Forgotten Treasures: A Symposium

“Paradiso,” a grand baroque evocation of Havana by the Cuban poet Jose Lezama Lima, is one of the half-dozen greatest novels in the Spanish language this century. “Grande Sertao, Veredas” by the Brazilian Joao Guimaraes Rosa is the greatest novel of his country--and one of the most extraordinary attempts to render simultaneity of time and space in the modern novel. In the United States, I believe that the work of Glenway Wescott has been notoriously overlooked. Also, I find it hard to obtain contemporary editions of a great journalist, Vincent Sheean, and of the superb work of historical criticism, Van Wyck Brooks’ “The Flowering of New England.”