Working (Modern) Man

Early Modernism in America fiction marks the birth of several major new literary styles and techniques -- stream-of-consciousness (though Joyce and Woolf were practicing the technique even before them), a focus on first-person narratives, and an obsession with ambiguity, with a purposeful obtuseness that was lacking in the much clearer, much more deliberately clear work of earlier centuries -- while it also the advancement and adaptation of several older techniques, dialect and regionalism becoming particularly prevalent focuses. Writers, coming out of World War I and very similar experiences, had witnessed the certain "truths" of the old world topple in a mere matter of years, as new movements in politics, economics, art and philosophy emerged from the fire and challenged everything everyone had once held dear.

Hence, why the themes in these works deal so much with the overturning of the old and the introduction of the new. In Faulkner's "Barn Burning," the old certainty of relationships between landed, working tenants and their landlords if spat upon entirely by the Snopes' patriarch, who has no respect for his landlords, property, or even his children. He is a new type of nihilistic, self-destructive monster. Similarly but contrarily, Fitzgerald covers the prevalence of property in his story "Babylon Revisited," deals with this lost generation's desperate attempts to cover up their newfound emptiness by overindulging in the extravagences of the past, all the while knowing their consumptive natures are only dooming them all the more certainly.

Old issues of race and provincialism were likewise challenged by writers such as Porter and Hurston, who did not, as writers of old had, identify themselves based solely on these criteria. Nor did they reject them, though, opting instead to embrace those aspects of them that made them unique and actually examine them. After all, with the old assumptions and stereotypes attached to race and region gone, there was all the more reason to dig into these labels to find the truth waiting behind them.

These concers, as well as the unique style of the writing, lend this period of fiction a very distinct shade, one that is particularly philosophical. All in all, a very rich time in the history of American literature.

More Poetry Than America Could Shake a Stick At

Goodness, but that's a lot of poetry; practically every major American poet from the early 20th century and some going on into the later half, too. From the sentimental, sometimes maudlin homespun poetry of Robert Frost to the modernist styling of T.S. Eliot and Stevens, all the way to the bizarre, clipped and frenetic works of E.E. Cumming, there's no doubt that this week's studies examined the width and breadth of American poetry and styles. Most interesting to note, though, is the debt that these poets owe their forebears (no doubt this is by design).

For in the works of these poets, especially in their contrasts one with the other, we can see that there is a distinct shift from the more traditional, Eurpoean classical styles to a Modernist, America style. But without the knowledge we have of Dickinson, Whitman and others, we would not be so well aware of just where this particularly American tradition first arises. No doubt these two giants' influence had much to do with the development of their torchbearers' work; the similarities in style between Stevens and Dickinson, for instance, are so close as to be identical in some instances. This survey of development in American literature has always been one of the most interesting parts of this curriculum, and nowhere more than here, where the juxtaposition of old-fashioned poets of the new age and the avant garde poets of said age reveals the debt they both owe to their literary ancestors.

Regionalism: now in flavors other than vanilla.

As far as I can tell, "regionalism" in reference to American literature means nothing more than subpar works by Black, Female and Southern writers. After all, the labels are coined to differentiate these authors not on their particular qualities as a writer, but on their particular qualities as a person. No real writer should ever have to hide behind the label of "woman" or "minority" in order to prove the worth of their work; that simply defeats the purpose! Too bad that the authors in this week's selections are by no means the exception to that rule.

The worst of the offenders is Kate Chopin, whom the Norton Anthology even identifies to be "shallow" and "thin"! And yet they keep her in the canon because? Because she is a Southern woman who was one of the first Southern women to complain about the restrictions of social mores. Her writing is adolescent at best, attempting for "style" and coming up with...nothing but a pale imitation of Southern dialect and customs. In fact, her use of dialect, unlike Twain's, is never masterful, is always overbearing and unnatural. It's as if she hides behind dialect to disguise the fact that her dialogue is never worth a damn. Gilam and her "Yellow Wallpaper," a thinly veiled autobiographical piece, lacks even the hint of dialect to pull it through; it's simply a bland, boring, self-righteous little tirade about the evils of the patriarchy. And without even a solution to them! Just useless vitriol hoping to...to what? Win other women to her cause? Funny, because she even acknowledges that most women will not be able to read the drat thing in "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper." Finally, Edith Wharton is better off resigned to the trashbin of history. Being droll is not by nature being witty, being cynical is not by nature being intelligent, and the "twist" at the story's end is forgettable. Best to forget this nonsense, especially when James' "Daisy Miller" is incredibly similar in content and yet infinitely better, rendering this piece completely superfluous.

Dunbar and Lazarus' poetry is forgettable on the best of days; the only reason that Lazarus is even remembered is because her poetry is attached to the Statue of Liberty, though I dare say most people are only capable of remembering the lines "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free," all while forgetting that this is part of a poem and that the poet is for some unknown reason considered famous.

I feel that Dubois isn't even worth mentioning, especially not in a Major that is more than anything concerned with the great works of FICTION and POETRY (which would be my biggest complaint with this course: if we're going to read NONFICTION [something we rarely do in other English classes] why spend so much of that time reading drab historical accounts of an obnoxious religious bent and demands for equality when would could be reading more of Emerson or William James, both of whom are eminent philosophers/intellectuals in their own rights?]). There is not much to be gained from a long outdated, long dead policy on White/Black integration, other than to notice that one particular man, instead of using his talents for himself and his own betterment, used them to demand equality from his ostensible owners for himself and those of his race. Where he writes there is no style to speak of, where he speaks there is no thought to pick up, just dull wind whistling and kicking up the dust between the pages. If this was a class in sociology or American history, I might understand his inclusion, but in a class devoted to the aesthetics of writing, I cannot fathom why he is in here unless he is meant to dissuade students from following in his footsteps.

Of them all, only Jewett has written anything of lasting work. Slow as "The White Heron" is to begin, it is a knockout story, somehow managing to deeply explore themes of immortality and delicacy of human sexuality in a scant six pages, all while maintaining a consistently high level of quality. The imagery is particularly noteworthy; Sylvia's view of the woods from where she stands atop the evergreen -- and her climb up it -- is breathtaking. This is the sort of work that deserves a full class' worth of attention, but because of the interference of these other, lesser works, does not receive it. Here is a story that does not use the vain and shallow recourse of hiding behind authorial labels to earn its worth; it does that through the telling.

Regionalism, Realism and Naturalism Part 1

Though I understand what the title of this week's study is referencing (Twain introduced regionalism -- particularly regional dialects and vernacular -- into American literature in a big way; James and Howells were always striving after the perfect realist novel, and Crane and London were, by the very dent of their wild lives, born naturalists [see what I done there?]) but I would find that too easy and too much discussed a piece of American literary history. Put simply, it has been done to death. Now, I'm not replacing it with an untouched topic -- indeed, it would be accurate to say that my topic has also been done to death -- but it is a focus that I particularly have not much been exposed to: the idea of these men as America's first great prose fiction stylists.

Yes, Fenimore and Poe and Hawthorne and Melville all predate them or are contemporary with them (and we won't even go into the poets of the time) but their styles were a good bit more subdued. Even Poe, for all of his Gothic, morbid bluster did not have complete control over his style. In many ways, they let their styles take over their writing to the point that they became pale parodies of themselves(or in Hawthorne's case, his style was so dry and unremarkable that it's a wonder he's still remembered). Not so Twain, who managed to introduce the first real strain of American comedy into literature, focusing heavily on irony, paradox and the contrast between his regional saps' low-dialect and their occasional high-thoughts (case in point: Finn's complex decision to turn against the laws of his father and country [which are highly immoral] and his own certainty that in choosing this moral high-ground he is doomed and damned). Or James, who, despite his seemingly dry work, is a master pensman, his tightly controlled prose disguising the incredible complexity of his characters and the instrumental importance of each sentence.

Crane and London, while rougher, are by no means inferior to their cousins, for they wrote with a verve that echoed their own harsh and all-too violent lifestyles. They were men of the wild, if not literally then figuratively, and their style reflects this. Tough, lean, with very little in the way of flourish, they might be considered in some odd ways precursors to Hemingway. Their themes -- particularly their focus on the brutal, nasty brevity of life -- are much more concerned with the nail of tooth and claw than their contemporaries, who were focused much more on civility and social conduct and all of the ironies therein. Such topics called for a much more brutal style, a style that one might at first miss. But second readings will assure the attentive audience that these two did not spend their time hammering out long, needless passages full of flowery imagery and sentimental moralizing. They were more than anything concerned with capturing the "truth" about life in an interesting mirror-image of James and Howells, who were attempting to do the same through realism.

Interesting that two approaches to achieving the same end -- to capture life as it really is in fiction -- could give birth to such widely different styles. Maybe, then, the differences between realism and naturalism hint that the whole picture of life is so much larger than any one style is capable of capturing? At any rate, the joy in these authors is not that they capture the complexities of life in their work (they are so prone to sentimentality and to over-simplifying something as infinitely complex as life), but in the beauty of their styles, which arise so naturally out of their individual concerns.

Fulfilling the Promise: Race and Gender in Ante-Bellum America

There is something about "minority literature" that I am inherently adverse to. It's not that I have a problem with minorities making work; that would be insane. My problem is that most of the work qualified as "minority work" isn't terribly good; the fact that it must be prefaced with the disclaimer that it IS "minority work" to legitimize it should be warning enough. No one would ever be dumb enough to marginalize Emily Dickinson's work as "women's literature," because it stands perfectly well on its own. It is landmark work! Much unlike what was on the agenda for this week, which was devoid of powerful style and which never managed to say anything more than "slaves are humans, ergo slavery is a bad thing!" (well, I suppose I should except Margaret Fuller; she wasn't actually all that bad).

The problem with Stowe and Jacobs is that there work is DULL! It is moralizing, simpering and trite, yes, but these faults might be excusable if the writing wasn't so lifeless. There is no variety to the sentence structure, no enthusiasm in the work, just very boring, journalistic, matter-of-fact recounting of events that MIGHT sound interesting (a leap across a frozen river, a ride through the wilderness in the dead of night, hiding out in an attic for years) but are in execution forgettable. It is as if in their haste to write about the evils of slavery that Jacobs and Stowe forgot to care about their subject long enough to invest it with the proper energy. For all the life here, the stories may as well be covering the lives of rocks. What should anyone care about the evils of slavery when one cannot even begin to imagine these characters as REAL? And yet, everyone in Jacobs' autobiography DID exist; what does that say for her? Not much, I'd imagine; though one can hand wave this lack of stylistic power by pointing out her own history as a slave, that's a defense of the lowest order.

Douglas, for the obnoxious, self-righteous tone of his work, is a powerful speaker and writer, with just a dash of the mad prophet in his words. Too bad that he wastes so much time railing about injustice and inadequacy and the evils of slavery that he ever forgot to write anything interesting. Maybe this is just the literary snob in me, but quite frankly, I have grown very sick of writing that is blatantly political and written for "moral" reasons; such writings belong in the ethical field of philosophy (which seems to me the lowest discipline in the field) or in sociology, where questions of utilitarian good popular. Again, this is not to say that there AREN'T excellent works about race in the American tradition -- Invisible Man is a classic by anyone's standards -- but these works are not soapboxes and speaking platforms so much as they are an honest exploration of the subject; Invisible Man is actually, in the end, a story most concerned with identity, a theme of the most vital importance, while Douglas and his contemporaries are only interested in demanding there rights instead of actually securing them. Interesting as his words are, at the heart of it he is just demanding freedom, something that, sad to say, is not just a right, but something that must be taken by force.

At least Margaret Fuller has the grace to be not only eloquent but relevant. Instead of railing about how women should be entitled to the same rights as men, she charts out the differences between men and women and suggests how they work together. There is in her none of the feminazi that is so despicable, just a well-reasoned, well-written and very readable account of how men and women might make the most of their relationships with each other, in every sense of that phrase. Why she had to be shoved into the "minority" section with the rest of these writers, I do not know; her writings just as much address the plight of men as women, showcasing her multidimensional thinking, and she manages to remain immensely readable, despite how off-putting the subject matter might seem at first.

There's more to say about how despicable the label of "minority" writer is, but I won't waste my time ranting about it now; there is a topic that deserves a very radical, thorough treatment, one I am not equipped to give here.

American Poetry: The Loud and the Quiet

How funny that the two major American poets of the 19th century are such contrasts: Whitman, the quintessentially "manly man", a massive, vibrant spirit whose work was to encompass the spirit of the Americas and who was to be the poet laureate of the new nation that Emerson demanded, and Dickinson, the demure, secluded woman of no great aspirations or designs. Fitting that they differed so greatly in style, as well. Whitman preferred an energetic free-verse, a structureless, malleable form that allowed him to shift and swerve and mold his style at a moment's notice, allowing him the freedom to write as he needed. His poems were as massive as the themes he was tackling (Leaves of Grass being a book-length work). Dickinson, by contrast, preferred a style that was tightly structured, pithy and delivered in tidbits; one would be hard-pressed to find any poems of hers that go beyond a few hundred lines.

As is fitting, they were focused on very different themes. There was nothing that held Dickinson's interests more than death, than obscurity; Emerson celebrated nothing besides life, extending that word to encompass everything that happened to him and everything that could happen to him. There could be no better representative American poets, then, than these two, who between them attempted to encompass everything that poetry could. In some ways, this opposition, these vivid contrasts, do not so much separate them as combine them. For between the two of them, they have established American poetry in a way that no one before them or no one since has, and so are BOTH the quintessential American poet that Emerson called for. Their interests were never the maudlin sentimentality or enlightened morality that so enraptured their British forerunners, but the pleasures and fears of the material and the mortal.

Expanding the Purvue of American Letters:

Until this week, our studies have focused on American literature of a particular bent: personal reflections and musings, delivered mostly through essays and journals, with only a few other forms (a poem or two, a political document) poking their head through at points. Interesting that American prose fiction, philosophy and poetry have yet to be explored with any depth, the former two having been unmentioned until now!

Well, until now: and with them, we see major American prose form (fiction) emerge, while a still-undeveloped strain of writing peaks and then disappears here with the two preeminent American philosophers: Emerson and Thoreau. Likewise, the scene of American fiction (if you believe high-school and lower-level college courses) peaks here, too, with the presence of Poe, Washington Irving, Cooper, and (most importantly) Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is interesting to note that of the 4 fiction writers, only Poe paves new ground thematically; Cooper and Irving are still most interested in American individualism and the American character as it exists in such turbulent, dangerous and shifting times, as well as its impressive ability to respond to the demands wrought by such a system. Hawthorne is still obsessed with the conflict between the individual and the community that plagued every religious-centric community in his time and before it. While they do not necessarily agree with their predecessors (Hawthorne seems to advocate the value of individuality and warn against the danger of dogma and the will of the mass, while Cooper and Irving seem to celebrate the wilderness and its power), they still focus on the same themes.

Only Poe dares to contemplate spheres beyond theirs, and not just simply in his obsession with the supernatural (a topic that he treats not so much with religious reverence as with fear). Where Hawthorne, Irving and Cooper all focus on love to some extent (it is the focus of The Scarlet Letter, van Winkle has a wife who is central to the story and one of the subplots in The Last of the Mohicans focuses on the betrothal of the Alice to a Duncan) none of them raise it to the level of central interests that Poe does. Love for Poe is not a fancy or a convenient avenue by which he can preach another point; it is the central focus of everything in his writing. The problem with all of their foci is that they are, generally, maudlin and lacking in any real depth. Poe only mourns love, never hoping to explain it or explore anything beyond the pain inherent in it, and the others are quick to expound their messages tritely. This is not to demean the power of their prose; stylistically, though they are generally accessible to the modern reader (they are incredibly verbal, these writers, and quick to switch syntax and to manipulate structure where it suits them), they are brilliant and command a power over the written word that has secured them their rightful place in history.

Our philosophers lack the stylistic gifts of our storytellers. Emerson is prone to obfuscation and rambling. His love of tangents muddles his impressive command of language and logic, and his points are either never explained or reiterated to excess. Thoreau is as boring a writer as they come, with a dry, boastful prose that reads less like philosophy and more like a journal he wrote to reassure himself of his masculinity. Nevertheless, these two begin to codify the rugged individualism and romanticism that embodies so much of the American character, adding a dash of metaphysics that, to the unobservant, upends religion (where in reality it merely replaces it). This does not stop prevent them from being fascinating, though, as they are truly the first American intellectuals and are in many ways the last. No American thinker since Emerson has had his impact: without Emerson, it is doubtful Nietzsche as we know him would exist, if not for the ideas he contributed to Nietzsche, then for the stylistic tendencies he lent the mad philosopher. Without Emerson, who would have synthesized the disparate body of American attitudes and writings into this coherent whole that embodies and explains so much of the American character?

Sadly, Thoreau is little more than a footnote in Emerson's shadow (he seems to admit as much by his incessant hero worship). All that is truly interesting in his character is how he bridges the gap between classic American frontiersman and city-dwelling dilettante. Much as he would love to be a woodsmen, independent from the world at large, he admits that his work in Walden is little more than a dare, a task he undertook just to prove that he could carry it through. Enabled to pursue his "rugged", "experimental" lifestyle by virtue of improvements in technology and standards of living, Thoreau is the bridge between modern American attitudes and earlier American attitudes.

Now the only link missing in this literary chain is a significant contribution from the poets!

Defining the American Character

If the last section of readings focused on establishing a colonial presence in Ameria -- with an especial focus on survival in religious and material senses -- this section of writings finds a group of writers focused on defining (and thereby establishing) what is the American character. While John Edwards is the only of these writers to focus on the religious character of America, there is no denying that Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God has had a particularly strong shaping hold on the American spirit. Surely it seems applicable to only the Puritan communities which he was addressing, but Edwards established a strain of American character that is prevalent to this day: a strain emphasizes the strength of the individual and self-determination while paradoxically acknowledging that life is, in fact, at the whim of higher-forces one has no sway over (here, God, but in the future society, culture, genetics, upbringing, 'religion' and other massive, invisible forces).

Benjamin Franlin likewise furthers this emphasis on the individual's capabilities, going so far as to try and perfect himself through nothing more than his own will. Not coincidentally, his fellow founding father, Thomas Jefferson, embodies many of these same principles in the Declaration of Independence, the GOSPEL of self-determination and self-control. Both of these men believed in the strength of an individual's will and the individual's self, so much it might be said they maid a religion out of the practice. Certainly they made a nation out of it, challenging the dominant mode of servile obedience that had dominated the peasantries thoughts in Europe for centuries (though they don't realize that they, too, doubt the power of the individual as Edward did and demand a guiding force, here the will of the masses).

While she is not writing in the same modes as the other writers in this section, Phillis Wheatley's poetry likewise emphasizes the glory of the individual; how relevant this is when one considers that she began life in America as a slave. Yet she does not seem to see slavery as a bad thing; in fact, she sees it in many ways as THE reason she was able to develop her identity at all (primarily through the influence of religion and education). What is generally regarded as indisputably evil by the majority of Americans today (and is the biggest blight on our history) was, to some slaves, the best thing that could ever happen to them.

This paradoxical strain that persists throughout the American character to this day is truly fascinating; on one hand, there is an extreme emphasis on the power of each individual to build themselves wholesale out of nothing, and yet, we are quick to acknowledge that we are not islands, that we do in fact depend on our interaction with the world to change. Only Hecter St. John de Crevecoeur seemed to acknowledge this in his writings, which were not so primarily concerned with SHAPING the American character (as the writings of his peers were, whether or not they realized it) but merely describing what was happening in American thought. It is something that bears more study, for the modern American character is quickly becoming, through globalization and cultural imperialism, one of the most dominant global characters, and yet it has changed so very little over these last two hundred years.

Art Imitating Life: New Horizons

It seems no surprise that literature would be affected by the experiences of the author in real life. After all, where else is there to draw inspiration from but the sum total of one's experience and knowledge? Interesting to note how the experiences of the first American colonial authors' influenced their work, though: faced with a new frontier and very little knowledge of what awaited them, with very little to no ability to turn back, limited resources and very little practical survival skills those early American writers were faced with one subject that dominated above all others: the brute struggle for survival.

Or it WOULD have been the focus of their work if they did not have one other highly influential element: the subject of religion. With this consideration, what might have been very simple travelogues and paltry journal accounts about woodland explorations and skirmishes with the Indians turns into a narrative about a New Chosen people whose very souls are at stake. More than a battle for brute survival, this a battle for the very survival of the soul and -- consequently -- the world. What's most interesting, though, is how these two aspects are constantly interrelated: all mentions of the survival of the soul are precepts that are meant to help the colonists work together.

William Bradford's accounts of the founding of Plymouth Plantation are rife with references to God's divine and right judgment and how it is casts upon those who would destroy the unity of the group (such as the callous young sailor). Winthrop's model of Christian charity is meant to keep the community together (he even talks of the cohesion between bodily parts and the failure of the body should certain body parts fail to do their job correctly. Even if this is an allusion to the BODY OF CHRIST, it still emphasizes a communal aspect and communal survival. Mary Rowlandson sees the very destruction of her village, her family and her friends as the wrath of God made manifest.

Everything the colonists are undergoing is seen as a new test for a New Chosen people, with references to covenants abounding in their discourse. Though this was certainly not uncommon in literature before the colonization (considering that the vast majority of all work produced from the time that the Roman Church became dominant was concerned WITH the Church), it did lead to the creation of a new type of literature that dealt not with the philosophical and metaphysical weight of Christianity, but with the very pragmatic aspects of survival that were attached to -- in some cases consequent -- of the spiritual aspects of survival. What occurred in the physical world was a mirror of what occurred in the metaphysical realm of god which was in turn triggered by the actions of the people in the physical world! This concern seems to have a large amount of relevance and presence even up into today's fiction; it might be said, then, that early American literature established a particular flavor of writing that would prove endemic to the country's body of written work.