WHAT IS AMERICAN LITERATURE ?
- By Carl Van Doren The plan of Mr. Van Doren's book (Routledge, 3s. ad.). is of
the simplest. Having concluded what writers are the American essence, it tries to define each of them as precisely as possible." Perhaps it is too simple, however: One might. take--it would be an interesting task—twenty writers out a the history of English literature, as Mr. Van Doren has taken twenty from American literature, and hope that its the amalgam one had found and presented an- answer to, What is English Literature ? just as with twenty novelists one might, with judicious eXplanatOry comment, " bottle " the 'English novel or the English drama. But in either case the measure of success would depend on the comparative solidarity of the tradition, and surely it is too soon to talk yet of the-tradition, or the main stream, or the peculiar quality of the literature of the (verbally) United States ? The original title, American Literature : an Introduction, was a more accurate description. It also excuses some of the more journalistic over-statements in the book, such as that Cabell's " Jurgen is to the twentieth century what .Candide was to the eighteenth," or that Lewis's " Arrowsmith sums up an age," or, speaking of Edwin Arling. ton Robinson's Arthurian figures, that " the supernatural in the old stories seem pinchbeck beside the natural passion• of these men and women." Yet, within an amazingly small space—the book might be read at a sitting and is no longer than half a dozen magazine articles—there is packed a swift and suggestive resume of all the essential phases of American literature up to the War, classifying and generalising with an easy familiarity that can outline movements in the broadest strokes. Of such is the division into Man Thinking (Emerson): Man Doing (Whitman and his times), Man Laughing (Mark Twain), or the suggestion that America has two epics, Mobil Dick and Huckleberry Finn, to match its happier and its more unquiet moods. Not very profound, or very meaningful; perhaps, but sufficiently picturesque as a mnemonic for those who require such a book, and for whom alone it was, doubtless. intended by its author.
Previous page
