American Literature and the Nobel Prize: Books

The Encyclopedia of Nobel Laureates (1901-2017) published by Panther Publishers showcases brief biographical sketches and summary of individual achievements of the 923 Nobel Prize winners in the last 117 years since the time the first Nobel Prize was awarded.

While others have studied the African spiritual ideas and values encoded in Morrison's work, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison is the most comprehensive. In this volume, K. Zauditu-Selassie explores a wide range of complex concepts, including African deities, ancestral ideas, spiritual archetypes, mythic trope, and lyrical prose representing African spiritual continuities. She delves deeply into African spiritual traditions, clearly explaining the meanings of African cosmology and epistemology as manifest in Morrison's novels.

What explains the perception of Asians both as economic exemplars and as threats? America's Asia explores a discursive tradition that affiliates the East with modern efficiency, in contrast to more familiar primitivist forms of Orientalism. Colleen Lye traces the American stereotype of Asians as a'model minority'or a'yellow peril'--two aspects of what she calls'Asiatic racial form'-- to emergent responses to globalization beginning in California in the late nineteenth century, when industrialization proceeded in tandem with the nation's neocolonial expansion beyond its continental frontier. From Progressive efforts to regulate corporate monopoly to New Deal contentions with the crisis of the Great Depression, a particular racial mode of social redress explains why turn-of-the-century radicals and reformers united around Asian exclusion and why Japanese American internment during World War II was a liberal initiative. In Lye's reconstructed archive of Asian American racialization, literary naturalism and its conventions of representing capitalist abstraction provide key historiographical evidence. Arguing for the profound influence of literature on policymaking, America's Asia examines the relationship between Jack London and leading Progressive George Kennan on U.S.-Japan relations, Frank Norris and AFL leader Samuel Gompers on cheap immigrant labor, Pearl S. Buck and journalist Edgar Snow on the Popular Front in China, and John Steinbeck and left intellectual Carey McWilliams on Japanese American internment. Lye's materialist approach to the construction of race succeeds in locating racialization as part of a wider ideological pattern and in distinguishing between its different, and sometimes opposing, historical effects.

In October 2005 a conference honoring the contributions of Sinclair Lewis to Midwest and American culture and celebrating the friendship between Sinclair Lewis and Ida K. Compton was held at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Sinclair Lewis would no doubt have been flattered, and perhaps a bit surprised by the breadth of this conference in his honor. The fact that scholars, writers, students and readers gathered to discuss his work and its broader influence would have pleased him. He would have learned that readers still found stimulus for serious thought in his writing, and that his works can serve as a springboard to discussion of today's societal issues, some of which might surprise him considerably.The papers selected from the conference entitled The American Village in a Global Setting consider elements of Lewis'world through today's lens. In Part I, his version of community is compared to that documented in other ways, including architecture and television. Scholars address issues such as anti-Semitism, theocratic communities, the Irish, and outdoor life. In Part II, the concept of community is expanded to the visions of other authors including his contemporaries, such as Martha Ostenso, Josephine Donovan, and Willa Cather, as well as more recent writers. In Part III, today's social and cultural issues in America are addressed, expressing the global and interdisciplinary intent of the conference. And, last, Part IV continues the global theme, addressing international communities and pedagogical philosophies through film and literature.

Walk through the Streets of Paris with Ernest Hemingway.In gorgeous black and white images, Hemingway's Paris depicts a story of remarkable passion—for a city, a woman, and a time. No other city in any of his travels was as significant, professionally or emotionally, as was Paris. And it remains there, all of the complexity, beauty, and intrigue that Hemingway described in the pages of so much of his work. It is all still there for the reader and traveler to experience—the history, the streets, and the city. Restaurants, hotels, homes, sites and favorite bars are all detailed here. The ninety-five black and white photographs in Hemingway's Paris are of the highest caliber. The accompanying text reveals Wheeler's deep understanding of the man; his torment, talent, obstacles and the places of refuge needed to nurture one of the preeminent writers of the twentieth century. Moved by the humanistic writing of the man—a writer capable of transcending his readers to foreign settings and into the hearts and minds of his protagonists—Wheeler was inspired to travel throughout France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and Cuba, where he has sought to gain insight into the motivation behind Hemingway's books and short stories. As a teacher, lecturer, and photojournalist, he set out to capture and interpret the Paris that Ernest Hemingway experienced in the first part of the century. Through his journal and photographs, Wheeler portrays the intimate connection Hemingway had with the woman he never stopped loving, Hadley, and with the city he loved most, Paris.

This title explores the creative works of famous musician Bob Dylan. Music analyzed includes Bob Dylan's protest songs (The Times They Are A-Changin', A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, and Blowin' In The Wind), Bob Dylan's personal songs (It Ain't Me, Babe and Positively 4th Street), Blood on the Tracks, and Hurricane and Joey from Desire. Clear, comprehensive text gives background biographical information of Dylan. You Critique It feature invites readers to analyze other creative works on their own. A table of contents, timeline, list of works, resources, source notes, glossary, and an index are also included. Essential Critiques is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

In March 1942, a desperate period for the allies in World War II, John Steinbeck published his propaganda novel The Moon is Down­—the story of ruthless invaders who overrun a militarily helpless country. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck underscored both the fatal weakness of the “invincible” unnamed aggressors and the inherent power of the human values shard by the “conquered” people. The Moon is Down created an immediate sensation among American literary critics; fierce debate erupted over Steinbeck's uncommonly sympathetic portrayal of the enemy and the novel's power as a vehicle for propaganda. Fifty years later, Coers continues the debate, relying heavily on unpublished letters and personal interviews with the lawyers, book dealers, actors, publishers, and housewives associated with the resistance movements in Western Europe. Clandestine translations of The Moon Is Down quickly appeared and were widely circulated under the noses of the Gestapo. Coers documents the fate of Steinbeck's novel in the hands of World War II resistance fighters and deepens our appreciation of Steinbeck's unique ability to express the feelings of oppressed peoples.

The book serves to present the major trends and developments and also provide information about the life and philosophy of Alfred Nobel, the history of the Nobel Foundation, and the procedure for nominating and selecting Nobel Laureates.

Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, Nobel-Prize-winning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to re-imagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its ill-fated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nation-states. According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies'imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle. Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet.

Faulkner is notoriously a'difficult'writer to study, especially for first-time readers. This Literature Insight begins with three chapters clearly setting out the important facts of his life, mapping the people and history of his recurrent fictional setting, Yoknapatawpha County, and analysing the oddities and problems of his prose style. Later chapters turn directly to his great novel'Go Down, Moses'and his later collection'Big Woods', dealing in detail with each story and the intertexts and showing how they connect and add up to something much more than loose collections. Readers new to Faulkner will find it a very helpful introduction to his world, and those already familiar with him a valuable resource.

The book sheds new light on the revolutionary influence of Eliot's poetry on the free verse movement in Iraq and Lebanon, especially on the mythical poets: Al-Sayyab, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Yusuf Al-Khal, Khalil Hawi and Adonis known as the Tammuzi Poets. The writer is one of Eliot's best translators and who personally knew all five of the modern mythical poets.