Despite having a shorter history compared to the countries of the old continent, the United States defines part of the current situation in the West. An evolution that these best american writers have been reflected in the last 200 years playing a determining role in the culture and thought of the country currently governed by Donald Trump.
Ernest Hemingway
Considered one of the great writers of the XNUMXth centuryHemingway was an adventurer, a man capable of discovering new places to the world through his stories. Strongly inspired by the so-called "lost generation" made up of expatriates who, like him, fought in the First World War, Hemingway exported the image of that folkloric Spain in his book Seafood, the splendor of the French capital of Paris was a party or the African scenes of The snows of Kilimanjaro. His passion for the sea would take him to Cuba, where he would write his best-known work, The old man and the sea, published in 1952. A year later, the author would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his entire career.
William Faulkner
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, Faulkner was one of America's early literary modernists by adopting narrative techniques from European authors such as Virginia Woolf or James Joyce. His work, characterized by a careful lexicon, long sentences and new experiments such as the interior monologue, is made up of works such as The noise and the fury, centered on the decadent Compson family, or the two intertwined tales of The wild palm trees, in addition to an infinity of short stories included in his collection Collected stories.
Mark Twain
Considered by William Faulkner as "the father of American literature", Twain was one of the great authors of his time, especially after the publication of the satirical story The famous jumping frog of Calaveras County in 1865, which attracted the attention of the whole country. Characterized by criticism of a colder and individualistic adult world, Twain's work left behind such iconic novels as The Prince and the Pauper o Tom Sawyer's adventuresfollowed by its sequel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Emily Dickinson
150 years ago, the literary scene did not understand women writers, a situation that would weigh down part of the existence of one of the great poets of history: Emily Dickinson. Eccentric and reserved, the author spent part of the last years of her life locked in a room accumulating up to 1800 poems of which only a dozen were published during his lifetime. Fortunately, time has allowed us to rescue some of Dickinson's greatest works, all of them influenced by love, humor or the Bible and characterized by short lines or imperfect rhymes that led some of the editors to modify their published poems. in life.
Harper Lee
Although it does not have an extensive bibliography, Lee is credited with creating what is one of the great works of American literature: Kill a Mockingbird. As a result of a childhood marked by the trials in which his father participated and who was accompanied by his friend Truman Capote, Lee expressed part of his vision on topics such as racism or machismo to a work that extols the figure of its protagonist, the lawyer Atticus Finch, making him the national racial hero so necessary in a decade such as the 60s. The first draft of the work, Go and post a sentry, was published in 2015, a year before Lee's death.
Truman Capote
Eccentric and particular, Capote grew up on different farms in the southern United States where he began to write as a way to alleviate isolation. Already in his teens, the success of his first stories earned him the nickname "disciple of Poe", a stage that would link with the success of Breakfast at Tiffany's, published in 1958 and adapted to the cinema in 1961. However, its great success would be Cold-blooded, published in 1966 an extensive investigation that established the pillars of the so-called "new journalism."
John Steinbeck
Steinbeck's life could have inspired a book in itself: from his work on Californian farms where he came into contact with the reality of immigrants, to his experiences in New York participating in the construction of Madison Square Garden, John Steinbeck finally stopped. in his native California, where after living on social benefits with his wife he began to write some of his greatest works. Among the most important are East of eden, The Pearl or, especially, The grapes of wrath, X-ray of a Great Depression that in the 30s prompted many families from the interior of the United States to emigrate to California, considered the land of opportunities. The writer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
Edgar Allan Poe
Before all the American writers of the XNUMXth century, Poe sowed the seed of the self-sufficient writer, or one who claims to live on his writings above all else. Marked by a harsh childhood, his addictions to alcohol and drugs or various suicide attempts, Poe spat out part of his universe in a selection of stories such as The Gold Bug o No products found. that would lay the foundations of the Fantastic literature perpetuated by other authors years later.
Stephen King
If there is a contemporary author capable of twisting the most primal fears of the human being, it is Stephen King, «master of terror»And author of up to fifty works that have enjoyed great public success. Although his unorthodox methods when writing his novels have been criticized by experts, King has managed to make works such as Misery, It, animal graveyard, Carrie o The Shiningtrue classics of modern horror literature, most of them adapted to the big screen with great box office success.
What are the best American writers for you? Which of his books do you like the most?
The father would be missing the current crime novel, James Ellroy.