Facing facts: realism in American thought and culture, 1850-1920

Abstract

A true poem, Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1852, daily newspaper-and American culture was never same again. Like a blast of cold air in a stuffy drawing room, Whitman's campaign to give artistic representation to gritty reality shocked genteel artistic elite of 1850s; but brassy poet's efforts helped generate a revolution in American life and thought. Four decades later, Willa Cather could declare demands realism, and they will have it. In Facing Facts, David Shi provides most comprehensive history to date of rise of realism in American culture. He vividly captures character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement-ranging from Winslow Homer to rise of Ash Can school, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. He begins with a look at idealist atmosphere of antebellum years, when otherwordly themes were considered only fit subject for art (Hawthorne wrote the grosser life is a dream, and spiritual life is a reality). Whitman's assault on these standards coincided with sweeping changes in American society: bloody Civil War, aggressive advance of a modern scientific spirit, popularity of photography, expansion of cities, capitalism, and middle class-all worked to shake foundations of genteel idealism and sentimental romanticism. Both artists and public developed an ever-expanding appetite for hard facts, and for art accurately depicted them. As Shi proceeds through nineteenth century, he traces realist revolution in each major area of arts and letters, combining an astute analysis of movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners. Here we see Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., shaken to stern realism by horrors of Civil War; influence of Walt Whitman on painter Thomas Eakins and architect Louis Sullivan, a leader of Chicago school; local-color verisimilitude of Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Orne Jewett; and impact of urban squalor on intrepid young writers such as Stephen Crane. In process of surveying nineteenth-century cultural history, Shi provides fascinating insights into specific concerns of realist movement-in particular, nation's growing obsession with gender roles. Realism, he writes, was in many respects an effort to revive masculine virtues in face of declining virility. During twentieth century, a new modernist sensibility challenged now-orthodox tenets of realism: Is it not time, one critic asked, that we renounce heresy it is function of art to record a fact? Shi examines why so many Americans answered yes to this question, under influences ranging from psychoanalysis to First World War. Nuanced, detailed, and comprehensive, Facing Facts provides definitive account of realist phenomenon, revealing why it played so great a role in American cultural history, and why it retains its perennial fascination.