Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) explored the mind and man's relationship with nature. This excerpt is from his essay Self-Reliance. Emerson's style can be seen in the essays Nature and Self-Reliance. He wrote many letters to President Martin Van Buren noting that the removal of Cherokee Native Americans from their lands was an injustice. He was a Transcendentalist who protested against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality.

Passage adapted from "Self-Reliance" in Essays: First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are some of the main characters in Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novella, The Crying of Lot 49. The story followed Oedipa Maas in particular.

These are characters from Toni Morrison's 1987 novel, Beloved. Set shortly after the American Civil War, the book tells the story of escaped slave Sethe and her daughter Denver.

This is Saul Bellow. In addition to The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Herzog (1964), he wrote Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Seize the Day (1956), and Humboldt's Gift (1975). Bellow had one of the most prolific and successful literary careers of the 20th century. His first novel was released in 1944 and his last in 2000; he won the National Book Award three times in three decades, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976.

This is Willa Cather, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction focused on life on the American frontier, in addition to her many literary honors, Cather's image was also featured on a stamp. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is routinely in the discussion as one of the best "Western Novels" of all time, it details the fictional attempts of a Catholic bishop to establish a diocese in frontier New Mexico. My Ántonia (1918) is one of Cather's most highly regarded works, and the last novel in her Prairie Trilogy (the other two being O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915)).

This is Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection. The book takes its title from the famous Velvet Underground song “Heroin” and discusses addiction in rural America. The collection was adapted into a film of the same name in 1999.

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990), Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1918), and Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (2000) were all used as alternative answer choices. All of these books are collections of short fiction.

This is James Baldwin, whose books include the essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), and the novels Giovanni’s Room (1956), Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953) (Baldwin's first novel, a semi-autobiographical work in which the above characters appear), and Just Above My Head (1979). Baldwin also wrote poetry and plays and was concerned with racial, sexual, cultural, religious, and class identities in twentieth-century America.

This is Norman Mailer, who is also a journalist, an essay writer, and a screenwriter. He had a noted feud with Truman Capote, another of the options listed in the question.

The Naked and the Dead (1948) was Mailer's first novel, published when he was just 25 years old. The Executioner's Song won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer's last book was published in 2007, making for an impressive fifty-nine year active publishing career.

This is Truman Capote’s book. He was a pioneer in the genre of creative nonfiction, which combines the devices of literary fiction with journalistic reporting. His works of fiction include Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). In addition to being an author Capote was a noted personality in the 1960s and 70s, appearing frequently on late-night talk shows.

The work described is Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940 and set in a small town in 1930s Georgia.

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1961), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) were all provided as alternative options.