Martha Graham's impact on dance has been compared to that of Picasso's on painting, Stravinsky's on music, and Frank Lloyd Wright's on architecture.

When Joseph Conrad died, Ernest Hemingway, by way of an obituary notice, wrote a little piece in the TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW, in October 1924, and what he said was that if it could be shown that by grinding T. S. Eliot down to a fine powder, and by sprinkling the powder upon Conrad's grave, then Conrad would immediately jump out of his grave and commence to write, then he, Hemingway, would leave for London immediately with a sausage grinder in his luggage.

Richard Avedon's stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects' characters made him one of the premier American portrait photographers.

Willa Cather wrote about the lives of early Nebraska pioneers in such books as O PIONEERS!, and MY ANTONIA, giving us growth, change and adaptation to life.

The following is an excerpt from the essay "The Crack-Up," reprinted from The Crack-Up, a compilation of articles written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in one book by New Directions Publishing.

In writing INVISIBLE MAN in the late 1940s, Ralph Ellison brought onto the scene a new kind of black protagonist, one at odds with the characters of the leading black novelist at the time, Richard Wright.

Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft and sang his songs with such believability that we feel privy to his world, despite the fact that he left no in-depth interviews and just a few letters.

Comedian Bob Newhart has enthralled audiences with his trademark stammer, one-sided telephone conversations and hysterical, historical "what if" routines for more than 40 years.

Sam Goldwyn's name is synonymous with the American movie from its beginnings through its golden age.