- Category: Books » Literary Criticism » American - General
- Format: Hardcover Learn more about the Hardcover format using Tower WIKI.
- Publisher: Belknap Press
- Number of Pages: 1104
- ISBN: 0674035941
- WAPI (Tower ID): 113437713
- Release Date: September 28, 2009
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #32000 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #467 in Literary Criticism (See Top 100 Literary Criticism Bestsellers)
- #33 in American - General (See Top 100 American - General Bestsellers)
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Product DescriptionRun a Quick Search on "A New Literary History of America" by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "A New Literary History of America"Browse more products related to "Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors"Review"In my opinion perhaps the single most impressive achievement in the book is the editors' and writers' ability to pinpoint linkages between one kind of fact and another. We Americans, the editors insist, are plural, not singular....By the time I had made my way through about a third of the book I began to feel an emotion that comes but rarely to a reviewer: pride." "In this thousand-page compendium...it's clear that nothing remains of the boundaries that traditionally separated literature, history and popular culture....In snapshots of a few thousand words each, the entries in A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICA put on display the exploring, tinkering and risk-taking that have contributed to the invention of America....[The book] gives us what amounts to a fractal geometry of American culture. You can focus on any one spot and get a sense of the whole or pull back and watch the larger patterns appear." "[T]his magnificent volume is a vast, inquisitive, richly surprising and consistently enlightening wallow in our national history and culture....The goal of those old-fashioned daily Bible readings was to help the faithful better know the mind of God. Since we've replaced divine will with what Mitchell Meltzer calls 'secular revelation,' our new scriptures consist not of God's words, but our own. A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICA shows us how to read them, how to look through words, gestures and ideas to glimpse our future." "The full national-literary character of the United States is on display in this mighty history and reference work for our time....[T]his is an astounding achievement in multiculturalism and American studies, which in the age of Google and the Internet lights the way toward serious interpretive reference publishing." (starred review) Publisher's noteA volume of more than 200 original essays traces the dynamic expression of the American experience and how the nation's evolving sense of identity can offer alternate perspectives into history, in an anthology that also explores modern cultural creations in a broad range of disciplines. America is a nation making itself up as it goes along--a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, "A New Literary History of America" brings together the nation's many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what "Made in America" means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoric--cultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape. The meeting of minds is extraordinary as T. J. Clark writes on Jackson Pollock, Paul Muldoon on Carl Sandburg, Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams, Sara Vowell on Grant Wood's "American Gothic," Walter Mosley on hard-boiled detective fiction, Jonathan Lethem on Thomas Edison, Gerald Early on "Tarzan," Bharati Mukherjee on "The Scarlet Letter," Gish Jen on "Catcher in the Rye," and Ishmael Reed on "Huckleberry Finn." From Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop to Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, from Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Foster to Alcoholics Anonymous, "Life," Chuck Berry, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ronald Reagan, this is America singing, celebrating itself, and becoming something altogether different, plural, singular, new. AnnotationA massive, radical, and brilliant anthology edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICA gathers together essays by over 200 authors to comment on the literary and national development of America. Arranged in chronological order, the anthology begins in 1507 when the word "America" first appears on a map, then zooms on to examine seminal literary events (both obvious and surprising) such as Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS, FDR's first fireside chat, or the invention of the term "multicultural." The pairing of authors to subject is both unexpected and inspired, with Ishmael Reed writing on "Mark Twain's Hairball" and Mary Gaitskill writing on Norman Mailer. With essays on country music, Superman, the first book club, and Dr. Seuss sharing space with THE GREAT GATSBY and LOLITA, A NEW LITERARY HISTORY is a wildly diverse, slyly subversive, wonderfully stimulating look at that fractured shifting landscape we call America. If You Enjoy "A New Literary History of America (Hardcover)", May We Also Recommend:Customer Reviews for "A New Literary History of America (Hardcover)" by Greil Marcus (Editor) and Wern...There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review! 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