitzer Prize Winners Named after Hungarian newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction honors a distinguished work of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. Chosen from a selection of 800 titles by five letter juries since 1918, the award has become one of the most prestigious awards in America for fiction. Holdings found in the library are featured in red. 2017 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 2014 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson 2012: No prize (no majority vote reached) 2011: A visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 2010:Tinkers by Paul Harding 2009:Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 2008:The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 2007:The Road by Cormac McCarthy 2006:March by Geraldine Brooks 2005 Gilead: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson 2004 The Known World by Edward Jones 2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo 2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham 1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth 1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Stephan Milhauser 1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford 1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 1994 The Shipping News by E. Anne Proulx 1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler 1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
    [Show full text]
  • 1. Harold Bloom (Ed.), Saul Bellow: Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986), P
    Notes 1. Harold Bloom (ed.), Saul Bellow: Modern Critical Views (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986), p. 1. 2. Saul Bellow (ed.), Great Jewish Short Stories (New York: Dell Publishing, 1963), p. 13. 3. Quoted in Stanley Kunitz (ed.) Twentieth Century Authors, First Supple­ ment (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1955), p. 72. 4. Jo Brans, 'Common Needs, Common Preoccupations', in Stanley Trachtenberg (ed.) Critical Essays on Saul Bellow (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979), p. 67. 5. Saul Bellow, in his foreword to Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1987), p.14. 6. Alfred Kazin, 'My Friend Saul Bellow', Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1965, p.51. 7. Mark Harris, Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 182. 8. Joyce Illig, 'An Interview with Saul Bellow', Publishers Weekly, 22 Oct. 1973, p. 77. 9. Saul Bellow, 'The Thinking Man's Waste Land', Saturday Review, 3 April 1965, p. 20. 10. Saul Bellow, The Last Analysis (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. vii. 11. Quoted in Mary Bruccoli (ed.), Dictionary of Literary Biography, Documentary Series, vol. 3 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1983), p. 62. 12. Joseph Epstein, 'A Talk with Saul Bellow', New York Times Book Review, 5 Dec. 1976, p. 3. 13. Noam Chomsky, 'Bellow's Israel', New York Arts Journal, Spring 1977, pp.29-32. 14. Saul Bellow, 'I Haven't Hung up My Gloves Yet', Toronto Star, 11 March 1990, p. D6. 15. Saul Bellow, Foreword to Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p.
    [Show full text]
  • IB Lang & Lit DP Year 1
    IB English Language and Literature Year 1 Summer Reading Assignment 2021 Welcome to IB English Language and Literature. In addition to providing you an excellent reading experience, this assignment will help you develop your ability to identify the main idea in a text, understand unfamiliar words in context, and become conversant in what IB calls Global Issues. We’ve prepared for you a list of 15 varied novels from which you are free to choose. We recommend researching some of the titles online or at your library and even reading a chapter or two into a few of them before settling on your choice. Once you have selected a book, read it carefully, taking notes as you read, and address the following prompt: How does the novel you selected discuss, suggest, or treat ONE (1) of the following topics: family, gender, class, ethnicity, inequality, injustice, immigration, politics, education, crime, the environment, or technology? Type a double-spaced essay of a minimum of 500 words (include the word count) IB English Language and Literature Year 1 answering the prompt. Your essay is due on the first day of class (Monday, August Summer Reading Assignment Book List: 23rd) and will be worth 40 points in the “Skills” grading category (25% weight). Due to the amount of work we’ll be doing once the year begins, late papers cannot be The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck accepted. Your essay will be evaluated in accordance with the attached rubric. La Rose by Louise Erdich Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale To turn in your essay, join our Turnitin.com class by signing in or creating an account, Hurston then use the class ID 28990415 and the enrollment key summer.
    [Show full text]
  • Author Biography Toni Morrison Discussion Guide
    TONI MORRISON DISCUSSION GUIDE (630) 232-0780 [email protected] AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY The second of the four children of George and Ramah (Willis) Wofford, Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, a steel town twenty-five miles west of Cleveland. During the worst years of the Great Depression, her father worked as a car washer, a welder in a local steel mill, and road-construction worker, while her mother, a feisty, determined woman, dealt with callous landlords and impertinent social workers. "When an eviction notice was put on our house, she tore it off," Morrison remembered, as quoted in People. "If there were maggots in our flour, she wrote a letter to [President] Franklin Roosevelt. My mother believed something should be done about inhuman situations." In an article for the New York Times Magazine, Morrison discussed her parents' contrasting attitudes toward white society and the effect of those conflicting views on her own perception of the quality of black life in America. Ramah Wofford believed that, in time, race relations would improve; George Wofford distrusted "every word and every gesture of every white man on Earth." Both parents were convinced, however, that "all succor and aid came from themselves and their neighborhood." Consequently, Morrison, although she attended a multiracial school, was raised in "a basically racist household" and grew up "with more than a child's contempt for white people." After graduating with honors from high school in 1949, Toni Morrison enrolled at Howard University in Washington, DC. Morrison devoted most of her free time to the Howard University Players, a campus theater company she described as "a place where hard work, thought, and talent" were praised and "merit was the only rank." She often appeared in campus productions, and in the summers she traveled throughout the South with a repertory troupe made up of faculty members and students.
    [Show full text]
  • Pulitzer Prize
    1946: no award given 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair Pulitzer 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow 1941: no award given 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Prize-Winning 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis Fiction 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller 1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck 1931 : Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (declined prize) 1925: So Big! by Edna Ferber 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 1920: no award given 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole Deer Park Public Library 44 Lake Avenue Deer Park, NY 11729 (631) 586-3000 2012: no award given 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer 2011: Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever 2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson 2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 1977: No award given 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks 1974: No award given 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty 2004: The Known World by Edward P.
    [Show full text]