The first movie I ever saw was the Walt Disney cartoon, The Three Little Pigs. My grandmother took me to it. It was back in the days when you went “downtown.” There was a second feature, with live actors, called Bring ‘Em Back Alive, a...
A few words are in order about this essay’s title. It is pilfered from that great American man of letters, Edmund Wilson, who used it for his collection of American writing, The Shock of Recognition.
Recently, historians have sought to understand how and why Americans continue to remember their civil war. Memory of the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil remains fresh in popular imagination, kept alive by legions of Civil War buffs...
He had been such from the beginning of his long and remarkably productive career—a career that stretched more than six decades and saw the publication of more than 15,000,000 words, including more than 40 books. Born in Riverton, North...
I used to have a reproduction of John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo hanging on my wall. Its colors weren’t as vivid as those of the original. The dramatic lighting effects created on the canvas by Sargent were largely absent from the repro. And...
On October 19, 1865, Sam Clemens—nearly 30 years old, in debt, haphazardly employed—wrote a letter to his brother Orion. Encouraged by the completion of his first significant creation, “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” Clemens overflowed...
