Vladimir Nabokov’s posthumous The Original of Laura, released nationwide today, is marketed as “A Novel in Fragments.” A more accurate title may have been “Fragments of a Novel” — as a collection of detachable notecards with little continuity, they represent only the bare outlines of the master’s final, unfinished work.

The Cornell English Department has become a staple in the American literary tradition. Although it isn’t readily apparent walking around the streets of Ithaca, American literature has benefited greatly from the work of notable Cornellians, some within the now 105 year-old Creative Writing program. The program offered to students its Centennial Plus Five reading series this semester in order to celebrate their impressive literary legacy and offer students access to the wide array of literary studies Cornell has to offer.

Roughly a month ago, we passed the one-year anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace — one of our generation’s greatest writers, a veritable genius — with disappointingly little fanfare here at Cornell. As far as I can tell, our university’s English department, which normally does a fabulous job celebrating good writing, neglected to mark the occasion at all.

Wallace, who killed himself on Sep. 12, 2008, at the age of 46, deserves better.

Toni Morrison M.A. ’55, the only living American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, came to Cornell last week to read from her newest novel, A Mercy, and to participate in a panel discussion. Renowned for her unique, poetic style and for interrogating the past and its legacy, Morrison has established herself as a novelist, critic and publisher. On Friday, The Sun sat down with the 78-year-old author to discuss language, history and writerly superstitions.

Feminism is not dead — it is part of a tradition. The tradition did not start in the 1960s, nor at the turn of the 20th century. It has been around for centuries, and it lives on. I know this because, quite simply, I can feel it. Some people don’t want to call it feminism, and maybe there’s a better name for it. But I haven’t found it yet. Certain works of art and literature have shaped my understanding of what feminism stands for, by bringing into focus what I always knew but somehow ignored. For my last column at Cornell, I’d like to share them with you, in neither chronological nor alphabetical order.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

A highly entertaining story about appreciating the work and love that goes into being a good mom.

If the verbal visionaries of Cornell’s nearly 105-year history of writing stood on each other’s shoulders; Nabokov as a base, cursing in Russian, Vonnegut next to him, muttering to himself about the absurdity of it, Pynchon above them, with a foot on each deltoid, shakily supporting Morrison, and so on — you’d have a ladder of literary giants to rival the clock tower. Even then, despite this towering tradition, the adrenaline-and-laughter inducing irreverence and innovation of Junot Díaz, MFA ’95, displayed to the delight of many in the Cornell community last week, would be enough, sure as Ithaca is cold, to make Uncle Ezra roll over in his grave and call for a pen. The Dominican-born author returned to campus Feb.

Three well-respected alumni authors drove students to delay the start of their weekend on Friday afternoon and gather for a panel discussion in Kauffman Auditorium.

Junot Díaz MFA ’95, Julie Schumacher MFA ’86 and Melissa Bank MFA ’88, three published writers and three graduates of Cornell’s MFA program, offered curious listeners and hopeful writers a look into the world of 21st century fiction writing. At the afternoon panel, they fielded questions from the audience, lending advice to eager minds. Later that evening, they held a reading in Rockefeller Hall, sharing their works before a standing-room-only audience.

What with the ghosts of Nabokov, Vonnegut and Pynchon haunting its corridors, Goldwin Smith Hall must have felt quite comfortable to former Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who stopped by Ithaca on Thursday, October 2nd as part of the Creative Writing Program’s Writers at Cornell reading series. The poet, a native of Belgrade who moved to the United States at the age of 15, has won numerous accolades for his terse and often dark poetry, including the Wallace Stevens Award, a MacArthur Fellowship and the Pultizer Prize. Decked out in a brown leather jacket and his trademark tinted glasses, the 70-year-old poet sat down with The Sun a few hours before the reading in the office of English professor J. Robert Lennon: