Narrating Discovery: The Romantic Explorer in American Literature, 1790–1855 by Bruce Greenfield

Abstract

358 Western American Literature seem too determined to define and limit the tricksters they study, the collected voices ofthe anthology finally allow the trickster to slip awayand wander along to the next story. BRADLEYJ. MONSMA University ofSouthern California Narrating Discovery: The Romantic Explorer in American Literature, 1790-1855. By Bruce Greenfield. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. 249 pages, $36.50.) The “romantic explorer[s]” here in question are a pretty diverse bunch, and not altogether “American,”as the title indicates. Three of them—Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie, and Alexander Henry—did their exploring in Canadian territories, and so may not be asfamiliar as Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, or John Charles Fremont. In addition to these, there are three who we tend to think of, first, as literary figures, and then, incidentally, as explorers: Washington Irving, Thoreau, and Poe. This assembly of the trail-weary and the ink-stained mayseem an unlikelyone, but itactuallyworkswell: on one hand, its inclusiveness will broaden your perspective on the explorations of the North American continent; and on the other hand, the attention it paysto some ofthe secondarywritings ofIrving, Thoreau, and Poe should add to whatyou know of them. The model for this volume is the scholarship of Sacvan Bervcovitch, ac­ knowledged in the introduction, and its critical orientation faces toward the myth/symbolists who have been prominent in the departments of American studies: Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, Frederick Jackson Turner, R. W. B. Lewis, Perry Miller, and Richard Slotkin, etc. Mentioning this body of scholarship is also a way of defining the sort of study that NarratingDiscoveryis not. I saythis because, when I first sawthe term “narrating”in the title ofthis critical monograph, Iwascurious to see ifit might try to situate its analyses in contemporary narrative theory. But there isnothing like that here. Greenfield makes but three very brief references to Hayden White and thereafter depends on Hegel for the balance of what serves as narrative theory. Perhaps the mostunifying aspectin this studyisnot narrative but instead its focus on the explorers’dealings with the Native Americans. This is a litmus test that Greenfield applies to his subjects: those like Lewis and Clark or Thoreau are instructive in the way they were able to hold their ambivalences for the natives in a kind ofsympathetic suspension, and thus resist the beguilements of Reviews 359 romance writing; whereas Fremont is instructive (in a negative sense) as one capable of imaginatively erasing the natives as he promoted his sense of mani­ fest destiny. On the whole, I enjoyed Greenfield’s book and learned some literary historyfrom it. Ifeel lesssatisfiedwith the “narrative] ”part. It’sregrettable that we know so little ofthe early explorations ofthis continent, and Greenfield has done quite a bit ofgood on that count. RUSSELL BURROWS WeberState University Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil By Michael J. McCauley. (New York: The Mysterious Press, 1991. 340 pages, $19.95.) In 1981, Geoffrey O’Brien called Jim Thompson the “Most Neglected Hardboiled Writer” in America, lamenting the fact that all twenty-nine of Thompson’s novels were currently out of print. By the end of the decade, however, VanityFairproclaimed thatThompson was “due to become the coolest dead writer in rotation,”and by the beginning ofthe 1990s VanityFair’s predic­ tion proved correct—Jim Thompson’s novels were everywhere. The inexpen­ sive paperback reissues put out by Black Lizard Press in the mid-’80s were repackaged in 1990 byRandom House as part ofits lavishVintage Crime Series. Furthermore, 1990 marked the appearance of three films based on Thompson’sworks: The Grifters; AfterDark, My Sweet, and TheKill-Off. As a result, readers and criticsfrom Paris to Hollywoodwere soon proclaimingJim Thomp­ son their favorite suspense writer. Michael J. McCauley’s fim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil is the second biography of America’s most hardboiled novelist (see alsoJim Thompson: The KillerInside Him, byCollins and Gorman). In his introduction, McCauley notes that there is an unfortunate “dearth of information about Thompson’sdomes­ tic life”because, while helpful in offering him some “preliminary facts”about the novelist, Thompson’sfamily “offers [only] a bland version ofJim’s life and character from which they refuse to waver, despite outside evidence to the contrary.”Thus, McCauley...