Twentieth-century American Literature Research Articles

Performing Americanness: Race, Class, and Gender in Modern African-American and Jewish-American Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Performing Americanness: Race, Class, and Gender in Modern African-American and Jewish-American Literature Ranen Omer-Sherman Performing Americanness: Race, Class, and Gender in Modern African American and Jewish-American Literature, by Catherine Rottenberg. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2008. 180 pp. $50.00. Performing Americanness is the kind of unprecedented, richly comparative study that significantly changes the nature of the conversation by cogently presenting how African-American and Jewish-American writers of the early twentieth century narrated the critical categories of identity that enlivened their era. Rottenberg begins with the important premise that both minority literary traditions experienced vital transformations at roughly the same moment; aware of their inherent liminality, writers from both backgrounds strategically created a place for themselves within American letters analogous to the struggle of each group to accommodate itself in American society as a whole. The seminal novels addressed in Rottenberg's six lean and lively chapters include classics of the Harlem Renaissance such as James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), and Nella Larsen's [End Page 210] novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), alongside representative texts of the early Jewish-American literary canon: Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) and Anzia Yezierska's Salome of the Tenements (1923), Arrogant Beggar (1927), and others. In my courses on the dynamic of "Passing" in twentieth-century American literature I was long ago struck by the glaring fact that both Johnson's and Cahan's troubled protagonists conclude their narrative journeys by expressing regret for having somehow failed to keep faith with their own better natures. Rottenberg is the first writer I have come across to successfully delineate the implications of that shared narrative dynamic, and she does so in ways that greatly complicate the notion of the individual's "authenticity" or "essence" while also raising important questions about each group's collective identity. And of course such an analysis is fully warranted; after all, during the period that Rottenberg examines, Jewishness was still mediated within a racial discourse of identity, not only by others but by Jews themselves. Thus, she argues that the conclusions of both Autobiography and Rise of David Levinsky alert readers to "the coercive aspect of race identification, and the punishments meted out to subjects who attempt to identify differently" (p. 118). Rottenberg seeks to transcend the well-worn paradigm of reading early Jewish American works as struggles with assimilation by aligning them with the performative/reiterative nature of passing narratives. In this context she adroitly draws on Judith Butler's groundbreaking work on social identity and performativity: "performativity, as the most efficacious form of positive power, tends to reinforce the hegemonic order and upholds existing hierarchal power relations. Reiteration produces the illusion of an identifiable and stable referent for regulatory ideals" (p. 28). Butler's theoretical paradigm exposes the inevitable dissonance between normative roles and actual social behavior or lived experience. Hence, Rottenberg is excited by the premise that the novels she discusses each "dramatize a certain moral imperative—the necessity of ensuring that, at any given historical moment, there are always many possible, socially sanctioned, and thus normative ways of performing Americanness" (p. 15). Precisely because hegemonic order requires the reiteration of racial codes for its survival, avenues for potentially subversive variation open up with exactly the same frequency. Deeply engaged with the critical stakes over whether Larsen's Passing, a milestone in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance, should be read as an argument for passing as a subversive cultural strategy or one that merely serves the individual's separate survival, Rottenberg posits that its two female protagonists each dramatize the "regulatory ideals that circulate and operate in the service of particular relations of power" (p. 35) and, even more significantly, reveal how in the dominant culture, "though whiteness is privileged [End Page 211] over and against blackness . . . the very repetition and circulation of different, and, at times contradictory, racial norms create the possibility of subversion" (p. 50). Similarly, Yezierska's fiction, while exposing the rigidity of American class structures of the 1920s (which bear roughly similar regulatory ideals to the racial norms critiqued in the racial novel of passing), present...

The passing game: queering Jewish American culture

Tony Kushner's award-winning epic play Angels in America was remarkable not only for its sensitive engagement of Jewish-American and gay culture but also for bringing these themes to a mainstream audience. While the play represented a watershed in American theater and culture, it belies a hundred years of previous attention to queer Jewish identity in twentieth-century American literature, drama, and film. In The Passing Game, Warren Hoffman sheds light on this long history, taking up both Yiddish and English narratives that explore the tensions among Jewish identity, queer sexuality, performance, and American citizenship. With fresh insight Hoffman examines the 1907 Yiddish play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, the cross-dressing films of Yiddish actress Molly Picon, and several short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. He also analyzes the English-language novels The Rise of David Levinsky (Abraham Cahan), Wasteland (Jo Sinclair), and Portnoy's Complaint (Phillip Roth). Hoffman highlights the ways in which the characters in these canonical texts attempt to 'pass' as white, straight, and American in the early and mid - twentieth century. This pioneering work is a welcome contribution to the study of Jewish American literature and culture.

The Cambridge companion to American travel writing

Chronology Introduction: new worlds and old lands: the travel book and the construction of American identity Judith Hamera and Alfred Bendixen Part I. Confronting the American Landscape: 1. Beginnings: the origins of American travel writing in the Pre-Revolutionary period Philip Gould 2. Landscape and American travel writing William W. Stowe 3. New York to Niagara by way of the Hudson and the Erie Christopher Mulvey 4. The Mississippi river as site and symbol Thomas Ruys Smith 5. The Southwest and travel writing Martin Padget Part II. Americans Abroad: 6. American travel books about Europe before the Civil War Alfred Bendixen 7. Americans in Europe: Henry James to the present William Merrill Decker 8. Americans in the Holy Land, Israel and Palestine Hilton Obenzinger 9. Americans in the larger world: beyond the Pacific coast Christopher McBride 10. South of the border: American travel writing in Latin America Terry Caesar Part III. Social Scenes and American Sites: 11. African American travel literature Virginia Whatley Smith 12. American women and travel writing Susan L. Roberson 13. Driving that highway to consciousness: late twentieth-century American travel literature Deborah Paes de Barros Guide to further reading Index.

“Education then is not Merely to Teach Reading or Writing—Not to fit us for the Successful Performance of our Worldly Calling, nor to Inculcate the Bare Principles of Belief and Practice; It is not to Impart Barren Lifeless Knowledge; but to Work Together With God in the Salvation Of Souls”

EDITORIAL PREFACE 3 “EDUCATION THEN IS NOT MERELY TO TEACH READING OR WRITING—NOT TO FIT US FOR THE SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE OF OUR WORLDLY CALLING, NOR TO INCULCATE THE BARE PRINCIPLES OF BELIEF AND PRACTICE; IT IS NOT TO IMPART BARREN LIFELESS KNOWLEDGE; BUT TO WORK TOGETHER WITH GOD IN THE SALVATION OF SOULS.” JOHN HENRY NEWMAN In his Journal, Newman described education as “my line”1 —an appropriate description since his involvement in education spanned practically the entirety of his life—from his student days at Ealing, through his years as both student and teacher at Oxford and then as rector in Dublin, to the last decades of his life, which were devoted to the Birmingham Oratory School. Newman’s ideas about education are expressed most compellingly and comprehensively in The Idea of a University, which collected some of the discourses and essays that he wrote as rector of the Catholic University in Ireland. Yet many of these ideas so cogently expressed in The Idea were seminally present in a sermon—“On Some Popular Mistakes as to the Object of Education”—which he preached on Sunday afternoon, 8 January 1826, while serving as curate at St. Clement’s Church in Oxford:2 Education then is not merely to teach reading or writing—not to fit us for the successful performance of our worldly calling, nor to inculcate the bare principles of belief and practice;it is not to impart barren lifeless knowledge;but to work together with God in the salvation of souls.3 Newman’s continuing influence as an educator is reflected in the essays in this issue. The initial essay by James M. Pribek on “Newman in Twentieth-Century American Literature”describes his influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and Flannery O’Connor. Drew Morgan then considers “The Rise and Fall of Newman’s Anglican School: From the Caroline Divines to the Schola Theologorum.” Next Newman’s educational legacy is examined in Greg Peters’ appraisal of the“approach 1 John Henry Newman, Autobiographical Writings, edited by Henry Tristram (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1957), 259. 2 Newman,who was a month short of his twenty-fifth birthday when he preached this sermon,served as curate at St. Clement’s from 4 July 1824 until 21 February 1826 (The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman 1:xviii). 3 The scriptural text for his sermon—number 128—was First Corinthians 8:1:“Knowledge puffeth up,but charity edifieth”;the sermon,which has an evangelical flavor,is now available in:John Henry Newman,by James Arthur and Guy Nichols (London–New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007), 205–213; citation at 211. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 4 to Christian learning”of Benedict of Nursia,Newman and theTorrey Honors Institute of Biola University. Newman’s ideas about education also loom large in John F. Crosby’s consideration of “How the Gospel encounters culture in the Catholic University.” The third pair of essays looks to topics that resonate with some of Newman’s concerns in The Idea of a University: Matthew Briel considers the similarities of Newman and Luigi Giussani in regard to their“conceptions of reason”; Kevin Mongrain examines Newman’s critique of arguments from design—which have again come to the fore in recent discussions of creation. Those who have visited Newman’s study at the Birmingham Oratory may recall that the altar of his private chapel is decorated by pictures and memorials of departed family and friends. In a similar way, this issue posts obituaries of two educators and Newman Scholars, who were contributors to this journal:Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. and Fr. Joseph C. Linck: Requiescant in pace! This issue of Newman Studies Journal also contains reviews of an example of Newman’s international influence and an excellent volume on Newman’s views about the theory and practice of education. The bibliographical section mentions various resources that are available to Newman-scholars and lists books that have been received for review. The chronology of Newman’s life is intended as a convenience for readers who wish to situate a particular writing within the broader context of Newman’s life. The“fillers”—which utilize otherwise unused space...

“It’s all by someone else!”

James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover is the outstanding visionary long poem of late twentieth-century American literature. Despite its somewhat unusual mode of composition and the rather eccentric heavenly pantheon with which Merrill claims to have communicated, Sandover is presented as the transmission of an authentic prophetic message and the narrative of the manner in which that message was received. One of the more intriguing aspects of the text is its self-reflexive nature. A substantial amount of the poem’s dialogue and a number of narrative manipulations interrogate the technologies of the poem’s composition and the relation of Merrill’s medium and method to his task as the author of a sacred text in a skeptical age. These internal tests ultimately confirm his efforts by celebrating the most basic element of any author’s craft—language—as not only the medium for the message but also the mechanism of humankind’s redemption.

White Book Clubs and African American Literature: The Promise and Limitations of Cross-Racial Empathy

White Book Clubs and African American Literature: The Promise and Limitations of Cross-Racial Empathy

Writing a New Nation:Literary Bohemianism and the Re-conceiving of America

This review compares Michael Soto's The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance, and Twentieth-Century American Literature and Michael Hrebeniak's Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form in order to explore the role of bohemianism in modernist American literary movements. Both argue that such movements are formed as reactions to the prevailing social order, and seek to provide America with new cultural models. While Soto's work is somewhat ambivalent about the ultimate possibility of literary rebellion in the modernist period, Hrebeniak believes that Jack Kerouac and the action writing that he represents posed a direct challenge to post-World War II culture.

Deauthenticating Community: The passing Intrusion of Clare Kendry in Nella Larsen's Passing

Lost totality, or totality accomplished in the lie of the individual: there is no way out of this circle of disenchantment. --Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community (38) In The Inoperative Community, Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that the possibility of the individual is necessarily predicated upon the possibility of a stable community, a pre-existing totality that encompasses and defines the individual as a coherent I. In stating that am white or am a man, I assume that my individuality adheres to certain fixed categories of being. In short, my individuality is determined by the community of being to which I ostensibly belong. Obviously, then, to say am white or am a man is to say that I have an essential link to both a community of whites and a community of males. By implication, and quite paradoxically, I am a singular and coherent entity only insofar as I am (in one way or another) indistinguishable from a certain communal whole, or plurality. As a result, if my identity as an individual is ambiguous or unfixed--if I do not clearly belong anywhere--then I disrupt the stability of the communities to which I only seem to belong. For this reason, the issue of (racially or otherwise) in twentieth-century American literature is inextricably linked to the issue of community and the possibility of communal stability. Characters who refuse to align or identify themselves with the communities to which their lineage (and/or gender, class, sexuality, etc.) assigns them deny their origins and, by implication, the communal stability upon which their coherence as individuals is based. They challenge the possibility of communal totalities and, thus, the possibility of a stable and coherent individual. It is hardly surprising, then, that characters like Clare Kendry in Nella Larsen's Passing (1929) have been identified as lamentable, failed, or simply disturbing. (1) This reading has been prevalent both in the texts in which such passing characters are presented and in some of the early criticism of those texts. (2) After all, by refusing, or being unable, to acknowledge the authenticity of the communities to which she is socially obligated, Clare disrupts and challenges the possibility of an essential social bond, or common upon which communal ties are legitimated. In focusing on Clare's disruptive and subversive nature, I am taking as my point of departure an already well-established field of criticism. However, I am not interested in simply reiterating the fact that racially and sexually ambiguous characters like Clare frustrate essentialist notions of identity while forcing us to accept the impossibility of interpretive and/or narrative closure; this has been clearly demonstrated already, in one way or another, by Judith Butler, Martha J. Cutter, and Elaine K. Ginsberg (to name a few). (3) Rather, I am concerned with how the act of passing (especially in Passing) confuses and, in turn, exposes our virtually default assumptions about community and individuality. What follows, then, is as much a reading of Passing as it is a consideration of critical responses to both Passing as a text and passing as a behavior. Read alongside critical discussions of the novel and the act, Passing suggests that racially and sexually ambiguous characters who embrace the flail implications of their marginal status threaten the possibility of totalized or totalizing communities because they frustrate the validity of the assumptions upon which their failure as individuals are necessarily predicated. Clare's (non)presence disrupts the illusory possibility that any community can be rigorously defined by an essential--or, as Nancy would have it, immanent--bond. In other words, and if we employ the work of Slavoj Zizek alongside the work of Nancy, we might say that Clare functions as a symptom of the Lacanian Real--that is, the impossible Real of essential bonds, or categories of identity. …

Simon J. Bronner. Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. 283 pp.Karen E. Beardslee. Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. 202 pp.

Simon J. Bronner. <i>Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition</i>. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. 283 pp.Karen E. Beardslee. <i>Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature</i>. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. 202 pp.

The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s; The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance, and Twentieth-Century American Literature; Split-Gut Song: Jean Toomer and the Poetics of Modernity

The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s; The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance, and Twentieth-Century American Literature; Split-Gut Song: Jean Toomer and the Poetics of Modernity

Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition, and: Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature (review)

Reviewed by: Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition, and: Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature Kathy M'Closkey (bio) Simon J. Bronner . Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002. 283 pp. Karen E. Beardslee . Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. 202 pp. Simon Bronner's Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of an American Tradition incorporates seventeen essays that span over a century—from the Gilded Age to the present—by authors whose works engendered key debates on the role of the folk in creating nation-hood. The book begins with a lengthy introduction titled "In Search of the American Tradition," that provides crucial context to situate the articles he has chosen to illustrate or contest the dominant theme. Bronner's exceptional introduction comprises twenty-five per cent of the book and provides an appropriate framework that positions folklore studies and debates within a historical context and surveys the treatment of the subject by folk-and American-studies scholars. His essay is followed by a very useful section suggesting further reading on the role of folklore in the creation of an American tradition. This short chapter is divided into several categories that include a list of major American journals that feature the intellectual history of American folklore studies, pertinent encyclopaedias and dictionaries, sources that provide a general introduction to the subject, and intellectual and cultural histories of the topic. Bronner juxtaposes pairs of essays from the same period that reflect differing perspectives on how "folklore" should be defined, studied, and interpreted in explicating the formation of an American tradition. Each essay opens with his commentary situating the author's work within a broader context. Far from [End Page 135] reflecting a benign traditional past shared by rural communities, folklore—its concepts and purpose—has engendered heated discussion. The essays chosen by Bronner engage in debates on a number of issues, including the query: does America have any ballads (Lomax 1915)? In light of definitions drawn from English and Scottish contexts, the answer is "no." Yet, by describing the "authors" and locales of folksongs, the book expands the formal definitions drawn from European contexts to include songs sung by miners, lumberjacks, sailors and soldiers, field hands, cowboys, and factory workers that illustrate the rich diversity of American lore. Much of the research on folklore during the Gilded Age was a form of salvage ethnology. William Wells Newell (1889) organized the American Folklore Society in 1888 for the purpose of gathering the "fast-vanishing remains of folk-lore in America." The organization sponsored local chapters in ten American cities and in Montre´al, Quebec. Not surprisingly, one of the first groups to garner attention was made up of "American Negroes." Alice Mabel Bacon (1893–4), daughter of a white abolitionist, spearheaded the campaign at Hampton Institute to organize folklore study groups. She edited Southern Workman and encouraged African Americans to interpret their own past and future. However, Bacon perceived the collection of their lore as a means to measure their advancement from an undeveloped to a civilized state. Thus Bacon's essay and several others reveal contemporary attitudes, especially in relation to Natives and African Americans as living primitives reflecting lower stages of humanity long surpassed by European Americans. Two essays focus on women and folklore. Fanny Bergen, in an essay on quilts as "emblems of women's tradition"(1894), suggests that uniquely American quilts are equivalent to European tapestries. Like her contemporaries, who were apologists for the comparative recentness of American works, Bergen repositioned quilts within an art historical framework that typically expunged the local context of creation. During the Renaissance, tapestries were the only textiles that were referred to as "art" because they were designed by artists. All other textiles were perceived as "crafts." [End Page 136] Bergen was trying to elevate the status of quilts. However, in so doing she ignored important differences from tapestries. Quilts are far more intimate expressive forms because they link makers and their families to their local environments and histories...

Steinbeck's Dysfunctional Families: A Coast-to-Coast Dilemma

At The Beginning Of A Semester, when I ask American Literature students to tell me what they know about the writings of John Steinbeck, his main themes and subject matter, their answers depend on which works they have read. More often than not, I will get responses that allude to his sympathy and support for the plight of farm workers and the dispossessed. Some mention his interest in the outcasts of society, in particular the retarded or the malformed. Rarely is there any mention of the family. These answers are to be expected. After all, Steinbeck's international reputation is based largely on The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men , the two works most likely to represent his presence in the canon, the former omnipresent on those lists of the one hundred most important novels in twentieth century American literature. And these works are primarily about the plight of migrant workers and the powerless and oppressed. Initial investigation for this article confirmed what my students and my own rudimentary research and reading have suggested. I started with the MLA International Bibliography, the standard search engine for literary investigation. Inputting the words Steinbeck and Family, I was disappointed but not sur-

Shades of Passing: Teaching and Interrogating Identity in Roth's The Human Stain and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

The notion of passing in American literature has an extended and complicated history. As one looks at the various ways American authors have dealt with the issue of passing and how this phenomenon manifests itself in literary characters, it is clear that passing-whether racial, cultural, religious, socioeconomic, or gendered-is a complex concept that lends itself well to explorations of identity issues and notions of American success. Reading Philip Roth's The Human Stain and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby together offers a discourse on passing that presents an important teachable moment about issues of selfhood and marginalized identities in the United States.In 2002, was a graduate teaching assistant and PhD student at Texas Christian University, teaching undergraduates and working on my dissertation, which focused on working-class literature. given the opportunity to teach a section of Major American Writers, decided to focus the course on the issue of passing, a notion had first become interested in after reading Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun while a master's student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The notion of passing was one that fascinated me in multiple ways. Having always been interested in the notion of the self as well as the representation of race in literature, passing was naturally something in which took great interest. However, also began to see important connections between the traditional notion of racial passing and the type of socioeconomic passing that saw in so many narratives, both fictional and autobiographical, about the working class. It became clear to me that passing was something that happened not only in a racial context, but also in terms of socioeconomic identity and representation. Therefore, the section of Major American Writers that taught was subtitled Racial and Socioeconomic Passing in Twentieth-Century American Literature. felt that introducing undergraduates to the idea of passing and helping them work through issues of racial and socioeconomic self-representation would be important, particularly at a school like Texas Christian University. In 2002, when taught this course at TCU, Ray Brown, dean of admissions, reported that minority enrollment for incoming students [was] the lowest it ha[d] been in five years at an estimate of 14 percent (Vega, par. 8). also knew from my own experiences as an undergraduate at this school that social class was something rarely discussed and more often shrouded. While many students at TCU may have been on scholarship or financial aid, the perception all often was that the university was a place for the wealthy and privileged. As such, felt bringing issues of class and race to the forefront would make for an interesting course. For the reading list, students worked with Nella Larsen's Passing, Fauset's Plum Bun, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Danzy Sennas Caucasia, and Roth's The Human Stain.Additionally, supplemented novels with outside readings from Jet and Tan, two popular African American periodicals that, particularly in the 1950s, published a number of confessional tales about passing. One example, I Passed for Love from a 1953 issue of Tan, tells the story of a woman who passes and then struggles with revealing her secret. The brief introduction to this story demonstrates the melodramatic nature that this genre often took: When love came to Betty, she was gripped by the chilling fear that she would have to reveal her racial identity and thereby spoil everything. But Steve, she found, had a secret, too (33). used this selection from Tan as a way of helping students see that passing and its complications have long been a part of the popular psyche. While many of stories tell of passing for various personal and communal reasons, a subset in this genre deals with the problems with and, in many cases, the rejection of passing. As Gayle Wald points out in Crossing the Line, these articles, produced in an era of national economic prosperity and growing impatience with de jure segregation, deploy the trope of the refusal to pass (or to be passed, through the agency of others) as a means of giving voice to aspirations regarding African Americans' economic, political, and social well-being (118; emphasis in original). …

Elaborate Versionings: Characteristics of Emergent Performance in Three Print/Oral/Aural Poets

Elaborate Versionings: Characteristics of Emergent Performance in Three Print/Oral/Aural Poets Kenneth Sherwood Indiana University of Pennsylvania [*eCompanion at www.oraltradition.org 1 ] From Page to Performance The significant influence of oral literature, song, and vernacular speech forms on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature is generally recognized by scholars, teachers, and editors. The authoritative, four-volume American Poetry series published by the Library of America serves as an index of this consensus, with sections on anonymous ballads, blues lyrics, popular song, Native American poetry (song and narrative), folk songs, and spirituals. 2 These and other popular teaching anthologies that represent poems from oral contexts effectively subsume the poems within an economy in which they are appreciated, taught, and analyzed as though they were originally written, literary texts—according minimal attention to the mechanisms of transposition (from performance to print). 3 [End Page 119] Given the general lack of appreciation, within literary criticism, of the oral/textual dynamics relevant to orally produced poetries, it should come as no surprise that little attention has been paid to the analysis of the oral delivery of poems composed on paper. Should a "poetry reading" be classified as a dramatic reading, a recitation, or a performance? Can the oral delivery of a written poem constitute a significant or primary means of publication and reception? These have not often seemed like fundamental questions or meaningful distinctions for literary criticism. The very phrase "poetry reading" shows how criticism marginalizes performance, tending to see it as subsidiary, a secondary mode of presentation. 4 The reluctance of literary criticism to conceive of orality as a medium for modern poetry is at least partly a reflection of the success, over a half-century ago, of New Criticism in casting a focus upon the autonomous text. Scholars of oral poetry have derived useful interpretive guidance from focussing on "performance as the enabling event" (Foley 1995:27), with a consequent emphasis on the "radical integration, or situatedness, of verbal art in cultural context" (ibid.:30); New Criticism moved literary study in the opposite direction: towards an approach to analysis as an interaction between reader and text, with a minimization of cultural, intertextual, or authorial context. 5 This essay considers the implications of situating literate, postmodern poetry in a performance context. Using recordings/transcriptions of "poetry readings" by Amiri Baraka, Kamau Brathwaite, and Cecilia Vicuña, its aims are: 1) to demonstrate that each event constitutes an emergent performance; 2) to explore how the performativity draws upon classically oral dynamics 6 ; [End Page 120] and 3) to show how the emergent qualities of the performances are achieved through the specific means of "elaboration" and "versioning." By means of elaboration and versioning, these poems break through into performativity; literary criticism cannot be content to receive them as conventional texts but must consider their emergent dimensions. Looking at print poetry within a performance context implicitly creates a friction with the lingering, teleological narrative (of the passage from orality to literacy), but it explicitly challenges the habitual privileging of the written text in literary studies. Scholars of both written and oral traditional literature have often operated, perhaps under the guidance of the paradigms of their fields, as if boundary questions belonged properly to the other's domain. The literary critic who ventures into the terrain of oral tradition and orality frequently finds such exploration discouraged. Beginning with a classic text in the scholarship, she or he finds Albert Lord claiming that "once the oral technique is lost, it is never regained" (1960: 129). Reflective as it may be of the situation of the oral epic in Yugoslavia, the extrapolation to oral art more generally serves as a rebuff to the literary critic. Committed to a strict definition of oral poetry—centered on the use of formula and composition-in-performance (the necessity for which, he quite rightly observes, is obviated by literate technologies)—Lord holds that there can be no transitional texts, because literacy impels oral composition in the...

The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance and Twentieth-Century American Literature by Michael Soto

The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance and Twentieth-Century American Literature by Michael Soto

Looking at Saul Bellow (1915–2005)

The backbone of twentieth-century American literature has been provided by two novelists-William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the twentieth century. For me as a writer The Adventures of Augie March remains the most inspiring American I've ever read. Nobody has topped Bellow at writing a about a city-bred American and probably nobody will.-Philip Roth, 5 April 2005, on the death of Saul BellowUnlike those of us who came howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair and teeth, speaking coherently. At twenty-six he is skillful, witty, and energetic and performs like a virtuoso. [. . .] My advice to Mr. Roth is to ignore all objections and to continue on his present course.-Saul Bellow, July 1959, review of Goodbye, ColumbusEditor's Note: On the evening of 5 April 2005, I was putting the final touches on a paper that I was to deliver at the 19th annual MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.) Conference in Chicago. It was then, checking an online news source to discover the weather in the Windy City, that I learned of the passing of Saul Bellow. He had died earlier that day, and it struck me as a somber coincidence that in less than forty-eight hours, I would be in the city of Augie March. Bellow had not lived in Chicago for many years, but I was hoping to find a bit of him present at the conference. I did not. There were no papers on Bellow-he has never been the most popular figure among MELUS members, and besides, he had said many times that he disliked being called a Jewish, or ethnic, writer-but nonetheless, many there privately expressed their grief over the death of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Among friends, we talked between panels and over meals, sharing our various histories and experiences reading his works. It was not a scholarly eulogy, surely no organized retrospective, but it helped us to place the significance of Bellow in our reading lives.For this issue of Philip Roth Studies, I have asked a number of friends and colleagues to do just this: share their thoughts on Bellow, what he meant to us personally and what he meant to the literary world, including his influence on Philip Roth. As for me, it was through the novels and stories of Bellow that I first came to know Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoys Complaint. He was my to Roth. His name always seemed to be linked to Roth's (and to Bernard Malamud's-Bellow served as a gateway there as well), so perhaps my work with this journal is a logical outgrowth of my fascination with The Adventures of Augie March, Seize the Day, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet. His fingerprints are here and all over the literary world, in places we cannot even detect. Roth apparently sensed them throughout his writing career, for he felt the need to issue an official statement, through his agent, the day after Bellow's death. Those of us associated with Philip Roth Studies feel the same. Consider the paragraphs that follow a testimony to Saul Bellow's legacy.-Derek Parker RoyalI was in graduate school when The Adventures of Augie March appeared. I remember my pleased astonishment when this Jewish novel received a rave front-page review in the New York Times Book Review and glowing acknowledgments in all the other literary publications. In those years following World War II, the New Criticism reigned supreme, and serious students of literature were expected to concentrate on English, not American, literature and certainly not on any contemporary work. Time was needed, our professors assured us, for a poem, play, or to gain major literary status. Indeed, my professors at both UCLA and USC (Ivy League and Johns Hopkins PhDs, for the most part) were then only grudgingly adding post-Victorian or Edwardian works to their reading lists. American literature itself was viewed as an area of study suitable only for the weaker or more frivolous students-or, as one of my undergraduate professors warned me-for lazy ones. …

Book Review: Hunger Overcome? Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature

Book Review: Hunger Overcome? Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature

Looking at Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

115 Looking at Saul Bellow (1915–2005) The backbone of twentieth-century American literature has been provided by two novelists—William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the twentieth century. For me as a writer The Adventures of Augie March remains the most inspiring American novel I’ve ever read. Nobody has topped Bellow at writing a novel about a city-bred American and probably nobody will. —Philip Roth, 5 April 2005, on the death of Saul Bellow Unlike those of us who came howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair and teeth, speaking coherently. At twenty-six he is skillful, witty, and energetic and performs like a virtuoso. [. . .] My advice to Mr. Roth is to ignore all objections and to continue on his present course. —Saul Bellow, July 1959, review of Goodbye, Columbus Editor’s Note: On the evening of 5 April 2005, I was putting the final touches on a paper that I was to deliver at the 19th annual MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.) Conference in Chicago. It was then, checking an online news source to discover the weather in the Windy City, that I learned of the passing of Saul Bellow. He had died earlier that day, and it struck me as a somber coincidence that in less than forty-eight hours, I would be in the city of Augie March. Bellow had not lived in Chicago for many years, but I was hoping to find a bit of him present at the conference. I did not. There were no papers on Bellow—he has never been the most popular figure among MELUS members, and besides, he had said many times that he disliked being called a Jewish, or “ethnic,” writer—but nonetheless, many there privately expressed their grief over the death of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Among friends, we talked between panels and over meals, sharing our various histories and experiences reading his works. It was not a scholarly eulogy, surely no organized retrospective , but it helped us to place the significance of Bellow in our reading lives. For this issue of Philip Roth Studies, I have asked a number of friends and colleagues to do just this: share their thoughts on Bellow, what he meant to us personally and what he meant to the literary world, including his influence on Philip Roth. As for me, it was through the novels and stories of Bellow that I first came to know Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint. He was my “gateway” to Roth. His name always seemed to be linked to Roth’s (and to Bernard Malamud’s—Bellow served as a gateway there as well), so perhaps my work with this journal is a logical outgrowth of my fascination with The Adventures of Augie March, Seize the Day, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet. His fingerprints are here and all over the literary world, in places we cannot 116 Philip Roth Studies Fall 2005 Author Saul Bellow, from the July 1958 issue of the Northwestern University Alumni News. Photograph courtesy of the Northwestern University Archives. Bellow Philip Roth Studies 117 even detect. Roth apparently sensed them throughout his writing career, for he felt the need to issue an official statement, through his agent, the day after Bellow’s death. Those of us associated with Philip Roth Studies feel the same. Consider the paragraphs that follow a testimony to Saul Bellow’s legacy. —Derek Parker Royal * * * I was in graduate school when The Adventures of Augie March appeared. I remember my pleased astonishment when this “Jewish novel” received a rave front-page review in the New York Times Book Review and glowing acknowledgments in all the other literary publications. In those years following World War II, the New Criticism reigned supreme, and “serious students” of literature were expected to concentrate on English, not American, literature and certainly not on any contemporary work. Time was needed, our professors assured us, for a poem, play, or novel to gain major literary status. Indeed, my professors at both UCLA and USC (Ivy League and Johns Hopkins PhDs, for the most part...

Hunger Overcome? Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature

Hunger Overcome? Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature

American Spaces in the Fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between Stars-on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. Robert Frost IN EDWARD HOPPERS PAINTING NIGHTHAWKS, three people sit at the counter of a diner, neither speaking nor looking at each other. The waiter busies himself behind the counter. It is a clean, well-lighted place, but not a space that keeps out the loneliness and nothingness of the outside world. The four people in the painting have brought that world of isolation in with them and made it a part of their own emotional space. What the painting suggests about the anonymity, loneliness, and emptiness of American interiors, physical and emotional, is a theme that runs through twentieth-century American literature as obviously and undeniably as the Mississippi runs through the middle of America. The names of the writers, from the beginning of the century to its close, are like ports along the way: Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver, Marilynne Robinson. In the works of all these writers, characters look for ways out of the rooms and houses that enclose their loneliness: Elizabeth Willard waiting for death to take her out of the inherited hotel that has become her prison; the unnamed narrator of Cathedral exclaiming with confused joy at a moment of transcendence that he no longer felt enclosed within anything; Emily Grierson looking out the windows of a decaying mansion that has literally become a tomb. Bachelard has written, If asked to name the benefit of a house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace (6). But to American writers, the walls that surround the inner spaces of houses are more often a metaphor for confinement within one's own ego, or confinement within a set of conventions that deny intimacy and individuality. For the characters who live in these spaces, life is outside, not within, as in Bachelard. Doors shut out the world, and the protagonist in American fiction must step outside that door to understand himself and make meaningful contact with others. To be shut in does not mean to be safe but to be trapped. This metaphor may originate, as Hemingway said all American fiction did, with Huck Finn, who runs away from his abusive father and the conventional household of the Widow Douglas and into a violent and dangerous world which at least allows him some independence. It may begin with Poe's House of Usher and the Gothic tradition. It certainly pervades the fiction of Faulkner, with his claustrophobic and decaying southern mansions, as William Ruzicka notes. We also see this metaphor in such contemporary classics as Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, in which Ruth and Sylvie burn down the house that has become a symbol of the stifling conventions of small town life, conventions which interfere with individual autonomy without providing kindness, understanding, or help. And it appears again and again in the mid-life crisis novels of Percy, Malamud, Price, and Bellow. Walls form a prison, and those caught within those walls are in a kind of solitary confinement; the only answer is escape. The solution to one's loneliness is outside. D. H. Lawrence once wrote of the original settlers in America: They came largely to get away--that most simple of motives. To get away. Away from what? Away from everything. That's why most people have come to America, and still do. To get away from everything they are and have been. Henceforth be masterless Which is all very well, but it isn't freedom. Rather the reverse--a hopeless sort of constraint. It is never freedom until you find something you positively want to be. (9) To the extent to which this is true, it isn't surprising that many of the protagonists of American fiction should keep on running, running away from houses that are both empty of meaning and stifling in their constraints. …