Remarkable, Unspeakable New York: A Literary History

O'Connell, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts (Imagining Boston: A Literary Landscape), has written a carefully researched and informative overview of important New York City writers and the literary movements they were part of, such as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Partisan Review literary circle of the 1960s. Beginning with the early 1800s, when a generation of writers emerged that included Washington Irving (A History of New York) and concluding with the work of contemporary authors such as Richard Price (Clockers), O'Connell examines the works of over 100 novelists, poets, playwrights, travel writers and memoirists. Although he deals extensively with major New York figures such as Henry James, Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald, many lesser-known authors are represented, including African American novelist Nella Larsen (Quicksand, 1928) and Elizabeth Cullinan, who wrote about New York's Irish immigrants (House of Gold, 1970). O'Connell's entertaining history will greatly interest literature devotees. (Aug.)