One of the most iconic American images is American Gothic, a 1930 painting by Grant Wood of a farmer holding a pitchfork, ...

So many wise things have been said about American humor, there seems to be little occasion for saying anything else about it, unless humorously. Absit omen ! that is not within the intention of the ...

“HUMOR can be dissected, as a frog can,” E. B. White once warned, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” Until recently, many ...

Short fiction -- the short story, in particular, even if it went by the name of "tale" -- was the Big News in literary America for centuries. Literally. From Hawthorne and Poe to Anderson, Hemingway ...