Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee

America’s literary landscape proves both vast and interconnected in Stanford professor Fishkin’s (Lighting Out for the Territory) newest book, which shines a light on the relationships between American authors and the places where they live and work. Using the National Register of Historic Places as her guide, the author sparks interesting questions regarding how writers influence, and are influenced by, place. The locations discussed include Walden Pond, Angel Island in San Francisco Bay (the onetime site of a processing center for Asian immigrants depicted in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men), and the Brooklyn Ferry (discussed in relation to Walt Whitman). Chapters on Mark Twain and the massacre at Wounded Knee deal with the difference between history and memory. The influence of the writers included is far-reaching: Fishkin shows Paul Laurence Dunbar and Kingston tearing through racial barriers and Whitman helping to redefine the literary landscape, not just for other Americans but for writers such as Federico García Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Neruda who read Whitman from afar. With passages by the various authors, Fishkin’s book offers a diverse look at our nation’s literary landscape and history. (Nov.)