William Dean Howells -- do people still read him?

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I'm reading "The Rise of Silas Lapham" for an American Realism course. I'd never really even heard of him until I was assigned this book. My professor is apparently one of the foremost Howellsians in the country and bemoans the fact that no one really reads him anymore. I like this book so far and was wondering if anyone out there read him or even really has an opinion of him.

― James Griffin (hadlex), Thursday, 12 February 2004 20:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I know he was a loyal friend to Twain and would stay up all night to play billiards with him when the two o'clock devils got too bad. I owe him 50 pages just for that, I suppose. But will you promise me it's good? Do you love it, or are you just curious about his fall from the canon?

― rams (rams), Saturday, 14 February 2004 18:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I was more just curious why he was removed from the canon because at the turn of the 20th century he was, apparently, such a literary heavyweight. Now, no one even knows who he is.

BTW, "Silas Lapham" is merely pretty good. Nothing that will blow your socks off.

― James Griffin (hadlex), Saturday, 14 February 2004 19:19 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

A Hazard Of New Fortunes is great, I need to read more of this guy

― gershy, Friday, 3 August 2007 06:04 (eighteen years ago)

also, any love for Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware ?????

― gershy, Friday, 3 August 2007 06:04 (eighteen years ago)

two years pass...

Both novels are terrific, although A Hazard is the kind of tumultuous social history that English and Russian novelists wrote as a matter of course in the late nineteenth century. It's a great book. I'm rereading it now. My graduate thesis depended on both Frederic and Howells.

― balls and adieu (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 31 July 2010 02:56 (fifteen years ago)

I still have to read The Man Who Saw Through Heaven...

― demons a. real (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, 31 July 2010 14:30 (fifteen years ago)

Really dig Howells--got into him after being recommended him by a book designer I was interviewing.

What is 'The Man Who Saw Through Heaven'?

― The great big red thing, for those who like a surprise (James Morrison), Sunday, 1 August 2010 08:26 (fifteen years ago)

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