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The Great American Novel book cover
The Great American Novel
1923
First Published
3.45
Average Rating
82
Number of Pages
First published in 1923 in Paris in an edition of three hundred copies, this satiric novel by the great American poet is "a satire on the novel form in which a little -(female) Ford car falls more or less in love with a Mack truck." For the most part, however, this work is a serious attempt to write a novel with the recognition that such a work is impossible to write within established conventions. Although long available from New Directions, this edition, by presenting it alone, puts the work into new focus, and reveals its importance in Williams’ career.
Avg Rating
3.45
Number of Ratings
108
5 STARS
22%
4 STARS
32%
3 STARS
20%
2 STARS
19%
1 STARS
6%
goodreads

Author

William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
Author · 44 books

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures. In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press. Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

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