The Columbia History of the American Novel

urban experience. Her novels include Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Tar Baby (1981).

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

Born in the Czarist Russian city of St. Petersburg, Nabokov immigrated with his family after the Russian Revolution to London and Berlin. During his long, cosmopolitan life, Nabokov lived variously in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Nabokov taught at Wellesley College and Cornell University while in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Widely considered a literary genius-many consider Nabokov to be the most influential postmodern writer — he created difficult, metafictional books, characterized by a combination of erudition and humor. Incorporating aspects of the author's personal history, passions, and aesthetic prejudices — for example, Russian history, butterflies, chess, and word games — Nabokov's books include Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962), and Ada (1969). In 1960 Nabokov returned to Europe and lived in the top floor of the Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland, until his death.

Frank Norris (1870–1902)

He was born Benjamin Franklin Norris in Chicago. In 1884 the family moved to San Francisco, and when he was seventeen his father took him to Paris to study painting. From 1890 to 1894 he attended the University of California, then Harvard for one year, after which he worked as correspondent for Collier's and the San Francisco Chronicle, covering the Boer War. Upon his return from South Africa he worked for a San Francisco magazine, The Wave, which serialized his first novel, Moran of the Lady Letty, in 1898. That same year he went to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War. When he returned the following year he took a position with Doubleday, which in 1899 published two of Norris's novels, McTeague, set in San Francisco, and Blix. I (1901) and The Pit (1903) were the first two volumes in a planned trilogy following the growing, selling, and dis-797- tribution of California wheat. The final volume, The Wolf, was incomplete at Norris's death from a ruptured appendix in 1902

Joyce Carol Oates (1938-)

Born in upstate New York, Oates studied at Syracuse University and at the University of Wisconsin. Her numerous teaching assignments include her present position as a professor at Princeton University. Oates often translates her personal experiences into fiction. Her small-town youth and suburban adolescence are explored and frequently parodied in her novels, and she provides the same selfmocking insight into the worlds of academia and art. A teacher and critic, and an exceedingly prolific and accomplished writer, Oates is on the board of the Kenyon Review. Her works include By the North Gate (1963), With Shuddering Fall (1964), A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), Expensive People (1968), them (1969), Wonderland (1971), New Heaven, New Earth (1974), Childwold (1976), Unholy Loves (1979), Bellefleur (1980), A Bloodsmore Romance (1982), Solstice (1985), Marya: A Life (1986), and You Must Remember This (1987).

Tim O'Brien (1946-)

Born and educated in Minnesota, O'Brien was drafted into the United States Army following his graduation from college in 1968. Returning from Vietnam in 1970, O'Brien went to work for the Washington Post. Often surreal, O'Brien's fiction chronicles the experience of the Vietnam War. His novels include If I Die in the Combat Zone (1973), Northern Lights (1974), and Going after Cacciato (1978).

Howard O'Hagan (1902-82)

O'Hagan was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, the son of a doctor whose practice took the family to Calgary, to Vancouver, and to a series of small railroad and mining towns in the Canadian Rockies. O'Hagan's major novel, Tay John (London, 1939), received little attention in Canada until its republication there in 1974. O'Hagan and his wife (painter Margaret Peterson) lived in Sicily from 1963 to 1974, when they returned to settle in Victoria, British Columbia. -798-

John Okada (1923-71)

Raised in Seattle, Washington, Okada was exposed at an early age to the language of the urban streets. He received two bachelor's degrees from the University of Washington, one in English and one in library science. He later received an M.A. in literature from Columbia University, where he met his wife Dorothy. Okada was a sergeant in the United States Air Force during World War II; he became embittered by the government's treatment of its Nisei population. Okada lived for some time in West Los Angeles. When Okada's No-No Boy (1957) was published, it was dismissed as 'too coarse' and too Asian. After Okada's death, his widow offered his papers and manuscripts to the University of California at Los Angeles. The university rejected the papers as being unimportant and, in consequence, Dorothy Okada burned the manuscripts. It is only recently that Okada has received positive critical acclaim as a sensitive chronicler of the Japanese American experience.

Tillie Lerner Olsen (1912-)

Olsen's parents fled to the United States in 1905, following the failure of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. They eventually settled in Nebraska, where Olsen was reared. Very much a child of the working class, Olsen was forced by economic circumstances to leave school before graduating from high school. Before she reached the age of eighteen, Olsen had worked in the infamous meat-packing industry, as well as serving as a waitress and a domestic. Still in her adolescence, Olsen became an active member of the Young Communist League and was jailed at eighteen for her attempts to organize packing-house workers. When Olsen was nineteen she began working on a novel that she eventually published as Yonnondio: From the Thirties (1974). Throughout her life, Olsen remained concerned with issues of class and gender. During the 1950s she was harassed by the FBI. In recent years Olsen has received serious critical attention. Some of her work has found publication only in the last few decades. Despite her abbreviated formal education, Olsen has received numerous honorary degrees. Her works include Tell Me a Riddle (1961), Silences (1978), Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother: A Day Book and Reader (1984), and Dream-Vision (1984). -799-

Michael Ondaatje (1943-)

Born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where the family owned a tea plantation, Ondaatje immigrated in 1952 to England, and at the age of nineteen to Montreal. His novels include Coming Through Slaughter (1976) and In the Skin of a Lion (1987); he has also edited a number of anthologies in addition to writing poetry, fiction, criticism, and screenplays. He has taught at the University of Western Ontario and, more recently, at Glendon College. He is the holder of two Governor General's Awards for poetry.

Walker Percy (1916-90)

A Southerner, Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He was educated at the University of North Carolina. Percy went North to attend medical school at Columbia University, obtaining his M.D. in 1941. While practicing at New York's Bellevue Hospital, Percy contracted tuberculosis. He retired from medicine and turned to literature. Percy's works include The Moviegoer (1961), The Last Gentleman (1966), The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975), and The Second Coming (1980).

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)

Baptized as Mary Gray, Phelps was born in Boston, the daughter of Elizabeth (Stuart) Phelps, a popular religious writer. She assumed her mother's name upon her mother's death. During a long period of reclusiveness following the death of her suitor in the Civil War, Phelps produced The Gates Ajar (1868), the first of her novels concerning the afterlife. In 1888 she married Herbert Dickinson Ward, who became an occasional co-author. Several of her novels (Hedged In [1870]; The Silent Partner [1871]; The Story of Avis [1877]; Dr. Zay [1882]) are strong indictments of the social restrictions applied to women.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49)

Poe was born in Boston to itinerant actors, both of whom died while he was very young. Unofficially adopted