Heather Neilson

Heather Neilson reviews ‘American Scoundrel: Murder, Love and Politics in Civil War America’ by Thomas Keneally

May 2002, no. 241 • 01 May 2002

‘Ah, Dan Sickles. I visited his leg,’ announced a colonel recently, as he spotted American Scoundrel on the floor of my office. He was referring to Sickles’s right leg, which was shattered by an unexploded cannonball on 2 July 1863, at Gettysburg. Sickles, as major general of the Third Corps of the Union army, had just led his men to what would prove an endlessly controversial victory, given ... (read more)

Heather Neilson reviews ‘A War for Gentlemen’ by Jackie French

February 2004, no. 258 • 01 February 2004

At one point in A War for Gentlemen, a school-teacher is reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin to her class in rural New South Wales in 1872. Seven-year-old Annie Fitzhenry excitedly announces that her father had fought for the North during the US Civil War. When the teacher subsequently visits Annie’s home, both she and the child are abruptly undeceived. Charles Fitzhenry is indeed a veteran of that war, ... (read more)

Heather Neilson reviews ‘Rapture’ by Emily Maguire

October 2024, no. 469 • 24 September 2024

The story of the only female pope (to date) emerged in the thirteenth century, and for some time thereafter was widely disseminated in Europe. She was initially alleged to have lived in the twelfth century, but what would become the best-known version of the story placed her election as pope in the year 855. The pontificate of ‘John Anglicus’ was said to have lasted for approximately two and a ... (read more)

Heather Neilson reviews ‘James’ by Percival Everett

July 2024, no. 466 • 20 June 2024

Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California, and the author of numerous works of fiction published over the past forty years. Throughout his oeuvre, he has explored the ways in which texts engage with other texts, and has vigorously critiqued the persistent stereotyping of African Americans in the cultural history of the United States. His best-known novel i ... (read more)

Heather Neilson reviews ‘The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism’ edited by Walter Kalaidjian

November 2005, no. 276 • 01 November 2005

The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms, to take a random example, indicates the challenges facing anyone undertaking a definitive and detailed account of modernism. According to the Dictionary’s author, J.A. Cuddon, modernism is: ‘A comprehensive but vague term for a movement (or tendency) [that] pertains to all the creative arts, especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music and archit ... (read more)

‘Some sort of afterlife: Posthumous representations of Gore Vidal’ by Heather Neilson

May 2024, no. 464 • 22 April 2024

I recognize Ravello in the dreamWhere Gore Vidal and Howard walk towardsMe, smiling, with martinis in their hands.We’re now inside La Rondinaia (orThe Swallow’s Nest). I sense unevennessBeneath my feet, look down, and see the floorComprised of pale blue jigsaw pieces, allIn disarray. I must tread carefully,In order not to break these scattered tilesThat seem like fragments from a fallen sky. ... (read more)

Heather Neilson reviews ‘Gore Vidal’s America’ by Dennis Altman

February 2006, no. 278 • 01 February 2006

The editors of Conversations with Gore Vidal – a recently published selection of interviews conducted with Vidal over the course of his long career – introduce the volume by quoting a comment made in the New Yorker in 1960: ‘Nothing’s easier nowadays than to get the feeling of being surrounded by Gore Vidal.’ They go on to remark that, today: ‘Gore Vidal is again seemingly everywhere. ... (read more)