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Viewing report
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American Humors. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, Aug 2008, Pages: 284
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick a jazz novel? Nathaniel
Hawthorne as playful as Charlie Bird Parker? Mark
Twain and Ralph Ellison trading twelves, across the
gulf of time, on the 'American' character? These are
just some of the questions explored in American
Humors. Beginning with Hawthorne and ending with Toni
Morrison, this book offers a jazz-inflected tour
of the literary history of the United States. Along
the way, we see how American writers extend the
achievements of their literary ancestors; we see the
well-springs of the creative process; we see how the
insistence upon improvisation becomes the foundation
for a national art form and way of life. With the
nineteenth-century American Renaissance and the
twentieth-century Harlem Renaissance serving as
bookends, American Humors investigates the varied
hues and frequencies of art and experience in the
United States and the global context.
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