#americanliterature — Public Fediverse posts

Book Review: The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

Author: Eudora Welty
Title: The Optimist’s Daughter
Narrator: Eudora Welty
Other Books Read by the Same Author:

• The Ponder Heart
• One Writer’s Beginnings

Publication Info: Books on Tape, 2011 [originally published, 1972]
Summary/Review:

This slice-of-life drama portrays Laurel Hand, a woman who returns to care for her aging father in New Orleans.  As her father’s condition deteriorates, Laurel gets to know his young wife/her stepmother, an immature woman named Fay.  When her father dies, they return to Laurel’s childhood hometown in Mississippi where the funeral is overshadowed by Fay’s attention-seeking behavior.  Despite this, Laurel finds comfort and warmth in reuniting with old friends and reconciling memories of her childhood and family.  The short novel serves as a study of character and the changing roles assumed as people age.

Recommended books:

• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Rating: ***1/2

We lost Edgar Allan Poe, in mysterious circumstances, on this day, in 1849. He was just forty years old.

I've been reading Poe since I was about 12, he's like an old friend. This also means, rather scarily, that I have now been reading & re-reading Poe for more years than he actually lived

.

#books #livres #bookstodon #OTD #1849 #writer #Author #Auteur #EdgarAllanPoe #AmericanLiterature

My First Encounter with Hemingway, Unfortunately Involving Fishing: On Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea

I bought The Old Man and the Sea sometime last year, placed it on the shelf, and proceeded to ignore it. Hemingway had always been one of those enormous literary names I knew I would eventually have to confront, almost out of obligation. Melville, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway. The Mount Rushmore effect. Eventually curiosity, guilt over an unread purchase, and the convenient fact that the book is barely more than a hundred pages won out. I finished it in perhaps two sittings.

And now I am not entirely sure what I think of it.

This was my first Hemingway, which may have been the first mistake. The Old Man and the Sea is short, famous, Nobel-adjacent, Pulitzer-winning, endlessly discussed in literary and reading circles, and therefore looks like the obvious doorway into Hemingway. It may not be. For long stretches, I felt as though I were reading an extremely detailed account of fishing written for someone who already understood why fishing mattered. Lines, hooks, currents, bait, birds, the positioning of the hands, the movement of the fish beneath the water. There are no chapters to provide even the psychological illusion of progress. Santiago goes to sea, hooks an enormous marlin, and then the ordeal begins.

That is essentially the plot.

Santiago is an old Cuban fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without catching anything. Once considered terribly unlucky, he sets out alone and hooks a marlin so enormous that instead of hauling it toward the boat, the fish begins pulling him farther out to sea. For days the old man endures hunger, exhaustion, cramped hands, wounds, sleeplessness, and solitude while developing an almost mystical respect for the creature he intends to kill. Eventually he harpoons the marlin and lashes it to his skiff, only for sharks to descend upon it during the journey home. By the time Santiago reaches shore, practically nothing remains except the skeleton.

A triumph reduced to evidence.

That, finally, was where the book began to make sense to me.

I had initially been waiting for psychological revelation, some penetration into Santiago’s inner life beyond the immediate questions of endurance and fishing. I wanted character excavation. Hemingway largely refuses it. Santiago’s psychology is strangely externalized. His character exists in what he does, what he endures, and what he refuses to surrender. He talks to himself because there is nobody else there. He talks to the fish. He talks to birds. He talks about baseball and Joe DiMaggio, who, I learned, was a famous American professional baseball player. His mind circles around pain, hunger, technique, memory, luck, the boy Manolin, and the fish pulling him toward some increasingly abstract confrontation with himself.

There is pride in all of it, certainly. Maybe too much pride.

Santiago does not merely want food. The marlin becomes proof. Proof that he remains what he once was. Proof that age has not entirely conquered him. Proof that eighty-four empty days have not rendered him useless. He wants to catch the fish because catching the fish would vindicate his existence as a fisherman. This gives the story its distinctly masculine quality, at least as I experienced it. There is something almost archaic about it. Man goes into nature. Man encounters magnificent beast. Man suffers. Man conquers beast. Nature retaliates. Man returns wounded but spiritually undefeated. It could have been told beside a fire three thousand years ago.

And perhaps that is precisely the point.

Santiago repeatedly calls the marlin his brother, admires its dignity, marvels at its strength, and yet remains committed to killing it. That contradiction is probably the most interesting psychological element in the book. Love does not prevent destruction. Respect does not cancel violence. Santiago recognizes something of himself in the fish, which makes the killing stranger rather than easier. He kills the thing he most admires because defeating it is how he measures himself.

There is tragedy in that.

The sharks make the tragedy almost cruelly mathematical. Santiago achieves the impossible and then watches the achievement disappear bite by bite. All that suffering, all that magnificent struggle, reduced to a carcass before anyone can properly see what he has done. The marlin begins to resemble ambition itself. Glory cannot be preserved. Victory decomposes. One may conquer something enormous and still return home with almost nothing to show for it.

Except the knowledge that it happened.

The Christian symbolism is difficult to miss once Santiago’s ordeal reaches its end. His wounded hands suggest stigmata. He carries the mast upon his shoulders after returning home, an unmistakably Christlike image. He collapses exhausted and sleeps with his arms outstretched. His suffering acquires the shape of sacrifice. But I do not think Hemingway turns Santiago into Christ in any straightforward religious sense. The symbolism seems less doctrinal than mythic. Santiago suffers so completely that suffering itself becomes transfiguring. The flesh fails, the prize is destroyed, but some interior dignity survives.

This is also where Manolin, the boy in the book, becomes important. I did not feel especially attached to the boy, perhaps because Hemingway gives so little psychological texture to their relationship. Yet his devotion to Santiago supplies the tenderness the book otherwise desperately needs. Manolin brings him food, worries over him, believes in him when others do not, and ultimately chooses loyalty over the judgment of his parents. The old man speaks constantly of wishing the boy were with him. Beneath all the masculine endurance and heroic solitude is a man who does not actually want to be alone.

That detail changed Santiago somewhat for me.

His independence is not absolute. He longs for companionship. He needs Manolin’s affection even if he can survive physically without it. The boy represents continuity, perhaps even immortality of a modest kind. Santiago’s body is deteriorating, but whatever he knows can pass into another person. The old fisherman may lose the marlin, but he has not entirely lost his place in the world.

Hemingway’s prose, meanwhile, is exactly what I had been told Hemingway’s prose would be: stripped down, direct, almost aggressively unornamented. There are moments of tremendous beauty, but Hemingway rarely appears interested in showing off the beauty of a sentence. He would rather make the sentence disappear. After writers who revel in language, this austerity can feel almost suspicious. I sometimes wanted more texture, more psychological intricacy, more verbal pleasure. Instead Hemingway gives nouns and verbs and physical facts. Sea. Fish. Rope. Hand. Blood. Pain.

It is easy to mistake simplicity for shallowness, though, and I suspect I did that occasionally while reading.

The novel’s depth lies less in psychological analysis than in compression. Santiago does not explain himself because his struggle is the explanation. Hemingway seems interested in the ancient philosophical question of what remains when almost everything else has been stripped away. Comfort disappears. Society disappears. Youth disappears. Luck disappears. Eventually even victory disappears. What remains is conduct.

That famous Hemingway ideal of grace under pressure suddenly becomes comprehensible here. Santiago cannot control whether the sharks come. He cannot control his age. He cannot control luck. He cannot even fully control what becomes of the marlin once he has killed it. He can only control how he meets each successive humiliation.

I understand, then, why The Old Man and the Sea is considered great. Understanding greatness, however, is not identical with loving the book.

I admired it more after finishing it than while actually reading it. During the reading itself I often struggled to care about the mechanics of fishing, and Santiago never became fully alive to me in the psychological way that my favorite literary characters do. Perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps Hemingway was doing something deliberately different from the novelists I instinctively prefer. He subtracts where others accumulate. He withholds where others interpret.

Still, as an introduction to Hemingway, I am not convinced this was the right book for me. Maybe I should have started with A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, or even some of the short stories, where human relationships occupy more of the foreground. I am not finished with Hemingway. One novella is hardly enough evidence to convict a writer, much less canonize him.

For now, The Old Man and the Sea remains something peculiar in my reading life: a book I respected without particularly enjoying, a book whose meaning became more interesting only after I had escaped the boat.

Perhaps Santiago would disapprove of that phrasing. Then again, I have never tried fishing.

Tell Me About the Rabbits One More Time: On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is my first Steinbeck, and as per usual, I went into it knowing practically nothing. Of course I knew the title. I knew Steinbeck’s name and had some hazy association of him with the Great Depression, poverty, migrant labor, dusty American landscapes, perhaps men in overalls staring grimly toward the horizon. That was about the extent of my preparation. I did not know George and Lennie were waiting for me. I certainly did not know what Steinbeck was going to do to them.

Perhaps ignorance is the way to read certain books.

The book is astonishingly short, almost suspiciously so. My copy is only a little over a hundred pages, and I finished it in probably two sittings. Yet it has the emotional weight of something much larger. I have read novels three times its length that contain half its humanity. Steinbeck’s prose is plain, controlled, sometimes almost biblical in its simplicity, but there is an enormous difference between simple writing and simplistic writing. He knows precisely how much to say and when to stop. The restraint is part of the cruelty. This is what I like about novellas. Steinbeck does not need four or five hundred pages to construct a world because the world he wants to show us is already narrow: a bunkhouse, a ranch, a few men, a woman, some rabbits that exist mostly in the imagination, and two itinerant workers carrying between them a private mythology about a piece of land they will someday own.

That dream matters because almost everyone in this book is lonely, worn down, or disappointed by life. George and Lennie, at least, have each other.

I felt particularly for George. There is a weariness in him that Steinbeck never sentimentalizes. He loves Lennie, although “love” is perhaps too neat a word for what exists between them. There is affection, obligation, frustration, pity, companionship, responsibility, even resentment. George must constantly think for two people. He anticipates Lennie’s mistakes, explains the world to him, protects him from other people and other people from him.

Lennie, meanwhile, possesses tremendous physical strength and almost no understanding of its consequences. He likes soft things. Mice. Puppies. Rabbits. A woman’s hair. He reaches toward the world with the innocence of a child while inhabiting a body capable of terrible damage. What he loves, he destroys. And somehow that innocence touched me.

Not because Lennie is harmless. He isn’t. That is precisely the tragedy. Innocence and harmlessness are not the same thing, and Steinbeck understands the distinction. Lennie does not comprehend evil in the ordinary moral sense, yet suffering follows him anyway. Intentions cannot resurrect a dead mouse, restore a crushed hand, or bring a dead woman back to life. I prefer morality to be clean. I want guilt to correspond neatly to intention. Steinbeck instead gives you someone capable of horrifying acts without possessing anything you’d comfortably call malice.

Then there is George.

He complains about Lennie. He fantasizes about the easier life he could have alone. He scolds him like a child, protects him like a brother, guides him like a parent, and sometimes seems almost imprisoned by him. And yet George stays. That matters.

They do not appear to be blood relatives, which makes the bond stranger and, to me at least, more moving. George has no obvious familial obligation to Lennie. Whatever obligation exists has been created between them. Friendship has become responsibility. Their relationship fascinated me because at times George and Lennie seemed less like two companions than two portions of the same human being. I kept entertaining the thought, perhaps unfairly, perhaps too psychologically, that Lennie could almost be George’s invention. A psychic double. George is calculation, restraint, memory, caution. Lennie is appetite, impulse, fantasy, longing. George knows reality. Lennie inhabits desire. George remembers what must be done. Lennie remembers the rabbits. Together they form something strangely whole.

Maybe that is why their separation at the end feels like an amputation.

Their dream of owning land is similarly divided between them. George supplies its architecture; Lennie supplies its faith. George describes the little farm, the vegetables, the animals, the freedom from bosses. Lennie returns obsessively to the rabbits. “Tell about the rabbits” becomes almost a prayer.

The farm is less an economic ambition than an imagined refuge from contingency. A few acres. Vegetables. Animals. Rabbits. No boss. No running. No fear. If they can only reach that place, perhaps George can stop worrying and Lennie can finally exist somewhere without accidentally destroying what he touches.

Steinbeck seems to understand that some dreams are necessary precisely because they may never happen. They allow people to endure the present.

There is very little excess in his writing. The prose is plain without being impoverished, lyrical without showing off. Even the beautiful descriptions of nature are not merely decorative. The landscape seems indifferent to the human dramas occurring inside it. Men suffer, dream, kill, disappear. The river continues. The trees remain. Nature neither condemns nor absolves anyone.

And Steinbeck prepares you for the ending long before it arrives.

One part that devastated me even before Lennie’s death was Candy’s old dog. The dog is ancient, weak, suffering, no longer useful. Candy has had him since he was a pup, but he eventually agrees to let Carlson put him down. Rationally, it is mercy. Emotionally, it is something much harder. Candy has to consent to losing a creature that has accompanied him for years. Afterward, he regrets that he did not kill the dog himself.

That regret hangs over George’s final decision. Candy teaches him, perhaps without meaning to, that if someone you love must die, there may be one final and horrible tenderness in making sure the last hand upon him is yours. I hated that this made sense.

The ending devastated me because George does not simply kill Lennie. He gives him the dream one final time. He tells him about the rabbits.

Lennie dies facing the world he wanted rather than the world coming to punish him. George allows him to remain inside the dream until the final second. It is violence that resembles mercy, or mercy forced to take the shape of violence. I do not know that the distinction can ever be made comfortable.

And George is free afterward. That may be the cruelest thing one can say about the ending.

No more running because of Lennie. No more explaining. No more watching him. No more carrying another man’s life alongside his own. George has finally obtained the independence he sometimes imagined wanting, but only by destroying the person who made that independence seem desirable.

The dream of freedom arrives, except it looks nothing like the dream.

For this reason, I ultimately read Of Mice and Men as a story about saying goodbye.

Not merely a goodbye to Lennie, but a goodbye to the person one has been while loving another person. George kills Lennie, yes, but he also kills the strange little world that existed only because there were two of them inside it. The farm dies. The rabbits die. Their private language dies. George will continue living, presumably, but the George who traveled with Lennie is finished.

Perhaps this is why my idea of Lennie as George’s psychological double refuses to leave me. If Lennie represents some dependent, dreaming, innocent portion of George himself, then the final gunshot becomes darker still. Survival sometimes demands that you abandon possibilities you once needed in order to keep living.

A very short book, then. Barely enough pages to occupy two sittings.

And somehow enough room for an entire goodbye.

It's time for another #ebook in my Grammaticus Free Library series!

This time it's "The Ambitious Guest," a short story by one of my favourites, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864).

Set in the majestic scenery of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the story highlights the uncertainty of life and the fragility of human aspirations.

As always, there are vocabulary notes throughout the text, to help with some of the more archaic or advanced vocabulary. Suggested CEFR level: C1/C2.

Get your free PDF copy here: https://grammaticus.blog/2026/09/22/ebook-the-ambitious-guest/

#englishteacher #americanliterature #nathanielhawthorne

This is a book I really wanted to love, because of its themes, because of Vuong's history, because it was highly recommended in my Silent Book Club, but I didn't.
And that's because I found it really uneven. 
Some parts are moving and beautiful and poetic, with characters I loved, and beautifully  described feelings and emotions, but then some parts feel heavy and overwritten and slow and (pointlessly) enigmatic. 
And I'm not sure I like the style.

#bookstodon #AmericanLiterature #OceanVuong

Fragments From A Writer’s Diary – September 2026

4.9.2026

The kettle boils and it seems to take a moment for me to remember where I am and what I’m doing. The pale sun pouring in. The scene still poised and waiting.

I gaze at the cups on the rack. Thinking that somehow it matters which one I choose. Because there is such a thing as turnaround. A cycle unfixed and unspoken, but somehow loosely kept to. The act itself becoming a kind of ritual. The moment forever striving towards some deeper meaning. Some greater sense of self.

There are times when I imagine this exact same scene taking place in an unknown city. These low-level trees, these red brick houses, the chimneys, replaced by the glass and steel of a late-capitalist metropolis. Electronic billboards. Neon sheen.

More recently I find I am living in some Mediterranean climate. Those ornate, or flat surface, buildings cast in warm tones. That sun-bleached marble and stone. And I rise early, while the weather is still relatively cool. The rooms still informed by shade.

I’m a writer living in some self-imposed exile. It’s years since I did anything of interest. It’s years since I did anything of note. The short story collection that won a prestigious award. A novel that was well received.

There’s a woman in my bed and maybe she’s still half-asleep, that untouched morning yet to become a reality. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now, but neither of us can decide if it’s serious. Because she still prioritises her freedom. And I still prioritise my solitude. And I wonder where exactly these scenes come from. And I wonder where exactly they are going.

6.9.2026

I take a walk along the beach. The mood overcast and set to weary. The clouds grey and heavy. The sea something close to static. The waves. The tide. I’m trying to take it all in. The scale of things. The colours. The scenery.

At certain points along the coast, the shoreline, those stretches of higher ground, there are homes about to fall, about to collapse, on to the beach. Just one more torrential downpour. One more landslide. And everything will be gone, everything will be lost, swept out to sea.

9.9.2026

What does it mean to keep rereading the works of a particular author? Coming back to those same novels, those same themes, again and again. Is it just another way of seeking some sort of literary comfort, some sort of literary distraction? The language, the stories, providing this sense of familiarity, this sense of return. If not to the past exactly, then perhaps to some kind of half-remembered space, or familiar non-place. Those same scenes. Those same characters. 

It is David Bell in Don DeLillo’s Americana. It is Bucky Wunderlick in Great Jones Street. One man seeking truth, some deeper sense of reality. The other man seeking his own, what, self-curated oblivion. That life lived far away from the ‘tropics of fame’.

What is it that I find so alluring about the artist between works, the artist in retreat? What is it that I find so appealing about giving up on everything for the sake of an idea? These drifts, or these descents, into the depths of your own solitude, your own psyche. Is that what I’ve been looking for in David Bell and Bucky Wunderlick? That idealised version, or idealised vision, of a life I want to be living?  

Sometimes I wonder if this is the real reason that I want success. If this is the real reason that I want some kind of recognition. So that I can disappear, I can descend, with something close to credibility. So that I am not forgotten, even as I continue to fade out of view.

10.9.2026

I meet Irina in the city. I forget what it’s like to be here. That slow tension between things. The steady pace, or steady onset, of people and places. The bars and restaurants. All those shop windows with their elaborate mannequins and their advertising. The constant murmurs of voices and music and whatever else is seeping into the atmosphere. The smartphone tones and snippets of videos being watched, being shared. The beeping of traffic lights. The dulled hum of engines. The cars. The buses.

Irina says, she is going to miss these evenings. The warm weather reminding her of holidays, of travel. Her summer wardrobe. The dresses. The sandals. She says, that she feels more like herself in this weather, in this climate. She feels closer to who she really is, or who she could be. And I think about this. I think about what it means. That on a different day, or in different weather, she could be someone else entirely.

12.9.2026

Rereading Great Jones Street I find myself making notes around a particular scene. Because it reminds me, it alludes to, a scene that DeLillo would only fully realise, or fully explore, in White Noise, some ten years after this.

‘I thought of calling Bellevue next but decided finally in favour of St. Vincent’s, gentle, humane and dedicated, St. Vincent’s, merciful and compassionate. I insisted on speaking to a nun. I wanted someone who believed in St. Vincent himself, in his ideals, his sacrifices, whatever these may have been. They wanted address, phone number, sex of deceased. I insisted on a nun. I wanted a nun, a short round woman, perhaps of German descent, someone who believed in the sacredness of dying and the veneration of the dead. No nun, no deal. This is what I told them.’

In White Noise, we see these nuns, these nuns of German descent, speaking German, tending wounds. Nuns in black habits, in black veils. We explore, or we confront, the nature, the idea, of faith, of believers and non-believers, of what happens to us when we die.

And this in turn reminds me of Sister Edgar, and Sister Grace, in The Angel Esmeralda. And I can’t decide if perhaps there is something to this. If there is something worth exploring. And I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself I don’t care. And I carry on reading.

13.9.2026

Two ideas for future pieces are alternately turning themselves over in my mind.

The first is for a piece that may or may not be called Japanese Dream House. Taken from, or inspired by, an exhibition I saw years ago.

It would predominately be about Japanese ambient, or Japanese environmental, music. The works of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa. Of Haruomi Hosano and Yoshio Ojima. Of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Fumio Miyashita. But it would be more than that really. It would be about art and culture. It would be about architecture. It would be about a desire to create and cultivate, a certain kind of life, or a certain kind of aesthetic. It’s review. It’s biography. It’s memoir.

The second idea would be for a short story, or a novella. About this couple that start cheating on each other, with each other, or with characters, or personas, that they create together. And not just as some fetish driven role play. Because it would become something far more intense, far more ambiguous. To the point where they almost start to become these other people.

And I can see them in this dark, neon soaked, room. And maybe he looks like me. And maybe she looks like Irina. And as he walks into the room, she tells him to sit down in the chair. And he can’t see her yet. Because she hasn’t stepped into that stretch of neon light. Electric pink. She has not revealed herself, or her other self, what she is wearing, how she has done her hair. But when she does, she ties his wrists to the arms of the chair. Is it with satin? Is it with silk?

He whispers her name, not her real name, her other name. And she sits astride him and she kisses him. Her hands gripping and pulling his hair.

At some point she disappears back into the shadows, and onto the bed. Her body somewhat obscured. Offering only a neon-soaked distortion of what is and isn’t happening.

14.9.2026

I like to watch these old Yale, or is it old Columbia, philosophy lectures, that someone has uploaded to YouTube. Kierkegaard and the Leap Of Faith. Hegel’s Philosophy Of History.

I’m not always sure exactly how much of them I understand. I’m not always sure how much of them I could use, or quote, or apply, to some half-imagined conversation. But then maybe it’s not really about that. Maybe it’s more about the way the man talks. It’s more about those subtle hand gestures, those wry smiles. It’s that stop start pacing. Those split-second pauses. That occasional lost train of thought. It’s that energy and enthusiasm. It’s the names of texts, and the use of certain, almost mythic words. It’s the different ways of seeing, those different ways of interpreting, and experiencing, the world. It all becomes something almost soothing, something almost hypnotic. Briefly elevating those far more mundane rhythms of living. It’s cooking. It’s cleaning.

As this particular lecture continues to unfold, I reach for my notebook and write,

Professor something…? Midnight In Dostoyevsky.

Is it possible this is the most elusive, the most evocative, title in DeLillo’s body of work?

Midnight In Dostoyevsky.

15.9.2026

Walking through the town, the high-street, round the houses, can sometimes feel like the end of things. All hopes. All ambitions. These pavements, cracked and uneven and intermittently smeared with dog shit. The drab exteriors of pubs and shop fronts, paint chipped and flaking. The one public bench by the flower beds randomly placed, rarely in bloom.  

Even now I am looking for a deeper meaning. So this is not just a man walking. The music he is listening to. Stars Of The Lid, The Ballasted Orchestra, Avec Laudenum.  

I try to imagine the life still waiting. I try to imagine those places I’ve never been. My life as something more than it is.

15.9.2026

There is this scene in Underworld, where Marian Shay, stands naked in front of a long mirror. She registers the briefest touch of the glass against her hip. She contemplates her body, how it looks. The exercise, the diets, she has to endure in order to maintain it. Eventually she presses her nipples gently against the glass,

‘…and when she backed away she saw they’d left a moistness, a pair of pressed kisses like winter breath.’

Rereading Falling Man, DeLillo’s exploration of those more personal, those more intimate, and perhaps transitory, responses to the aftermath of 9/11, I realise he has somewhat echoed, somewhat reworked, or reimagined the above, aforementioned, scene.

However, in this instance, in this moment, the act itself seems less about contemplation, less about the passing of time, and instead becomes something more instinctual, something more desperate, or more cathartic. As if DeLillo was trying to explore the exact same scene, or the exact same image, from a different place, or a different angle. That need for connection, that need to find, or maybe get back to, a sense of self. Now moving towards something far more physical, far more intense, or even clinical.

‘…and she got up to dress for her morning run but then pressed herself naked to the full-length mirror, face turned, hands raised roughly to head level. She pressed her body to the glass, eyes shut, and stayed for a long moment, nearly collapsed against the cool surface, abandoning herself to it.’

In some ways the two scenes almost become reversals of each other, or at least they do in theory. So where the scene plays out in Underworld, in this quiet, solitary moment before sex. In Falling Man, the scene plays out in the early light of the morning after. And where Marian is sleeping with her husband’s friend in Underworld. In Falling Man, Lianne slept with her previously estranged husband, the husband who had showed up at her door in the wake, the ash and soot and blood of 9/11.

For Marian, the act itself will leave only this subtle, almost erotic, trace. Whereas for Lianne the act will leave something more substantial, something that doesn’t go unnoticed. Meaning one scene remains as something completely private. While the other becomes something left out in the open, something between Lianne and her husband. 

‘…she put on her shorts and top and was lacing her shoes when he came out of the bathroom, clean shaven, and saw the fogged marks of her face, hands, breasts and thighs stamped on the mirror.’

16.9.2026

Irina calls when I am in the supermarket. And for a second, I think about ignoring it. Not because I don’t want to speak to her, but because I don’t want to talk in the supermarket. I don’t want to talk while I’m moving between the aisles. While I stand there contemplating the fruits and the vegetables. Trying to decide what it is exactly I want for lunch, or what I want for dinner.

And I answer the phone and say, hey. And she says, hey, what you up to? And I tell her that I’m in the supermarket. And she says, no worries, I won’t keep you. But then she carries on talking anyway. Because she’s having one of those days. It’s all back-to-back meetings and this stream of messages from her sister. What the doctor said and what happens next.

And I want to be there for her, but I am in the supermarket. I am weaving round trolleys and those hip leaning baskets. I’m passing those lost, those bemused, faces. And I say something inane. I say something about how many different types of toothpaste there are. And she says, I know what you mean. And I start reading them out. And at some point, she says, I better let you go. And I say, no, no, it’s fine. And she says, no really, she’s got more meetings. And she still needs to call her sister and make herself a coffee. And I can’t help feeling like I have let her down. I can’t help feeling like I’ve failed her.

17.9.2026

I watch another one of those old lectures. This time on Barthes. And I realise, as he is talking, the professor that is, that I am waiting, that I am focusing, on precisely how he says, and how he pronounces, Barthes. Because it doesn’t matter how many times I have read or heard these names. Barthes. Sarte. De Beauvoir. Camus. I am never completely confident in saying them. I’m never completely confident in using them as a point of reference.

Because it’s not just the pronunciation. It’s actually using these names and their connotations. Derrida. Deleuze. Baudrillard.

When the professor says Barthes, I repeat it back, to him, to myself.

Barthes.

Barthes.

I’m still not sure if it sounds right.

Barthes.

Barthes.

18.9.2026

Through the haze of the morning, blue sky overpowering, this half-imagined, this half-stolen, image, or maybe scene, keeps coming to me. It’s Irina standing naked in front of a full-length mirror. Contemplating herself from different angles, in different poses. Her arms raised above her head. Hands pushing upwards. Hands entwined.

For a second, she almost becomes Marian Shay, gently pressing her nipples against the glass. But then the room appears to be bathed in that pink neon light. And I can see myself, or I can see some other self, watching from a chair, as she leans over and towards the mirror, with her body slightly bent, her body slightly curved, or arched. And I whisper her name, or I whisper that other name, as she softly kisses the glass. The imprint, those traces, left from her lipstick, a kind of deep cherry red.   

22. 9. 2026

I continue to make notes on, and look for comparisons in, the works of Don DeLillo. I take scenes, I take fragments, I take those snippets of conversation. Those recurring themes and undercurrents beyond the plots and the subplots that have already been recognised. It’s this sense, or notion, of husbands and wives. It’s fathers and sons, and men at 40, or something about men at 40.

‘Forty was my father’s age,’ James Axton says in The Names. ‘All fathers were forty. I keep fighting the idea I’m fast approaching his age. As an adult I’ve only been two ages. Twenty-two and forty. I was twenty-two well into my thirties. Now I’ve begun to be forty, two years shy of the actual fact. In ten years I’ll still be forty.’

And this will be repeated and returned to, further embellished, in Falling Man.

‘In one hundred days or so, he would be forty years old. This was his father’s age. His father was forty, his uncles. They would always be forty, looking aslant at him. How is it possible that he was about to become someone of clear and distinct definition, husband and father, finally occupying a room in three dimensions in the manner of his parents.’

Well before this it was women counting down in odd numbers, in blocks of seven, in Falling Man and The Silence. It was Delillo’s obsession, those continued allusions to the image, and the details, of the skin directly around the finger nails, the thumbs. Mentioned in Cosmopolis and Point Omega, and having somewhat vaguely first appeared in Americana. It was people setting themselves on fire, in Players, in Cosmopolis, and again in Zero K. It was that scene in The Silence, where a character explores and recites the life and theories of Albert Einstein. And how this mirrors the scene in White Noise, where Jack Gladney and Murray Jay Siskind, are simultaneously exploring the lives of Adolf Hitler and Elvis Presley.

And I think about this for a moment. I think about all these examples and comparisons. And I wonder what it all means and where exactly this is going. And deep down I imagine someone else will tell me. I imagine someone else will write, or has written this already. And I wonder who they are. I wonder who they could be.

Free ebook: “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

At the very beginning of autumn, I’m happy to launch the latest title in the Grammaticus Free Library series: “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was a novelist and short story writer, considered one of the most important American authors of the 19th century.

In his story “The Ambitious Guest”, a young traveller stops at a family’s mountain home and speaks of his ambition of becoming famous and leaving a lasting legacy. Before any of those hopes can be fulfilled, a massive landslide suddenly destroys everything in its path, highlighting the uncertainty of life and the fragility of human aspirations.

To download your free PDF copy, please click on the link below:

CLICK HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD

To learn more about Hawthorne and the setting of this short story, have a look at the list of suggested resources below. If you like this author’s style, make sure you download another one of his stories available here, “The Minister’s Black Veil.”

I hope you enjoy this and other titles in the Grammaticus Free Library series!

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Nathaniel Hawthorne – an Encyclopedia Britannica biographical entry

Hawthorne, the Artist of New England – an Atlantic magazine article

10 Things You May Not Know about Nathaniel Hawthorne – a History.com listicle

Franconia Notch State Park – find out more about the natural setting of this short story

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.

To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

COVER PHOTO CREDIT

Image by Ali Kazal via Unsplash

Rest easy, Annie.
#AmericanLiterature
#NatureWriter
#PulitzerPrize

“Annie Dillard became the youngest woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, at the age of 28, for her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She began the book remembering her old tomcat, who would jump through the bedroom window after prowling outside her home in rural Virginia.” - Scott Simon

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/19/nx-s1-5966624/opinion-remembering-annie-dillard-nature-writer

@isa

If/when you have a moment, could you share your thoughts on Gertrude Stein in general and "Tender Buttons" in particular?

I haven't been yet to that exhibition I mentioned to you a little while ago, but I have been revisiting "Tender Buttons" and thinking about Stein.

#GertrudeStein #TenderButtons #Modernism #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #USLiterature #QueerLiterature

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜’𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: "𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝘆𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗻" 𝗯𝘆 𝗙. 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁 𝗙𝗶𝘁𝘇𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗱 -

What can I say? I never got around to it! And since opinions on this novel are mixed, anyway . . . but I recently read Laing's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘪𝘱 𝘵𝘰 𝘌𝘤𝘩𝘰 𝘚𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 , so that will add a fresh take on Fitzgerald's motives (and addictions)!

#books #bookreviews #tbr #tbrpile #reading #fiction #fscottfitzgerald #thelasttycoon #americanliterature #fiction #classicliterature #alcoholism

If you're more of a dog person, we got "In Dogs We Trust" for you - the 1st anthology of #dogs in #AmericanLiterature - covering texts 1644-1954 (fiction, #poetry & nonfiction, mostly 19th & early 20th c), edited by Jacob F Rivers, III & Jeffrey Makala

#NonHuman #DogsinLiterature #AmericanStudies

#ZoraNealeHurston #SeraphOnTheSuwanee #oblivion #AmericanLiterature #20thcentury

3) "All Y'all: Queering Southernness in US Fiction, 1980–2020" by Heidi Siegrist uses Southerness as a way to explore queerness of sexuality & place in texts by Fannie Flagg, Monique Truong, Randall Kenan, Dorothy Allison & even George RR Martin

#QueerLiterature #AmericanLiterature #LiteraryStudies

2) Dive headfirst into the lives of 2 Black lovers in the racist 1920s & their struggles for a better life in Jasmine Elizabeth Smith's blues-infused poetry collection "South Flight", winner of the 2021 Georgia Poetry Prize

#BlackWriters #AmericanLiterature #AmericanPoetry

3 new arrivals on the Southern States of the USA! 🇺🇸
1) "The Weird South" by Melanie Benson Taylor analyses the duality of the weirdness of the #Anthropocene & the South in Postplantation #AmericanLiterature - tracing human responsibility, both for apocalypse & for deliverance

#LiteraryStudies

Novel ending 25: From an American novel published in 1986

Photo of the author of this novel

David woke in the morning when the first light came in the window. It was still gray outside and there were different pine trunks than the ones he usually woke to see and a longer gap beyond them toward the sea. His right arm was stiff because he had slept on it. Then, awake, he knew he was in a strange bed and he saw Marita lying sleeping by him. He remembered everything and he looked at her lovingly and covered her fresh brown body with the sheet and then kissed her very lightly again and putting on his dressing gown walked out into the dew-wet early morning carrying the image of how she looked with him to his room.

Notes
This quote is actually not the very ending of the book but the beginning of the last chapter and, in my (im)modest opinion more relevant in closing the novel than the page that follows.
After a break of many years, it occurred to me while looking a the various novels on the shelf in front of me to give it a new shot.

Please leave a comment if you think you know who wrote this novel.

2) The new volume of aspeers - the renowned, peer-reviewed journal by grad students of #AmericanStudies at Uni Leipzig - looks at "Spaces of Resistance" in #USPolitics & film, #hiphop #nostalgia, #quietquitting discourse & #AmericanLiterature & #CanadianLiterature

https://s.gwdg.de/MmVZei

2 new gems for researchers of #AmericanLiterature & #CulturalStudies & #AmericanPolitics - now free to download in #openaccess at thestacks.libaac.de

1) New American Studies Journal's new special edition features #poetry by North American poets living in Berlin

https://s.gwdg.de/b4R3W5

#RayBradbury #ShortStories #AmericanLiterature #AllSummerInADay #Venus

I remember watching this on TV. It never left my memory and TIL it was a Bradbury short story. I should have known.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/all-summer-in-a-day.pdf

Book review: “Best Offer Wins” by Marisa Kashino

I very rarely read hot-off-the-press books, but this one caught my attention as it’s on the subject currently very relevant to me: the housing market, and the drive to finding that perfect piece of property. This is something that’s consumed the past 12 months of my personal life, and back when I first started house hunting, I had no idea how frustrating and nerve-wracking the whole process would be. 

That’s precisely the predicament our protagonist finds herself in: Margo has a loving spouse and a satisfying career, but somehow finding and buying that perfect house keeps proving impossible. Cramped in a small apartment in Washington, D.C., she dreams of becoming the owner of her own suburban home, having a fresh start, and getting on with her life. 

This turns into a real obsession once she comes across a house that she instantly recognises as a perfect piece of property. She sees it and simply knows it was meant for her. She is not going to let that particular opportunity pass her by! Right then and there she decides she will do anything it takes to win that bid — by somehow landing the house before it even hits the market.

What follows is a series of acts — partly comical, partly unhinged and utterly devious — that eventually spiral out of control. There’s trespassing, stalking, fraud, betrayal, and more… Actions done by herself and her husband that inevitably put a strain on their marriage, threatening to destroy the life they had both wanted to secure and improve.

Even if you can’t relate to the house-hunting theme of the book, “Best Offer Wins” is a solid page-turner that you won’t be able to put down until the very end. In terms of genre, it might be best described as a domestic thriller, peppered with dark humour and social commentary, mainly on the housing crisis and class anxiety. 

Characters are believable, as is Margo’s desperation — both up to a point, and this is where I have a bit of a problem with the book. As entertaining as it was, I felt like the crescendo towards the end was too intense and rather hurried. The plot comes dangerously close to sliding into a farce, as Margo ends up committing acts that are pretty disproporationate to the situation at hand. (Granted, that might have been the author’s intention, but I personally saw it a structural flaw.)

Still, this is an entertaining piece of writing that may feel like a cosy domestic thriller at first, but it gradually develops into a genre-blending narrative with elements of dark comedy and satire. I would love to see it turned into a film.

Four stars out of five.

P.S. To access my other book reviews on this blog, click on the book review tag.

“Best Offer Wins” is Marisa Kashino’s debut novel, published in November 2025 by Celadon Books.

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.

To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

COVER IMAGE CREDIT

Photo by Johnson via Unsplash.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/future-classics-readers-of-1936-predict-which-authors-will-endure-143151313/

I have first hand acquaintance with the works of eight of the ten authors thought by 1936 readers of "The Colophon" to be writers of books that would be esteemed as classics long into the future. This familiarity of mine is not unusual; most educated Americans will have at least some knowledge, even if only at second hand, of Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Robert Frost.

Dreiser might be less well known. In spite of his importance in US literary history, his themes will seem distant and dull to many readers today and his prose wordy and clumsy.

I've never read anything by the popular historian James Truslow Adams, although I was aware that he coined the phrase "The American Dream" for a 1931 book.

George Santayana has fallen into obscurity today outside the ranks of historians of American philosophy. I have read a little by him; I should read more. My guess is that he earned his place in this poll not on account of his philosophical works but by virtue of his 1935 bestseller "The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel", which I have not yet read but is on my To Be Read List.

James Branch Cabell achieved fame with his comic fantasy "Jurgen" in 1919. Subsequently he churned out a large number of fantasies, historical novels, essays, and poems, but his popularity was waning by the 1930s. I have never read anything by him and have no interest in doing so.

I've read a lot of Sinclair Lewis, who topped the poll. He was a witty observer not only of the peculiarities of America life in the early decades of the 20th century but also of forces and habits that continue to shape the culture of the USA. Nor was he simply a chronicler of social mores; his best novels, like "Dodsworth" and "Arrowsmith", while deeply rooted in US culture, also speak to human dilemmas and passions that transcend the time and place of their setting.

I would like to echo the article's question "Who would you put on a list of authors read today who will still be read into the year 2080 and beyond?"

I can't give an informed answer because I do not read that much contemporary literature, so I am eager to see who might be nominated by those better read in this area than I am.

#Literature #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #20thCenturyLiterature #21stCenturyLiterature #1930s #Classics #LiteraryReputation

BUtterfield 8 -- John O'Hara

Although there has been small revival of interest in John O'Hara in recent years, as can be seen by the 2019 appearance of a Library of America edition of four of his novels, he is never going to regain the attention he enjoyed in the thirties, when he was a regular in the "New Yorker" and both the 1934 "Appointment in Samarra" and the 1935 "BUtterfield 8" were best sellers.

Amongst the many reasons for this decline is his stylistic weakness compared to his now more highly esteemed contemporaries; his prose cannot match the lyricism of Fitzgerald, the allusive brevity of Hemingway, or the distinctive modernist idioms of Faulkner or Dos Passos.

Nevertheless, his ability to create convincing dialogue is one of the strengths of "BUtterfield 8" and his acute ear is of a piece with the other observational powers at work is this novel of New York in the early years of the Depression. O'Hara had a sharp eye for the markers of social class and status, racial and ethnic prejudice, and the power of alcohol with Prohibition still in force. Notably, an unprurient candor about sex might surprise the reader of today and probably accounted at least in part for strong sales in the past.

The novel, revealing as it is about the Depression and the cafe society component of the metropolitan middle classes, is more than a document in social history. At its heart is the search of its young protagonist Gloria Wandrous for both love and freedom and her uncertainty about what these might be. This search and uncertainty are shown at work in her adulterous and abusive relationship with the older businessman Weston Liggett and the unconsumated yet deeper romance with commercial artist Eddie Brunner. She never finds what she is looking for, and these unresolved tensions are perhaps mirrored in the novel's conclusion, which has struck many critics as clumsily unsatisfying.

Although I recognize the literary weakness of the abrupt ending of the narrative, I found myself impressed by "BUtterfield *" both in regard to its social observation and psychological insight. I would recommend it to readers with an interest in the twenties and thirties and to those who would like to understand better how the rapidly changing role of women was portrayed at that time.

Many years ago I enjoyed "Appointment in Samarra". Now that I've read "BUtterfield 8", I'm going to give some of his short stories, his 1938 "Hope of Heaven", and 1940 "Pal Joey" a try.

#Books #BUtterfield8 #JohnOHara #Fiction #Novels #Realism #AmericanLiterature #LiteratureInEnglish #1930s

📖 #vendrediLecture (n°60)

"Tout ce que je peux te dire, c'est que même le courage ne nous servira à rien".

James SALTER - Un Bonheur parfait.

( et merci à Marina Rollman pour cette très belle découverte)

#Mastolivre #bookstodon #livres #Books #americanliterature #marinaRollman #JamesSalter #currentlyreading

Image by Henry Inman
#WyrdWednesday #LegendaryWednesday #BookChatWeekly #Book #BookSky #Fiction #FictionSky #AmericanFiction #Literature #LiteratureSky #AmericanLiterature #Fantasy #FantasySky #FantasyFiction #America #AmericaSky #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesSky #WashingtonIrving #RipVanWinkle

Image by Henry Inman
#WyrdWednesday #LegendaryWednesday #BookChatWeekly #Book #BookSky #Fiction #FictionSky #AmericanFiction #Literature #LiteratureSky #AmericanLiterature #Fantasy #FantasySky #FantasyFiction #America #AmericaSky #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesSky #WashingtonIrving #RipVanWinkle

Image by Henry Inman
#LegendaryWednesday #BookChatWeekly #Book #BookSky #Fiction #FictionSky #AmericanFiction #Literature #LiteratureSky #AmericanLiterature #Fantasy #FantasySky #FantasyFiction #America #AmericaSky #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesSky #WashingtonIrving #RipVanWinkle

https://tcupress.tcu.edu/9780875659695/

I'm very much looking forward to the reissue of this hard to find novel of 1940.

#Books #TheInheritors #Novel #Texas #AmericanLiterature #1930s #FortWorth #LiteratureInEnglish #PhilipAtlee #JamesYoungPhillips

Who Is America's Homer?

https://www.plough.com/articles/who-is-americas-homer

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913656

#HackerNews #Homer #AmericanLiterature #Storytelling #Culture #Plough

I’m happy to present another title in the Grammaticus Free Library series. This time it's “Squirrel”, a charming story written by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

The PDF comes with vocabulary notes and a grammar exercise on non-standard, dialectal forms used by the author - all of which are explained in the accompanying blog post.

To get your copy, go to https://grammaticus.blog/2026/07/01/free-ebook-squirrel/

#englishteacher #learningenglish #americanliterature #shortstory #nature #naturewriting

Free ebook: “Squirrel” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

I’m happy to present another title in the Grammaticus Free Library series: “Squirrel” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) was a prominent American writer whose finely crafted short stories set in rural New England explored themes of domestic duty and women’s struggles, while also commenting on the natural world and our intimate connection with the animal and plant life. She is still remembered as one of the leading voices of American realism of the late 19th century.

Her short story “Squirrel” tells of a devoted pair of squirrels who claim ownership of an English walnut tree, quietly harvesting its nuts each year while the elderly farmer and his wife remain puzzled by the tree’s seemingly perpetual barrenness.

Apart from the customary vocabulary notes, this ebook contains a simple exercise on some of the dialectal grammar forms used by the author and which may sound confusing to English language learners. The answer key with relevant explanations can be found at the bottom of this post, under Grammar Explainer.

To download your free PDF copy, please click on the link below:

CLICK HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD

GRAMMAR EXPLAINER

At the end of the PDF file, there’s an exercise drawing the readers’ attention to some of the non-standard, dialectal grammar forms used in the story. And here’s a brief explainer on those key features:

“Seems as if them nuts must drop off that tree and be picked up,” said the Farmer, “but there ain’t no boys.”

Standard English: “It seems as if those nuts must have dropped off that tree and been picked up,” said the Farmer, “but there aren’t any boys.”

Seems < It seems…

“It” is often omitted at the beginning of a sentence in spoken English, for various reasons. Here we have an example of omission in impersonal statements introduced by verbs such as “seem” and “look.”

Looks nice!

Seems good to me.

them < those

In many dialects, such as Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English, “them” is regularly used as a demonstrative instead of “those.”

Them boys are crazy!

I don’t know him well, he’s one of them people.

must drop off… be picked up < must have dropped off… have been picked up

Tenses and structures requiring the Past Participle are often formed irregularly in spoken language. Here we have the auxiliary verb “have” completely ommitted, and then bare infinitives used after the modal verb “must.” You’ll notice the inconsistent use of past tense forms, too (it’s there in “picked” but not in “drop”). 

ain’t no < aren’t any

“Ain’t” is a commonly used informal contraction replacing various negative forms of the auxiliary verbs:

That ain’t true. = That isn’t true.

I ain’t got no money. = I haven’t got / I don’t have any money.

It goes with “no” rather than “any”, forming a double negative (which is otherwise avoided in standard English).

“What d’ye think?” he said. “It was them Squirrels that have stole all them English walnuts.”

Standard English: “What do you think?” he said. “It was those Squirrels that have stolen all those English walnuts.”

d’ye < do you

“Ye” is still used in a number of dialects as the informal plural form of “you.” Here it’s further contracted with “do.”

them < those

Same as in the previous quote.

have stole < have stolen

Another example of irregular formation of a tense formed using the Past Participle (in this case, the Present Perfect Simple tense).

“Be you the thief?” he asked.

Standard English: “Are you the thief?” he asked.

be < are

Also typical of Appalachian, as well as African American Vernacular English and other dialects, here we have the use of “be” instead of “is” or “are” in the present tenses (both Present Simple and Present Continuous).

Be he ready? = Is he ready?

I be going now. = I am going now.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the short story, and that these irregular grammar forms weren’t too confusing. They just go to show that there’s a lot more going on in the English grammar apart from what is taught in formal classes!

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.

To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

COVER PHOTO CREDIT

Mathew Schwartz via Unsplash

📖 #vendrediLecture (n°55)

Cette tentation du sabotage.
Toujours cette tentation.

Edward ABBEY, Le Gang de la clef à molette.

#mastolivre #lecture
#littérature #livres
#Books #sabotage #americanliterature #EdwardAbbey

Today is the 100th birthday of beat poet #AllenGinsberg
Browse our collection to explore his writings like the famous "Howl", as well as biographical material & criticism of his writings & their relation to other arts (esp #photography & film)

#BOTD #AmericanPoetry #AmericanLiterature #Poetry

In my latest blog post you can get acquainted with Sara Teasdale's poem “Spring Rain”, first published in 1917.

In many ways typical of her style of writing, the poem is simple yet deep, using imagery from the natural world to reflect on the poet’s emotions and memories: stormy, thunderous, passionate.

https://grammaticus.blog/2026/05/13/spring-rain-by-sara-teasdale/

Image credit: Levi Guzman via Unsplash

#poetry #americanliterature #spring #englishteacher #blog

“Spring Rain” by Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American poet, celebrated for her works that explored themes such as love, beauty, nature, and mortality. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she published her first collection of poems in 1907 as a member of “The Potters”—a group of young women authors. She quickly gained recognition for the clarity and simplicity of her writing. Notably, she won a Pullitzer prize in 1918 for the collection Love Songs. Sadly, her life was marked by severe personal struggles, including a lonely marriage, divorce, and declining health, ultimately leading to her tragic death by suicide. She is still remembered as an important voice of the early 20th-century American literature.

In this post we’ll get acquainted with her poem “Spring Rain”, first published in 1917. In many ways typical of her style of writing, the poem is simple yet deep, using imagery from the natural world to reflect on the poet’s emotions and memories. In the first stanza, the sounds of rain and thunder trigger a recollection of a past love; the rest of the poem takes us down the memory lane. You’ll notice that the poem itself is brief, just like a typical spring rain; and the weather described is stormy and intense—just like passionate young love.

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say...

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Love Songs by Sara Teasdale – free ebook, downloadable in various formats

Sara Teasdale’s biography – a Poetry Foundation page

COVER PHOTO CREDIT

Image by Levi Guzman via Unsplash

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.

To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

Today in #newbooks in our #library - 2 new #biofiction novels on #AgathaChristie 👑
The Queen of Crime disappeared for 11 days in 1926. These 2 novels by Marie Benedict & Nina de Gramont fictionalise this real #mystery in different ways

#AmericanLiterature #EnglishLiterature

100 Years of the Best American Short Stories "These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time" Sale: $36 to $1.99 by Lorrie Moore, Heidi Pitlor Rating: 4.4/5 (1,081 Reviews) #ShortStories #Anthology #AmericanLiterature #Fiction #Reading #Books #BookSky

100 Years of the Best American...