The Midwest Archive
The Limits and Freedoms of Literary Regionalism: The Cycle of Isolation in Sherwood Anderson’s Modernist Midwest
Loosely based on Anderson’s hometown Clyde, Ohio, Winesburg, Ohio contains twenty-two stories that reference each other―all highlighting specific characters who are bound by their shared feelings of loneliness. This cyclical, self-aware form of storytelling situates Winesburg as an early work of Modernist literature.
Cowboy Bebop: Ralph Ellison’s Strange Jazz Geography
Reading The Blue Devils of Nada, Albert Murray’s 1996 collection of essays on jazz, the blues, and American expression, I penciled four question marks next one line.
The Bigness of The World, The Wintry Chill of The Midwest
Lori Ostlund’s “The Bigness of The World,” a short story collection rereleased in trade paperback in February 2016, was recipient of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction, and if ever a prize-winning book could be argued to take after the prize’s namesake, then this is that book.