Bibliography of William Carlos Williams Scholarship 2011

Bibliography of William Carlos Williams Scholarship 2011
Life Along the Passaic River
& Selected Recent Scholarship
Bell, Barbara Currier. “Williams' „The Use of Force‟ and First Principles in Medical Ethics.”
Literature and Medicine 3 (1984): 143-51.
Examines the question of medical ethics in “The Use of Force.”
Beveridge, Allan. “The Benefits of Reading Literature.” Mindreadings: Literature and Psychology.
Ed. Femi Oyebode. London: RCPsych Publications: 2009. 1-14.
Argues that students of medicine benefit from education in the humanities, and discusses a wide
variety of literature with a medical context, including Life Along the Passaic River.
Boone, April. “William Carlos Williams‟s The Great American Novel: Flamboyance and the
Beginning of Art.” William Carlos Williams Review 26.1 (2006): 1-25.
Boone examines the question of form in The Great American Novel, and argues that Williams uses
elements of metafiction, creating a novel “that anticipates postmodern fiction.”
Boelhower, William. "A Place from which to Speak: The Gift Economy in William‟s Poem
„Morning.‟” Paterson Literary Review (Jan. 2005): 36-45.
This essay discusses Williams‟s interest in Paterson immigrants and an Italian neighborhood on the
margins of Paterson, focusing on the cultural gap between the residents and the poem‟s speaker.
Boss, Laura. "Meeting with William Carlos Williams.” Paterson Literary Review (Jan 2005): 49-
50.
Describes Laura Boss‟s personal connection with Williams, his support for younger writers, and his
influence on her work.
Cohen, Milton. “Stumbling into Crossfire: William Carlos Williams, Partisan Review, and the Left
in the 1930s.” Journal of Modern Literature 32.2 (2009): 143-58.
Discusses Williams‟s embattled relationship with Partisan Review in the 1930s.
Coles, Robert, MD. “Dr. William Carlos Williams: Affection, Anger, and Their Discontents.”
Literary Imagination 2.1 (2000): 23-30.
---. “William Carlos Williams: A Writing Physician.” JAMA 245.1 (1981): 41-42.
Both essays discuss Williams‟s “doctor stories.”

Copestake, Ian, ed. The Legacy of William Carlos Williams: Points of Contact. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars P, 2007.
A collection of essays that examine Williams‟s contribution to various 20 th -century branches of
poetics as well as his connections to modernism, abstract impressionism, surrealism, and other
cultural movements that influenced the development of American poetry.
---. Rigor of Beauty: Essays in Commemoration of William Carlos Williams. New York: Peter
Lang, 2004.
A collection of seventeen essays that examine the modernist dimensions and development of
Williams‟s poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction. Highlighted are Williams‟s influence on
younger poets, the importance of the American idiom on Williams‟s poetics; and a separate
section, distinguished by two long essays by Gary Grieve-Carlson and Mark C. Long that focus on
Paterson.
Crawford, T. Hugh. Modernism, Medicine, and William Carlos Williams. Norman: U of
Oklahoma P, 1995.
Examines the concurrent development of modernism and the professionalism of medicine in the
United States, and explores scientific perspectives that are present throughout Williams‟s work.
---. “The Politics of Narrative Form.” Literature and Medicine 11.1 (1992): 147-162.
Discusses narration in “Mind and Body.”
Entin, Joseph B. Sensational Modernism: Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties
America. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007.
Entin examines fiction and photography of the 1930s that adopts the “sensationalism” of popular
culture, such as tabloids or pulp fiction, in order to show the injustices inflicted on the working
class, as evidenced in their damaged and disfigured bodies. Contains an extended study of Life
Along the Passaic River.
Favis, Roberta Smith. “Painting „the Red City.‟” American Art 17.1 (Spring 2003): 26-47.
Favis explores the “sense of place” that both Bluemner and Williams found in the city of Paterson,
examining the connection between Oscar Bluemner‟s paintings of Paterson‟s silk factories and
Williams‟s writing, especially Paterson. Just as Williams believed that Paterson was an appropriate
subject for contemplation by “the mind of modern man,” Bluemner believed that Paterson, with
its history of immigration and labor struggle, could serve as a symbol of the essence of America.
Flanagan, Ian. “Hearing the American Voice: Thomas Kinsella and William Carlos Williams,” Irish
Studies Review 16.3 (2008):
Honorable mention, Louis Martz Prize 2009.
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Gish, Robert F. "Rare Presences: The Knife of the Times and Life Along the Passaic River."
William Carlos Williams, A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. 39-78.
A study of thematics and stylistics in Williams's short fiction.
Hahn, Stephen. "It was … civilization I was after": George Tice, William Carlos Williams, and the
Archaeology of Paterson.” Literary Review 50.4 (Summer 2007): 62-82.
A thorough and insightful review of two books that engage the sense of place of Paterson:
Paterson, and Paterson II, by photographer George Tice.
Hardy, Sarah Boykin. “The Art of Diagnosis.” Narrative 6.2 (1998): 157-73.
A comparative analysis of the short fiction of Poe and Williams, and the use of a “medical slant” in
these works. Discusses “A Face of Stone.”
Hillringhouse, Mark. "Looking at Paterson.” Paterson Literary Review (Jan. 2005): 51-54.
Examines the influence of the city of Paterson city to the poem Paterson. Contains a description of
the city, the references to Paterson, and examines Williams‟s choice of Paterson as a subject for a
book-length poem.
Hsiao, Irene. “Early William Carlos Williams: Bad Keats?” The Cambridge Quarterly 37 (2008):
Awarded 2009 Louis Martz Prize for best essay on Williams published outside the WCW
Review.
Johnson, Bob. "A Whole Synthesis of His Time": Political Ideology and Cultural Politics in the
Writings of William Carlos Williams, 1929-1939." American Quarterly 54.2 (2002): 179-
215.
Considers Williams‟s politics, especially in his “Depression writings,” including Life Along the
Passaic River.
King, Nancy M.P., and Ann Folwell Stafford. “Patient Stories, Doctor Stories, and True Stories: A
Cautionary Reading.” Literature and Medicine 11.2 (1992): 185-199.
Discusses “Face of Stone.”
Kinnell, Galway. "Don‟t Cure It, Cultivate It: Visiting William Carlos Williams in the Late
Fifties.” Paterson Literary Review (Jan 2005): 14-14.
Recounts Kinnell‟s personal interaction with Williams during a visit to Rutherford, New Jersey.
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Koch, Vivienne. “The Novels and Short Stories." William Carlos Williams. New York: New
Directions, 1950. 187-246.
An examination of Williams's fiction before 1950, including The Knife of the Times and Life along
the Passaic River. Koch argues for their importance in the development of Williams‟s career and of
the modern American short story.
Laughlin, James. Remembering William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1995.
Laughlin, Williams‟s editor at New Directions, offers a brief recollection and fond anecdotes that
recall his relationship with Williams.
Lunberry, Clark. "So Much Depends: Printed Matter, Dying Words, and the Entropic Poem."
Critical Inquiry 30.3 (Spring 2004): 627-653.
Examines the friendship and relationship between Williams and Robert Smithson, the well-known
New Jersey artist.
MacGowan, Christopher J. The Twentieth-Century American Fiction Handbook (Blackwell
Guides to Literature). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
---. Twentieth-Century American Poetry (Blackwell Guides to Literature). Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2004.
Marsh, Alec. “The Poet as a Man of Action: Emersonian Reflection on Williams‟ The Wedge.”
College Hill Review 6 (2010): n. pag. Web. 26 May 2011.
Traces Emersonian influence and tendencies, following the work of William James, in The Wedge,
arguing for the usefulness of Richard Poirier‟s approach to Williams in Poetry and Pragmatism
(1992) and The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (1987).
Monteiro, George. “The Doctor's Black Bag: William Carlos Williams' Passaic River Stories.”
Modern Language Studies 13. 1 (1983): 77-84.
Examines Williams‟s dual careers as physician and writer, and the ways in which those callings
interact in his Passaic River stories.
Perloff, Marjorie. “The Man Who Loved Women: The Medical Fictions of William Carlos
Williams." The Georgia Review 34.4 (1980): 840-53.
An examination of psychosexual aspects of doctor-patient relationships in several “doctor stories”
in Life along the Passaic River.
Rozendal, Michael. “Forms of Need: William Carlos Williams in the Radical Thirties Little
Journals.” William Carlos Williams Review 27.2 (2007): 137-155.
A study of Williams‟s story “Jean Biecke,” which appeared in the first issue of Blast, and Williams‟s
desire to create a form that would respond to the social needs of the time.
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Slate, J.E. "William Carlos Williams and the Modern Short Story." The Southern Review 4.3
(1968): 647-64.
Slate relates Williams's theories about writing short fiction to the stories themselves, demonstrating
the modern qualities of Williams's thought and practice.
Wagner, Linda Welshimer. "The Shape of Men's Lives." The Prose of William Carlos Williams.
Middlebury, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1970. 104-20.
Wagner surveys Williams's short fiction, relating its subjects and techniques to those of
contemporaneous writings.
Walton, Eda Lou. “X-Ray Realism.” Rev. of Life Along the Passaic River. The Nation 146.12 (28
March 1938): 334-35.
Early review of the book upon its publication by New Directions in 1938 – priced at $1.95. In
Walton‟s words, “Dr. Williams takes no detours around life” in the collection of “sketches,” as she
calls them. Brutally honest in their representation of life in the “Passaic river town,” the collected
stories, Walton claims, offer the reader “the shock of observing bone suddenly and cleanly
unfleshed.”
Williams, William Carlos. "A Beginning on the Short Story (Notes)," in Selected Essays of William
Carlos Williams. New York: Random House, 1954. 295-310.
Witemeyer, Hugh. “William Carlos Williams' Introduction to His Short Stories: A History and
Some Interpretive Uses.” Journal of Modern Literature 18.4 (1993): 435-46.
A close examination of a 48-page typescript sent by Williams in 1960 to his editor at New
Directions, James Laughlin.
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Prepared by Judith Broome
Department of English
William Paterson University
June 2011