Great American writers
Intro:
We could date modern America’s origins back to the 1500s when Spanish and
Portuguese explorers began landing in places that are now Florida or Texas. Later,
English explorers started sending colonists further north to places like North Carolina
and Virginia. In 1607, one of the first colonies, Jamestown, was founded. Its
population was booming: In 1630, only about 3,000 people lived there, but in the
next ten years, 16,000 more colonists arrived.
The colonists weren’t the first people to live on this land. The Native Americans
farmed and hunted all over the US long before them. While they didn’t have much
written work, their stories and beliefs were handed down generation by generation.
So, it’s clear that American literature is relatively young. The first books written in
America were diaries of the newcomers, books of theological argument and political
pamphlets. They were aimed at readers in England. The colonist wanted to let them
know about their life and attract new settlers.
18th and 19th century
Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) assimilated a number of European folk tales to the
new American nation. He wrote humorous short stories and folk tales about Dutch
settlers like Rip van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In view of this book,
the modern serial Sleepy Hollow has recording since 2013.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) could be considered the father of horror and crime
fiction thanks to stories like The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat or the
Murders in the Rue Morgue (first known detective story). He was also a poet and he
is well-known for his poem The Raven, in which the raven becomes a symbol of dark
doubts and frustrating longing. Unfortunately, his life was marked by a lack of
money, frequent changes of jobs and drinking.
H. Melville (1811 – 1891) gathered material for his novels during his early years at
sea. His masterpiece is Moby Dick or the Whale. The book can be read as thrilling
story about the life of sailors hunting whales, or as an epic about the courage of
common people in the face of danger. There are also a lot of reflections on the
meaning of life.
Mark Twein‘s (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835 – 1910) novels The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are both set along the
Mississippi River and describe the adventures of his boyhood. He also wrote sci-fi
novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Jack London (1876 – 1916) became popular with his adventurous books. He used his
experience with nature and a gold rush in Klondike, where he made an unsuccessful
attempt at mining. He wrote for example The Calls of the Wild or White Fang.
20th century and present
The First World War influenced the post-war generation of writers, usually called
The Lost Generation. The war gave them nothing but purposeless, cruel, and
disillusioning experiences. The writers lost their ideals and were not able to find a
suitable place in society. Civilization was considered oppressive.
Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) served as a war correspondent
in WWI and the Spanish Civil War and wrote novels and short stories about soldiers
and other men of action. After WWII he suffered from health problems and
depression which led to his suicide. His best known works are The Sun Also Rises
(Fiesta), A Farewell to Army, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) represents the period of prosperity preceding
the great economic crisis of the thirties. On one side he was fascinated by the
immensity of the period’s wealth, on the other he was scared of its indifference and
dehumanisation. His books such as The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night
described people trying to follow the “American dream” to become wealthy and
respected in society.
Beat generation was a group of young people in the 1950s including some writers,
such as Jack Keroac and Allan Ginsberg. The beatnics refused to accept the values of
Western society. They showed this by refusing to work, keeping no material
possessions, and wearing their own style of clothes. A lot of them were tramps. Jack
Kerouac celebrated the lifestyle in his book On the Road, describing his road trip
across America.
Ken Kesey gained fame with his first book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a story
of a man who pretends to be mad in order to escape imprisonment and is shocked by
the inhuman conditions in a mental hospital. It was made into an Oscar-winning
movie directed by Miloš Forman.
My favourite authors
I love fantasy stories, so it’s not surprising that my favourite American author writes
in this genre. I wish to mention especially Christopher Paolini, Naomi Novik, Richard
A. Knaak and George R. R. Martin.
Christopher Paolini is an author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of four
books – Eragon, Eldest, Brisinger and Inheritance. It’s a story of a dragon rider
Eragon and his dragon female Saphira. I love stories about intelligent dragons and
Saphira is surely pretty intelligent.
Quite similar to Saphira is Temeraire. It is a character from Naomi Novik’s books, for
example His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War and Empire of
Ivory. Nowadays, the Temeraire stories has got eight parts. Temeraire is very
intelligent dragon originally from Asia and his dragon rider is a navy officer Lawrence.
Temeraire is very often more intelligent than his captain, which is very funny.
Temeraire series has many common with Inheritance Cycle, but there are two big
differences – in Temeraire series there is no magic except of dragons and these books
aren’t set in imaginary world. Temeraire series is enacted on the Earth in alternative
timeline of the Napoleonic wars fought with dragons.
Richard A. Knaak is the best-known for novels based in the worlds of the computer
games Warcraft and Diablo, but I prefer books from DragonRealm series, for example
Firedrake, Ice Dragon, Wolfhelm, Shadow Steed…
George R. R. Martin is famous for A Song of Ice and Fire, his international bestselling
series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for its dramatic series Game of
Thrones.