Dictionary of Midwestern Literature: Dimensions of the Midwestern Literary Imagination (2) - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0253021049 ISBN 13: 9780253021045

Casa editrice: Indiana Univ Pr, 2016

Riassunto

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Phillip A. Greasley is a retired Associate Professor, English; Dean, University Extension; and Associate Provost for University Engagement at the University of Kentucky. He has served as General Editor of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature and has published widely on Midwestern writers, the Chicago Renaissance, and modern poetics.

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Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume Two

Dimensions of the Midwestern Literary Imagination

By Philip A. Greasley

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2016 Indiana University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-253-02104-5

Contents

The Editorial Board, ix, 
Acknowledgments, xi, 
Introduction Philip A. Greasley, 1, 
Entries, A-Z, 9, 
Bibliography, 897, 
Contributors, 911, 
Entries by Author, 919, 
Index, 923, 

CHAPTER 1

A

Adventures of Augie March, The

HISTORY:The Adventures of Augie March, the third novel by Saul (C.) Bellow (1915-2005) and the one that marked his maturity as a major American writer, was published in the fall of 1953. Set in Depression-era Chicago, the novel follows the adventures of Augie March, a street-smart, ambitious, and intellectual son of immigrant Russian Jewish parents. Reviews prominently featured in such journals as the New York Times Book Review and the Saturday Review of Literature revealed a critical ambiguity that continues to prevail.

The nature of these reviews reflects not only critics' attitudes but also Bellow's attitude toward the novel after its publication and in following years. Although he defended the novel against what he considered undue criticism, he is quoted in "The Art of Fiction XXXVII," Paris Review 36 (Winter 1966): 48–73, as thinking the novel too excessive and its style and structure in need of restraint (54). Nevertheless, in the same interview he said that he had written Augie March with "a great sense of freedom" (57). Later, in a May 1997 Playboy interview (59+), he asserted that Augie March had liberated the American novel from "the English mandarin influence," as well as from Hemingway's (68). Hemingway, Bellow explained, "was a very marvelous and beautiful writer who was constricting. He produced novels with a highly polished surface. You didn't want to mar the surface of his beautifully constructed and polished stories or novels. But then it was too narrowing, because there were all kinds of experience which would never fit into that" (68). Significantly, the novel received the 1954 National Book Award for Fiction.

The critical ambiguity with which the novel has been regarded by reviewers, scholars, and Bellow himself may well be the result of what Bellow planned to do in the novel, as well as of the complex history of the novel's composition. Augie March appeared more than six years after the publication of The Victim in 1947. In that six-year period Bellow signed a contract for and abandoned a novel tentatively called The Crab and the Butterfly. He also applied for and, after two unsuccessful earlier applications, received a Guggenheim Award for $2,500, which he planned to spend on a year in Paris. Above all, he wrote, first on the novel that was later aborted and on other writing projects and then, increasingly furiously, on what was to become The Adventures of Augie March. The first tangible manifestation of the novel-to-be appeared in the November 1949 Partisan Review and was titled "From the Life of Augie March." In 1953 it would become chapter 1 of The Adventures of Augie March.

Subsequent appearances of works obviously related to the developing novel were frequent. "The Coblins," later to be chapter 2 of Augie March, appeared in the Autumn 1951 Sewanee Review. "The Einhorns," later to be chapter 5, appeared in the November- December 1951 Partisan Review and was reprinted in the Winter 1953 Perspectives USA. "Interval in a Lifeboat," later to be chapter 25, appeared in the December 27, 1952, New Yorker. "The Eagle," later to be chapters 15 and 16, was published in the February 1953 Harper's Bazaar, and "Mintouchian," later to be chapter 24, appeared in the Summer 1953 Hudson Review.

The Adventures of Augie March was largely the product of Bellow's Guggenheim, which gave him the freedom to write, as well as a unique perspective on his past. Both are evident throughout the novel. Freed from the relative formalism of his first two novels, as well as the perspective that governed both, he wrote furiously in a series of Parisian apartments, on cafe tabletops, and during excursions outside Paris. He was possessed by an exuberance he later decried, but also by the innocent adventurousness he discovered in his Midwestern antecedents from Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), writing as Mark Twain, to Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941), an influence he also later decried. He produced stories: "Dora" (Harper's Bazaar, November 1949, "Address by Gooley MacDowell to the Hasbeens Club of Chicago" (Hudson Review, Summer 1951), "A Sermon by Dr. Pep" (Partisan Review, May 1949), and others, but above all he worked on Augie March. When Bellow returned to the united States after his Guggenheim was not renewed, employment and a place to live became major problems. But after his slow tour of Europe, capped by six weeks of writing in Rome, he had the manuscript, more than 100,000 words long, well in hand.

Later, in an essay in the January 31, 1954, New York Times Book Review titled "How I Wrote Augie March's Story," he recounted his writing odyssey through southern Europe, concluding with the months back in the States during which he finished the novel: at the apartment of a friend, in a cold-water flat, in a Seattle hotel, in an Oregon motel, at the Yaddo artists' community, and even in Pennsylvania Station, a Broadway hotel, and the Princeton Library (3, 17). Oddly, however, he commented that not a single word of the novel was written in Chicago. With a one-year appointment as a creative-writing fellow at Princeton and with the novel finally at Viking, scheduled for spring 1953 publication, his first marriage ended but another on the horizon, Bellow felt confident about the future.

The novel was published at an auspicious time. Prominent critics had proclaimed the death of the traditional American novel even though the form endured; in the June 15, 1952, New York Times Book Review column "Speaking of Books," Diana Trilling (2) and, one week later in the June 22 issue, John W. Aldridge had lamented the novel's demise (2). Others hoped that their pessimism would be refuted and believed that new young Jewish writers, Bellow among them, would introduce a new dimension into the American literary canon. The Adventures of Augie March was awaited with strong anticipation. Meanwhile, in a review of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) in the June 1952 issue of Commentary, Bellow insisted that the novel was hearty and strong, using Ellison's novel to support his almost passionate claims (608–10).

Before publication, the novel's success was clear. It was a selection by Readers' Subscription and an alternate selection by Book-of-the-Month Club, and it received enthusiastic blurbs by Robert Penn Warren and Lionel Trilling, as well as strong praise by Clifton Fadiman. By and large, these pre-publication comments anticipated the post-publication reactions of prominent critics, both in the United States and abroad, often because they were so different. Pronouncements in the prepublication blurbs were invariably positive; the post-publication reviews were almost invariably tentative, if not ambiguous. Most reviewers were not sure what Bellow was trying to do, and most disliked his style. Nevertheless, most were sure that it was an important work.

In many ways typical of the critical responses to The Adventures of Augie March is that in the Saturday Review of Literature for September 19, 1953 (13). The cover of the issue is devoted to a drawing of Bellow against an urban neon background, thus suggesting the importance and the subject matter of the novel reviewed inside in Harvey Curtis Webster's lead review, titled "Quest through the Modern World." Webster begins the review by suggesting that reading Augie March in 1953 is comparable to reading Ulysses in 1923; he praises the story and the characterization but finds meaning "elusive." He concludes that Bellow "is perhaps a great novelist," and the book is "perhaps a great novel" (13). Robert Gorham Davis in the September 20, 1953, New York Times asserts that Bellow was a bit lavish in "adventures" and that Augie was not well drawn, but the novel was a major accomplishment (1, 36).

Other reviewers echo Webster's conclusions: Time's anonymous September 21, 1953, review praises the novel's "power and authenticity" but little else (114, 117). Granville Hicks in the New Leader for December 14, 1953, ranks it ninth among the ten best novels since 1945 and indicates that although he would recommend it to others, he would reread it himself only had he "but world enough and time" (12–14). However, Harvey Swados in the November 18, 1956, New York Post is unequivocal: Augie March is perhaps "the most significant and remarkable novel" in the past decade (11). Perhaps the most devastating review, by Anthony West in the September 26, 1953, New Yorker, describes parts of the novel as "frivolous," as an attempt by Bellow to seek literary fame or notoriety. West charges that the novel indulges in an "orgy of ... loose political-sociological allegory" (128) and considers it a lesser version of Henry James's Christopher Newman in The American (128). Bellow took such offense at the review that he protested to the editors, who ultimately admitted that West was wrong, but Bellow never forgave or forgot either West or the review.

SIGNIFICANCE: The novel almost literally made Bellow's reputation as a major American writer, and although Bellow decried its exuberance and innocence on several occasions, it remains the cornerstone of his literary reputation and ranks high among twentieth-century works of fiction. Yet it is taught less frequently in American literature classes than it should be, primarily because of its length. A number of critics have suggested that the novel would benefit from extensive, judicious pruning.

The novel makes clear Bellow's penchant for using as models for characters people he had known in the past or even those who continued to be part of his life. Bellow admitted that his characterization of Augie drew on his Chicago neighbors, that Augie's brother, Simon, was based on Bellow's brother, Maurice, and that character names were freely borrowed from the world around him. He was equally free with the experiences of others; for example, he borrowed the eagle-lraining episode from the published experiences of Daniel and Jule Mannix. See D. W. Gunn, American and British Writers in Mexico, 1974.

Another import ant result of the novel was recognition that the Jewish American novel had come of age and that Bellow was a major practitioner of the art, a conclusion Bellow was quick to deny. "This whole Jewish writer business is sheer invention by the media, by critics, and by 'scholars,'" he said in one interview reprinted in the 1994 volume Conversations with Saul Bellow (103). He is, however, quoted in James Atlas's Bellow (2000) as frequently asserting that he was "an American, a Jew, a writer by trade" (128).

Publication of The Adventures of Augie March made Bellow a major writer and a famous man. It is often referred to as his most important work, and it has never been out of print. But Bellow grew and matured in his work, a fact he often suggested too many critics failed to acknowledge. Critics, scholars, and the reading public are now quick to acknowledge that the novel remains a major work by a major American writer.

IMPORTANT EDITIONS: The standard edition of The Adventures of Augie March is the fiftieth-anniversary edition, published by Viking in 2003. The text is essentially that of the 1953 edition, and the design of both the volume and the dust jacket faithfully reproduces the original, with the inclusion, however, of recognition in both that this is the fiftieth-anniversary edition; it also includes an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. Dust-jacket statements have also been updated.

Many other editions are in print in numerous languages. Most are in paperback, although hardcover editions are also widespread. The standard American paperback edition is published by Penguin Group (USA); its most recent publication date is February 2006.

FURTHER READING: No book devoted exclusively to The Adventures of Augie March has appeared, but many articles and essays discuss it. Bellow published "How I Wrote Augie March's Story" in the January 31, 1954, issue of the New York Times Book Review, and he commented on it many times in conversation and in interviews. The 1978 and 1985 bibliographies of Bellow and his critics are somewhat dated, but more general works on Bellow comment at length on Bellow's writing of Augie March. James Atlas's Bellow (2000) is definitive and extremely valuable in studying Bellow's writing of the work. Also valuable is Ruth Miller's Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination (1991). Important critical works are Irving Malin's Saul Bellow's Fiction (1969) and Tony Tanner's Saul Bellow (1965). Other valuable works are Conversations with Saul Bellow, edited by Gloria Cronin and Ben Siegel (1994), and a collection of Bellow's occasional pieces, It All Adds Up (1994). David Mikics's "Bellow's Augie at Sixty," Yale Review 102 (2014): 30–42, looks back on the novel and compares it to Ellison's Invisible Man.

David D. Anderson

Michigan State University

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

HISTORY: By the time Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), originally of Missouri, returned to his late frontier, early Midwestern youth in his best and most enduring, if most controversial, work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (London 1884; New York 1885), his nom de plume had all but supplanted his birth name in the popular mind and in the popular press. The author's name appeared as Mark Twain on the frontispiece of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 in England, published by Chatto and Windus, and in Canada, published by Dawson, as well as on the title page of its first American edition, published in 1885 by Charles L. Webster and Company. Although the book was originally scheduled for simultaneous publication in the three countries in editions similar in all respects, including illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, American publication was delayed by copyright and pirating problems.

In a burst of pessimism, Clemens predicted a critical and financial failure that Webster was confident would not occur. Webster's optimism was more than justified when the first American edition of 30,000 copies was released to agents who had acquired thousands of advance orders. The official date of U.S. publication was February 18, 1885. The book was sold by agents in three formats for three prices: green or blue cloth at $2.75, leather at $3.25, and half morocco at $4.25. The cheapest binding had plain edges, the medium-priced library edition had sprinkled edges, and the most expensive had marbled edges (The Annotated Huckleberry Finn xcviii).

Before American publication in February 1885, three excerpts from the novel appeared in Century magazine for December 1884 and January and February 1885. The first excerpt, "An Adventure of Huckleberry Finn: With an Account of the Famous Grangerford-Shepherdson Feud," was drawn primarily from chapters 16 and 18; the second, "Jim's Investments and King Sollerman," was largely from chapters 8 and 14; the third, slightly bowdlerized to remove potentially offensive language, was "Royalty on the Mississippi: As Chronicled by Huckleberry Finn," from chapters 19, 20, 21, and 23. Periodical publication was a normal means of whetting the literary appetite for a new work. Century was a new, stylish magazine that had already serialized The Rise of Silas Lapham (November 1884–August 1885) by William Dean Howells (1837–1920) and The Bostonians (1886) by Henry James (1843–1916) with good results. Clemens and Webster had hopes, ultimately justified, for the serialization of Huck's adventures.

As apparently complex as the prepublication history of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was, the writing history of the book that led to its publication was even more complicated. Its evolution spanned nearly seven years. Bursts of sustained creative energy were punctuated by fallow weeks and months during which Clemens wrote or completed other works, including A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), and Life on the Mississippi (1883).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Dictionary of Midwestern Literature Volume Two by Philip A. Greasley. Copyright © 2016 Indiana University Press. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Indiana Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0253021049
• ISBN 13: 9780253021045
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 1057
• Redattore: Greasley Philip A.
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile