Margins
1937
First Published
3.67
Average Rating
291
Number of Pages

Part of Series

Williams was foremost a poet, but the novels are of great interest. They are important books in their own right, because they present with a poet’s insight, and in a prose style of striking originality, aspects of American life which few other writers have approached. White Mule and its sequels, In the Money and The Build-Up, form a trilogy, the saga of the Stecher family, but each volume is a complete novel by itself. Joe Stecher and Gurlie, his wife, are a young couple of European origin settled in New York at the turn of the century and working to make a place for themselves in the new world. White Mule is the story of Joe’s inner struggle between love of fine craftsmanship (he is a printer by trade) and Gurlie’s ambition to get ahead, to have him get “in the money.” But it also the story of the awakening consciousness of their children; the real heroine is the baby Flossie––she had a kick like “White Mule” whiskey––whose birth begins the book. Everything revolves around the baby and she is surely unique in literature. Dr. Williams was a pediatrician, and without sentimentality he makes of this little being, who cannot even talk, a full-scale, three-dimensional personality.
Avg Rating
3.67
Number of Ratings
117
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
32%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
1%
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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