American Lit in the New York Times Book Review!
The 4 January issue of the New York Times Book Review features a piece by Liesl Schillinger
looking at The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich, and Schillinger opens feisty, calling out the Swedish Academy for their recent put-down of American literature as “too isolated,” “too insular,” and “too sensitive to trends.” Our reviewer is having none of that, saying it’s the particular impatient qualities of American letters that first “captured the imagination when most readers could never visit the country they dreamed about” (coincidentally or not, the same issue ends with an essay about Franz Kafka, for whom that statement was certainly true on both counts).
A Woman’s Rage video Erdrich is Schillinger’s chosen exemplar of American literature, and the reader is left in no doubt of the reviewer’s affection for her subject:
The Man Who Would Be King download What’s New Pussycat film
The author of some two dozen books for adults and children, Erdrich is also a wondrous short story writer. In “The Red Convertible,” she gathers 36 stories, 26 previously published, together creating a keepsake of the American experience. Like the painted drum in her story of that name, this collection can be considered “a living thing,” an emblem of the universe — “exquisitely sensitive for so powerful an instrument.”
In our current issue, Karen Vanuska also takes a spin in The Red Convertible – after first checking its registration to find out just how many new components it contains! Click on over to read her full report, and of course feel free to leave a comment telling us what you think. We promise not to tell the Swiss.
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