TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Knopf published Reading America, Volume 2 of the Selected Essays of Denis Donoghue, in 1987. One wonders what the audience for a book like this would be today.
Introduction — ix
ESSAYS
America in Theory — 3
Emerson at First — 20
Thoreau — 40
Whitman — 68
Emily Dickinson — 97
Henry Adam’ss Novels — 111
Henry James and The Sense of the Past — 127
On “Gerontion” — 144
Stevens’s Gibberish — 158
Trilling, Mind, and Society — 175
BREVITIES
Conrad Aiken — 199
Marrianne Moore — 206
Wallace Stevens — 218
Ransom — 225
Allen Tate — 230
H. D. — 237
Hart Crane
I. — 242
II. — 250
Auden
I. — 254
II. 258
Kenneth Burke — 265
John Berryman — 276
Robert Lowell
I. — 282
II. — 287
Sylvia Plath — 296
John Ashbery
I. — 302
II. — 312
Good question. Even then, I wonder how it did.
Jeff, yes, WORDPRESS is up to its demonic antics again. It posted three reviews instead just one. Sigh…
Oops. Looks like WordPress did it again, posting more than one entry.
As Jeff suggests, essay collections have a hit and miss audience…they usually do better than short stories, and on occasion, as with the short story volumes, they just Take Off/get the right kind of push. So, this book could get lucky today, but I wouldn’t expect it to outsell most memoirs or novels on the Top 20 lists…
I imagine that Donoghue had a sizable coterie audience already, for Knopf to be doing the second book, rather than a university or small press. I don’t remember reading his work thus far, but I like what he covers here.
Todd, I’ve read several books by Denis Donoghue and enjoyed them all. Donoghue is a careful reader and a deep thinker. Anything he publishes is worth a look!