Customer Reviews

Words and Shadows: Literature on the Screen

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A fine, quite comprehensive book, I initially
thought it would encompass all writers such as
Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo etc but the book
only deals with American writers and that's okay.
The chapters deal with different genre writers
- Realists (Theodore Drieser, Sinclair Lewis),
writers of the West (Stephen Crane, Willa Cather),
early American writers (Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar
Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper) as well as Henry
James and Edith Wharton. That is just a
small sampling and as well as that there are many
rare photos liberally sprinkled throughout the book.
I don't want to nitpick but there were some glaring
omissions - Edna Ferber may not have been as high
class a writer as Edith Wharton or Ellen Glasgow
but her books were far more popular. She was at her
best writing family sagas, usually about wide open
spaces - "Cimarron", "Giant", "Showboat". She also
won a Pulitzer Prize for "So Big". I thought it was
a glaring omission. Another was Cornell Woolrich,
there was a chapter devoted to pulp writers but
he wasn't there!! Some of his novels were the basis
for a couple of the most suspenseful movies ever
- "The Window" and "Rear Window".