“That’s my middle-west”: Nick Carraway’s Christmas Memories

By buckeyemuse | December 24, 2015 |

One of my all time favorite passages from The Great Gatsby concerns Christmas and the Midwest. The passage comes towards the end of the novel as Nick Carraway is describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder and preparing to leave New York. There’s something about this passage that captures that exhilaration of returning home for the…

Read More

Born on January 6: Wright Morris and Carl Sandburg

By buckeyemuse | January 7, 2015

Two important writers from the Midwest were born on January 6: Carl Sandburg in 1878 and Wright Morris in 1910. Since Morris is the lesser known of the two, I will start with him. Wright Morris was born in Central City, Nebraska. His mother died within a week of his birth. His father was a…

Read More

Remembering Thomas Berger

By buckeyemuse | January 1, 2015 |

The distinguished postwar American novelist Thomas Berger died on July 13, 2014 in Nyack, New York. As this was a great loss for American letters in the past year, I wanted to post an entry on this very unique and gifted writer, who will be featured in the future on this blog. Berger was a…

Read More