Will Rogers: A Biography Yagoda, Ben New York:
Knopf,
1993.
Born in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), cowboy humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) had a "dual consciousness," in Yagoda's estimate. The rope-twirling vaudeville monologist, salty political commentator, silent film actor and New York Times columnist was the son of a former slaveholder and Confederate veteran, but he was also one-quarter Cherokee and the tribe vividly remembered Andrew Jackson's massive betrayal of the Cherokees. Rogers embodied old-time values, yet he "opportunistically" embraced the new mass-culture media. About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made Yagoda, Ben New York:
Scribner,
2000.
Yagoda tells the story of the tiny journal that grew into a literary enterprise of epic proportions. Incorporating interviews with more than fifty former and current New Yorker writers, including the late Joseph Mitchell, Roger Angell, the late Pauline Kael, Calvin Trillin, and Ann Beattie, Yagoda is the first author to make extensive use of the New Yorker's archives. The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing Yagoda, Ben New York:
HarperCollins,
2004.
In writing, style matters. Our favorite writers often entertain, move, and inspire us less by what they say than by how they say it. Ben Yagoda offers practical and incisive help for writers on developing and discovering their own style and voice. This book features interviews with more than 40 authors discussing their literary style. When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech for Better And/or Worse Yagoda, Ben New York:
Broadway,
2006.
Yagoda isn't trying to reinvent the style guide, just offering his personal tour of some of the English language's idiosyncrasies. Using the parts of speech as signposts, he charts an amiable path between those critics for whom any alterations to established grammar are hateful and those who believe whatever people use in speech is by default acceptable. Memoir: A History Yagoda, Ben New York, NY:
Riverhead,
2009.
Ben Yagoda traces the memoir from its birth in early Christian writings up to the first years of the current century. Spanning decades and nations, styles and subjects, he analyzes the hallmark memoirs of the Western tradition-Rousseau, Ben Franklin, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Edward Gibbon, among others. Throughout, the idea of memory and truth, how we remember and how well we remember lives, is intimately explored.
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