Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. Please note: Editorial Studies works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link, and fill out the appropriate web form. / A Fine and Growing Art is an annotated edition of letters and other documents chronicling the intertwining relationships and careers of Norman Mailer, James Jones, and William Styron, three prominent figures in American literature of the past century. I have endeavored to collect every surviving letter exchanged between the principals; I also include letters of other interlocutors, and published writings in which the principals discuss one another (or are discussed by others), insofar as these collateral documents touch informatively upon the principals' relationships with one another. A Fine and Growing Art is an elaborated three-way conversation, bringing forward expressions of opinion and feeling both public (in the sense of published, and often prominently so) and candid (in the reserved company of friends, or even in the near-secrecy of an unsent draft). Often funny, occasionally outrageous, consistently engaging, A Fine and Growing Art begins to unravel the mysteries long surrounding these three literary titans-about their friendships particularly, their feuds also, their evolving art, and how it all came to pass. / 2031-01-01