Contents
The Literature ofthe United States
Colonialliterature
Early U.S.literature
UniqueAmerican style
American lyric
Realism,Twain, and James
Turn of the century
Theater
Post-World War II
Postmodernism
Modern humoristliterature
Southernliterature
African Americanliterature
JewishAmerican literature
Other ethnic,minority, and immigrant literatures
Other genres
J.D.Salinger
Biography
The Poetry of theUnited States
Poetry inthe colonies
Postcolonial poetry
Whitman andDickinson
Modernism and after
World War IIand after
American poetry now
Academy ofAmerican Poets
Awards given by theacademy
Chicanopoetry
Pioneers andforerunners
Unifyingconcepts
Theater in theUnited States
History
Early history
The 19thcentury
The 20th century
Americantheater today
American comic book
History
Proto-comic books
FamousFunnies and New Fun Comics
Superman andsuperheroes
The ComicsCode
Silver Age of ComicBooks
Undergroundcomics
Bronze Age of ComicBooks
The ModernAge
Prestige format
Independentand alternative comics
Artist recognition
Production
The superhero
Pricing
The List ofLiterature & Web-sites
TheLiterature of the United States
During itsearly history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast ofthe present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins aslinked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique Americancharacteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to beconsidered a separate path and tradition.Colonialliterature
Some of theearliest American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefitsof the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. John Smith ofJamestown could be considered the first American author with his works: A TrueRelation of… Virginia… (1608) and The General Historie of Virginia, NewEngland, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other writers of this manner includedDaniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, JohnHammond, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.
The religiousdisputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing.A journal written by John Winthrop discussed the religious foundations of theMassachusetts Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also recorded a diary of the firstyears after the Mayflower's arrival. Other religiously influenced writersincluded Increase Mather and William Bradford, author of the journal publishedas a History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like Roger Williams andNathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state and church separation.
Some poetryalso existed. Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor are especially noted. MichaelWigglesworth wrote a best-selling poem, The Day of Doom, describing the time ofjudgement. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
Other earlywritings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen inwritings by Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, andMary Rowlandson. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language.
JonathanEdwards and Cotton Mather represented the Great Awakening, a religious revivalin the early 18th century that asserted strict Calvinism. Other Puritan andreligious writers include Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Uriah Oakes, JohnWise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers included SamuelSewall, Sarah Kemble Knight, and William Byrd.
Therevolutionary period also contained political writings, including those bycolonists Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, aloyalist to the crown. Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklinare esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of abudding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The AmericanCrisis writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the politicaltone of the period.
During therevolution itself, poems and songs such as «Yankee Doodle» and«Nathan Hale» were popular. Major satirists included John Trumbulland Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote important poems aboutthe war's course.Early U.S.literature
The firstAmerican novel is sometimes considered to be William Hill Brown's The Power ofSympathy (1789). Much of the early literature of the new nation struggled tofind a uniquely American voice. European forms and styles were oftentransferred to new locales and critics often saw them as inferior. For example,Wieland and other novels by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) are often seenas imitations of the Gothic novels then being written in England.
Unique American style
With the Warof 1812 and an increasing desire to produce uniquely American work, a number ofkey new literary figures appeared, perhaps most prominently Washington Irving,William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving,often considered the first writer to develop a unique American style (althoughthis is debated) wrote humorous works in Salmagundi and the well-known satire AHistory of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant wrote earlyromantic and nature-inspired poetry, which evolved away from their Europeanorigins. In 1835, Poe began writing short stories — including The Masque ofthe Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, andThe Murders in the Rue Morgue — that explore previously hidden levels of humanpsychology and push the boundaries of fiction toward mystery and fantasy.Cooper's Leatherstocking tales about Natty Bumppo were popular both in the newcountry and abroad.
Humorouswriters were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin P. Shillaber inNew England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J. Hooper,Thomas Bangs Thorpe, Joseph G. Baldwin, and George Washington Harris writingabout the American frontier.
The NewEngland Brahmins were a group of writers connected to Harvard University andits seat in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The core included James Russell Lowell,Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
In 1836, RalphWaldo Emerson (1803-1882), an ex-minister, published a startling nonfictionwork called Nature, in which he claimed it was possible to dispense withorganized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state by studying and respondingto the natural world. His work influenced not only the writers who gatheredaround him, forming a movement known as Transcendentalism, but also the public,who heard him lecture.
Emerson's mostgifted fellow-thinker was perhaps Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), a resolutenonconformist. After living mostly by himself for two years in a cabin by awooded pond, Thoreau wrote Walden, a book-length memoir that urges resistanceto the meddlesome dictates of organized society. His radical writings express adeep-rooted tendency toward individualism in the American character. Otherwriters influenced by Transcendentalism were Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller,George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very.
The politicalconflict surrounding Abolitionism inspired the writings of William LloydGarrison and his paper The Liberator, along with poet John Greenleaf Whittierand Harriet Beecher Stowe in her world-famous Uncle Tom's Cabin.
In 1837, theyoung Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) collected some of his stories asTwice-Told Tales, a volume rich in symbolism and occult incidents. Hawthornewent on to write full-length «romances,» quasi-allegorical novelsthat explore such themes as guilt, pride, and emotional repression in hisnative New England. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, is the stark drama ofa woman cast out of her community for committing adultery. History of modern literature
Hawthorne'sfiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819-1891), whofirst made a name for himself by turning material from his seafaring days intoexotic novels. Inspired by Hawthorne's example, Melville went on to writenovels rich in philosophical speculation. In Moby Dick, an adventurous whalingvoyage becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as obsession, the natureof evil, and human struggle against the elements. In another fine work, theshort novel Billy Budd, Melville dramatizes the conflicting claims of duty andcompassion on board a ship in time of war. His more profound books sold poorly,and he had been long forgotten by the time of his death. He was rediscovered inthe early decades of the 20th century.
Anti-transcendentalworks from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the Dark Romanticismsubgenre of literature popular during this time.
American lyric
America's twogreatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different intemperament and style. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was a working man, a traveler,a self-appointed nurse during the American Civil War (1861-1865), and a poeticinnovator. His magnum opus was Leaves of Grass, in which he uses a free-flowingverse and lines of irregular length to depict the all-inclusiveness of Americandemocracy. Taking that motif one step further, the poet equates the vast rangeof American experience with himself without being egotistical. For example, inSong of Myself, the long, central poem in Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes:«These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they arenot original with me....»
Whitman wasalso a poet of the body — «the body electric,» as he called it. InStudies in Classic American Literature, the English novelist D.H. Lawrencewrote that Whitman «was the first to smash the old moral conception thatthe soul of man is something `superior' and `above' the flesh.»
EmilyDickinson (1830-1886), on the other hand, lived the sheltered life of a genteelunmarried woman in small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Within its formalstructure, her poetry is ingenious, witty, exquisitely wrought, andpsychologically penetrating. Her work was unconventional for its day, andlittle of it was published during her lifetime.
Many of herpoems dwell on death, often with a mischievous twist. «Because I could notstop for Death,» one begins, «He kindly stopped for me.» Theopening of another Dickinson poem toys with her position as a woman in amale-dominated society and an unrecognized poet: «I'm nobody! Who are you?/ Are you nobody too?»
Realism, Twain, and James
Mark Twain(the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) was the first majorAmerican writer to be born away from the East Coast — in the border state ofMissouri. His regional masterpieces were the memoir Life on the Mississippi andthe novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain's style — influenced byjournalism, wedded to the vernacular, direct and unadorned but also highly evocativeand irreverently funny — changed the way Americans write their language. Hischaracters speak like real people and sound distinctively American, using localdialects, newly invented words, and regional accents. Other writers interestedin regional differences and dialect were George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page,Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), SarahOrne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Henry Cuyler Bunner, and William SydneyPorter (O. Henry).
William DeanHowells also represented the realist tradition through his novels, includingThe Rise of Silas Lapham and his work as editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
Henry James(1843-1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing directlyabout it. Although born in New York City, he spent most of his adult years inEngland. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel toEurope. With its intricate, highly qualified sentences and dissection ofemotional and psychological nuance, James's fiction can be daunting. Among hismore accessible works are the novellas Daisy Miller, about an enchantingAmerican girl in Europe, and The Turn of the Screw, an enigmatic ghost story.Turn of thecentury
ErnestHemingway in World War I uniform.
At thebeginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction'ssocial spectrum to encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected tothe naturalist school of realism. In her stories and novels, Edith Wharton(1862-1937) scrutinized the upper-class, Eastern-seaboard society in which shehad grown up. One of her finest books, The Age of Innocence, centers on a manwho chooses to marry a conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than afascinating outsider. At about the same time, Stephen Crane (1871-1900), bestknown for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, depicted the life ofNew York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. And in SisterCarrie, Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) portrayed a country girl who moves toChicago and becomes a kept woman. Hamlin Garland and Frank Norris wrote aboutthe problems of American farmers and other social issues from a naturalistperspective.
More directlypolitical writings discussed social issues and power of corporations. Some likeEdward Bellamy in Looking Backward outlined other possible political and socialframeworks. Upton Sinclair, most famous for his meat-packing novel The Jungle,advocated socialism. Other political writers of the period included EdwinMarkham, William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida M. Tarbelland Lincoln Steffens were labelled the The Muckrakers. Henry Adams' literateautobiography, The Education of Henry Adams also depicted a stingingdescription of the education system and modern life.
Experimentationin style and form soon joined the new freedom in subject matter. In 1909,Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published ThreeLives, an innovative work of fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism,jazz, and other movements in contemporary art and music. Stein labelled a groupof American literary notables who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s as the«Lost Generation».
The poet EzraPound (1885-1972) was born in Idaho but spent much of his adult life in Europe.His work is complex, sometimes obscure, with multiple references to other artforms and to a vast range of literature, both Western and Eastern. Heinfluenced many other poets, notably T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), anotherexpatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral poetry, carried by a dense structure ofsymbols. In «The Waste Land» he embodied a jaundiced vision ofpost-World War I society in fragmented, haunted images. Like Pound's, Eliot'spoetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste Land come withfootnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize inLiterature.
Americanwriters also expressed the disillusionment following upon the war. The storiesand novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) capture the restless,pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s. Fitzgerald's characteristic theme,expressed poignantly in The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of youth's golden dreamsto dissolve in failure and disappointment. Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Andersonalso wrote novels with critical depictions of American life. John Dos Passoswrote about the war and also the U.S.A. trilogy which extended into theDepression. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) saw violence and death first-hand asan ambulance driver in World War I, and the carnage persuaded him that abstractlanguage was mostly empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from hiswriting, simplified the sentence structure, and concentrated on concreteobjects and actions. He adhered to a moral code that emphasized grace underpressure, and his protagonists were strong, silent men who often dealtawkwardly with women. The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are generallyconsidered his best novels; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Five yearsbefore Hemingway, another American novelist had won the Nobel Prize: WilliamFaulkner (1897-1962). Faulkner managed to encompass an enormous range ofhumanity in Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own invention.He recorded his characters' seemingly unedited ramblings in order to representtheir inner states, a technique called «stream of consciousness.» (Infact, these passages are carefully crafted, and their seemingly chaoticstructure conceals multiple layers of meaning.) He also jumbled time sequencesto show how the past — especially the slave-holding era of the Deep South — endures in the present. Among his great works are The Sound and the Fury,Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down, Moses, and The Unvanquished.
Depression eraliterature was blunt and direct in its social criticism. John Steinbeck(1902-1968) was born in Salinas, California, where he set many of his stories.His style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers butnot of the critics. Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class people andtheir struggle to lead a decent and honest life; he was probably the mostsocially aware writer of his period. The Grapes of Wrath, considered hismasterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel that tells the story of theJoads, a poor family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search ofa better life. Other popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, CanneryRow, and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.Other writers sometimes considered part of the proletarian school includeNathanael West, Fielding Burke, Jack Conroy, Tom Kromer, Robert Cantwell,Albert Halper, and Edward Anderson.Theater
In addition tofiction, the 1920s and 1930s were a rich period for drama. There had not beenan important American dramatist until Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) began to writehis plays. The 1936 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, O'Neill drew uponclassical mythology, the Bible, and the new science of psychology to exploreinner life. He wrote frankly about sex and family quarrels, but hispreoccupation was with the individual's search for identity. One of hisgreatest works is Long Day's Journey Into Night, a harrowing drama, small inscale but large in theme, based largely on his own family.
Anotherstrikingly original American playwright was Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), whoexpressed his southern heritage in poetic yet sensational plays, usually abouta sensitive woman trapped in a brutish environment. Several of his plays havebeen made into films, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot TinRoof. Other playwrights of the period were Maxwell Anderson, Marc Connelly,Elmer Rice, Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, and WilliamSaroyan.Post-World WarII
There were anumber of major American war novels written in the wake of World War II. Someof the most well known included Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948),novels by Irwin Shaw and James Jones, and later Joseph Heller (Catch-22) andKurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five).
In the 1950sthe West Coast spawned a literary movement, the poetry and fiction of the«Beat Generation,» a name that referred simultaneously to the rhythmof jazz music, to a sense that post-war society was worn out, and to aninterest in new forms of experience through drugs, alcohol, and Easternmysticism. Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) set the tone of social protest andvisionary ecstasy in Howl, a Whitmanesque work that begins: «I saw thebest minds of my generation destroyed by madness....». Jack Kerouac(1922-1969) celebrated the Beats' rollicking, spontaneous, and vagrantlife-style in his masterful and vibrant novel On the Road.
Other writersof the period like J.D. Salinger and Sylvia Plath were starkly individual andcannot be easily classified.Postmodernism
From the early1960s through the late 1980s, an important literary movement was postmodernism.Important writers, here, are Thomas Pynchon, author of V. and Gravity'sRainbow, among other things, and Don Delillo, who wrote White Noise. Postmodernwriters dealt directly with the way that popular culture and mass mediainfluence the average American's perception and experience of the world. Theywould set scenes in fast food restaurants, on subways, or in shopping malls;they wrote about drugs, plastic surgery, and television commercials. Sometimes,these depictions look almost like celebrations. But simultaneously, writers inthis school take a knowing, self-conscious, sarcastic, and (some critics wouldsay) condescending attitude towards their subjects.Modern humoristliterature
From Irvingand Hawthorne to the present day, the short story has been a favorite Americanform. One of its 20th-century masters was John Cheever (1912-1982), who broughtyet another facet of American life into the realm of literature: the affluentsuburbs that have grown up around most major cities. Cheever was longassociated with The New Yorker, a magazine noted for its wit andsophistication. John Updike also continued Cheever's tradition and is bestknown for his Rabbit series which began with Rabbit Run.Southernliterature
Faulkner waspart of a southern literary renaissance that also included such figures asTruman Capote (1924-1984) and Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). Although Capotewrote short stories and novels, fiction and nonfiction, his masterpiece was InCold Blood, a factual account of a multiple murder and its aftermath, whichfused dogged reporting with a novelist's penetrating psychology and crystallineprose. Another practitioner of the «nonfiction novel,» Tom Wolfe(1931- ) was one of the founders of «New Journalism,» who honed hisart in such essays as The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby andRadical Chic before he moved on to book-length efforts, such as his history ofthe American manned space program The Right Stuff and probably his best-knownnovel Bonfire of the Vanities. Other writers steeped in the Southern traditioninclude John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) and Tom Robbins (1936- ).
FlanneryO'Connor was a Catholic, and thus an outsider in the heavily Protestant Southin which she grew up. Her characters are Protestant fundamentalists obsessedwith both God and Satan. She is best known for her tragicomic short stories.AfricanAmerican literature
AfricanAmerican literature is literature written by, about, and sometimes specificallyfor African-Americans. The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries withwriters such as poet Phillis Wheatley and orator Frederick Douglass. Among thethemes and issues explored in African American literature are the role ofAfrican Americans within the larger American society, African American culture,racism, slavery, and equality.
Before theAmerican Civil War, African American literature primarily focused on the issueof slavery, as indicated by the popular subgenre of slave narratives. At theturn of the 20th century, books by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T.Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in theUnited States.
AfricanAmerican literature saw a surge during the 1920s with the rise of an artisticBlack community in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The period calledthe Harlem Renaissance produced such gifted poets as Langston Hughes(1902-1967), Countee Cullen (1903-1946), and Claude McKay (1889-1948). Thenovelist Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960) combined a gift for storytelling withthe study of anthropology to write vivid stories from the African-American oraltradition. Through such books as the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God — aboutthe life and marriages of a light-skinned African-American woman — Hurstoninfluenced a later generation of black women novelists.
After WorldWar II, a new receptivity to diverse voices brought black writers into themainstream of American literature. James Baldwin (1924-1987) expressed hisdisdain for racism and his celebration of sexuality in Giovanni's Room. InInvisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) linked the plight of AfricanAmericans, whose race can render them all but invisible to the majority whiteculture, with the larger theme of the human search for identity in the modernworld.
Today, AfricanAmerican literature has become accepted as an integral part of Americanliterature, with books in the genre, such as Roots: The Saga of an AmericanFamily by Alex Haley and The Color Purple by Alice Walker, achieving bothbest-selling and award-winning status. In addition, African American authorssuch as Nobel Prize winning Toni Morrison are ranked among the top writers inthe world.Jewish Americanliterature
The UnitedStates has had a community and tradition of writing by Jewish immigrants andtheir descendants for a long time, although many writers have objected to beingreduced to «Jewish» writers alone. Key modern writers with Jewishorigins are Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, IsaacBashevis Singer, Chaim Potok, Isaac Asimov, Wendy Wasserstein, and Woody Allen,among others. The New Yorker has been especially instrumental in exposing manyJewish-American writers to a wider reading public.Other ethnic,minority, and immigrant literatures
NativeAmerican writer Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- ) uses colloquial language andtraditional stories to fashion haunting, lyrical poems such as In Cold StormLight. Amy Tan (1952- ), of Chinese descent, has described her parents' earlystruggles in California in The Joy Luck Club. Oscar Hijuelos (1951- ), a writerwith roots in Cuba, won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo KingsPlay Songs of Love. In a series of novels beginning with A Boy's Own Story,Edmund White (1940- ) has captured the anguish and comedy of growing up gay inAmerica.
Other genres
DashiellHammett and Raymond Chandler pioneered gritty detective fiction that has hadgreat influence on other genres and in other countries.
Stephen Kinghas been especially successful internationally with his horror fiction.
The UnitedStates has also played a key role in the development of science fiction withauthors like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein,Philip K. Dick, and many others.J.D. Salinger
Jerome DavidSalinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for TheCatcher in the Rye, a classic novel that has enjoyed enduring popularity sinceits publication in 1951. A major theme in Salinger's work is the strong yetdelicate mind of «disturbed» adolescents, and the redemptive capacityof children in the lives of such young men. Salinger is also known for hisreclusive nature; he has not given an interview since 1980, and has not made apublic appearance, nor published any new work (at least under his own name),since 1965.
In the mid1990s, there was a flurry of excitement when a small publisher announced a dealwith Salinger to bring out the first book version of his final published story,«Hapworth 16, 1924,» but amid the ensuing publicity, Salinger quicklywithdrew from the arrangement.Biography
Jerome DavidSalinger was born in Manhattan, New York, to Sol Salinger, a Jewish father ofPolish origin who worked for a meat importer, and Marie Jillich, ahalf-Scottish, half-Irish mother. When they married, Salinger's mother changedher name to Miriam and passed as Jewish; J. D. did not find out that his motherwas not Jewish until just after his bar mitzvah. Jerome David was the couple'ssecond child; his only sibling, Doris, was born in 1911.
The youngSalinger attended public schools on the West Side, the private McBurney Schoolin ninth and tenth grades, and then was happy to get away from theover-protectiveness of his mother by entering the Valley Forge Military Academyin Wayne, Pennsylvania. He started his freshman year at New York University(NYU), but dropped out the next spring to work on a cruise ship. The next fall,he was prevailed upon to learn the meat-importing business and was sent to workat the company in Vienna, where he could also perfect his French and Germanskills. He left Austria only a month or so before the country fell to Hitler,on March 12, 1938. That fall, he attended Ursinus College in Collegeville,Pennsylvania, but for only one semester. Salinger attended Columbia Universityevening writing class in 1939. The teacher was Whit Burnett, longtime editor ofStory Magazine. During the second semester of the class, Burnett saw somedegree of talent in the young author. In the March-April 1940 issue of Story,Burnett published Salinger's debut short story, a vignette of several aimlessyouths, entitled «The Young Folks.»
World WarII
In 1941,Salinger started dating Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, writing longdaily letters to her. This ended when Oona began a relationship with CharlieChaplin. Salinger was drafted into the Army in 1942, where he saw combat withthe U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment in some of the fiercest fighting of World WarII, including action on Utah Beach on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge.During the campaign from Normandy into Germany, he met and corresponded withErnest Hemingway, then a war correspondent, in Paris. After reading Salinger'swriting, Hemingway remarked, «Jesus, he has a helluva talent.»
Salinger wasassigned to Counter-Intelligence, in which he interrogated prisoners of war,putting his foreign language skills to use. He was among the first soldiers toenter a liberated concentration camp. He told his daughter later, «Younever really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, nomatter how long you live.» His experiences, perhaps, affected himemotionally (he was hospitalized for a few weeks for combat stress reactionafter Germany was defeated), and it is likely that he drew upon his wartimeexperiences in several stories, such as «For Esmé with Love andSqualor,» which is narrated by a traumatized soldier. He continued topublish stories in magazines, such as Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post,during and after his war experience.
After thedefeat of Germany, he signed up for a six-month period of«de-Nazification» duty in Germany. Among those Nazis he arrested wasa low-level official, Sylvia, whom he married in 1945 and brought back to theStates. The marriage fell apart after a few months and Sylvia returned toGermany. The marriage was not finalized until 1956. (In 1972, his daughterMargaret was with her father when he received a letter from Sylvia. He lookedat the envelope, tore it up, and discarded it, unread. He said that that wasthe first time he had heard from her since she left, but «when he wasfinished with a person, he was through with them.»)
From TheNew Yorker to novels
By 1948, withthe publication of a critically acclaimed short story entitled «A PerfectDay for Bananafish,» Salinger began to publish almost exclusively in TheNew Yorker. «Bananafish» was one of the most popular stories everpublished in the magazine, and he quickly became one of the publication'sbest-known authors. It was not his first experience with the magazine; in 1942,Salinger had received his first acceptance from The New Yorker for a storyentitled «Slight Rebellion off Madison,» which featured a semi-autobiographicalcharacter named Holden Caulfield. The story was held from publication until1946 because of the war. «Slight Rebellion» was related to severalother stories featuring the Caulfield family, but perspective shifted fromolder brother Vince to Holden.
Salinger hadconfided to several people that he felt Holden deserved a novel, and TheCatcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It was an immediate success, althoughearly critical reactions were mixed. While never confirmed by Salinger himself,it is believed that several of the events in the novel aresemi-autobiographical. A novel driven by the nuanced, intricate character ofHolden, the plot is quite simple. The book became famous for Salinger'sextensive and exceptional eye for subtle complexity, detail, description,ironic humor, and the depressing and desperate atmosphere of New York City. Thenovel was banned in some countries, and some U.S. schools, because of its boldand (to some) offensive use of language; «goddam» appears 255 times,and a handful of «fuck»s (which the would-be censors seldom notice hewas trying to erase from a museum bathroom stall.), plus a few seamy incidentssuch as the encounter with a prostitute (even though it was a chasteencounter). The book is still widely read, particularly in the United States,where it is considered an especially skillful depiction of teenage angst. It isnot unusual to see The Catcher in the Rye on a «required reading»list for American high school students. As of 2004, the novel sells about 250,000copies per year, «with total worldwide sales over — probably way over — 10million.»
In July 1951,his friend and New Yorker editor William Maxwell in Book of the Month Club Newsasked Salinger about his literary influences. Salinger said, “A writer, whenhe's asked to discuss his craft, ought to get up and call out in a loud voicejust the names of the writers he loves. I love Kafka, Flaubert, Tolstoy,Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Proust, O'Casey, Rilke, Lorca, Keats, Rimbaud, Burns, E.Brontë, Jane Austen, Henry James, Blake, Coleridge. I won't name anyliving writers. I don't think it's right."
In 1953,Salinger published a collection of seven short stories in The New Yorker(«Bananafish» among them), as well as two that they had rejected. Thecollection was published as Nine Stories in the United States, and ForEsmé with Love and Squalor in the UK (after one of the most belovedstories). It was also very successful, although Salinger had already begun totightly regulate publicity. He would not allow publishers to illustrate thedust jacket, so that his readers would have no preconceived notion of how thecharacters looked.
Withdrawalfrom public life
After thenotoriety of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger gradually withdrew into himself.In 1953, he moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire. Early in his time inCornish he was relatively sociable, particularly with the high school studentswho treated him as one of their own. However, after one interview for the high schoolnewspaper ended up in the city paper, Salinger felt betrayed. Salinger withdrewfrom the high schoolers entirely and was seen less frequently around the town,only seeing one close friend regularly, jurist Learned Hand.
In June 1955,when he was 36, he married Claire Douglas, a Radcliffe student. Their daughterMargaret was born that December, and their son, Matt, was born in 1960.Salinger insisted that Claire drop out of school, only four months shy ofgraduation, and live with him, which she did. Certain elements of the story«Franny», published in January, 1955, are based on Claire, includingthe fact that Claire had the book The Way of the Pilgrim. Due to their isolatedlocation and Salinger's proclivities, they hardly saw other people for long stretchesof time. Margaret reports that her mother Claire admits living with Salingerwas not easy, due to the isolation and his controlling nature; as well as thejealousy of Margaret replacing her (Claire) in Salinger's affection.
The infantMargaret was sick much of the time, but Salinger refused to take her to adoctor as he had embraced Christian Science. In later years, Claire confessedto Margaret that she (Claire) went «over the edge;» she had madeplans to murder the thirteen-month-old Margaret and then commit suicide. It wasto happen during a trip to New York with her husband. «It would be she,Claire, not the fictional Seymour, who'd go bananas and leave guts spatteredacross the hotel room for the horrified spouse to witness.» Instead,Claire, when in the hotel, acted on a sudden impulse to take the child and runaway, but after a few months was persuaded by Salinger to return to Cornish,NH.
Salingerpublished Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpentersand Seymour: An Introduction in 1963. Each contained a pair of related shortstories or novellas which had been published in The New Yorker in the fifties.
Despite thefact that, in 1961, Time magazine reported that the Glass family series«is nowhere near completion....Salinger intends to write a Glasstrilogy,» Salinger has, to date, only published one story since. His lastpublished work was «Hapworth 16, 1924,» an epistolary novella in theform of a long letter from seven-year-old Seymour Glass from summer camp, thattook up most of the June 19, 1965 issue of The New Yorker. Around this time,Salinger's isolation of Claire, making her, Margaret Salinger later wrote,«a virtual prisoner» from friends and relatives, led Claire toseparate from him in September 1966. Their divorce was finalized in October1967.
In 1972, whenSalinger was 53, he had a year-long relationship with 18-year old writer JoyceMaynard, already an experienced writer for Seventeen magazine. The New YorkTimes had asked Maynard to write an article for them which, when published as«An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back On Life» on April 23, 1972, made hera celebrity-of-the-moment. Salinger wrote a letter to her warning her aboutliving with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salingerthe summer after her freshman year at Yale University. Maynard did not returnto Yale that fall, and spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's Cornish home;the relationship ended, he told his teenaged daughter Margaret at a familyouting, because Maynard wanted children, and he felt he could not stand thereality of children again (as opposed to the fantasy children in his writings.)
Salingercontinued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning; in arare 1974 interview with The New York Times, he explained, «There is amarvelous peace in not publishing....I like to write. I love to write. But Iwrite just for myself and my own pleasure.» It is said that, on severaloccasions in the 1970s, he was on the verge of publishing another work but decidedagainst it at the last minute. In 1978, Newsweek reported that Salinger, whileattending a banquet in an army friend's honor, said he had recently finished«a long, romantic book set in World War II,» but no further detailsare known about that book. In her memoir, Margaret Salinger described thedetailed filing system her father had for his unpublished manuscripts: «Ared mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this 'as is,' bluemeant publish but edit first, and so on.»
Later yearsand instances of exposure
Salinger triedto escape public exposure and attention as much as possible («A writer'sfeelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loanto him,» he wrote.) However, he continued to struggle with the unwantedattention he received as a popular-culture figure. Dozens of students andreaders would drive to Cornish to get a glimpse of Salinger. Some writers wouldleave manuscripts. In the 1970s and 1980s, the reclusive writer Franz Douskey,who lived near Salinger on Dingleton Hill, would misdirect tourists down aseries of dirt roads that led them away from Salinger's house into nearbytowns.
Upon learningin the early eighties of the intent of British writer Ian Hamilton to publishIn Search of J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935-65), a biography includingletters Salinger had written to other authors and friends, Salinger sued tostop the book's publication. The book was finally published with the letters'contents paraphrased. The court ruled that, though a person may own a letterphysically, the language within it belongs to the author. An unintendedconsequence of the lawsuit was that many details of Salinger's private life,including that he had written two novels and many stories but left them unpublished,became public in the form of court transcripts.
For «afew years all the way through the middle eighties,» Salinger wasromantically involved with television actress Elaine Joyce. The relationshipended when he met Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker,who he married around 1988. O'Neill, who is forty years the author's junior,told Margaret Salinger that she and Salinger were trying to have a child.
In asurprising move, in 1997 Salinger gave a small publisher, Orchises Press, permissionto publish «Hapworth 16, 1924,» the previously uncollected novella;it was to be published that year, and listings for it appeared on Amazon.comand other book-sellers. However, the publication date was pushed back severaltimes, the last time to 2002. It was not published and no new date has beenset. In 1999, twenty-five yearsafter the end of their relationship, Joyce Maynard put up for auction a seriesof letters Salinger had written to her. The sale helped to publicize a memoirof Maynard's, At Home in the World: A Memoir, published the same year. Amongother indiscretions, the book described how Maynard's mother had consulted withher on how to appeal to the aging author, and described Maynard's relationshipwith the author at length. In the ensuing controversy over both the memoir andthe letters, Maynard claimed that she was forced to auction the letters forfinancial reasons; she would have preferred to donate them to Beinecke Library.Software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,000 and announcedhis intention to return them to Salinger.
A year later,Salinger's daughter Margaret Salinger, by his second wife, Claire Douglas,published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. In her «tell-all» book, Ms.Salinger dispelled many of the Salinger myths established by Ian Hamilton'sbook. One of Hamilton's arguments was that Salinger's experience with PostTraumatic Stress Disorder left him psychologically scarred, and that he wasunable to deal with the traumatic nature of his war service. Ms. Salinger,however painted a picture of J. D. as a man immensely proud of his servicerecord, maintaining his military haircut, service jacket, and moving about hiscompound (and town) in an old Jeep. Ms. Salinger offered many insights intoother Salinger myths, including her father's supposed long-time interest inmacrobiotics and involvement with what is today known as «alternativemedicine» and Eastern philosophies.
Religiousand philosophical beliefs
In the lateforties, Salinger was an avid follower of Zen Buddhism, to the point that he«gave reading lists on the subject to his dates» and met Buddhistscholar D. T. Suzuki. Then, as described in Som P. Ranchan's book, An Adventurein Vedanta: J. D. Salinger's the Glass Family, the writer became a life-longstudent of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. Sri Ramakrishna and his studentVivekananda were important contemporary figures he studied. In this tradition,celibacy and detachment from human responsibilities such as family areemphasized for those seeking enlightenment. Margaret Salinger says that shemight have never been born if her father had not read Autobiography of a Yogiby Paramahansa Yogananda who brought the possibility of enlightenment to thosefollowing the path of the «householder» (i.e., married person withchildren).
J. D. andClaire were initiated into this path of Kriya yoga in a small store-front Hindutemple in a lower-middle class neighborhood of Washington, DC. They received amantra and breathing exercises that they were to practice for ten minutes twicea day. Salinger had sudden jumps of enthusiasm for different belief-systemsthat he then insisted Claire also follow. Salinger tried Dianetics (latercalled Scientology), even meeting L. Ron Hubbard himself, according to Claire.
This wasfollowed by a number of spiritual/medical/nutritional belief systems includingChristian Science, teachings of Edgar Cayce, homeopathy, acupuncture,macrobiotics, fasting, megadoses of Vitamin C, vomiting to remove impurities,solar reflectors for tanning, drinking one's own urine (this is part of thefolk-medicine of several cultures around the world; see urine therapy),«speaking in tongues» (glossolalia) which he learned at a Charismaticchurch, and sitting in a Reichian «orgone box» to accumulate«orgone energy.»
Relationshipwith Hollywood
In a 1942letter to Whit Burnett, Salinger wrote with fervor, «I wanted to sell somestuff to the movies, through the mags. Gotta make a killing, so I can go awayto work after the war.» After being disappointed, according to IanHamilton, when «rumblings from Hollywood» over his 1943 short story«The Varioni Brothers» came to nothing, Salinger was unhesitant whenindependent film producer Samuel Goldwyn offered to buy the film rights to his1948 short story, «Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.» Though Salingersold his story with the hope, in the words of his agent Dorothy Olding, that«they would make a good movie,» the film version of«Wiggly» was critically lambasted upon its 1949 release. Renamed MyFoolish Heart and starring Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward, the melodramaticfilm departed to such an extent from Salinger's short story that Goldwynbiographer A. Scott Berg referred to it as a “bastardization.”
Salinger wouldnever relinquish control of his work to Hollywood filmmakers after that, eventhough, when The Catcher in the Rye was released in 1951, numerous offers weremade to adapt it for the screen (Samuel Goldwyn among them.) Since itspublication, there has been sustained interest in the novel among filmmakers, withBilly Wilder, Harvey Weinstein, and Steven Spielberg among those seeking tosecure the rights. Actors ranging from Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire havemade bids to play Holden Caulfield, and Salinger has said that «JerryLewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden.» The authorhas repeatedly demurred, though, and in 1999, the writer Joyce Maynarddefinitively concluded, «The only person who might ever have played HoldenCaulfield would have been J. D. Salinger.»
In 1995,Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui made Pari, an unauthorized «loose»film adaptation of Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Though the film could bedistributed legally in Iran since the country has no official copyrightrelations with the United States, Salinger had his lawyers block a plannedscreening of the film at Lincoln Center in 1998. Mehrjui called Salinger'saction «bewildering,» explaining that he saw his film as «a kindof cultural exchange.»
Despite hisissues with film versions of his work, Salinger has been described as a devotedfilm buff, his favorite films including Gigi, The Lady Vanishes, and The LostWeekend, along with the films of the Marx Brothers. Predating VCRs, Salingerhad an extensive collection of classic movies from the 1940s in 16 mm prints. Maynard wrote that «he loves movies, not films,» and his daughter went so faras to write that her father's «worldview is, essentially, a product of themovies of his day. To my father, all Spanish speakers are Puerto Ricanwasherwomen, or the toothless, grinning gypsy types in a Marx Brothersmovie.»ThePoetry of the United States
The poetry ofthe United States naturally arose first during its beginnings as theConstitutionally-unified thirteen colonies (although prior to this, a strongoral tradition resemblant of poetry existed among Native American societies).Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists' work relied on contemporaryBritish models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19thcentury, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part ofthat century, when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad,poets from the United States had begun to take their place at the forefront ofthe English-language avant-garde.
This positionwas sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot were perhaps the most influential English-language poets in the period duringWorld War I.[citation needed] By the 1960s, the young poets of the BritishPoetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors asmodels for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. Toward the end of themillennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified, as scholarsplaced an increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans, Hispanics,Chicanos and other subcultural groupings. Poetry, and creative writing ingeneral, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth ofcreative writing programs in the English studies departments of campuses acrossthe country.Poetry in thecolonies
One of thefirst recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672),who remains one of the earliest known women poets in English. Her poems areuntypically tender evocations of home and family life and of her love for herhusband. In marked contrast, Edward Taylor (1645–1729) wrote poems expoundingPuritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen astypical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethicwas, understandably, the dominant note of most of the poetry written in thecolonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Anotherdistinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, aslave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was publishedin 1773. She was one of the best-known poets of her day, at least in thecolonies, and her poems were typical of New England culture at the time,meditating on religious and classical ideas.
The 18thcentury saw an increasing emphasis on America as fit subject matter for itspoets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832),who is also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americansshown in his writings. However, as might be expected from what was essentiallyprovincial writing, this late colonial poetry is generally technically somewhatold-fashioned, deploying the means and methods of Pope and Gray in the era ofBlake and Burns.
On the whole,the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development ofthe colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preservethe integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the firstplace. As the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasinglyreflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter wasnot reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative, to saythe least. This can be seen as a product of the physical remove at whichAmerican poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developmentsin London.Postcolonialpoetry
The firstsignificant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant(1794–1878), whose great contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on thegrandeur of prairies and forests. Other notable poets to emerge in the earlyand middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803–1882), HenryWadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), EdgarAllan Poe (1809–1849), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), Henry David Thoreau(1817–1862), James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), and Sidney Lanier (1842–1881).As might be expected, the works of these writers are united by a common searchfor a distinctive American voice to distinguish them from their Britishcounterparts. To this end, they explored the landscape and traditions of theirnative country as materials for their poetry.
The mostsignificant example of this tendency may be The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow.This poem uses Native American tales collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, whowas superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841. Longfellowalso imitated the meter of the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, possibly to avoidBritish models. The resulting poem, while a popular success, did not provide amodel for future U.S. poets.
Another factorthat distinguished these poets from their British contemporaries was theinfluence of the transcendentalism of the poet/philosophers Emerson andThoreau. Transcendentalism was the distinctly American strain of the EnglishRomanticism that began with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Emerson, as much as anyone the founder of transcendentalism, had visitedEngland as a young man to meet these two English poets, as well as ThomasCarlyle. While Romanticism mellowed into Victorianism in post-reform England,it grew more energetic in America from the 1830s through to the Civil War.
Edgar AllanPoe was probably the most recognized American poet outside of America duringthis period. Diverse authors in France, Sweden and Russia were heavily influencedby his works, and his poem «The Raven» swept across Europe,translated into many languages. In the twentieth century the American poetWilliam Carlos Williams said of Poe that he is the only solid ground on whichAmerican poetry is anchored.Whitman andDickinson
The finalemergence of a truly indigenous English-language poetry in the United Stateswas the work of two poets, Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).On the surface, these two poets could not have been less alike. Whitman's longlines, derived from the metric of the King James Version of the Bible, and hisdemocratic inclusiveness stand in stark contrast with Dickinson's concentratedphrases and short lines and stanzas, derived from Protestant hymnals. Whatlinks them is their common connection to Emerson (a blurb from whom Whitmanprinted on the first edition of Leaves of Grass), and a daring quality inregard to the originality of their visions. These two poets can be said torepresent the birth of two major American poetic idioms—the free metric anddirect emotional expression of Whitman, and the gnomic obscurity and irony ofDickinson—both of which would profoundly stamp the American poetry of the 20thcentury.
Thedevelopment of these idioms can be traced through the works of poets such asEdwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Robert Frost(1874–1963) and Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). As a result, by the beginning of the20th century the outlines of a distinctly new poetic tradition were clear tosee.
Modernism and after
This newidiom, combined with a study of 19th-century French poetry, formed the basis ofthe United States input into 20th-century English-language poetic modernism.Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) were the leading figures atthe time, but numerous other poets made important contributions. These includedGertrude Stein (1874–1946), Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), William CarlosWilliams (1883–1963), Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–1961), Adelaide Crapsey(1878-1914), Marianne Moore (1887–1972), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), and HartCrane (1899–1932). Williams was to become exemplary for many later poetsbecause he, more than any of his peers, contrived to marry spoken AmericanEnglish with free verse rhythms.
While thesepoets were unambiguously aligned with High modernism, other poets active in theUnited States in the first third of the 20th century were not. Among the mostimportant of the latter were those who were associated with what came to beknown as the New Criticism. These included John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), AllenTate (1899–1979), and Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989). Other poets of the era,such as Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), experimented with modernist techniquesbut were also drawn towards more traditional modes of writing. The modernisttorch was carried in the 1930s mainly by the group of poets known as theObjectivists. These included Louis Zukofsky (1904–1978), Charles Reznikoff(1894–1976), George Oppen (1908–1984), Carl Rakosi (1903–2004) and, later,Lorine Niedecker (1903–1970). Kenneth Rexroth, who was published in theObjectivist Anthology, was, along with Madeline Gleason (1909–1973), a forerunnerof the San Francisco Renaissance. Many of the Objectivists came from urban communities of new immigrants,and this new vein of experience and language enriched the growing Americanidiom. Another source of enrichment was the emergence into the American poeticmainstream of African American poets such as Langston Hughes (1902–1967) andCountee Cullen (1903–1946).
World War II and after
World War IIsaw the emergence of a new generation of poets, many of whom were influenced byWallace Stevens. Richard Eberhart (1904–2005), Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) andRandall Jarrell (1914–1965) all wrote poetry that sprang from experience ofactive service. Together with Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), Theodore Roethke(1908–1963) and Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966), they formed a generation of poetsthat in contrast to the preceding generation often wrote in traditional verseforms.
After the war,a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged. John Berryman (1914–1972)and Robert Lowell (1917–1977) were the leading lights in what was to becomeknown as the confessional movement, which was to have a strong influence onlater poets like Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and Anne Sexton (1928–1974). BothBerryman and Lowell were closely acquainted with modernism, but were mainlyinterested in exploring their own experiences as subject matter and a stylethat Lowell referred to as «cooked», that is consciously andcarefully crafted.
In contrast,the Beat poets, who included such figures as Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), AllenGinsberg (1926–1997), Gregory Corso (1930–2001), Joanne Kyger (born 1934), GarySnyder (born 1930), Diane Di Prima (born 1934), Denise Levertov (1923–1997),Amiri Baraka (born 1934) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919), were distinctlyraw. Reflecting, sometimes in an extreme form, the more open, relaxed andsearching society of the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats pushed the boundaries ofthe American idiom in the direction of demotic speech perhaps further than anyother group.
Around the sametime, the Black Mountain poets, under the leadership of Charles Olson(1910–1970), were working at Black Mountain College. Somewhere between raw andcooked, these poets were exploring the possibilities of open form but in a muchmore programmatic way than the Beats. The main poets involved were RobertCreeley (1926–2005), Robert Duncan (1919–1988), Ed Dorn (1929–1999), PaulBlackburn (1926–1971), Hilda Morley (1916–1998), John Wieners (1934–2002), andLarry Eigner (1927–1996). They based their approach to poetry on Olson's 1950essay Projective Verse, in which he called for a form based on the line, a linebased on human breath and a mode of writing based on perceptions juxtaposed sothat one perception leads directly to another. Cid Corman (1924–2004) andTheodore Enslin (born 1925) are often associated with this group but areperhaps more correctly viewed as direct descendants of the Objectivists.
The Beats andsome of the Black Mountain poets are often considered to have been responsiblefor the San Francisco Renaissance. However, as previously noted, San Franciscohad become a hub of experimental activity from the 1930s thanks to Rexroth andGleason. Other poets involved in this scene included Charles Bukowski(1920–1994) and Jack Spicer (1925–1965). These poets sought to combine acontemporary spoken idiom with inventive formal experiment. Jerome Rothenberg(born 1931) is well-known for his work in ethnopoetics, but he was also thecoiner of the term «deep image». Deep image poetry is inspired by thesymbolist theory of correspondences. Other poets who worked with deep imageinclude Robert Kelly (born 1935), Diane Wakoski (born 1937) and ClaytonEshleman (born 1935).
The SmallPress poets (sometimes called the mimeograph movement) are another influential andeclectic group of poets who also surfaced in the San Francisco Bay Area in thelate 1950s and are still active today. Fiercely independent editors, who werealso poets, edited and published low-budget periodicals and chapbooks ofemerging poets who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. This work ranged fromformal to experimental. Gene Fowler, A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, Paul Foreman, JohnBennett, Stephen Morse, Judy L. Brekke, and F. A. Nettelbeck are among the manypoets who are still actively continuing the Small Press Poets tradition. Manyhave turned to the new medium of the Web for its distribution capabilities.
Just as theWest Coast had the San Francisco Renaissance and the Small Press Movement, theEast Coast produced the New York School. This group aimed to write poetry thatspoke directly of everyday experience in everyday language and produced apoetry of urbane wit and elegance that contrasts strongly with the work oftheir Beat contemporaries. Leading members of the group include John Ashbery (born1927), Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), Kenneth Koch (1925–2002), James Schuyler(1923–1991), Richard Howard (born 1929), Ted Berrigan (1934–1983), Anne Waldman(born 1945) and Bernadette Mayer (born 1945).
John Cage(1912–1992), one-time Black Mountain College resident and composer, and JacksonMac Low (1922–2004) both wrote poetry based on chance or aleatory techniques.Inspired by Zen, Dada and scientific theories of indeterminacy, they were toprove to be important influences on the 1970s U.S avant-garde.
James Merrill(1926–1995), off to the side of all these groups and very much sui generis, wasa poet of great formal virtuosity and the author of the epic poem The ChangingLight at Sandover (1982).
Tomas O'Learypublished Fool at the Funeral in 1975 and The Devil Take a Crooked House in1990. These two critically acclaimed books established O'Leary as a reknownedpoet in the New England States.American poetrynow
The lastthirty years in United States poetry has seen the emergence of a number ofgroups and trends. It is probably too soon to judge the long-term importance ofthese, and what follows is merely a brief outline sketch.
The 1970s sawa revival of interest in surrealism, with the most prominent poets working inthis field being Andrei Codrescu (born 1946), Russell Edson (born 1935) andMaxine Chernoff (born 1952). Performance poetry also emerged from the Beat andhippie happenings, and the talk-poems of David Antin (born 1932) and ritualevents performed by Rothenberg, to become a serious poetic stance whichembraces multiculturalism and a range of poets from a multiplicity of cultures.This mirrored a general growth of interest in poetry by African Americansincluding Gwendolyn Brooks (born 1917), Maya Angelou (born 1928), Ishmael Reed(born 1938) and Nikki Giovanni (born 1943).
The mostcontroversial avant-garde grouping during this period has been the Languagepoets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine that bears that name).Language-centered writing is extremely theoretical, discounting speech as thebasis for verse, and dedicated to questioning the referentiality of languageand the dominance of the sentence as the basic unit of syntax. The idea appearsto be that language when stripped of its normal associative and denotativemeanings becomes closer to the source of language and may actually provideinsights that might not otherwise be possible. Those critical of the Languagemovement point out that taken to its logical conclusion this abandonment ofsense and context creates a poetry that could be just as well be written by theproverbial infinite sized room full of monkeys with an infinite number of wordprocessors.
The Languagepoets movement includes a very high proportion of women, which mirrors anothergeneral trend; the rediscovery and promotion of poetry written both by earlierand contemporary women poets. In addition to Language poets, a number of themost prominent African American poets to emerge are women, and other prominentwomen writers include Adrienne Rich (born 1929) and Amy Gerstler (born 1956).
The Languagegroup also contains an unusually high proportion of academics. Poetry hastended to move more and more into the campus, with a growth in creative writingand poetics programs providing an equal growth in the number of teaching postsavailable to practicing poets. This increased professionalization and abundanceof academic presses combined with a lack of any coherent process for criticalevaluation is one of the clearest developments and one which seems likely tohave unpredictable consequences for the future of poetry in the United States.
The 1980s alsosaw the emergence of a group of poets who became known as the New Formalists.These poets, who included Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Dana Gioia andMarilyn Hacker, write in traditional forms and have declared that this returnto rhyme and more fixed meters is the new avant-garde. Critics of the NewFormalists have compared their traditionalism with the conservative politics ofthe Reagan era. It is intended as an insult.
Many poets (Agrowing group of poets loosely called Outlaw Poets or Small Press Poets) ignorewhat they see as the extremes and academic elitism of the self-proclaimedavant-garde of both poetic groups, choosing to use both traditional andexperimental approaches to their work.
Concurrently,a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith was growing bored withincreasingly esoteric academic poetry readings. In 1984, at the Get Me HighLounge, Smith devised the format that has come to be known as slam poetry. Acompetitive poetry performance, poetry slam opened the door for a newgeneration of writers, spoken word performers, and audiences by emphasizing astyle of writing that is edgy,topical, and easily understood.
Poetry slamhas produced noted poets like Alix Olson, Taylor Mali, and Saul Williams, aswell as inspired hundreds of open mics.Academy ofAmerican Poets
The Academy ofAmerican Poets is the preeminent organization in the United States dedicated tothe art of poetry. The academy was created in 1934 in New York City by Mrs. Marie Bullock with a mission to «support American poets at allstages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporarypoetry.» In 1936, the academy was officially incorporated as a non-profitorganization. Ms. Bullock was the president of the academy for the next half acentury, running the academy out of her apartment for thirty of those years.She started the academy after her return from her studies at the Sorbonne inParis. Returning to America, Ms. Bullock was dismayed at the lack of support forpoetry in her home country. Taking advice from friends such as Edwin ArlingtonRobinson and Joseph Auslander, Ms. Bullock raised plans and funds to create theacademy and help support and nature the American poet.
Nowcelebrating over 70 years of existence, the academy fulfills its goals in twoways. The first, to «support American poets», is accomplished by themyriad of awards handed out by the academy. There are seven major awards handedout by the academy and over 200 college awards handed out at schools across thecountry. To «foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry,» theacademy runs numerous programs, including Poets.org, the most popular siteabout poetry on the web; National Poetry Month (April), the largest literarycelebration in the world; an array of Awards & Prizes for poets at everystage of their careers; American Poet, a biannual literary journal; and thePoetry Audio Archive, hundreds of audio recordings of poetry readings datingback to the early 1960s.Awards given bythe academy
WallaceStevens Award — a lifetime achievement award of $100,000 to recognizeoutstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry
Fellowship ofthe Academy of American Poets — a $25,000 award given in memory of James IngramMerrill, for distinguished poetic achievement at mid-career
LenoreMarshall Poetry Prize — $25,000 for the best book of poetry published in theprevious year
James LaughlinAward — $5,000 to recognize and support a poet's second book
Walt WhitmanAward — first-book publication, $5,000, and a one-month artist's residency
Raiziss/dePalchi Translation Awards — $5,000 book prize and $20,000 fellowship (inalternating years) to recognize outstanding translations into English of modernItalian poetry
Harold MortonLandon Translation Award — $1,000 for a published translation of poetry fromany language into English
College &University Prizes — $100 individual prizes at more than 200 colleges anduniversities nationwideChicano poetry
Chicano poetryis a branch of American literature written by and primarily aboutMexican-Americans and the Mexican-American experience. The term«Chicano» is a politico-cultural term of identity specificallyidentifying people of Mexican descent who were born in the United States. Inthe same way that American poetry is comprised of the writing of the offspringof English and other European colonists to North America, so is Chicano poetryand literature comprised of the writing of the off-spring of Latinos who eitheremigrated to the US or were involuntarily included in the United States due tothe Mexican-American War of 1848.Pioneersand forerunners
Well knownChicano poets who were instrumental in creating a niche both in American andLatin American literature and developed an impetus were early writers such asAbelardo «Lalo» Delgado, Trinidad «Trino» Sanchez, Rodolfo«Corky» Gonzales. Delgado wrote «Stupid America», Sanchezwrote «Why Am I So Brown?» and Gonzales authored the epic «YoSoy Joaquin.» Another early pioneer writer is the Poet/Painter and gypsyvagabond of the national community, Nephtalí De León, author of«Hey, Mr.President, Man!», «Coca Cola Dream,» and«Chicano Popcorn.»
Unifying concepts
These poemsprimarily deal with how Chicanos deal with existence in the United States andhow Chicanos cope with marginalization, racism and vanquished dreams. ManyChicano writers allude to the past glory of the Mesoamerican civilizations andhow the indigenous people of those civilizations continue to live through theChicano people who are largely «mestizos», people of mixed NativeAmerican, European and African ancestry. Theater in the United States
Theater of theUnited States is based in the Western tradition, mostly borrowed from theperformance styles prevalent in Europe. Today, it is heavily interlaced withAmerican literature, film, television, and music, and it is not uncommon for asingle story to appear in all forms. Regions with significant music scenesoften have strong theater and comedy traditions as well. Musical theater may bethe most popular form: it is certainly the most colorful, and choreographedmotions pioneered on stage have found their way onto movie and televisionscreens. Broadway in New York City is generally considered the pinnacle ofcommercial U.S. theater, though this art form appears all across the country.Another city of particular note is Chicago, which boasts the most diverse anddynamic theater scene in the country. Regional or resident theatres in theUnited States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City thatproduce their own seasons. There is also community theatre and showcasetheatre. Even tiny rural communities sometimes awe audiences with extravagantproductions.History
The birth ofprofessional theater in America is usually thought to have begun with the LewisHallam troupe which arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1752. However it iscertain that theater existed in North America before that. A theater was builtin Williamsburg in 1715, and in January 1736, the original Dock Street Theatrewas opened in Charles Town, SC. Thomas Kean played the part of Richard III inNew York City in 1750, and probably performed in Williamsburg shortly beforethe Hallams. (Amateur theater is recorded to have existed as early as 1665,when performers of a play were prosecuted in Accomack County, Virginia oncharges of public wickedness.) In any case The Hallams were the first toorganize a complete company of actors in Europe (London in this case) and bringthem to the colonies. They brought a repertoire of the most popular plays fromLondon, including Hamlet, The Recruiting Officer, and Richard III. The Merchantof Venice was their first performance, shown initially on September 15, 1752. Encounteringopposition from religious organisations, Hallam and his company left forJamaica in 1754 or 1755. Soon after, Lewis Hallam's son, Lewis Hallam, Jr.,founded the American Company which opened a theater in New York and presentedthe first professionally-mounted American play, The Prince of Parthia by ThomasGodfrey, in 1767.
Throughout the18th century there was widespread opposition to theatrical performances. In thepuritanical climate of the time, especially in the North, the theater wasconsidered a «highway to hell». Laws forbidding the performance ofplays were passed in Massachusetts in 1750, in Pennsylvania in 1759, and in Rhode Island in 1761, and it was banned in most states during the AmericanRevolutionary War at the urging of the Continental Congress. In 1794 PresidentTimothy Dwight IV of Yale College in his «Essay on the Stage»declared that «to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or lessthan the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul.». Howeverit is likely that these ordinances were not strictly enforced, for we haverecords of performances in many cities during this time.
The 19th century
In the early19th century, theater became more common in the United States, and manycelebrity actors from Europe toured the United States. There were even a fewfamous American actors, such as Edwin Forrest and Charlotte Cushman. Manytheater owners, such as William Dunlap and Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, similarlybecame well known throughout the young nation.
The WalnutStreet Theatre (or simply The Walnut) is the oldest continuously-operatingtheater in America, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 825 Walnut Street.The Walnut was built by The Circus of Pepin and Breschard, in 1809.
Most citiesonly had a single theater. Productions were much more rudimentary then, andsometimes plays would be staged in barns or dining rooms when no theater wasavailable. Provincial theaters frequently lacked heat and even minimal propsand scenery. As the Westward Expansion of the country progressed, someentrepreneurs staged floating theaters on boats which would travel from town totown. Eventually, towns grew to the size that they could afford «longruns» of a production, and in 1841, a single play was shown in New York City for an unprecedented three weeks.
Shakespearewas the most commonly performed playwright, along with other European authors.American playwrights of the period existed, but are mostly forgotten now.American plays of the period are mostly melodramas, often weaving in localthemes or characters such as the heroic but ill-fated Indian. The most enduringmelodrama of this period is Uncle Tom's Cabin, adapted by H. J. Conway from thenovel by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
A popular formof theater during this time was the minstrel show, arguably the first uniquelyAmerican style of performance. These shows featured white actors dressed inblackface and playing up racial stereotypes. These shows became the mostwatched theatrical form of the era.
Throughout the19th century, many preachers continued to warn against attending plays as beingsinful. Theater was associated with hedonism and even violence, and actorsespecially female actors, were looked upon as little better than prostitutes. Aserious rivalry between William Charles Macready and Edwin Forrest mirrored thesports rivalries of later years. The Astor Place Riot of 1849 in New York was sparked by this rivalry, and brought about the deaths of 22 people. Then, at theend of the United States Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theaterwhile watching a play.
Burlesquebecame a popular form of entertainment in the middle of the 19th century.Originally a form of farce in which females in male roles mocked the politicsand culture of the day, burlesque was condemned by opinion makers for itssexuality and outspokenness. The form was hounded off the «legitimatestage» and found itself relegated to saloons and barrooms. The female producerswere replaced by their male counterparts, who toned down the politics andplayed up the sexuality, until the shows eventually became little more thanpretty girls in skimpy clothing singing songs, while male comedians toldraunchy jokes.
The Civil Warended much of the prosperity of the South, and with it, its independenttheaters. Only New Orleans was able to recover its theatrical tradition in the19th century, if only partially. In the North, theater flourished as a post-warboom allowed longer and more frequest productions. The advent of railroadsallowed actors to travel much more easily between towns, making theaters insmall towns more feasible. By the late 19th century, there were thousands ofcities and towns with at least a rudimentary theater for live productions. Thistrend also allowed larger and more elaborate sets to travel with players fromcity to city. The advent of electric lighting led to changes in styles, as moredetails could be seen by the audience.
By the 1880stheaters on Broadway in New York City, and along 42nd Street, took on a flavorof their own, giving rise to new stage forms such as the Broadway musical(strongly influenced by the feelings of immigrants coming to New York withgreat hope and ambition, many of whom went into the theater). New York becamethe organizing center for theater throughout the U.S.
In 1896,Charles Frohman, Al Hayman, Abe Erlanger, Mark Klaw, Samuel F. Nixon, and Fred Zimmermanformed the Theatrical Syndicate. Their organization established systemized bookingnetworks throughout the United States and created a monopoly that controlledevery aspect of contracts and bookings until the late 1910s when the Shubertbrothers broke their stranglehold on the industry.
Minstrel showperformers Rollin Howard (in female costume) and George Griffin, c. 1855.The20th century
humoristliterature postcolonial poetry
Vaudeville wascommon in the late 19th and early 20th century, and is notable for heavilyinfluencing early film, radio, and television productions in the country. (Thiswas born from an earlier American practice of having singers and novelty actsperform between acts in a standard play.) George Burns was a very long-livedAmerican comedian who started out in the vaudeville community, but went on toenjoy a career running until the 1990s.
Somevaudeville theaters built between about 1900 and 1920 managed to survive aswell, though many went through periods of alternate use, most often as movietheaters until the second half of the century saw many urban populationsdecline and multiplexes built in the suburbs. Since that time, a number havebeen restored to original or nearly-original condition and attract newaudiences nearly one hundred years later.
By thebeginning of the 20th century, legitimate (non-vaudville) theater had becomedecidedly more sophisticated in the United States, as it had in Europe. Thestars of this era, such as Ethel Barrymore and John Drew, were often seen aseven more important than the show itself. The advance of motion pictures alsoled to many changes in theater. The popularity of musicals may have been due inpart to the fact the early films had no sound, and could thus not compete. Morecomplex and sophisticated dramas bloomed in this time period, and acting stylesbecame more subdued. Even by 1915, actors were being lured away from theaterand to the silver screen, and vaudeville was beginning to face stiffcompetition.
While revuesconsisting of mostly unconnected songs, sketches, comedy routines, and scantily-gladdancing girls dominated for the first 20 years of the 20th century, musicaltheater would eventually develop beyond this. One of the first major steps wasShow Boat, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. Itfeatured songs and non-musical scenes which were integrated to develop theshow's plot. The next great step forward was Oklahoma!, with lyrics byHammerstein and music by Richard Rodgers. Its «dream ballets» useddance to carry forward the plot and develop the characters.
Amateurperforming groups have always had a place along side professional actingcompanies. The Winneshiek Players, an amateur theater group in Freeport, IL,first organized in 1916. After a few years of sporadic performances at variousvenues, the group reorganized in 1926. The group has been in continuousoperation since that time, making them the oldest continuously operatingingtheater group in the United States. Detailed history of the Winneshiek Playerscan be found in the 1970 edition of History of Stephenson County. Records ofall productions are maintained in the archives of the Winneshiek Players.
The massivesocial change that went on during the Great Depression also had an effect ontheater in the United States. Plays took on social roles, identifying withimmigrants and the unemployed. The Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal programset up by Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped to promote theater and provide jobs foractors. The program staged many elaborate and controversial plays such as ItCan't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and The Cradle Will Rock by MarcBlitzstein.
After WorldWar II, American theater came into its own. Several American playwrights, suchas Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, became world-renowned. In the Sixties,experimentation in the Arts spread into theater as well, with plays such asHair including nudity and drug culture references. Musicals remained popular aswell, and musicals such as West Side Story and A Chorus Line broke previousrecords.Americantheater today
Earlier stylesof theater such as minstrel shows and Vaudeville acts have disappeared from thelandscape, but theater remains a popular American art form. Broadwayproductions still entertain millions of theatergoers as productions have becomemore elaborate and expensive. Notable contemporary American playwrights includeEdward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, David Henry Hwang, and WendyWasserstein. Smaller urban theaters have stayed a source of innovation, andregional theaters remain an important part of theater life. Drama is alsotaught in high schools and colleges, which was not done in previous eras, andmany become interested in theater through this.Americancomic book
An Americancomic book is a small magazine originating in the United States containing anarrative in the comics form. The standard dimensions are 6 ⅝"× 10 ¼".
Since theinvention of the comic book format in the 1930s, the United States has been theleading producer with only the British comic books (during the inter-war periodand up until the 1970s) and the Japanese manga as close competitors in terms ofquantity.
Comic booksales declined with the spread of television and mass market paperback booksafter World War II, but regained popularity in the late 1950s and the 1960s ascomic books' audience expanded to include college students who favored thenaturalistic, «superheroes in the real world» trend initiated by StanLee at Marvel Comics. As well, the 1960s saw the advent of the undergroundcomics. Later, the influence of Japanese manga and the recognition of the comicmedium among academics, literary critics and art museums helped solidify comicsas a serious artform with established traditions, stylistic conventions, andartistic evolution.Proto-comicbooks
The creationof the modern American comic book came in stages. Comic strips had beencollected in hardcover book form as early as 1930 in Europe, when the Belgian comic strip Tintin was first collected in an «album»titled «Tintin in the Land of the Soviets». A year earlier, however,Dell Publishing, founded by George T. Delacorte Jr. in 1921, published TheFunnies, described by the Library of Congress as «a short-lived newspapertabloid insert». (This is not to be confused with Dell's later same-namecomic book, which began publication in 1936.) Historian Ron Goulart describesthe 16-page, four-color periodical «more a Sunday comic section withoutthe rest of the newspaper than a true comic book. But it did offer all originalmaterial and was sold on newsstands». It ran 36 issues, publishedSaturdays through Oct. 16, 1930.
In 1933,salesperson Maxwell Gaines and sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg, and ownerGeorge Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut company Eastern Color Printing —which among other thing printed Sunday-paper comic strip sections — producedFunnies on Parade. Like The Funnies but only eight pages this was a newsprintmagazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in colorseveral comic strips licenced from the McNaught and McClure Syndicate. Theseincluded such highly popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's Mutt and Jeff, HamFisher's Joe Palooka, and Percy Crosby's Skippy. This periodical, however, wasneither sold nor available on newsstands, but rather sent free as a promotionalitem to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Proctor & Gamble soapand toiletries products. Ten-thousand copies were made. The promotion proved asuccess, and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for CanadaDry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs offrom 100,000 to 250,000.FamousFunnies and New Fun Comics
That sameyear, however, Gaines and Wildenberg collaborated with Dell to publish the36-page Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, considered by historians thefirst true American comic book; Goulart, for example, calls it «thecornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishng».It was distributed through the Woolworth's department store chain, though it isunclear whether it was sold or given away; the cover (see above) displays noprice, but Goulart refers, either metaphorically or literally, to«sticking a ten-cent pricetag [sic] on the comic books».
When Delacortedeclined to continue with Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, Eastern Coloron its own published Famous Funnies #1 (cover-dated July 1934), a 68-page giantselling for 10¢. Distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American NewsCompany, it proved a hit with readers during the cash-strapped GreatDepression, selling 90 percent of its 200,000 print though ironically runningEastern Color more than $4,000 in the red. That quickly changed, with the bookturning a $30,000 profit each issue starting with #12. Famous Funnies wouldeventually run 218 issues, inspire imitators, and largely launch a new massmedium.
When thesupply of available existing comic strips began to dwindle, early comic booksbegan to include a small amount of new, original material in comic-stripformat. Inevitably, a comic book of all-original material, with no comic-stripreprints, debuted. Fledgling publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's foundedNational Allied Publications — which would evolve into DC Comics — to releaseFun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 (Feb. 1935). Colloquially called New Fun (thename it would adopt with issue #2; the first has «New» on the coveronly as a bannered blurb), this was a tabloid-sized, 10-inch by 15-inch,36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover. An anthology, it mixedhumor features such as the funny animal comic «Pelion and Ossa» andthe college-set «Jigger and Ginger» with such dramatic fare as theWestern strip «Jack Woods» and the «yellow peril» adventure«Barry O'Neill», featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow.Issue #6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debut of Jerry Siegel and JoeShuster, the future creators of Superman, who began their careers with themusketeer swashbuckler «Henri Duval» (doing the first twoinstallments before turning it over to others) and, under the pseudonyms«Leger and Reuths», the supernatural-crimefighter adventure «Dr.Occult»Supermanand superheroes
In 1938, afterWheeler-Nicholson had been ousted by partner Harry Donenfeld, National Alliededitor Vin Sullivan pulled a Siegel & Shuster creation from the slush pileand used it as the cover feature of Action Comics #1 (June 1938). The duo'salien hero, Superman, dressed in colorful tights and a cape, evoking costumedcircus daredevil performers, became the archetype of the«superheroes» that would follow. Action Comics would become theAmerican comic book with the second-largest number of issues, next to DellComics' Four Color, with over 850 issues published as of 2006.
Siegel &Shuster's creation, influenced by the pulp fiction stories and by the legend ofthe Golem of Prague, Superman had superhuman strength, speed and otherabilities, and lived day-to-day in his secret identity as a mild-manneredreporter, Clark Kent. Within two years, most comic-book companies werepublishing large lines of superhero titles, and Superman has gone on to becomeone of the world's most recognizable characters.
The periodfrom 1930 through roughly the end of the 1940s is known as the Golden Age ofcomic books. It is characterized by extremely large print runs (comic booksbeing very popular as cheap entertainment during World War II); erratic qualityof stories, art and print quality; and by being a rare industry that providedjobs to an ethnic cross-section of Americans, albeit often at low wages and insweatshop working conditions. However, since comic books were primarily aimedat children, many adults remember the era fondly and uncritically, a hallmarkof a golden age.
Following thewar, new genres were added and old ones expanded upon. Teen humor (epitomizedby Archie Comics), funny animal comics (such as those published featuring WaltDisney's characters), science fiction, western, romance, and satiric humorcomics all found comfortable niches. Except for three enduring originals,Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, superheroes were all but wiped out by 1952.TheComics Code
In the late1940s and early 1950s, horror and true crime comics flourished, with EC Comicsthe most successful, artistically creative, and infamous publisher of suchcomics, many containing violence and gore. Targeting these and other comics,politicians and moral crusaders (without any basis of evidence) blamed comicbooks as a cause of crime, juvenile delinquency, drug use, and poor grades. Thepsychiatrist Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent, concerned withwhat he perceived to be sadistic and homosexual undertones in horror and insuperhero comics, respectively, raised anxieties about comics. This led theSenate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to take an interest in comic books.As a result of these concerns, schools and parent groups held public comic-bookburnings, and some cities banned comic books. Industry circulation declineddrastically.
In the wake ofthese events, many comics publishers, most notably National and Archie, foundedthe Comics Code Authority in 1954 and drafted the Comics Code, intended as«the most stringent code in existence for any communications media.»A Comic Code Seal of Approval soon appeared on virtually every comic bookcarried on newsstands. EC, after experimenting with less controversial comicbooks, dropped its comics line to focus on the satiric Mad — a comic book itchanged to magazine format in order to circumvent the Code.SilverAge of Comic Books
In themid-1950s, following the popularity of TV series The Adventures of Superman,publishers experimented with the superhero once more. Showcase #4 (National,1956) introduced the rebooted hero The Flash, which began a second wave ofsuperhero popularity known as the Silver Age of comic books. National expandedits line of superheroes over the next six years, introducing new versions ofGreen Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman and others.
In 1961writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby created the FantasticFour for Marvel Comics. In a landmark that changed the industry, The FantasticFour #1 initiated a naturalistic style of superheroes with human failings,fears, and inner demons, who squabbled and worried about the likes of rentmoney. In contrast to the super heroic do-gooder archetypes of establishedsuperheroes at the time, this ushered a revolution. With dynamic artwork byKirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and others complementing Lee's colorful, catchyprose, the new style found an audience among children (who loved thesuperheroes) and college students (who were entertained by the deeper themes).Marvel was initially restricted in the number of titles it could produce inthat its books were distributed by rival National, a situation not alleviateduntil the late 1960s. This inhibited the introduction of a Lee/Ditko character,first to surpass Superman in sales since writer Bill Parker and artist Clarence«C.C.» Beck's original Captain Marvel, Spider-Man.
National(colloquially called DC Comics by this time), Marvel, and Archie were the majorplayers in the 1960s. Other notable companies included the American ComicsGroup (ACG), the low-budget Charlton, where many professionals such as DickGiordano got their start; Dell; Gold Key; Harvey Comics, home of the Harveycartoon characters (Casper the Friendly Ghost) and non-animated others (RichieRich); and Tower, best-known for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.Undergroundcomics
During thelate 1960s and early 1970s, a surge of underground comics occurred. Thesecomics were published independently of the established comic book publishersand most reflected the youth counterculture and drug culture of the time. Manywere notable for their uninhibited, irreverent style, which hadn't been seen incomics before. The movement is often considered[citation needed] to have beenstarted by R. Crumb's publication of Zap Comix #1 in 1968, though there wereantecedents such as pornographic «Tijuana bibles», dating to the1920s, and Frank Stack's The Adventures of Jesus, published in 1962.
Although manyof the underground artists continued to produce work, the underground comixmovement is considered by most historians to have ended by 1980, to be replacedby a rise in independent, non-Comics Code compliant publishing companies in the1980s and the resulting increase in acceptance of adult-oriented comic books.BronzeAge of Comic Books
Historians andfans use the term Bronze Age to describe the period of American mainstreamcomics history that begins with a period of concentrated changes to comic bookscirca 1970. Unlike the Golden/Silver Age transition, the Silver/Bronzetransition involved many continually published books, making the transitionless sharp; not every book can be said to have entered the Bronze Age at thesame time.
Changescommonly considered to mark the transition between Silver and Bronze agesinclude:
· Areshuffling of popular creators, including the retirement of Mort Weisinger,editor of the Superman books, and the movement of Jack Kirby to DC.
· A boomin non-superhero and borderline superhero comics such as Conan the Barbarian,Tomb of Dracula, Kamandi, Swamp Thing, Ghost Rider, and the revived DoctorStrange.
· «Relevant»comics which attempted to address serious social issues, such as the Spider-Mandrug abuse issues and the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series.
· TheComics Code Authority's first update, in 1971.
· Revampingof several popular characters, including a «darker» Batman closer tothe original 1930s conception, several changes to Superman such as thedisappearance of Kryptonite, and a temporary non-powered era for Wonder Woman.
· Thedeath of major characters such as Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, the DoomPatrol, and several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.TheModern Age
Thedevelopment of a non-returnable «direct market» distribution systemin the 1970s coincided with the appearance of comic book specialty storesacross North America. These specialty stores were a haven for more distinctvoices and stories, but they also marginalized comics in the public eye.Serialized comic stories became longer and more complex, requiring readers tobuy more issues to finish a story. Between 1970 and 1990, comic book pricesrose sharply because of a combination of factors: a nationwide paper shortage,increasing production values, and the minimal profit incentive for stores tostock comic books (due to the small unit price of an individual comic bookrelative to a magazine). These factors are often pointed to when consideringthe decline in comic book popularity in America.
In themid-to-late 1980s, two comic book series published by DC Comics (Batman: TheDark Knight Returns and Watchmen) had a profound impact upon the American comicbook industry. The phenomenal popularity of these series led both of the majorpublishers (DC and Marvel) to change the content of their titles to a morerealistic, «darker» tone, often derisively termed«grim-and-gritty». This change was underscored by the growingpopularity of anti-heroes such as the Punisher, and Wolverine, as well as thedarker tone of some independent publishers such as First Comics and Dark HorseComics. For a period of several years the pages of mainstream comics werefilled with brooding mutants and «dark avengers». This tendencytowards darkness and nihilism was also manifested in DC's production of heavilypromoted comic book stories such as «A Death in the Family» in theBatman series (in which Batman's sidekick Robin was brutally murdered by TheJoker), while at Marvel, the continuing popularity of the various X-Men booksled to storylines such as «Mutant Massacre» and «Acts ofVengeance.»
Though aspeculator boom in the early 1990s temporarily increased specialty storesales—collectors «invested» in multiple copies of a single comic tosell at a profit later—these booms ended in a collectibles glut, and comicsales declined sharply in the mid-1990s, leading to the demise of many hundredsof stores. (See comic book collecting for a more detailed look at the speculatorboom.) Today fewer comics sell in North America than at any time in theirpublishing history. Though the large superhero-oriented publishers like Marveland DC are still often referred to as the «mainstream» of comics,they are no longer a mass medium in the same sense as in previous decades. Inrecent years, several movies based of Marvel and DC characters have beenreleased and publishing of several cross over events in the DC and MarvelUniverse, such as Identity Crisis and Civil War, and the death of CaptainAmerica, which receive widespread media coverage, comic books have receive moremainstream interest and attention.
Prestige format
Prestigeformat comic books are typically longer than standard comic books, typicallybeing of between 48 and 72 pages, and printed on glossy paper with a spine andcard stock cover. The format was first used by DC on Frank Miller's Batman: TheDark Knight Returns. The success of this work led to the establishment of theformat, and it is now used generally to showcase works by big name creators orto spotlight significant storylines.
Thesestorylines can be serialised over a limited number of issues, or can bestandalone. Standalone works published in the form, such as Batman: The KillingJoke, are sometimes referred to either as graphic novels or novellas.Independentand alternative comics
Comicspecialty stores did help encourage several waves of independent-producedcomics, beginning in the late 1970s. The first of these was generally referredto as «independent» or «alternative comics»; some of thesecontinued somewhat in the tradition of underground comics, while othersresembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but werepublished by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist, and a few(notably RAW) were experimental attempts to bring comics closer to the world offine art.
The«small press» scene continued to grow and diversify, with a number ofsmall publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of theirbooks to more closely resemble non-comics publishing. The«minicomics» form, an extremely informal version of self-publishing,arose in the 1980s and became increasingly popular among artists in the 1990s,despite reaching an even more limited audience than the small press. «Artcomics» has sometimes been used as a general term for alternative,small-press, or minicomic artists working outside of mainstream traditions.Publishers and artists working in all of these forms stated a desire to refinecomics further as an art form.
Artist recognition
Some comicbooks have gained recognition and earned their creators awards from outside thegenre, such as Art Spiegelman's Maus (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and NeilGaiman's The Sandman (an issue of which won the World Fantasy Award for«Best Short Story»). Though not a comic book itself, Michael Chabon'scomic-book themed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the 2001Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Popularinterest in superheroes increased with the success of feature films such asX-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002). To capitalize on this interest, comics publisherslaunched concerted promotional efforts such as Free Comic Book Day (first heldon May 5, 2002). In addition, the filmed adaptation of non-superhero comicbooks like Ghost World, Road to Perdition, and American Splendor raised hopesthat the medium's image can be changed for the better.Production
Comic booksare a collaborative medium. Generally, some kind of writer/scripter/plotterwill outline the whole story and is a core of the story telling process. Thepenciller is the first step in rendering the story in visual form and mayrequire several steps of feedback with the writer. These artists are concernedwith layout (positions and vantages on scenes) to showcase steps in the plot.In earlier generations it was more common for artists to use a loose pencillingapproach, in which the penciller does not take much care to reduce the vagariesof the pencil art, leaving it to the inker to interpret the penciller's intentand render the art in a more finished state. Today many pencillers prefer tocreate very meticulously detailed pages, where every nuance that they expect tosee in the inked art is indicated in pencil. This is known as tight pencilling.Because the inking and the pencilling are so closely aligned there are strongcross influences — inked lines emphasize aspects of the scene, but is thisparticular emphasis the intention of the penciller or is the penciller'spreference off-base compared to the point of the story? Then the colorist comesinto the picture and is responsible for adding color to the black and white(possibly shaded) line art. Almost all comic books are rendered in color andhave been for much of the history of comic books. Sometimes color is not addedfor specific effect or when production resources don't allow for a colorist. Acolorist also can add to or shift the emphasis of a page of comic art — thepenciller laid out the basic scene — the inker emphasizes the depth and dramaof the edges of things and their weight on the page, and the colorist canfuther emphasize what draws the eye and adds or subtracts to the realism of thescene. Finally the letterer renders what needs to be said on a page of art forthe story — which could be dialogue or the content of signs or print if shown.This may seem like an easy job, but the right use of fonts, letter size, andlayout of the words inside the balloon all contribute to the impact of the art.A good letterer is a good calligrapher, and a great letterer has as much to dowith the quality of the comic as the writer, penciler, inker, or colorist.
Aside fromdifferences in regional styles of comics books the disciplines of writer,penciler, inker, colorist and letterer are under pressures of productionefficiencies as well — and computers are mixing things up too. Different partsof the creative process are generally being done by fewer people but whichmixing of responsabilies happens varies. But there are few that do all thesteps in comic production.Thesuperhero
Superhero dramatic-adventureand science-fiction stories have dominated American comic books for most of themedium's history. Before the 1960s, comics were published in many genres,including humor, Westerns, romance, horror, military fiction, crime fiction,biography, and adaptations of classic literature. Non-superhero comics havecontinued to exist as niche publishing, with humor titles, such as those fromArchie Comics and Bongo Comics, the most visible alternatives.
Pricing
Typical pricesof a new, standard size, mainstream (DC/Marvel) comic book: Timing variesslightly by publisher as not all publishers changed prices at the same time(data samples taken from X-Men, Action Comics and Avengers cover price listingsin ComicBase 10 Archive Edition)
· Priorto 1962 $ .10
· 1962 — 1969 $ .12
· 1969 — 1971 $ .15
· 1971 — 1974 $ .20
· 1974 — 1976 $ .25
· 1976 — 1977 $ .30
· 1977 — 1979 $ .35
· 1979 — 1980 $ .40
· 1980 — 1981 $ .50
· 1982 — 1985 $ .60
· 1985 — 1986 $ .65
· 1986 — 1988 $ .75
· 1988 — 1991 $ 1.00
· 1992 — 1995 $ 1.25
· 1995 — 1996 $ 1.50
· 1996 — 1997 $ 1.95
· 1997 — 2000 $ 1.99
· 2000 — 2005 $ 2.25
· 2005 — 2006 $ 2.50
· 2006 — Present $ 2.99
TheList of Literature & Web-sites
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_the_United_States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_American_Poets
www.poets.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicano_poetry
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicano_poets
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_in_the_United_States
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_comic_book
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Salinger
www.salinger.org/index.php?title=Main_Page