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1925: A Literary Encyclopedia
748 pages, Hardcover
Published March 11, 2025
25 people want to read
About the author
Tom Lutz
61 books76 followersI have just published the third volume of my travel writing, THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS ()October 2021). A volume of photographic portraits of people I've met on the road is coming out in February 2022, PORTRAITS: MOMENTS OF INTIMACY ON THE ROAD.
A book of philosophical and literary critical reflections, AIMLESSNESS, was published in January 2021 by Columbia University Press.
My first novel, BORN SLIPPY: A NOVEL was published in January, 2020 (Repeater/PRH).
I've just sent a sequel, STILL SLIPPY, to my agent.
I am the author of two earlier books of travel narrative — And The Monkey Learned Nothing and Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World — the cultural histories Doing Nothing and Crying; literary histories Cosmopolitan Vistas and American Nervousness, 1903; pieces for New York Times, LA Times, ZYZZYVA, Exquisite Corpse, New Republic, Salon, Black Clock, Iowa Review, and other places.
I’m a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the UC Riverside, the founding editor in chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, founder of The LARB Radio Hour, The LARB Quarterly Journal, The LARB/USC Publishing Workshop, and LARB Books. I am a part-time musician, an amateur photographer, and a full-time dilettante. I live in Los Angeles.
A book of philosophical and literary critical reflections, AIMLESSNESS, was published in January 2021 by Columbia University Press.
My first novel, BORN SLIPPY: A NOVEL was published in January, 2020 (Repeater/PRH).
I've just sent a sequel, STILL SLIPPY, to my agent.
I am the author of two earlier books of travel narrative — And The Monkey Learned Nothing and Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World — the cultural histories Doing Nothing and Crying; literary histories Cosmopolitan Vistas and American Nervousness, 1903; pieces for New York Times, LA Times, ZYZZYVA, Exquisite Corpse, New Republic, Salon, Black Clock, Iowa Review, and other places.
I’m a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the UC Riverside, the founding editor in chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, founder of The LARB Radio Hour, The LARB Quarterly Journal, The LARB/USC Publishing Workshop, and LARB Books. I am a part-time musician, an amateur photographer, and a full-time dilettante. I live in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 26, 2025
An absolutely delightful reference book for the devoted reader, this is more than a simple alphabetical-by-author compendium of all the (noteworthy) American books published in 1925--it incorporates major figures who contributed to the culture of the times like Duke Ellington and Charlie Chaplin with his film The Gold Rush, but also includes cultural elements like "Colonization" and "Emile Coue, Normalcy and The Crowd", as well as the important journals published in that year and the major news items.
But the most wonderful thing about 1925: A Literary Encyclopedia is the voice of our Virgil, Tom Lutz, founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books--a most charming and skilled reader, and it's one of the book's great pleasures just to read his witty and insightful commentary. I discovered so many books and authors I never heard of and want to read, as well as fascinating entries of books I probably will never read, but am happy to know of their existence. And simply enjoyed Lutz's voice on this most entertaining expedition.
The entries vary in length from a paragraph to several pages, and include books by writers we know well but aren't acquainted with the entry they published in 1925 (for example, Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense--which I went right out and bought), as well as major novels published at the pinnacle of that writer's career (Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans, Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Dreiser's An American Tragedy.).
I enjoyed discovering how that year took a sample of writers in a great cross section of career timelines--some at the very beginning of their careers (a 26 year old William Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches) alongside others one thought belonged to an earlier time but were still publishing (Joseph Conrad's Hearsay, Suspense, Laughing Anne--which was actually published the year following his death in 1924.)
There are novels, biographies, histories, memoirs, it's a treasury of culture pinned at that specific year for reasons the author gives in the introduction--post WW1, post the recession of 1924 when publishers held back books and then brought them out in the bull market of '25. TS Eliot's first Collected Poems came out that year, as did Alan Locke's anthology The New Negro, heralding the Harlem Renaissance. Anita Loos' fabulous sex comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes jostles with Willa Cather and her Professor's House, which leads to a general discussion of her work.
This would be a great gift for the reader for Christmas--not a. novel to be devoured and left behind, but a book to be taken out and browsed through many an evening, and opening doors we didn't even know were there. Bravo Tom Lutz!
But the most wonderful thing about 1925: A Literary Encyclopedia is the voice of our Virgil, Tom Lutz, founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books--a most charming and skilled reader, and it's one of the book's great pleasures just to read his witty and insightful commentary. I discovered so many books and authors I never heard of and want to read, as well as fascinating entries of books I probably will never read, but am happy to know of their existence. And simply enjoyed Lutz's voice on this most entertaining expedition.
The entries vary in length from a paragraph to several pages, and include books by writers we know well but aren't acquainted with the entry they published in 1925 (for example, Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense--which I went right out and bought), as well as major novels published at the pinnacle of that writer's career (Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans, Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Dreiser's An American Tragedy.).
I enjoyed discovering how that year took a sample of writers in a great cross section of career timelines--some at the very beginning of their careers (a 26 year old William Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches) alongside others one thought belonged to an earlier time but were still publishing (Joseph Conrad's Hearsay, Suspense, Laughing Anne--which was actually published the year following his death in 1924.)
There are novels, biographies, histories, memoirs, it's a treasury of culture pinned at that specific year for reasons the author gives in the introduction--post WW1, post the recession of 1924 when publishers held back books and then brought them out in the bull market of '25. TS Eliot's first Collected Poems came out that year, as did Alan Locke's anthology The New Negro, heralding the Harlem Renaissance. Anita Loos' fabulous sex comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes jostles with Willa Cather and her Professor's House, which leads to a general discussion of her work.
This would be a great gift for the reader for Christmas--not a. novel to be devoured and left behind, but a book to be taken out and browsed through many an evening, and opening doors we didn't even know were there. Bravo Tom Lutz!
Displaying 1 of 1 review