Background
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher was born on May 9, 1950 in New York City. Daughter of Milton and Renee B. (Breger) Fisher.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01182B71E/?tag=2022091-20
(Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most w...)
Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art. In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature. Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon. American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices." Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195089146/?tag=2022091-20
(Walt Whitman spent twenty-five years as a journalist befo...)
Walt Whitman spent twenty-five years as a journalist before he published his first book of poems. Mark Twain pursued a twenty-year career as a journalist before the publication of his first novel. The list of great imaginative writers whose careers began in journalism includes not only Whitman and Twain, but also Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos, among others. Fishkin's book--the first full-length study to examine this tradition in American letters--focuses on the lives and careers of Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Hemingway, and Dos Passos, in order to discover the roots of their greatest imaginative works and the factors that led each writer to turn to fiction. Fishkin determines that they all turned to fiction because they wished to engage their readers in ways not possible through conventional journalism, and yet not one of them found his artistic stride until he returned, in new and creative ways, to the subjects and strategies first explored as a journalist. Fishkin weaves together threads of biography, literary criticism, literary theory, and social history to reveal the neglected role journalism has played in shaping American literary tradition since the 1830s. Her final chapter examines the attitudes toward journalism and fiction, and the division between the two in the works of such contemporary fiction writers as Norman Mailer, John Hersey, and E.L. Doctorow. Fishkin's probing examination of the poetry and fiction that followed the newspaper and magazine work of Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Hemingway, and Dos Passos both reveals how each writer transformed fact into art and how journalism has helped to give a distinctively American cast to American literature.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801825466/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195121228/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011DB5WUW/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y4RLME8/?tag=2022091-20
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher was born on May 9, 1950 in New York City. Daughter of Milton and Renee B. (Breger) Fisher.
Bachelor, Yale College, 1971. Master of Arts, Yale University, 1974. Master of Philosophy, Yale University, 1974.
Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1977.
Associate Chubb fellow, Yale College, New Haven, 1974-1985; director Poynter fellowship in journalism, Yale College, New Haven, 1980-1985; visiting lecturer, Yale College, New Haven, 1981-1984; senior lecturer American studies, University Texas, Austin, 1985-1989; professor American studies, University Texas, Austin, since 1993; Professor of English, University Texas, Austin, since 1994.
(Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most w...)
(Walt Whitman spent twenty-five years as a journalist befo...)
(Walt Whitman spent twenty-five years as a journalist befo...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
Member Modern Language Association (executive council nonfiction prose divsn 1991-1995), American Studies Association (nominating committee 1990-1992, international committee 1993-1996, program committee 1995, national council since 2000), Mark Twain Circuit American (president 1998-2000), Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society (co-founder, executive director 1990-1998).
Married James S. Fishkin. Children: Joseph, Robert.
