Shelley Fisher Fishkin

The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Marc Notes: Distributed to the trade by Putnam Group.; Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: "Mark Twain," William Faulkner once observed, "was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." In this unique collection scores of these literary legatees from the U. S. and around the world take the measure of Twain and his genius, among them: Jose Marti, Rudyard Kipling, Theodor Herzl, George Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken, Helen Keller, Jorge Luis Borges, Sterling Brown, George Orwell, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, W. H. Auden, Ralph Ellison, Kenzaburo Oe, Robert Penn Warren, Ursula Le Guin, Norman Mailer, Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, David Bradley, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Min Jin Lee, Roy Blount, Jr., and many others (including actor Hal Holbrook, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, stand-up comedians Dick Gregory and Will Rogers, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Barack Obama). Included are essays originally published in Chinese, Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish that have not previously been available in English, as well as the work of several visual artists, such as James Montgomery Flagg (creator of the "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster), French playwright and artist Jean Cocteau, and Chuck Jones (of Bugs Bunny fame). Published to mark the centennial of Twain's death, this collection testifies to the enduring and continuing legacy of the man William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature." Review Citations: Library Journal 04/15/2010 pg. 82 (EAN 9781598530650, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Fishkin, Shelley Fisher Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872--1906) overcame racism and poverty to become one of the best-known authors in America, and the first African American to earn a living from his poetry, fiction, drama, journalism, and lectures. This original collection includes the short novel The Sport of the Gods, Dunbar's essential essays and short stories, and his finest poems, such as "Sympathy," all which explore crucial social, political, and humanistic issues at the dawn of the twentieth century. Shelley Fisher Fishkin is a professor of English and the director of American studies at Stanford University. An award-winning author, she is past president of the American Studies Association. David Bradley is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon, and the author of South Street and The Chaneysville Incident, for which he received the 1982 PEN/ Faulkner Award.