Love the restructured syllabus. Sad to lose some Whitman/Dickinson and was looking forward to spending a leisurely Christmas vacation reading Moby-Dick again, but was secretly dreading that many transcendentalists tbqh, and very excited to read or reread those 20c authors.
I am with you on absolutely hating phonetically written dialogue, there's nothing worse than being jerked out of the flow of a book because you have to squint to make it out. But almost nothing gives me more pure pleasure than the great American dialogue tradition that runs through Mark Twain, Charles Portis, George V. Higgins, the Coen Brothers, Deadwood, Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in The Sweet Smell of Success (my favorite movie) -- that unique set of regionalisms, wisecracks, tough talk, comebacks etc. Eloquence mixed with earthiness. If you ask me it's an American contribution to world culture as good as baseball or jazz.
Love the restructured syllabus. Sad to lose some Whitman/Dickinson and was looking forward to spending a leisurely Christmas vacation reading Moby-Dick again, but was secretly dreading that many transcendentalists tbqh, and very excited to read or reread those 20c authors.
I am with you on absolutely hating phonetically written dialogue, there's nothing worse than being jerked out of the flow of a book because you have to squint to make it out. But almost nothing gives me more pure pleasure than the great American dialogue tradition that runs through Mark Twain, Charles Portis, George V. Higgins, the Coen Brothers, Deadwood, Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in The Sweet Smell of Success (my favorite movie) -- that unique set of regionalisms, wisecracks, tough talk, comebacks etc. Eloquence mixed with earthiness. If you ask me it's an American contribution to world culture as good as baseball or jazz.
Novel ordered, I look forward to reading.