Nobody's expecting Wharton to ever be as popular as Jane Austen. After all, Wharton had a much more jaundiced view of life than Austen did, and she's unlikely to be hijacked as a writer of romances, the way Austen has been.

Can the phrase "Great American Novel" only be applied to realistic novels that attempt to capture the mainstream American experience? Or can it be applied to other novels that are more diverse in terms of either subject matter or literary approach?

Charles Bukowski was disgusting, his actual real fiction is awful, he's been called a misogynist, overly simplistic, the worst narcissist, (and probab...

Malcolm O'Hagan, an Irish engineer with a love for great literature, is bringing his dream to Chicago. ...

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world...not th...

On a family vacation from Wisconsin to Dauphin Island, Alabama, we stopped at Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL to take a tour. In the front parlor there was a photograph of Honest Abe hanging on the wall.

Would you rather live in the state of Black Elk or Maya Angelou instead of Montana or Arkansas? The island of Melville looks a little cold, so instead...

Is this merely coincidence, or is there something else at work here? Do American writers absorb Bildungsroman aptitude alongside fluoridated water and...

The Shirley Jackson Awards for excellence in "literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic" were awarded over the weekend, and...

With her new novel, So Much for That, Lionel Shriver strengthens her already credible claim to the title of best living American writer. This won't s...