One of the larger ironies of the renewed interest in the American expatriate movement of the twenties and thirties is the relative obscurity of one of the period's most important and prolific contribu...
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Kay Boyle , poet, short-story writer, novelist, journalist, and teacher, has been known to the American reading public since 1929, when her first collection of short stories was published. One of the ...
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Kay Boyle's poetry is often relegated to a minor footnote in her distinguished literary career, for she is better known for her fiction, which includes fourteen novels and ten short story collections....
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As a member of the expatriate literary community in Paris in the late 1920s and 1930s, Kay Boyle was well known for her novels, poetry, and short fiction, but it is as a short-story writer that she ...
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In the following review of Wedding Day and Other Stories, the critic argues that Boyle is at her best when she combines experimentation with structure.
These short stories and five-finger exercises...
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In the following essay based on an interview with Boyle, Holt provides an overview of Boyle's life, concentrating on the author's political activism.
Climbing the steps of Kay Boyle...
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In the following review of Words that Must Somehow be Said, D'Evelyn claims the book is a valuable record of the twentieth century as Boyle recounts her life experiences artfully and with skill...
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In the following review of Words That Somehow Must Be Said, Hinerfeld, a critic and writer, praises Boyle's writing, but cites the story "Farewell to New York" as a piece in which...
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In the following interview, filmmaker Kelley Baker talks to famous social historian and radio personality Studs Terkel about his personal recollections of Boyle.
Edited in consultation with Studs T...
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In the following essay, Clark explores the balance between literary and feminist ideology in Boyle's writing.
Modernist experiments with language have an especially problematic relationship ...
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In the following essay, Hatlen reconsiders Death of a Man from a feminist perspective in an attempt to explain why the novel has been misinterpreted as Pro-Nazi.
When Kay Boyle's Death of a ...
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In the following essay MacNiven praises His Human Majesty as a near perfect novel that is well balanced, with a great tone.
When Hugh Ford quoted Glenway Wescott's comment on Kay Boyle, ...
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In the following essay, Bell argues that Boyle's essays are proof of Boyle's conviction that writers must be a voice of consciousness and accountability.
Noted as a stylist and awarde...
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In the following essay, Gronning explores the issue of androgyny in Boyle's short story "Astronomer's Wife."
Since Kay Boyle's mother, aunt, and grandmother all f...
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In the following essay Hollenberg compares the conflicted views on maternity of American writers H. D. and Boyle.
In memoirs written later in life, when they were self-assured, H. D. and Kay Boyle ...
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In the following review of Gentlemen, I Address You Privately, Kronenberger states that although Boyle enjoys moments of genius in this novel, she fails to sustain the quality.
It is only recently ...
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In the following review which compares Gentlemen, I Address You Privately with Jack Conroy's The Disinherited, Cantwell concludes that Boyle's writing suffers from isolation and unrealis...
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In the following review of My Next Bride, Walton accuses Boyle of focusing on trivial matters and failing to meet her potential.
Several years' ago Kay Boyle published a short story, "...
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In the following review of Death of a Man, Kazin suggests that while Boyle's sense of style is successful, she fails in her narrative.
It is some time now since a reviewer was moved to write...
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In the following review of The Crazy Hunter, the critic claims Boyle has found her best literary form in the novelette.
Are there varieties of literary talent for which there is no recognized form ...
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In the following review, Hauser praises Primer for Combat as a powerful portrayal of France in 1940 under Nazi rule.
Last year, after nearly two decades in Europe, Kay Boyle returned to America. Pr...
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In the following review of Thirty Stories, Mirrielees praises the collection, citing the French section as the best.
This most recent of Kay Boyle's short-story collections offers only fact ...
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In the following review of Generation Without Farewell, Peterson, a radio commentator and critic, credits Boyle with creating a profound account of postwar Germany which reflects the conditions from m...
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Critical Essay by Katherine Anne Porter
Miss Kay Boyle's way of thinking and writing stems from sources still new in the sense that they have not been supplanted. She is young enough to regard...
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Critical Essay by Edmund Wilson
I picked up Kay Boyle's Avalanche in the hope of finding a novel worth reading, and have been somewhat taken aback to get nothing but a piece of pure rubbish.
...
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Critical Essay by Struthers Burt
Miss Boyle is a storyteller, a superb one; by and large, the best in this country, and one of the best now living. This somewhat belated point of view concerning her ...
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Critical Essay by Nathan L. Rothman
In writing about a book by Kay Boyle, who is one of the shrewdest stylists in the language and something of a mystic no matter what material she makes momentary us...
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Critical Essay by Richard C. Carpenter
[Mastery] of style accounts for only one side of the blade that is Kay Boyle—the side that glitters and dazzles and, perhaps, blinds some readers to the ...
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Critical Essay by Robert E. Knoll
[Unlike] some of her contemporaries Miss Boyle's emotions do not turn inward, feeding on themselves; and she is not the object of her own speculation. Rather,...
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Critical Essay by Richard C. Carpenter
Kay Boyle's theme is nearly always the perennial human need for love; her design is woven from the many forms the frustration and misdirection of love ma...
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Critical Essay by Earl Rovit
This selection of Kay Boyle's short fiction [Fifty Stories] spans almost forty years of work and is itself only the sparest sampling of her total literary producti...
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Critical Essay by Vance Bourjaily
Kay Boyle remains a central character in that group legend that nourished us all, the literary Paris of the 20's…. [They] invented techniques we still ...
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