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The Great American Novel
18 Aug 06
Wharton, Edith. “The Great American Novel.” 1927. Edith Wharton: The Uncollected Critical Writings. Ed. Frederick Wegener. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. 151-159.
More quote mining. . .
It would appear that in the opinion of recent American reviewers the American novelist must submit to much narrower social and geographical limitations [than the European] before he can pretend to have produced the (or the greatest, or even simply an) American novel; indeed the restrictions imposed appear to differ only in kind from those to which a paternal administration subjects drinkers of wine, wearers of short skirts, and upholders of the evolutionary hypothesis. (151-152)
First of all, the novelist’s scene must be laid in the United States, and his story deal exclusively with citizens of those States; furthermore, if his work is really to deserve the epithet “American,” it must tell of persons so limited in education and opportunity that they live cut off from all the varied sources of culture which used to be considered the common heritage of English-speaking people. (152)
“Main Street” has come to signify the common mean of American life anywhere in its million cities and towns, its countless villages and immeasurable wildernesses. It stands for everything which does not rise above a very low average in culture, situation, or intrinsic human interest; and also for every style of depicting this dead level of existence, from the photographic to the pornographic—sometimes inclusively. (153)
As she [America] has reduced the English language to a mere instrument of utility (for example, by such simplifications as the substituting of “a wood,” or, mysteriously, “a woods,” for the innumerable shadings of coppice, copse, spinney, covert, brake, holt, grove, etc.), so she has reduced relations between human beings to a dead level of vapid benevolence, and the whole of life to a small house with modern plumbing and heating, a garage, a motor, a telephone, and a lawn undivided from one’s neighbor’s. (154)
It is not because we are middle-class but because we are middling that our story is so soon told. (154)
The idea that genuineness is to be found only in the rudimentary, and that whatever is complex is unauthentic, is a favorite axiom of the modern American critic. (155)
. . . keeping in mind, of course, that this article was written in 1927.
Posted by pzed on August 18, 2006 at 3.01pm
Categories: fragments, scripture
Comments on "The Great American Novel"
Ugh, don’t remind me. This is why I’ve really never paid attention to American literature (other than the true greats who rise above, like Faulkner, Welty and O’Connor). Just can’t bring myself to spend my time reading the work of Blandy McBlanderson when there’s a whole world outside the US of people who can WRITE.
At risk of sounding like an American-basher, what parallels can we draw between Wharton’s description of how American novelists write and how many of the people here think? Because a lot of what you’ve quoted here seems to aptly describe some of the cultural quirks I’ve had so much difficulty getting accustomed to since coming to the States.
Also, these quotes make me want to go home and knock on Alice Munro’s door and give her a grateful hug (even though I know she would tell me to bugger off and slam the door in my face).
Posted by jodi on August 18, 2006 at 6.46pm :: link
