Guest Blog: Burned – The White-Hot Deaths of 8 Literary Movements

Very accessible timeline of some of the more widely regarded literary movements in the United States. Concise and easy to follow. Courtesy of Professor Patrick Smith of Bainbridge State College (GA)

Interesting Literature

By Patrick Smith

“The term ‘Movement’—and it’s always written with a capital ‘M’—has always given me the heebie-jeebies, it’s very pretentious,” science-fiction icon William Gibson told Andy Diggle in a 1997 interview. “I was so taken aback the first time I heard the word ‘Cyberpunk.’” Of course, since Gibson’s meteoric success with the publication of Neuromancer in 1984, he has understood the fickleness and ephemerality of literary trends too well to not be suspicious of the inevitable outcome.

“As soon as I realized it was happening I was calling all the different people I was associating with and saying, ‘Duck and cover! It’s a labelling operation! Don’t let them do this, we’re dead in the water!’ But everyone I called just said, ‘Oh, I want it on the back of my jacket, this is so cool!’ And at that point I just thought, Yeah, you can have it…

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