THE QUEST to discover one’s true identity is a central theme in much of world literature. Zeyn Joukha-dar’s new novel, The Thirty Names of Night, explores this issue from a multiplicity of angles.

[Daryl] Palmer is especially good at digging deeper into Cather’s early stories, which have too often been dismissed or treated as journeywork by past critics.

            There are discussions of beauty and art here, including Wilde’s concern that art should not raise nature on high (reminiscent of J. D. McClatchy’s view that nature was an uncongenial subject for poetry, suitable only as a backdrop for human issues). One of the best is a revisit to Crane’s “The Bridge,” in which the phrase “Appalachian Spring” appears, the source for the title of Aaron Copland’s ballet score (courtesy of Martha Graham).

The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In, edited by Janine Utell, contains essays by sixteen scholars in the fields of comics studies, gender studies, and popular culture. Bechdel, who lives in Vermont with her wife, artist Holly Rae Taylor, was awarded a Mac-Arthur Fellowship in 2014. This is the first book to focus entirely on scholarship about her major works: Dykes to Watch Out For, Fun Home, and Are You My Mother?

No Modernism without Lesbians is important for 2020 because it rips apart the prevailing patriarchal model. What Souhami calls for is abandoning the Modernist canon and rebuilding it one lesbian at a time to create a new, inclusive, 21st-century model. This project will send readers back, not only to a cast of characters that Souhami has spent her life compiling, but to works of others writing about lesbians and their role in supporting and advancing the arts.

So, was Calamity Jane a lesbian, or what we would call gender fluid, or something else altogether? In light of all the other tall tales and outright lies that were perpetuated by and about her, that question may never be answered.