American Literature: Essays and Opinions Book

Part 1 1930-1934

An American Novelist Sinclair Lewis 3

Sherwood Anderson 30

The Spoon River Anthology 42

Herman Melville 55

Preface to Moby-Dick 69

Preface to Dark Laughter 75

or, The literary Trick O. Henry 79

John Dos Passos and the American Novel 91

Dreiser and His Social Battle 107

Interpretation of Walt Whitman, Poet 117

Faulkner, a Bad Pupil of Anderson 142

The Fictionalized Biographies of Sinclair Lewis 146

Part 2 1938-1950

Preface to The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas 153

Preface to "Benito Cereno," 156

Preface to Three Lives 161

Additions to the Second Preface to Moby-Dick 165

The Dead at Spoon River 168

American Ripeness 177

A Useful Book 189

A Negro Speaks to Us 192

Yesterday and Today 196

The Great American Anguish 200

Appendix: English Writers

Preface to Defoe Moll Flanders 203

Preface to Dickens David Copperfield 206

Preface to Conrad, 'Twixt Land and Sea 210

Robert Louis Stevenson 213

Index Of Names 217