Jackson Bryer

Wilder is best known for "Our Town" and "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," both winners of a Pulitzer Prize, making Wilder still the only writer to be so honored for both drama and fiction. His other fiction, in particular, is far less familiar to a wider readership. The authors of these essays aim to contextualize Wilder’s work historically and to show that Wilder’s handling of questions of religion, American identity, gender, and ethics should vault him into the ranks of major American novelists. Specifically, this anthology includes groundbreaking work on the application of queer theory to "Our Town;" on Wilder’s screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt; and on Wilder’s adaptations of Ibsen’s "A Doll’s House," Farquhar’s "The Beaux’ Stratagem," and his own "The Long Christmas Dinner."

On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," "Why I Like This Story" presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values.

Among the writers whose stories are discussed are such American masters as James, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Porter, Carver, Wright, Updike, Bellow, Salinger, Malamud and Welty; but the book also includes pieces on stories by canonical but lesser-known practitioners such as Andre Dubus, Ellen Glasgow, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, George Garrett, Elizabeth Tallent, William Goyen, Jerome Weidman, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, William H. Gass and Jamaica Kincaid, and relative newcomers such as Lorrie Moore, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Phil Klay, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Edward P. Jones. "Why I Like This Story" will send readers to the library or bookstore to read or re-read the stories selected.

Among the contributors to the book are Julia Alvarez, Andrea Barrett, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Andre Dubus, George Garrett, William H. Gass, Julia Glass, Doris Grumbach, Jane Hamilton, Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Clarence Major, Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Spencer and Mako Yoshikawa.

Fitzgerald once wrote: “There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people if he’s any good.” Since his untimely death in 1940, Fitzgerald has been scrutinized in nine major biographies, each of which seeks to construct a single narrative that conveys the biographer’s interpretation of Fitzgerald. In contrast, "F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered" presents over sixty first-hand accounts of Fitzgerald, many of them previously unpublished, by those who knew him at all stages of his life – from his time as an adolescent in St. Paul and an undergraduate at Princeton through his meeting and marrying Zelda Sayre and his first successes, the high points and increasing dissipation of the 1920s in New York, Paris, and the Riviera and the 1930s in Baltimore and North Carolina, to his final years in Hollywood.

The guiding principle is not to provide a single interpretation of Fitzgerald’s life but to present these accounts in all their variety and even contradiction, inviting the reader to form a biographical portrait based upon them. Making these reminiscences available to scholars, students, and fans of Fitzgerald is particularly timely given the centenary of the publication of "The Great Gatsby" in 2025.

With roots in the American South, Beth Henley (b. 1952) has for four decades been a working playwright and screenwriter. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 at the age of twenty-eight, Henley so far has written twenty-five produced plays that are always original, usually darkly comic, and often experimental. In these interviews, Henley speaks of the plays, from her early crowd-pleasers, "Crimes of the Heart" and "The Miss Firecracker Contest," to her more experimental plays, including "The Debutante Ball" and "Control Freaks," to her brilliant and time-bending play, "The Jacksonian."

Henley is a master at writing about the duality of human experience—the beautiful and the grotesque, the cruel and the loving. This duality provokes in Henley both amazement and compassion. She discusses here not only her admiration for Chekhov and other influences, but also her process of bringing a play from notebooks of images and bits of dialogues through rumination, writing, and rewriting to rehearsals and previews. The interviews range from 1981, just before she won the Pulitzer Prize, to 2020 and cover nearly forty years of a creative life, which, as Henley remarks in the most recent interview, is “such a life worth living: to be in tune with the creative process.”

A prolific playwright, Sam Shepard (1943–2017) wrote fifty-six produced plays, for which he won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. He was also a compelling, Oscar-nominated film actor, appearing in scores of films. Shepard also published eight books of prose and poetry and was a director (directing the premiere productions of ten of his plays as well as two films); a musician (a drummer in three rock bands); a horseman; and a plain-spoken intellectual. The famously private Shepard gave a significant number of interviews over the course of his public life, and the interviewers who respected his boundaries found him to be generous with his time and forthcoming on a wide range of topics.

The selected interviews in "Conversations with Sam Shepard" begin in 1969 when Shepard, already a multiple Obie winner, was twenty-six and end in 2016, eighteen months before his death from complications of ALS at age seventy-three. In the interim, the voice, the writer, and the man evolved, but there are themes that echo throughout these conversations: the indelibility of family; his respect for stage acting versus what he saw as far easier film acting; and the importance of music to his work. He also speaks candidly of his youth in California, his early days as a playwright in New York City, his professionally formative time in London, his interests and influences, the mythology of the American Dream, his own plays, and more. In "Conversations with Sam Shepard," the playwright reveals himself in his own words.

Neil Simon (1927–2018) began as a writer for some of the leading comedians of the day—including Jackie Gleason, Red Buttons, Phil Silvers, and Jerry Lewis—and he wrote for fabled television programs alongside a group of writers that included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Michael Stewart, and Sid Caesar. After television, Simon embarked on a playwriting career. In the next four decades he saw twenty-eight of his plays and five musicals produced on Broadway. Thirteen of those plays and three of the musicals ran for more than five hundred performances. He was even more widely known for his screenplays—some twenty-five in all.

Yet, despite this success, it was not until his BB Trilogy—"Brighton Beach Memoirs," "Biloxi Blues," and "Broadway Bound"—that critics and scholars began to take Simon seriously as a literary figure. This change in perspective culminated in 1991 when his play Lost in Yonkers won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In the twenty-two interviews included in "Conversations with Neil Simon," Simon talks candidly about what it was like to write commercially successful plays that were dismissed by critics and scholars. He also speaks at length about the differences between writing for television, for the stage, and for film. He speaks openly and often revealingly about his relationships with, among many others, Mike Nichols, Walter Matthau, Sid Caesar, and Jack Lemmon. Above all, these interviews reveal Neil Simon as a writer who thought long and intelligently about creating for stage, film, and television, and about dealing with serious subjects in a comic mode. In so doing, Conversations with Neil Simon compels us to recognize Neil Simon’s genius.

Evolving from papers given at the Second International Thornton Wilder Conference, the contributions examine Wilder’s work as both playwright and novelist, focusing upon how he drew on the collaborative mode of creativity required in the theatre, when writing drama and fiction.

William Inge's popular plays of the 1950s received Tony nominations (Bus Stop [1956], and Dark at the Top of the Stairs[1958]) and won a Pulitzer Prize (Picnic [1953]). As a screenwriter, he won an Academy Award (Splendor in the Grass [1961]). Yet Inge's career ended in perceived failure, depression and finally suicide. These previously unpublished essays take a fresh look at some of his most popular work, as well as his less well-known later plays. Inge's work was often ahead of its time, and foreshadowed the influence of popular media and advertising, the sexual revolution and the women's movement. The essays give context for Inge's work within twentieth-century American drama, and attest to his exceptional talent. Included are reminiscences which reveal the playwright's charm and generosity, and shed light on how a brilliant, troubled man eventually took his own life

The author of such classics as Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder was a born storyteller and dramatist—rare talents on glorious display in this volume of more than three hundred letters he penned to a vast array of famous friends and beloved relatives. Through Wilder's correspondence, readers can eavesdrop on his conversations with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Noel Coward, Gene Tunney, Laurence Olivier, Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, and Mia Farrow. Equally absorbing are Wilder's intimate letters to his family.

Wilder tells of roller-skating with Walt Disney, remembers an inaugural reception for FDR at the White House, describes his life as a soldier in two World Wars, and recalls dining out with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. In these pages, Thornton Wilder speaks for himself in his own unique, enduring voice—informing, encouraging, instructing, and entertaining with his characteristic wit, heart, and exuberance.

"Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" Answering that question, voiced by one of the book s characters, is fundamental to teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Although there is no simple answer, classroom analysis of this classic American novel can lead to a rich exploration of the colorful yet contradictory period Fitzgerald dubbed the Jazz Age. The novel also prompts considerations of novelistic technique, specifically point of view, characterization, and narrative structure.

This volume aims to give instructors of The Great Gatsby multiple tools and strategies for teaching the novel and for introducing students to the culture of the 1920s. Part 1, "Materials," reviews the novel s composition history and the scholarly resources related to the novel. In part 2, "Approaches," contributors demonstrate a range of frameworks that usefully inform teaching, from the new historicism to feminist and gender studies to narrative theory. They also examine the novel s complex artistry, variety of motifs and symbol patterns, and cultural and social influences, such as the era s changing racial attitudes, the rise of a new suburban culture, and the dichotomy of East versus West in America.

Unrivaled diversity and teachability have made The Heath Anthology a best-selling text. In presenting a more inclusive canon of American literature, The Heath Anthology changed the way American literature is taught. The Sixth Edition continues to balance the traditional, leading names in American literature with lesser-known writers and have built upon the anthology's other strengths: its apparatus and its ancillaries.

In little more than twenty years, playwright August Wilson (1945-2005) completed a ten-play cycle depicting African American life in the twentieth century, with each play taking place in a different decade. Two of the plays—Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990)—were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and seven of them received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best American play. Wilson was indisputably the most significant American playwright to emerge since Edward Albee.

Conversations with August Wilson collects a selection of the many interviews Wilson gave from 1984 to 2004. In the interviews, the playwright covers at length and in detail his plays and his background. He comments as well on such subjects as the differences between African Americans and whites, his call for more black theater companies, and his belief that African Americans made a mistake in assimilating themselves into the white mainstream. He also talks about his major influences, what he calls his "four B's"—the blues, writers James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka, and painter Romare Bearden. Wilson also discusses his writing process and his multiple collaborations with director Lloyd Richards.

Throughout, Wilson is candid, expansive, and provocative, displaying in these exchanges his willingness to confront controversial topics just as he did in his plays.

Featuring contributions from a collection of scholars, The Facts On File Companion to American Drama presents a complete history of the genre, with emphasis on 20th-century dramatic literature. An introduction traces the development of American drama from the late 18th century to the present. Appendixes include a general bibliography and a chronological list of prize winners for major drama awards. Teachers, students, and others interested in American drama will find this reference invaluable.

Years after his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald continues to captivate both the popular and the critical imagination. This collection of essays presents fresh insights into his writing, discussing neglected texts and approaching familiar works from new perspectives.

Seventeen scholarly articles deal not only with Fitzgerald's novels but with his stories and essays as well, considering such topics as the Roman Catholic background of The Beautiful and Damned and the influence of Mark Twain on Fitzgerald's work and self-conception. The volume also features four personal essays by Fitzgerald's friends Budd Schulberg, Frances Kroll Ring, publisher Charles Scribner III, and writer George Garrett that shed new light on his personal and professional lives. Together these contributions demonstrate the continued vitality of Fitzgerald's work and establish new directions for ongoing discussions of his life and writing.

Through his alcoholism and her mental illness, his career highs (and lows) and her institutional confinement, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's devotion to each other endured for more than twenty-two years. Now, for the first time, the story of the love of these two glamorous and hugely talented writers can be given in their own letters. Introduced by an extensive narrative of the Fitzgeralds' marriage, the 333 letters - three-quarters of them previously unpublished or out of print - have been edited by the noted Fitzgerald scholars, Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks. They are illustrated throughout with a generous selection of familiar and unpublished photographs.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories are the most critically undervalued and ignored segment of his fiction. Despite the fact that most of his short fiction has been published in various extant collections, critics nonetheless continue to focus primarily on his novels. Moreover, even when they turn their attention to Fitzgerald's stories, they tend to deal with the half dozen most frequently anthologized to the exclusion of the vast majority.

This volume presents twenty-three previously unpublished essays on Fitzgerald's "other" stories. The first section contains close readings of individual stories and ranges chronologically over his entire career--from "The Spire and the Gargoyle" (published in 1917, when Fitzgerald was at Princeton) through such early efforts as "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" (1920) and "John Jackson's Arcady" (1924) down to late stories such as "An Alcoholic Case" (1937) and "The Lost Decade" (1939). The second section includes essays on Fitzgerald's three story groups--the Basil and Josephine stories, the Count of Darkness stories, and the Pat Hobby stories.

By placing these stories within the context of Fitzgerald's total fictional achievement, this collection serves as a resource for a deepened understanding of the intensely autobiographical nature of Fitzgerald's work, offering insights into his methods of composition and his aims, both artistic and human.

The roster of contributors includes long-time Fitzgerald critics such as John Kuehl, Scott Donaldson, and Ruth Prigozy, along with distinguished critics of modern American literature such as Robert Merrill, Alan Cheuse, and James Nagel, and younger scholars like Gerald Pike and Heidi Kunz Bullock. The editor, Jackson R. Bryer, deliberately chose such a diverse group to ensure a variety of critical perspectives. The resulting volume is not the "last word" on these neglected stories; rather, these are the "first words" on stories that will now begin to receive more attention in what will be a continuing discovery of the pleasures in the full range of F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction.