Walt Whitman
Story Stream
Walt Whitman: the Original Substacker December 31, 2024
I can remember exactly where I was when I first read Walt Whitman. Lying on the bed in my girlfriend’s dorm room in college, I started reading “Song of Myself” from Leaves of Grass out loud and, much to my girlfriend’s annoyance, sort of couldn’t sto...
Didion, Babitz & the Biographer Who Missed the Point December 19, 2024
In a 1939 essay, the critic Philip Rahv argued that there have been two main types in American literature: the solemn and semi-clerical, which he associates with Henry James, and the exuberant, open-air lowlife embodied in Walt Whitman. Between them,...
