Every Good Morning

  I have not read his early books – Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, etc. I know him from his astonishing later period, roughly from 1997 to 2007, eleven years of work he completed from his mid-60’s to mid-70’s. – I Married a Communist , The Human Stain , The Plot Against America and Exit Ghost and the novel that changed how I thought of contemporary American literature, American Pastoral .* Before American Pastoral (1997), I wondered if the realist/naturalist strain of American writing had exhausted […]

In the novel Varina , Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain , tells the story of Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America. Varina is a formidable woman – well educated, perceptive, strong minded, and one who struggles against a whole array of patronizing and threatening men. She is compassionate and principled, but she also was married to the leader of a rebellion who fought a […]