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Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below.

Last week I boasted to friends that I had written my first blog. Longtime bloggers may find my sense of accomplishment overblown, but last week’s blog did mark my entry to this innovative world of communication. Being new to the blogosphere, I was unsure what kind of responses I would receive. As things turned out, the comments were quite useful. They point to a major problem facing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. This little book about a big topic requires me to make some tough choices. Who should I include? Who can I exclude? Where should I discuss each author?

Responding to my query about American travel writers, James suggested I include Hunter S. Thompson. Though a great Thompson fan, I am excluding him from the travels chapter. Instead, I’ll put him with novels. The sixties took the postmodern novel to a dead end, but it gave rise to an exciting literary movement: New Journalism. For a time, journalists exceeded novelists in terms of literary virtuosity. As a digression in my novels chapter, I will discuss the work of such writers as Truman Capote, Peter Maas, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Ideally, I would like to discuss every author only once. But what should I do about authors who wrote in different genres? Pick their most important genre and ignore the others? Only major figures who excelled in multiple genres can justify separate discussions. Take Henry James for instance. Best known as a novelist, James was also a fine travel writer and memoirist. I can justify discussing James in two or three different places, but I do not have room to discuss every genre of every author.

So, here are my questions. Which American authors excelled in more than one literary genre? Where should I discuss them? Are they important enough to deserve discussion in more than one chapter? Boy, that’s a loaded question. Here’s a more fundamental one: what constitutes literary importance?

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Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below.

When I was studying for my exams at the University of Delaware, I found little books about big subjects to be the most useful study aids. Despite the usefulness and convenience of these little books, I still resented the time studying took. I was eager to finish my degree and start my career, to stop reading the work of others and start writing work of my own. As part of the studying process, I drafted a brief history of American literature. After passing all my exams, I realized my draft history had been a way to force myself to keep studying. I set it aside without a second thought, graduated, and moved to Oklahoma. The draft history disappeared along the way.

Upon completing my forthcoming biography, The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson, I wanted to work on a tiny little book next, so I started writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. The book will consist of eight chapters and will be organized in a rough chronological manner. Each chapter will concentrate on a particular literary genre and will have a central focus, too. For example, Chapter 7, the first chapter I drafted, presents an overview of the novel refracted through the idea of the “great American novel.”

I’m working on Chapter 2 now. It will trace the story of American travel writing from colonial times through the twentieth century. Though travel writing constitutes some of the best writing in the colonial American period (see Daniel Royot’s fine chapter in the recent Oxford Handbook to Early American Literature), literary histories have typically slighted subsequent travel writings in favor of belletristic literature. Deciding which travel writers to include has proven to be more difficult than I initially anticipated. I need help. Obviously, I do not have room to discuss too many travel narratives in such a short book. Here’s my question: which travel writers should I include?

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Erik and Jaap, the guys from the Delft Public Library who visited the Chicago area in February to talk with librarians about gaming, are coming back this month on a nationwide tour to explore innovation in U.S. libraries. Yes, a nationwide tour. Only these two could pull off something this ambitious. They’ll be driving cross-country on their way to the Internet Librarian conference in California at the end of October, stopping at the following libraries along the way:

• New York Public Library
• Darien Library
• Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County
• Ann Arbor District Library
• Mortenson Center
• Council Bluffs Public Library
• Denver Public Library
• Salt Lake City Library

They’ll be talking with librarians, interviewing them on camera, shooting video of services, driving westward, participating in the annual “gadgets” presentation at the IL conference, and then heading home to create another great documentary (like the one they did for their first trip). They’ll be in the Chicago area around October 20-21, and I can’t wait to see them again. If nothing else, we will definitely have another video game night.

If you’re on or near their route, consider contacting and getting together with them - I guarantee you won’t regret it. Their enthusiasm and creativity is infectious. I mean really, who else do you know who could get funding for such a big idea as this?

When Erik first drew up the plan on a napkin in February, I loved the idea of librarians as “shanachies.” Their theme is “Keep stories, tell stories, make stories.”

“Originally the shanachie in Ireland was a very important person who in rank came after the chief and the druid carried the gift of keeping and telling the stories. They travelled the country and were given free lodges and food in return for stories. The gift was passed on when the Shanachie died.”

More info is available on the official Shanachie Tour site. They’ll be posting a video diary there as the trip progresses. I can’t wait to watch what they do next!