Newman Studies Journal

Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2009

Newman in Twentieth-Century American Literature
Fitzgerald, Lewis, and O’Connor

This essay traces Newman’s rich legacy in modern American literature in the writings of three prominent American writers of the last century: F. Scott Fitzgerald, who plays off of Newman’s definition of a gentleman in his The Beautiful and Damned (1922); Sinclair Lewis, who connects the figure of Carlyle Vesper to Newman in Gideon Planish (1943); and Flannery O’Connor, who mentioned Newman in four published letters, and whose artistic vision was shaped appreciably by Newman’s Apologia and his Grammar of Assent.