Spokesmen

Spokesmen, by T. K. Whipple, gathers a series of essays written in the 1920s, a decade when American literature was breaking decisively from academic gentility and provincial puritanism. Whipple examines ten central figures—Dreiser, Anderson, Cather, Lewis, O’Neill, Sandburg, Frost, and others—writers he credits with advancing what he and his contemporaries called the “liberation of American literature.” His double theme, drawn from Max Eastman and Van Wyck Brooks, shapes the volume: the ne...