11 h 43 minAudiobook17 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What changes when you meet the person behind a story?
In American Nights Entertainment, Grant M. Overton looks at the writers who shape early twentieth-century fiction. His portraits begin with a simple idea: knowing an author's habits, influences and place in the world can open a way into the work. The people behind the stories become part of the pleasure of reading.
Published in 1923, the book brings you close to a critic considering the fiction of his own day. American novels and short stories are changing, and a growing reading public gives new writers an audience. Overton asks what makes these authors worth reading, using a plain, friendly style rather than difficult theory.
What you’ll discover
- People behind the pages Meet writers through portraits that connect their lives and influences with their fiction.
- A changing literary world Explore a time when magazines, publishers and readers create a growing market for stories.
- Criticism with an open door Follow a critic who writes for ordinary readers, without making theory the main event.
- Reputations in motion Consider how literary standing shifts as some praised writers fade and others gain attention.
- Another way into fiction Discover how looking at an author as a person can deepen your reading.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy literary gossip and lively portraits will love it, along with anyone who collects reading lists, admires Conrad or Galsworthy, or wants to hear how writers of the 1920s worked, lived and sold their books.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Galsworthy hides his loyalties in plain sight
- Books can carry you away or leave you breathless
- Marlow tells Conrad's life on a dark river
- Documents and houses shape two careers
- Two preachers write for ordinary readers
- Tarkington, Stewart and Gale pay different prices
- Nature and Cape Cod make two steady storytellers
- Wharton and Morley change course with the years
- The reading guides
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- Large print hardcover
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American Nights Entertainment
by Grant M. Overton · 1923
Marlow lights his pipe to tell Joseph Conrad's life, while Galsworthy hides his secrets in his plays.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
American Nights Entertainment is a book of literary portraits by Grant M. Overton, written in 1923 for readers who wanted to know who stood behind the novels on the shelf.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Galsworthy hides his loyalties in plain sight
Overton opens in the autumn of 1922, when New York is watching John Galsworthy's play Loyalties. Critics keep explaining the man by outside facts. They say his Jewish character guaranteed a success, that The Man of Property came from his Socialism, and that Justice came from a prison sentence. Overton thinks these tidy stories miss the point.
His own answer sits in the title. An earlier critic wrote that Galsworthy cannot see how two conflicting loyalties could both be right. Overton says the reverse is true. In every novel and play Galsworthy shows two or more sides and chooses none, so that at the end he offers only a recommendation for mercy. Galsworthy himself admits that we cannot have things both ways, and Overton adds that he has never learned that lesson.
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What is American Nights Entertainment about?
It is a set of portraits of writers of the early 1920s, including Galsworthy, Conrad, Wharton, Tarkington and Morley. Between the portraits come guides to travel books, thrillers, poetry, plays, biography and children's reading, each with a list of titles.
Who wrote American Nights Entertainment and when?
Grant M. Overton wrote it, and it speaks of events up to 1923. He was an American critic who died in 1930. His pages reflect the publishing world of the early 1920s, when many of his subjects were still at work.
Is the Marlow chapter about Conrad a true account?
Marlow is a character from Conrad's own fiction, so the telling is invented, with Marlow as a narrator on a boat at night. The facts it gives about Conrad's life, such as his Polish birth, his sea career and his struggle for income, come from the record.
The author
Grant M. Overton
1887–1930 · American writer and critic
Grant M. Overton (1887–1930) was an American writer and critic, also known as Grant Martin Overton. He wrote books about writers and publishing. His works included When Winter Comes to Main Street, published in 1922, and American Nights Entertainment, published in 1923. He lived in the United States.
More by Grant M. Overton
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