Looking Backwards: Okay, Professor Boomer

Abstract

Abstract:With the canon expanding (if not exploding), authors like Crane and even Hemingway and works like "The Blue Hotel" (1898) and "The Killers" (1927) received less and less critical attention. To be clear, that is not a bad thing: new voices, fresh voices, rediscovered voices enrich our understanding of not just American literature but of the American experience. At the same time, as Princeton's Eddie Glaude, Jr., reminds us, to understand the present with any real insight, we must also examine the past.