The Enormous Room (Warbler Classics)

📖 The Scoop

The Enormous Room is a fictionalized autobiographical account of the three months that E. E. Cummings spent in a French prison under suspicion of espionage--a circumstance he could have easily avoided had he professed a hatred of Germans. Instead, when questioned, Cummings answered French authorities in a way that insured that he would accompany his friend "B." (William Slater Brown), who was indeed guilty of writing letters critical of the French government. The psychologically tense narrative--shocking and provocative in its day--juxtaposes the barbarity and inhumanity of war against the camaraderie and collective spirit of the oppressed. As a piece of writing, it foreshadows the whimsy, humor, pessimism, and jubilance that would come to characterize Cummings's poetry while, on its own, it stands as a major work of World War I literature. This Warbler Classics edition includes Paul Headrick's essay "Brilliant Obscurity: The Reception of The Enormous Room," as well as a detailed biographical timeline. "It's not as an account of a war atrocity or as an attack on France...that The Enormous Room is important, but as a distinct conscious creation separate from anything else under heaven." --John Dos Passos

Genre: Fiction / General (fancy, right?)