Writers with different visions from
the mainstream have existed almost from the beginning of this nation.Phyllis Wheatley, a slave in Boston, began writing poetry in her
teens.Her status as an African-American
slave and as a woman put her on the fringe of early American writing in that
many of the critics of the time could not accept that she had actually written
the work attributed to her.
Of better-known early American
writers, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville and even Edgar Allan Poe were at
times writers on the edge.Thoreau,
marching to his own drummer, often had his fringe status ignored because of his
relationship with prominent Massachusetts intellectuals like Emerson.Melville had success with two early novels, Omooand Typee, but then with Moby Dick and later works like Pierre,
Billy Budd and Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville separated himself
from the mainstream writers of the day.
Likewise, even though Poe’s poetry
and stories were popular, his personality, personal life and refusal to
compromise artistically kept him from achieving the success of many
contemporaries.Of course, today,
Thoreau, Melville and Poe are unquestioned giants in the American canon, but
their places there were not always secure.
During and after the Civil War, the
fireside poets, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and Holmes, epitomized what America looked for in poetry.Today, the most-praised poets from that
period are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.Dickinson published only seven poems in her lifetime, and Whitman’s
personal reputation far exceeded his literary position.Many people are not aware that the first
edition of Leaves of Grass was self-published with no authorial
attribution or that the work was attacked for its overt sexuality.
In the early twentieth century, as
important a writer as William Faulkner had to live from short story sales
because his novels rarely sold well.Only when the French discovered Faulkner and the Nobel prize was awarded
to him, did he move from the edge intohis now eminent position in the American literary establishment.
Many twentieth century
African-American writers, Jean Toomer, Dorothy West, Richard Wright and dozens
of others, received little acclaim until after the 1960’s.African-American writers from the 1970’s,
like Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim, have recently begun to receive serious
critical attention.
Perhaps the writers most
associated with the fringe are the Beats who first came to some fame, or
infamy, in the 1950’s.Kerouac, Burroughs,
Ginsburg, Corso, McClure, DiPrima, and others were mocked by much of the
literary establishment of the time.Truman Capote famously said of On the Road, “That’s typing not
writing.”Still today, many critics are
not sure how to deal with these writers.But almost yearly, they become a larger and larger part of the American
canon.
Mystery, science fiction and horror
writers, have long been regarded as writers of little literary merit.Even Jules Verne is often seen as a
children’s writer.But as time passes,
H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Harry Stephen Keeler and others
have come to be more and more a part of corpus of American Lit.Lovecraft has a volume in The Library of
America.
Today, there are many writers on the
fringe.From Kathy Acker and Lydia
Lunch, who write openly and sometimes graphically, about feminine sexuality, to
graphic novelists (that’s comic books, if you are behind the curve) like Harvey
Pekar, Art Spiegelman and R. Crumb, more and more artists who were once ignored
are beginning to receive serious recognition.
The Ridge Books has a growing
selection of what we call American Edge writers.Some of these writers are already a part of
the American canon while others may never gain admittance.But reading them opens new views on life and
art, and their major works can still be purchased for reasonable prices. A number of these books are shown on our Home Page, and you may search for the authors listed below
