The Columbia History of the American Novel

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (London, 1835) was released in the United States in an expurgated form as Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States (1864).

Orestes Brownson (1803-76)

Brownson was born in Stockbridge, Vermont. He was six years old when his father died, and he was raised by strictly Puritan relatives. he had almost no formal education, but he became a well-known liberal editor and helped to found the Workingmen's Party. His religious affiliations shifted from Presbyterianism to Universalism; he was for a time and itinerant preacher, then a Unitarian minister. His eventual conversion to Catholicism is recounted in The Convert (1857). His two novels are Charles Elwood; or, The Infidel Converted (1840) and The Spirit-Rapper (1854).

Charles Bukowski (1920-)

Born in Germany, Bukowski immigrated to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and still lives in southern California. Largely influenced by the irreverent rhythms and patterns of free association used by the Beat generation, Bukowski is an extraordinarily prolific writer of prose and poetry, authoring more than forty titles. These include Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960), Fire Station (1970), Post Office (1971), factotum (1975), Ham on Rye (1982), and Barfly (1984).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950)

Burroughs was born in Chicago, graduated from the Michigan Military Academy, and served briefly with the Seventh Cavalry in Arizona. He held a variety of jobs, and even tried dredging for gold before the publication of his first science fiction story, Under the Moons of Mars (91912). Though Burroughs is best known as the creator of Tarzan, whose adventures he chronicled in twenty-four volumes, his many sci-fi novels include such familiar titles as The Warlord of Mars (1919) and At the Earth's Core (1922). -762-

William Burroughs (1914-)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Burroughs attended Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico and began what was to be an extensive and diverse educational experience. From 1932 to 1936, Burroughs attended Harvard and majored in English; from 1936 to 1937 he attended medical school at the University of Vienna; and in 1938 he attended graduate school in anthropology at Harvard. In 1944 Burroughs settled in New York City and began a long association with various countercultural figures, including Beats Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Highly experimental, satiric, and demanding, Burroughs's fiction often draws upon his own experiences at the fringes of society. Burroughs's subjects include heroin addiction, homosexuality, and subversive politics. In 1962 he published Naked Lunch and 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled the book not obscene, following a long and controversial trial. His works include Nova Express (1964), The Ticket That Exploded (1967), The Wild Boys (1971), Exterminator! (1973), and The Place of Dead Roads (1983).

George Washington Cable (1844–1925)

Cable was born in New Orleans, served in the Confederate Army, and was wounded twice. With little formal schooling, Cable set about a program of disciplined self-education, rising before daylight to study French. In 1873 his story ''Sieur George' was published in Scribner's Monthly. Between 1873 and 1879 other stories appeared in Scribner's and Appleton's, and in 1879 a collection of his Frenchdialect stories, Old Creole days, was published. His first novel, The Grandissimes, appeared the next year, to be followed by several more novels of the South and of Creole life. In 1885 Cable moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he lived for the rest of his life. Remembered today as a prominent figure of the local color movement, he was also a social and religious writer. His nonfiction work includes The Silent South (1885) and the Busy Man's Bible (1891). -763-

Truman Capote (1924-84)

Capote was born in New Orleans. He attended the prestigious academies of the Trinity School and St. John's, but left school at the age of seventeen. Fascinated by New York theater, Capote worked at a number of locales before being employed by The New Yorker. As he grew older, and more self-parodic, Capote became the friend of celebrities and often received more attention as a personality than as an author. Capote's prose is both sensitive and nostalgic. His works include Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), Local Color (1950), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1966), and Answered Prayers (unfinished and posthumous, 1985).

Alejo Carpentier (1904-80)

Born in Havana, Cuba, to a Russian mother and a French father, Carpentier was a Cuban political prisoner in the early 1930s. Though he lived for many years outside his native country, mostly in Paris and in Caracas, Venezuela, Carpentier returned to Cuba in 1959, where he became a member of the Cuban Communist Party and the National Assembly. His novels!Ēcue-Yamba-e! (God Be Praised, begun in 1933 during his imprisonment and published in 1979), El acoso (1958; The Chase, 1989), El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral, 1963), and El recurso del método (Reasons of State, 1976), combine 'magic realism' with strong critiques of political oppression. Carpentier died in 1980 in Paris.

Raymond Carver (1938-88)

Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, Carver attended California State University At Humbolt and later the University of Iowa. Despite his extensive teaching experience — at the universities of Iowa, Texas, California (Berkeley and Santa Cruz), and Syracuse — he persistently returned to the Pacific Northwest. Caver died in Port Angeles, Washington. Primarily a writer of short stories, Carver was also a poet of considerable talent. A self-avowed, recovered alcoholic, Carver explored the hidden vulnerabilities of character and exposed the revelatory aspects of ordinary experience. His works include Will You Please Be Quite, Please (1977), What We Talk About When We-764- Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1984), Fires, Essays, Poems and Stories (1984), and Where I'm Calling From (1986).

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

Chandler, who gained fame as a writer of 'hard-boiled' detective fiction, was born in Chicago, educated in England, and moved to southern California in 1912. He began writing mystery stories when in his forties, and his first novel was The Big Sleep (1939), which introduced his famous detective, Philip Marlowe. It was an enormous success both as a novel and as a motion picture, as were Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943), and The Long Goodbye (1954), Chandler himself was a cultured man, yet he (like Dashiell Hammett, for whom he had the greatest respect) depicted the underside of life in the great metropolises. His essay on the writing of crime fiction is included in The Simple Art of Murder (1950).

Denise Chavez (1954-)

Chavez is a native of New Mexico. The Last of the Menu Girls (1985) reflects her familiarity with the rhythms, language, and mythologies of the border regions, as well as Chavez's concern for the women of the Southwest.

John Cheever (1912-82)

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Cheever was educated in New England. He attended the well-known Thayer Academy, but was expelled at the age of seventeen. This expulsion formed the basis of Cheever's first story, 'Expelled,' which was published by the New Republic in 1930. Committed to a literary career, Cheever moved to New York City where he wrote book synopses for MGM. During World War II, Cheever served in the United States Army and then returned to what would become a successful literary career. Living in New England suburbia, Cheever exposed the painful and sometimes humorous truths that haunt upper-middle-class existence. The biographies that have appeared since Cheever's death suggest that his life, too, had hidden aspects. Alcoholism, familial strife, and sexual guilt were aspects of Cheever's own life, as well as themes in his fiction. His works -765-