Sacred Land: Sherwood Anderson, Midwestern Modernism, and the Sacramental Vision of Nature

Abstract

The title of Mark Bueschel's new book does not immediately suggest connections to F. Scott Fitzgerald; however, upon reviewing the table of contents, he does include a chapter that could potentially contribute to underexplored elements of Fitzgerald studies. In “‘A Story of the West, After All’: The Sacramental and Midwestern Pastoral Subtext of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby,” Bueschel attempts to connect his larger discussion regarding Midwestern pastoral imagery and sacramentalism to Fitzgerald's work. While Bueschel's book overreaches much of the time, trying to connect very different authors and works while not always clearly establishing a sense of definition, particularly with respect to modernism, some of his comments regarding Fitzgerald do encourage reconsideration of the author's role as a Midwestern writer and the way he can be contrasted with his regional contemporaries.Bueschel begins his chapter on Fitzgerald by accurately noting that: “To include F. Scott Fitzgerald in a discussion of Midwestern authors and their sacramental view of the Midwestern land may seem strange and tenuous from a variety of angles” (243). He cites many of the reasons for this tenuous connection, from Fitzgerald's youth in the Midwest and his later distance from the region, to his typical literary focus on urban instead of rural or small town locations. The discussion in this chapter focuses on The Great Gatsby but also mentions “Absolution” (1924) and “The Swimmers” (1929). There are definite limitations in how Bueschel executes his analysis of Fitzgerald's work; his greatest strength is in the effort to place Fitzgerald back among his Midwestern contemporaries (other chapters deal with Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, and Ruth Suckow) and to note potential modernist connections. Fitzgerald's knowledge of the literary world of his time argues for interesting contrasts in both cases (connections that are often underexplored in scholarship), for while he may not have always adopted the same styles or conventions, he was decidedly part of shaping that literary era and reflexively being shaped by those he knew and read.Bueschel argues in that “upon close investigation of The Great Gatsby as well as others of Fitzgerald's works, one finds that significant references to the natural realm form a vital subtext to the urban plot superstructure of the text” (245). He also notes that “it is a particularly Midwestern historical and cultural experience that often shapes Fitzgerald's characters’ vision of America as a whole and even of the world” (245). Bueschel highlights the various ways he sees this emphasis on nature occurring in Fitzgerald's work, alleging that Nick's home on West Egg has pastoral elements similar to the landscape he left in the Midwest and pointing out the incongruity between the materialism of the characters in The Great Gatsby and the different values many of them may have had with a greater connection to, or awareness of, the Midwestern land.However, as I noted, there are some limitations to the Fitzgerald scholarship in this chapter. As Bueschel highlights an American vision represented by the character of Henry Clay Marston in “The Swimmers,” he asserts in an endnote that “[t]he middle name ‘Clay’ here indicates the character's ability to perceive the spiritual significance and vitality of American soil, of American nature” (347). Bueschel provides no contextual evidence to support the idea that this was Fitzgerald's intention in naming this character, and he ignores the fact that Henry Clay was a prominent nineteenth-century politician who could have also been an inspiration for the name of this character. This reads as though Bueschel is looking for elements of Fitzgerald's work that he can mold to fit his overall premise. Elsewhere in the chapter, he observes Fitzgerald's negative references toward Yale in The Great Gatsby, concluding that they signify “a largely negative image of Ivy League education” (247) without noting that Fitzgerald's own Princeton educational background may have also influenced his bias against a rival institution. Throughout the chapter, Bueschel shows a shallow knowledge of overall scholarship regarding Fitzgerald's work (indicated by the short list of primarily articles on Fitzgerald's work listed in the bibliography at the end of the book), which seems potentially problematic in omissions like citing comments by Nick Carraway without ever discussing his status as a problematic and unreliable narrator.It is clear upon finishing Bueschel's book that his primary focus and research was more on Sherwood Anderson's life and work and that the other authors included are tangential. However, it is an admirable book in what it attempts to do, and his discussion of writers like Fitzgerald points to underexplored aspects that could be built on and fleshed out more fully by other scholars.