Sep 23, 2009

“A New Literary History of America”



(NYTimes) ... So how does one select which moments and artifacts from North America’s last 500 years deserve inclusion? ... Some were obvious: the Declaration of Independence, “Leaves of Grass,” Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Great Gatsby.”
Others were obscure, unexpected or unlikely: how “canoe” may have become the first American Indian word to enter the European lexicon, the first potato chip, Charles Dickens’s “American Notes,” Levi Strauss’s blue jeans with rivets, Alcoholics Anonymous, the blues singer Mamie Smith, the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the very literary history that was the subject of their meeting. Continued


Photo: Library of Congress

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