The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story is a favorite so far among my students in the "Forgotten Books" class I'm teaching this semester. It is set in the South of France in the late 1920s but was written in 1940, long after its author, Glenway Wescott, had left France. My students and I all agreed that it is a beautiful, unjustly forgotten book.…
Last week in my “Forgotten Books” class we read some stories from Kay Boyle’s The White Horses of Vienna and Other Stories. The title story dominated our discussion. (See the end for where to find "The White Horses of Vienna.") It was published in Harper’s magazine in 1935 and won the O. Henry Award for best story that year. Today it’s a rather…
My students and I just read this book in my Forgotten Books class. They weren't thrilled by it, but I thought it was fascinating, a peek into another "lost generation" that the myth of Paris in the 20s has obscured. Their biggest complaint (and mine) is that McAlmon's chapters are a lot of name-dropping and bar-hopping without much introspection. Boyle's chapters, on the…
My class "The Literature of War" has now moved on to WWI. Most of the students freely admitted that they knew almost nothing about it. That's not surprising, considering that even during the recent 100-year commemorations of the war, there was almost no mention of it in the American media. In Europe, the war was front and center in people's minds from 2014…
This week's readings on the experience of the Civil War for African-Americans sparked a lengthy discussion of America's suppressed histories. We read Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, published in 1902, as well as speeches by Frederick Douglass, and a story published in 1864 in Harper's Weekly, “Tippo Saib." We also read two critical articles, one of which explained the long…
Overall, I love what this version does with the character of Jo March. For the first time, Jo's feelings for Laurie are clear, more accurately reflecting Alcott's view of things. In the book, Jo is repeatedly clear that she thinks of him more as a brother, while in the previous films there seemed to be a lot of flirting and mixed messages. Winona…
Last night my Little Women reading group and I met to watch the first episode of the PBS Masterpiece Little Women. It was wonderful to see them (my friends and the March sisters) again. My reading group had meet several times in 2016, while I was writing my book on Little Women, to discuss the novel and its two successors. They had all…
It has been lovely to hear from the first readers of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, which will come out Aug. 21. Because I had to produce the book so quickly in order to get it published for the 150th anniversary of Little Women on September 29, 2018, very few people had read it before it…
It's been almost three weeks in the U.S. since the biography and stories came out. Next week they come out in the UK. In advance of the UK publication, W.W. Norton UK has put up an excerpt of the biography. You can read the prologue and get a sense of the book. (The links there are for UK readers to purchase the…
Constance Fenimore Woolson was born on this day in 1840. I can't imagine a better birthday present for her than her picture on the cover of The New York Times Book Review! Although she was squeamish during her life about her picture appearing in print, I think she would be happy to know now that she is being remembered. The full review…