fiction — Bunk History

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Black and white photo of Gertrude Stein writing at desk.

Gertrude Stein's Pulp Fiction

It has taken decades for an appreciation of Stein’s crime fiction to really take hold.

by Gertrude Stein, Cornelius Fortune, Mark McGurl, Brooks Landon via JSTOR Daily on June 22, 2022

A picture of an eerie dark house.

This House Is Still Haunted: An Essay In Seven Gables

A spectre is haunting houses—the spectre of possession.

by Adam Fales via Dilettante Army on February 15, 2022

Illustration of two ghostly women

The Haunted World of Edith Wharton

Whether exploring the dread of everyday life or the horrors of the occult, her ghost tales documented a nation haunted by isolation, class, and despair.

by Krithika Varagur via The Nation on February 8, 2022

Magazine illustration depicting fantastical inventions for travel on water, land, and air, titled March of Intellect, by William Heath, c. 1828.

A Utopia of Useful Things

On the nineteenth-century artists and thinkers who pictured a future of abundance powered by steam.

by Michael Rawson via Lapham’s Quarterly on December 24, 2021

Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and snowman.

How Mrs. Claus Embodied 19th-Century Debates About Women's Rights

Many early stories praise her work ethic and devotion. But with Mrs. Claus usually hitting the North Pole’s glass ceiling, some writers started to push back.

by Maura Ives via The Conversation on December 15, 2021

The Once and Future Temp

What can the history of the temp-work industry teach us about the precarity of modern working life?

by Eve Zelickson via Public Books on August 27, 2021

The writer (seen here in a picture from the eighteen-eighties) hid his own life story.

Are All Short Stories O. Henry Stories?

The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on June 28, 2021

Abstract composition by Valentijn Edgar Van Uytvanck, 1918

Still Farther South

In 1838, as the U.S. began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue.

by John Tresch via The Public Domain Review on June 16, 2021

Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.

by Yasmin Nair via Current Affairs on June 13, 2021

What We Want from Richard Wright

A newly restored novel tests an old dynamic between readers and the author of “Native Son.”

by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on May 12, 2021

Illustration of Pimento Cheese on Bread by Carter.

Pimento-cracy

The history of pimento cheese as a working class fixture and a symbol of Southern culture as seen through mystery novels.

by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Oxford American on March 23, 2021

H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.

by Siddhartha Deb via The New Republic on March 19, 2021

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.

by Halle Butler via The Paris Review on March 11, 2021

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?

Ninety-six years after the book's publication, the characters of "The Great Gatsby" continue to mesmerize readers.

by Wesley Morris via The Paris Review on January 11, 2021

‘A Land Where the Dead Past Walks’

Faulkner’s chroniclers have to reconcile the novelist’s often repellent political positions with the extraordinary meditations on race, violence, and cruelty in his fiction.

by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on December 20, 2020

A house.

Poe in the City

Peeples helps us to see that Poe’s imagination was stoked by his external surroundings as well as by his interior life.

by Henry T. Edmondson III via Law & Liberty on December 11, 2020

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl's Anti-Black Racism

The first edition of the beloved novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory featured "pygmy" characters taken from Africa.

by Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on December 10, 2020

An image of William Faulkner and author André Malroux.

Faulkner Couldn’t Overcome Racism, But He Never Ignored It

That’s why the privileged White novelist’s work is still worth reading, Michael Gorra argues.

by Chandra Manning via Washington Post on October 2, 2020

Charles Averill’s The Cholera-Fiend: Fiction for a Pandemic

The 1850 novel reveals disturbing continuities between the 19th century cholera pandemics and global health crises today.

by Sari Alschuler, Paul Erickson via The Panorama on August 23, 2020

William Faulkner writes at a typewriter in front of a messy bookshelf, not looking at the camera.

What to Do About William Faulkner

A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it.

by Drew Gilpin Faust via The Atlantic on August 8, 2020

A printed advertisement for "The Bookman" depicting a fish reacting to "The Bookman" on a hook.

The Power of Flawed Lists

How "The Bookman" invented the best seller.

by Elizabeth Della Zazzera via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 27, 2020

Illustration taken from The Great Gatsby, The Graphic Novel

Greil Marcus Takes a Deep Dive Into "the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby"

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’

by Allen Barra via The National Book Review on July 17, 2020

The title page of Life and confession of Ann Walters, the female murderess.

How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.

by Dawn Keetley, Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on March 25, 2020

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.

by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 23, 2020

A photo of Nelson Bellamy next to a photo of a boardwalk full of people sunbathing and wading.

“The Splendor of Our Public and Common Life”

Edward Bellamy's utopia influenced a generation of urban planners.

by Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on December 17, 2019

Illustration of WWI soldiers hiking thorugh a field; the painting uses light pastel colors and surrounds the soldiers with mist

On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s World War I Novel

From Hemingway to Mencken, no one thought a woman could write about combat.

by Rebecca Onion via Literary Hub on October 21, 2019

Protester at an "America First" rally.

The Great-Granddaddy of White Nationalism

Thomas Dixon’s racist discourse lurks in American politics and society even today.

by Diane Roberts via Southern Cultures on September 18, 2019

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.

by Erin Blakemore, Yvonne Keller via JSTOR Daily on August 1, 2019

The secret message in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug"

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” (1843)

Poe’s story of a treasure hunt, revealing the fantastical writer’s hyper-rational penchant for cracking codes.

via The Public Domain Review on July 18, 2019

Painting of people examining a globe that depicts California as an island.

California, an Island?

Meet cartography's most persistent mistake.

by Frank Jacobs via Big Think on July 7, 2019

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