Darryl Pinckney

High Cotton is an account of the dreams and inner turmoils of a new generation of the black upper middle class, capturing a part of American society that has mostly been ignored in literature. The novel's protagonist journeys from his childhood home in the Midwest to college, a stint in New York publishing, and Europe, yet the issue of his "blackness" remains at the heart of his being.

"Elizabeth Hardwick wrote during the golden age of the American literary essay. For Hardwick, the essay was an imaginative endeavor, a serious form, criticism worthy of the literature in question. In the essays collected here she covers civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, describes places where she lived and locations she visited, and writes about the foundations of American literature--Melville, James, Wharton--and the changes in American fiction,...