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The American Tradition in Literature
Literature of the Colonies and the Revolution.
1234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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September 25, 2017
This has long been used as a standard American Literature I and II textbook in many U.S. colleges, and the two-volume 1967 edition was the text used when I took those courses in 1971-1972. For a long time, I didn't list it here on my shelves, and didn't consider reviewing it. That's partly because it wasn't as formative an intellectual influence on me as my high-school British literature textbook, Adventures in English Literature, or remembered as sharply (although, interestingly, I can't even remember the title of my high-school American literature textbook, though I recall some selections, and a supplemental text), and partly because it's been hard to track down the exact edition in the Goodreads database, and even harder to get my hands on a physical copy to refer to for this review. (After graduating, I kept my copy, but in the many moves since then, it was a victim of downsizing.) However, I finally reflected that Goodreads combines every edition of a book into one database entry, anyway, so finding the exact edition there isn't so crucial; and I decided that together, the first volume of the 1967 edition and the 1974 one-volume edition, both of which the BC library where I work has, should supplement my memory well enough.
All three of the joint authors here were American academics, specializing in the study of American literature; it's not clear how they divided up the responsibilities for different parts of the text. (Interestingly, although Norton is of course a secular publisher, and the text was designed to be nonsectarian and appropriate for public colleges/universities, in 1967 that wasn't felt to require the purging of Christian participation in its preparation; co-author Long was chair of the English Dept. at Baylor Univ., a Southern Baptist school. If the text was being drafted today, 50 years later, it's not likely that he'd have been allowed to participate.) In the discussion below, I'll draw some comparisons between this and the only other American literature textbook I'm very familiar with, American Literature For Christian Schools by Raymond St. John (although the latter is designed mainly for high-school students, and as a one-volume edition is necessarily less broad in its selections).
Both texts divide the national literature into essentially the same four historical periods, which is pretty much the standard schema in the field: colonial/Revolutionary; the Romantic period (up through the Civil War); the Realist period from 1865 through the "long" 19th century; and the years since 1918. (St. John treated Walt Whitman with the pre-Civil War era, this book with the following period; his life actually straddled both.) As is normal for textbooks, the great bulk of both works are treatments of individual writers and selections from their works. (Most of these are followed by discussion questions in St. John's book, but this one lacks that feature.) The authors' introductory discussions for the four periods and for individual writers are about as long in both books, but those here tend to be blander and less controversial (for good or ill), and more inclined to view the historical narrative in triumphalist terms rather than as a decline from a Golden Age. (Personally, I don't think either schema corresponds very strictly to reality.) As best I recall, we didn't cover the period introductions much in class, nor all of the writers and selections; and my reading of the whole book was undoubtedly somewhat spotty, depending on what parts were assigned. (I read more than what was assigned but, because of the time element, not the entire book.)
For the colonial/Revolutionary period, St. John actually treats 17 writers/writings, compared to only 15 here. The writers and selections included have considerable overlap, but although Phillis Wheatley is treated in St. John's book, she's ignored entirely here --inexcusably, IMO. However, this is where I recall getting my first introduction to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, which I really liked a lot. Both books make heavy use, especially in this period, of writings that are utilitarian rather than literary in the real sense, such as sermons, diaries, historical and descriptive accounts, political tracts and speeches (for instance, Thomas Jefferson, dragged in here but not in the other book, belongs to the study of American history, not American literature), and of excerpting snippets from longer works, which are both pedagogical practices that I deplore.
Coverage of Romantic period writers here isn't really any more extensive overall than in St. John's book: 14 writers are treated here (compared to 13 there), but Abraham Lincoln was not a writer of belle lettres, however worthwhile his writings and speeches are to read in pursuit of other studies. Our authors here, however, do include the South Carolina poet Henry Timrod (although, alas, I don't recall actually reading any of his work.) Otherwise, the same writers, and many of the same selections, are included. I'd already been introduced to Hawthorne, Poe, and some of the poets as a kid, so their work wasn't new to me. But the entire text of Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (which I've reviewed separately) is included here, and this is where I read it. And I was also introduced here to Washington Irving's "Adventure of the German Student," and to the poetry of Emerson ("Concord Hymn" stayed with me across the years) and Whittier.
Since I only have the 1974 one-volume abridgment to supplement my memory of the second volume, I can't make exact numerical comparisons with St. John's book for it. (I'm guessing that most of the authors in the later edition were in the earlier one, even if I don't specifically recall them, since the former is shorter and would be more apt to have undergone deletions than additions; but the former adds some material that isn't in the latter, so this isn't an ironclad rule.) Where there are additions in the former, they're probably mostly of women and minority writers; and I don't recall that the coverage of these was markedly any better in the 1967 edition than St. John's. (He includes James Weldon Johnson, who isn't in the one-volume edition here.). For works written after 1922 and so under copyright when St. John produced his textbook, Norton had a lot more resources to pay copyright holder's fees than Bob Jones Univ. Press did, and this is reflected here. On the other hand, obviously nothing written after 1967 appeared in that edition of this work; but then, only one of St. John's selections was written after that date.
The selection I remember the most strongly from the second volume of the book is Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," but it's a negative memory, since I really disliked the story. On the other hand, it's probably a very effective introduction to that author's style and outlook. We could say the same for Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," which I didn't care much for either. T. S. Eliot is treated here (but not by St. John) as an American rather than a British writer, but I'd been introduced to him in high school in British literature class, and so think of him in that way. I remember liking poetry here by Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Some writers are represented by the same selections in both books (for instance, William Dean Howells by "Editha," Stephen Crane by "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and John Crowe Ransome by "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter.")
Overall, I'd recommend this as a good, broad introduction to American letters for a reader who wants, as it were, an overview of the territory. (Readers might, as I did, skip some parts.) There's likely to be reading here that everyone will like, though not all will necessarily like the same things. And if you're looking for a home schooling text (there's not, IMO, much difference between what high school juniors and college sophomores can handle, if the former have been well-taught and take their education seriously) or even a college or high school text for a public or private schooling context, it could still serve adequately with some supplementation, especially for the post-1967 years.
All three of the joint authors here were American academics, specializing in the study of American literature; it's not clear how they divided up the responsibilities for different parts of the text. (Interestingly, although Norton is of course a secular publisher, and the text was designed to be nonsectarian and appropriate for public colleges/universities, in 1967 that wasn't felt to require the purging of Christian participation in its preparation; co-author Long was chair of the English Dept. at Baylor Univ., a Southern Baptist school. If the text was being drafted today, 50 years later, it's not likely that he'd have been allowed to participate.) In the discussion below, I'll draw some comparisons between this and the only other American literature textbook I'm very familiar with, American Literature For Christian Schools by Raymond St. John (although the latter is designed mainly for high-school students, and as a one-volume edition is necessarily less broad in its selections).
Both texts divide the national literature into essentially the same four historical periods, which is pretty much the standard schema in the field: colonial/Revolutionary; the Romantic period (up through the Civil War); the Realist period from 1865 through the "long" 19th century; and the years since 1918. (St. John treated Walt Whitman with the pre-Civil War era, this book with the following period; his life actually straddled both.) As is normal for textbooks, the great bulk of both works are treatments of individual writers and selections from their works. (Most of these are followed by discussion questions in St. John's book, but this one lacks that feature.) The authors' introductory discussions for the four periods and for individual writers are about as long in both books, but those here tend to be blander and less controversial (for good or ill), and more inclined to view the historical narrative in triumphalist terms rather than as a decline from a Golden Age. (Personally, I don't think either schema corresponds very strictly to reality.) As best I recall, we didn't cover the period introductions much in class, nor all of the writers and selections; and my reading of the whole book was undoubtedly somewhat spotty, depending on what parts were assigned. (I read more than what was assigned but, because of the time element, not the entire book.)
For the colonial/Revolutionary period, St. John actually treats 17 writers/writings, compared to only 15 here. The writers and selections included have considerable overlap, but although Phillis Wheatley is treated in St. John's book, she's ignored entirely here --inexcusably, IMO. However, this is where I recall getting my first introduction to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, which I really liked a lot. Both books make heavy use, especially in this period, of writings that are utilitarian rather than literary in the real sense, such as sermons, diaries, historical and descriptive accounts, political tracts and speeches (for instance, Thomas Jefferson, dragged in here but not in the other book, belongs to the study of American history, not American literature), and of excerpting snippets from longer works, which are both pedagogical practices that I deplore.
Coverage of Romantic period writers here isn't really any more extensive overall than in St. John's book: 14 writers are treated here (compared to 13 there), but Abraham Lincoln was not a writer of belle lettres, however worthwhile his writings and speeches are to read in pursuit of other studies. Our authors here, however, do include the South Carolina poet Henry Timrod (although, alas, I don't recall actually reading any of his work.) Otherwise, the same writers, and many of the same selections, are included. I'd already been introduced to Hawthorne, Poe, and some of the poets as a kid, so their work wasn't new to me. But the entire text of Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (which I've reviewed separately) is included here, and this is where I read it. And I was also introduced here to Washington Irving's "Adventure of the German Student," and to the poetry of Emerson ("Concord Hymn" stayed with me across the years) and Whittier.
Since I only have the 1974 one-volume abridgment to supplement my memory of the second volume, I can't make exact numerical comparisons with St. John's book for it. (I'm guessing that most of the authors in the later edition were in the earlier one, even if I don't specifically recall them, since the former is shorter and would be more apt to have undergone deletions than additions; but the former adds some material that isn't in the latter, so this isn't an ironclad rule.) Where there are additions in the former, they're probably mostly of women and minority writers; and I don't recall that the coverage of these was markedly any better in the 1967 edition than St. John's. (He includes James Weldon Johnson, who isn't in the one-volume edition here.). For works written after 1922 and so under copyright when St. John produced his textbook, Norton had a lot more resources to pay copyright holder's fees than Bob Jones Univ. Press did, and this is reflected here. On the other hand, obviously nothing written after 1967 appeared in that edition of this work; but then, only one of St. John's selections was written after that date.
The selection I remember the most strongly from the second volume of the book is Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," but it's a negative memory, since I really disliked the story. On the other hand, it's probably a very effective introduction to that author's style and outlook. We could say the same for Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," which I didn't care much for either. T. S. Eliot is treated here (but not by St. John) as an American rather than a British writer, but I'd been introduced to him in high school in British literature class, and so think of him in that way. I remember liking poetry here by Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Some writers are represented by the same selections in both books (for instance, William Dean Howells by "Editha," Stephen Crane by "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and John Crowe Ransome by "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter.")
Overall, I'd recommend this as a good, broad introduction to American letters for a reader who wants, as it were, an overview of the territory. (Readers might, as I did, skip some parts.) There's likely to be reading here that everyone will like, though not all will necessarily like the same things. And if you're looking for a home schooling text (there's not, IMO, much difference between what high school juniors and college sophomores can handle, if the former have been well-taught and take their education seriously) or even a college or high school text for a public or private schooling context, it could still serve adequately with some supplementation, especially for the post-1967 years.
January 9, 2023
One of my rescued books. I have a lot of these college textbook collections. My copy is a semi-beaten up paperback. The painting of an elderly Walt Whitman on the cover resembles a self-portrait by Paul Cezanne. This book replaces a two-volume set and comes in at a whopping 1,921 pages. Yowza! I do NOT plan on reading all of it and will instead browse the contents for old favorites and haven't reads. I've already mostly skipped over the colonial stuff. List night I re-read for the umpteenth time "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - an old favorite. As I read I imagined various creative ways a reading might be performed. Like with using children for some of it. Men and women both. Teenagers too... a chorus... a whole troop of actors and non-professionals. With images playing on a screen behind.
And off I go into the late 18th century/bad prose heaven. Washington Irving is the best and J. F. Cooper is the worst. Included is the final battling scene from "The Last of the Mohicans" in which Cooper uses twice as many words a necessary to describe the various ends of Magua, Cora and Uncas, thereby draining all the excitement and tension out of the scene.
- "The Last of the Mohicans" features a character named Alice Munro> I just realized that.
Meanwhile, "Rip Van Winkle " is still an awesome story. Correct pronunciation = Reep Fun Vinkle.
Next up - Hawthorne, and more "issues." The editors call "The House of the Seven Gables" a "great novel"! Oh really? I thought it was pretty mediocre. "My Kinsman Major Molineaux" was as good as ever, but I skipped "Young Goodman Brown" this time around - I think my two/three readings are sufficient. Not only is Hawthorne an uneven writer, his content is creepy and intellectually unrewarding. His mind seems to be firmly affixed in the 100 years past colonial times. You know, when his Salem forebears hanged, publicly humiliated and squished nonconforming citizens. "The Minister's Black Veil" was... enervating(?). However, there are a few more of his stories that I haven't read) on offer here, so I'll give him another go tonight.
"My Kinsman..."(and "The Scarlet Letter" too I think) has a scene of Boston being entered at night via a ferry and its ferryman. In particular the author focuses on the payment given. A suggestion of the Greek Underworld?
"Rappaccini's Daughter "- I skipped and skimmed my way through this pointless(to me at least) word-fest to the predictably dreary end. Scholarly folk may well be able to tell us what Hawthorne was about, but I guess I never really wanted to find out. "The Scarlet Letter" as sort of OK-ish, but as for the rest... MEH! TOO MANY WORDS! Style-wise he's almost as bad as Cooper. One more story, "Ethan Brand," was skipped as it looked to be as dreary as "R's Daughter."
Next up... E. A. Poe - A really messed-up dude who led a dreary and messed-up(alcohol and drugs) personal life but left us a lot of excellent poetry and stories. Especially the fiction. So many deliciously obsessed people engaged in crazy, morally "questionable" things.
Read "Ligeia" last night and it is suitably unhinged. A ghost story..."The Fall of the House of Usher" comes tonight. I've already read it 2-3 times(of course). BTW, the movie version of "Ligeia" is "The Tomb of Ligeia" and was directed by Roger Corman in his Poe series. That means, of course, that it .starred none other than Vincent Price. Supposed to be pretty good too.
Read "Usher" last night for the 3rd or 4th time. Some observations. The beginning shot - outside the house - reminds of "The Shining."
The demise of Madeleine is glossed over(I've made this observation before). Those two mopey-dopes ASSUME she's dead w/o any corroboration from a doctor? HMMMM... Then they both hear these noises for like a WEEK! and don't investigate? Then, when they begin to suspect the worst they sit around talking about it?
- Why does Roderick call his pal "MADMAN"... TWICE?
- The language of choice that Poe employs is VERY annoying an invites skipping to the finish. I'm sure he had a reason for choosing to write that way. Imitating English Gothic literature?
More Poe:
The Purloined Letter - While I agree with Dupin's description of policer narrow-mindedness, I was unable to read all that stuff about reasoning and logic. Poe-pourri...
- A Descent into the Maelstrom - read before. The whirlpool is a real thing, though Poe exaggerates it.
- The Cask of Amontillado - read before 2-3 times. Enough's enough, though I do really like the story.
- A review of Twice-Told Tales(Hawthorne) - skipped.
- The Philosophy of Composition - skipped.
Presently in the middle of Melville's account of the Enchanted Isles(Islas Encantadas), now known as the Galapagos. Interesting...
Finished last night with the Galapagos. Not only is the prose ever a strain to read, but Melville includes an account some poor harmless, frantic(they KNEW they were being left behind) little doggies being abandoned to their inevitable fate(thirst - starvation) on a remote island. Horrible!
- Here's a fun bit of prose... "That this mysterious humming-bird of ocean, which had it but brilliancy of hue might from its evanescent liveliness be almost called its butterfly, yet whose chirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the death-tick sounding from behind the chimney-jam - should have its special haunt at the Encantadas, contributes in the seaman's mind not a little to their dreary spell."
- Hawthorne... Cooper... Melville... James... Dreiser = The dreary five horsemen of the American prose apocalypse.
Started Billy Budd last night. The prose is predictably dense and annoying but barely do-able. We'll see how long I can take it.
RE: Billy Budd - not very long as it turns out. Oh well... from Melville and onward I skipped-skimmed my way through Emerson, Thoreau, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell(the Elder), Lincoln, Whitman(never at a loss for words, that guy), Lanier, Dickinson(the best of the bunch) and Mark Twain. I'm lingering a bit with Twain - SO much more enjoyable to read than those other stiffs.
- Whitman's poetry reminded me a bit of Keats, Eliot and Homer.
- 'Roughing It' - When a Buffalo Climbed a Tree... very amusing!
Moving on through Bret Harte(The Outcasts of Poker Flats) and Joel Chandler Harris("His[Uncle Remus] Story of the Deluge and How It Came About") - the Negro dialect is borderline unintelligible. And then on to Henry James' "A Bundle of Letters," which is fairly easily read because of the epistolary format. A sort-of sour look at a group of souls living in a Parisian boardinghouse. The young English and American ladies/girls write only vaguely and euphemistically about sex while their French "teachers"(seducers) brag about it. The last letter is from a hideous German professor, who seems to hate all of them.
- "The Real Thing" - As I went further into this one that I'd read it before. It has the virtue of James' authorial understanding and observation. Reminds a bit of "Bartleby the Scrivener."
- "The Beast in the Jungle" - The jungle being(IMHO)the mass of needlessly ornate and dense prose one has to patiently whack away at in order to get to the Beast - the sort-of ordinary and obvious point of the story. It's been suggested that the author was describing his own lack of a love life. Makes sense...
I finally(and patiently) finished this depressing story a few days ago. I have to give Mr. James credit for its ending. He does indeed bring the emotionally devastating message home. It is moving to read but dubious as to whether one feels much sympathy for the self-obsessed Marcher. There IS a message in this story, and curiously enough, it resonates with my own stunted emotional development in the face of a dicey life history, particularly in childhood/teenager-hood. Got to give Mr. James his due. He does bring home his point nicely, though he might have done it in about half the words.
- "swum into her ken" = a tribute/borrowing from Keats.
- The Beast = fear induced failure at love... sexual panic... fear of intimacy.
- As does David Copperfield, Marcher goes a-wandering after his lady-love/companion dies.
I started to read "The Jolly Corner," but gave up in the face of pages long paragraphs and little to no dialogue. Same with "The Art of Fiction" - NO dialogue in that one. Then we skipped by Henry Adams and William Vaughn Moody(mediocre poetry) and went on to Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. What a breath of fresh air was Stephen Crane! Wry, ironic, poetic and direct. NO word piles with him. Sad indeed that he died so young. I skipped "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" only because I'd read twice already and one of those was pretty recent. It took until a few days ago for me to remember that there is a very good Western movie titled "Yellow Sky" and that one of my paintings is titled "Yellow Sky." Sheesh...
Next up was "The Second Choice" by Dreiser. He was not a particularly interesting writer, but he did try to focus on the realities of life. This story reminds one of "Sister Carrie" as it describes the romantic challenges of an attractive lower-middle-class young woman caught between a reliable-but-boring suitor and a charismatic(to her anyway - to me he just sounded like a jerk-off)-but-unreliable dreamboat. She seems pretty discouraged(but at least realistic) at the end. Despite being a boring sort-of writer, Dreiser was like a breath of fresh air compared with Henry James.
- Dreiser uses the phrase "in toto" - something I hadn't heard(or seen in print) in a good long while.
Read "Editha" a few nights ago. The first William Dean Howells that I can remember reading. Pretty famous(if "outdated") American author. Can't remember much about the story right now.
Robinson Jeffers... Archibald MacLeish... Hart Crane...
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter - read for the second or third time. Ms. Porter was EXCELLENT!
Faulkner - "The Bear" - I've passed on reading this in the past - you know, it's that Faulkner "thing." This time I read it and mostly enjoyed it until Old Ben dies(FINALLY!) and the "story" spins off into page after page of huge paragraphs and incoherent(to me anyway) sentences as Faulkner gets shoulder deep into the history of Jefferson and that unpronounceable county which surrounds it: Snopes, McCaslin, Sartoris, Compton, Sutpen, Hoggenbeck and all the rest are there. Unreadable and unskimmable(by me anyway) there it lies. I ain't goin' back to try again.
Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - A story I might have read long ago. Definitely a story read to my junior(?) year English class by our teacher, Al Wise. Good stuff by a great writer.
More Hemingway - A Way You'll Never Be - A WWI Nick Adams story, heavy with atmosphere, but not particularly memorable.
Thomas Wolfe - "An Angel on the Porch" = poetic prose. Uses "pullulation" twice! Mentions Carrara. Also mentioned in "Barchester Towers."
Wallace Stevens(a personal favorite)... he and Hemingway once got into a fist fight down in Key West - or so I've heard... William Carlos Williams(a doctor - I think)... Marianne Moore... John Crowe Ransome(I seem to be skipping a lot of the poetry - too much "work"?... E. E. Cummings(ditto)... I do like "with up so floating many bells down"... - James T. Farrell...
John Dos Passos - nice lyrical prose from "The 42nd Parallel," "1919," "The Big Money" - JDP was a committed Socialist - I do believe.
James T. Farrell - "The Fastest Runner on Sixty-First Street" - Boring but effective on America the horrible.
Bernard Malamud - "The Mourners" What??? A Jewish Bartleby?
Flannery O'Connor - "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" - Typically mysterious and amusing.
John Updike - "The Bulgarian Princess" Typical JU - obsessed with salvation via sex and romance.
Finally... done with this behemoth. The last section featured a number of poets of the 60's and 70's. I did read some of the poems...
And off I go into the late 18th century/bad prose heaven. Washington Irving is the best and J. F. Cooper is the worst. Included is the final battling scene from "The Last of the Mohicans" in which Cooper uses twice as many words a necessary to describe the various ends of Magua, Cora and Uncas, thereby draining all the excitement and tension out of the scene.
- "The Last of the Mohicans" features a character named Alice Munro> I just realized that.
Meanwhile, "Rip Van Winkle " is still an awesome story. Correct pronunciation = Reep Fun Vinkle.
Next up - Hawthorne, and more "issues." The editors call "The House of the Seven Gables" a "great novel"! Oh really? I thought it was pretty mediocre. "My Kinsman Major Molineaux" was as good as ever, but I skipped "Young Goodman Brown" this time around - I think my two/three readings are sufficient. Not only is Hawthorne an uneven writer, his content is creepy and intellectually unrewarding. His mind seems to be firmly affixed in the 100 years past colonial times. You know, when his Salem forebears hanged, publicly humiliated and squished nonconforming citizens. "The Minister's Black Veil" was... enervating(?). However, there are a few more of his stories that I haven't read) on offer here, so I'll give him another go tonight.
"My Kinsman..."(and "The Scarlet Letter" too I think) has a scene of Boston being entered at night via a ferry and its ferryman. In particular the author focuses on the payment given. A suggestion of the Greek Underworld?
"Rappaccini's Daughter "- I skipped and skimmed my way through this pointless(to me at least) word-fest to the predictably dreary end. Scholarly folk may well be able to tell us what Hawthorne was about, but I guess I never really wanted to find out. "The Scarlet Letter" as sort of OK-ish, but as for the rest... MEH! TOO MANY WORDS! Style-wise he's almost as bad as Cooper. One more story, "Ethan Brand," was skipped as it looked to be as dreary as "R's Daughter."
Next up... E. A. Poe - A really messed-up dude who led a dreary and messed-up(alcohol and drugs) personal life but left us a lot of excellent poetry and stories. Especially the fiction. So many deliciously obsessed people engaged in crazy, morally "questionable" things.
Read "Ligeia" last night and it is suitably unhinged. A ghost story..."The Fall of the House of Usher" comes tonight. I've already read it 2-3 times(of course). BTW, the movie version of "Ligeia" is "The Tomb of Ligeia" and was directed by Roger Corman in his Poe series. That means, of course, that it .starred none other than Vincent Price. Supposed to be pretty good too.
Read "Usher" last night for the 3rd or 4th time. Some observations. The beginning shot - outside the house - reminds of "The Shining."
The demise of Madeleine is glossed over(I've made this observation before). Those two mopey-dopes ASSUME she's dead w/o any corroboration from a doctor? HMMMM... Then they both hear these noises for like a WEEK! and don't investigate? Then, when they begin to suspect the worst they sit around talking about it?
- Why does Roderick call his pal "MADMAN"... TWICE?
- The language of choice that Poe employs is VERY annoying an invites skipping to the finish. I'm sure he had a reason for choosing to write that way. Imitating English Gothic literature?
More Poe:
The Purloined Letter - While I agree with Dupin's description of policer narrow-mindedness, I was unable to read all that stuff about reasoning and logic. Poe-pourri...
- A Descent into the Maelstrom - read before. The whirlpool is a real thing, though Poe exaggerates it.
- The Cask of Amontillado - read before 2-3 times. Enough's enough, though I do really like the story.
- A review of Twice-Told Tales(Hawthorne) - skipped.
- The Philosophy of Composition - skipped.
Presently in the middle of Melville's account of the Enchanted Isles(Islas Encantadas), now known as the Galapagos. Interesting...
Finished last night with the Galapagos. Not only is the prose ever a strain to read, but Melville includes an account some poor harmless, frantic(they KNEW they were being left behind) little doggies being abandoned to their inevitable fate(thirst - starvation) on a remote island. Horrible!
- Here's a fun bit of prose... "That this mysterious humming-bird of ocean, which had it but brilliancy of hue might from its evanescent liveliness be almost called its butterfly, yet whose chirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the death-tick sounding from behind the chimney-jam - should have its special haunt at the Encantadas, contributes in the seaman's mind not a little to their dreary spell."
- Hawthorne... Cooper... Melville... James... Dreiser = The dreary five horsemen of the American prose apocalypse.
Started Billy Budd last night. The prose is predictably dense and annoying but barely do-able. We'll see how long I can take it.
RE: Billy Budd - not very long as it turns out. Oh well... from Melville and onward I skipped-skimmed my way through Emerson, Thoreau, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell(the Elder), Lincoln, Whitman(never at a loss for words, that guy), Lanier, Dickinson(the best of the bunch) and Mark Twain. I'm lingering a bit with Twain - SO much more enjoyable to read than those other stiffs.
- Whitman's poetry reminded me a bit of Keats, Eliot and Homer.
- 'Roughing It' - When a Buffalo Climbed a Tree... very amusing!
Moving on through Bret Harte(The Outcasts of Poker Flats) and Joel Chandler Harris("His[Uncle Remus] Story of the Deluge and How It Came About") - the Negro dialect is borderline unintelligible. And then on to Henry James' "A Bundle of Letters," which is fairly easily read because of the epistolary format. A sort-of sour look at a group of souls living in a Parisian boardinghouse. The young English and American ladies/girls write only vaguely and euphemistically about sex while their French "teachers"(seducers) brag about it. The last letter is from a hideous German professor, who seems to hate all of them.
- "The Real Thing" - As I went further into this one that I'd read it before. It has the virtue of James' authorial understanding and observation. Reminds a bit of "Bartleby the Scrivener."
- "The Beast in the Jungle" - The jungle being(IMHO)the mass of needlessly ornate and dense prose one has to patiently whack away at in order to get to the Beast - the sort-of ordinary and obvious point of the story. It's been suggested that the author was describing his own lack of a love life. Makes sense...
I finally(and patiently) finished this depressing story a few days ago. I have to give Mr. James credit for its ending. He does indeed bring the emotionally devastating message home. It is moving to read but dubious as to whether one feels much sympathy for the self-obsessed Marcher. There IS a message in this story, and curiously enough, it resonates with my own stunted emotional development in the face of a dicey life history, particularly in childhood/teenager-hood. Got to give Mr. James his due. He does bring home his point nicely, though he might have done it in about half the words.
- "swum into her ken" = a tribute/borrowing from Keats.
- The Beast = fear induced failure at love... sexual panic... fear of intimacy.
- As does David Copperfield, Marcher goes a-wandering after his lady-love/companion dies.
I started to read "The Jolly Corner," but gave up in the face of pages long paragraphs and little to no dialogue. Same with "The Art of Fiction" - NO dialogue in that one. Then we skipped by Henry Adams and William Vaughn Moody(mediocre poetry) and went on to Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. What a breath of fresh air was Stephen Crane! Wry, ironic, poetic and direct. NO word piles with him. Sad indeed that he died so young. I skipped "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" only because I'd read twice already and one of those was pretty recent. It took until a few days ago for me to remember that there is a very good Western movie titled "Yellow Sky" and that one of my paintings is titled "Yellow Sky." Sheesh...
Next up was "The Second Choice" by Dreiser. He was not a particularly interesting writer, but he did try to focus on the realities of life. This story reminds one of "Sister Carrie" as it describes the romantic challenges of an attractive lower-middle-class young woman caught between a reliable-but-boring suitor and a charismatic(to her anyway - to me he just sounded like a jerk-off)-but-unreliable dreamboat. She seems pretty discouraged(but at least realistic) at the end. Despite being a boring sort-of writer, Dreiser was like a breath of fresh air compared with Henry James.
- Dreiser uses the phrase "in toto" - something I hadn't heard(or seen in print) in a good long while.
Read "Editha" a few nights ago. The first William Dean Howells that I can remember reading. Pretty famous(if "outdated") American author. Can't remember much about the story right now.
Robinson Jeffers... Archibald MacLeish... Hart Crane...
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter - read for the second or third time. Ms. Porter was EXCELLENT!
Faulkner - "The Bear" - I've passed on reading this in the past - you know, it's that Faulkner "thing." This time I read it and mostly enjoyed it until Old Ben dies(FINALLY!) and the "story" spins off into page after page of huge paragraphs and incoherent(to me anyway) sentences as Faulkner gets shoulder deep into the history of Jefferson and that unpronounceable county which surrounds it: Snopes, McCaslin, Sartoris, Compton, Sutpen, Hoggenbeck and all the rest are there. Unreadable and unskimmable(by me anyway) there it lies. I ain't goin' back to try again.
Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - A story I might have read long ago. Definitely a story read to my junior(?) year English class by our teacher, Al Wise. Good stuff by a great writer.
More Hemingway - A Way You'll Never Be - A WWI Nick Adams story, heavy with atmosphere, but not particularly memorable.
Thomas Wolfe - "An Angel on the Porch" = poetic prose. Uses "pullulation" twice! Mentions Carrara. Also mentioned in "Barchester Towers."
Wallace Stevens(a personal favorite)... he and Hemingway once got into a fist fight down in Key West - or so I've heard... William Carlos Williams(a doctor - I think)... Marianne Moore... John Crowe Ransome(I seem to be skipping a lot of the poetry - too much "work"?... E. E. Cummings(ditto)... I do like "with up so floating many bells down"... - James T. Farrell...
John Dos Passos - nice lyrical prose from "The 42nd Parallel," "1919," "The Big Money" - JDP was a committed Socialist - I do believe.
James T. Farrell - "The Fastest Runner on Sixty-First Street" - Boring but effective on America the horrible.
Bernard Malamud - "The Mourners" What??? A Jewish Bartleby?
Flannery O'Connor - "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" - Typically mysterious and amusing.
John Updike - "The Bulgarian Princess" Typical JU - obsessed with salvation via sex and romance.
Finally... done with this behemoth. The last section featured a number of poets of the 60's and 70's. I did read some of the poems...
October 9, 2020
Excellent collection showing the true and incredible richness of the American tradition. I loved the poem, The Man Against the Sky, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. I loved some of the poems of Wallace Stevens. I got to know the transcendentalist movement better. I think Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway are excellent. I found Faulkner's "The Bear" amazing initially and then it got very very confusing! We get some speeches from Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. There is The Bulgarian Poetess by John Updike at the end which shows his dazzling writing. Flannery O'Connor's story about a man who married a deaf girl was truly gut-wrenching. Eugene O'Neil's The Hairy Ape was very compelling, as was Melville's Billy Budd. What an amazing collection!
September 3, 2024
This book is an encyclopedia of the beautiful tradition of American literature, beginning with William Bradford and concluding with Leroi Jones.
January 21, 2016
This is one of my college textbooks from the '80s. I still pull it out for both pleasure reading and reference. It's awesome.
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