By Nava Atlas | On July 14, 2017 | Updated December 29, 2024 | Comments (0)
Nightwood is the best-known of the novels of Djuna Barnes, the American-born expat who spent much of her life among the lesbian circles in 1930s Paris. Published in 1936, it has long been considered her literary masterpiece, and is still regarded as one of the most influential works of modernist fiction.
This experimental novel explores the lives and loves of five eccentric and extraordinary people, and may be the first modern novel with a transgender character.
Nightwood was edited by T.S. Eliot. Barnes, then in her mid-40s, was still overwhelmed by the breakup with her lover, Thelma Wood. The novel follows the obsessive love affair of two women, which led to Barnes being called a “lesbian evangelist.” Despite the real-life parallel, Barnes despised and denied the label. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 13, 2017 | Updated September 21, 2024 | Comments (0)
When Peyton Place by Grace Metalious was published in 1956, critics from coast to coast found the book scandalous. The book was vilified in the press and numerous attempted banned didn’t stop Americans from buying it in droves.
Canadians weren’t as lucky — it was banned countrywide.
A blockbuster bestseller, the novel by an unknown 34-year-old captured the public imagination. The fine yet somewhat sanitized film that was brought out following year (1957) cemented Peyton Place’s spot in the cultural conversation. The term “Peyton Place” quickly became synonymous with scandal and intrigue.
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By Nava Atlas | On June 25, 2017 | Updated July 5, 2026 | Comments (0)
Show Boat by Edna Ferber is a 1926 novel telling the story of three generations of performers on a floating theater, the Cotton Blossom.
As the titled show boat travels down the Mississippi River from the 1880s to the 1920s, readers get a glimpse of a forgotten form of American entertainment.
In that era, floating theaters stopped in river towns that normally didn’t have access to high quality performances because of their distance and isolation from major urban centers. Edna Ferber captured the spirit of this way of life with her skillful storytelling and captivating characters. Read More→
By Emma Ward | On May 26, 2017 | Updated March 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck was the second novel by this iconic American author. Published in 1931, it led the bestseller list for almost two years. The story of a Chinese peasant farmer named Wang Lung and his family, the book was translated more than thirty languages worldwide.
Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 for her body of work, and the impact of The Good Earth surely contributed to this high honor.
Pearl Buck’s perspective provided an anthropological twist as a Western participant in Chinese culture. She was able to highlight cultural traditions that may be taken for granted by a native author: Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On May 23, 2017 | Updated October 17, 2022 | Comments (0)
It’s always fascinating to come upon a review by one classic author of the work of another. In this case, Dorothy Parker’s review of Ice Palace by Edna Ferber (1957), one of her behemoth later novels, gets the acid-penned treatment.
Of the two authors, Parker is the one who has been more enduring; in their time, Ferber was one of the richest, most successful writers of the mid-twentieth century, something to which Parker hilariously eludes.
Keep in mind that when Ice Palace was published in 1957, Alaska was not yet a state (that would imminently happen in 1959). Read More→
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