Writers In America Research Articles

Haymarket and Hazard: The Lonely Politics of William Dean Howells

A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) came out of Howell's experience with the 1887 execution of the Chicago Haymarket Square anarchists, and it documented the constellation of issues that combined to make the Haymarket riots such a traumatic episode. The decline of agrarian values and the rise of industrialism, the pervasiveness of the free market, the strike wars between labor and management, and the rapidly growing urban areas which were changing under the tide of immigration all receive Howells's sustained treatment in the novel. Yet if most commentators can agree that the novel was Howells's most politically ambitions, hardly anyone has explored the of Howells's personal stake in the novel.(1) As much as Howells wanted to explore the unimaginable and certainly frightening changes that were confronting American society, Howells wrote the novel to explore consequences of his bitterness and alienation as a result of his Haymarket protest. Beginning with his travel narratives, Venetian Life (1886) and Italian Journeys (1867), on up through The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Howells had enjoyed an unprecedented rise in both popularity and critical stature which seemed to justify his ascension to the apostolic succession Oliver Wendell Holmes had conferred upon him when he was a young man making a literary pilgrimage of sorts to visit his own literary idols, Lowell, Hawthorne, Emerson, et al.(2) Though Howells's commitment to realism, as biographers Lynn and Cady have shown, subjected Howells to some occasionally harsh criticism from his audience for his willingness to paint life too harshly, there was no question that by the late 1880s William Dean Howells was America's preeminent author. Haymarket, however, severed Howells from his conception of realism, of his audience, of America itself. Stripped from the comfort of all that had previously sustained him, Howells wrote A Hazard of New Fortunes as his bravest attempt to overturn what would become, unfortunately, our lasting image of him, best captured in the famous dismissive words of H.L Mencken: almost the national ideal: an urbane and highly respected gentleman, a sitter on committees...a placid conformist (Cady and Cady 259). To a remarkable degree, Howells's protest of the execution of the so-called Haymarket anarchists placed him on a committee of one, and his experience points up the many obstacles the writer in America faces who strives to make a political gesture through his fiction.Thus, critics have failed to see that Howells wrote his protest into the Novel through a kind of doubled perspective. On an obvious level, which. no one has failed to notice, Howells employed as his critical spokesman his favorite alter ego, Basil March, whom Howells had used in other novels, including his first novel, Their Wedding Journey (1871). March represents no on Howells's version of himself, but his audience as well. If Howells was going to convince his audience of the moral outrage that had been committed in the aftermath of the Haymarket riots, then he would. have to do so through a figure with whom his audience could identify. The eminently sane March fits this bill. On the other hand, Howells had become estranged from the very saneness March was supposed to represent. No longer did he share the values--in today's more politicized times, one might even use the word, ideology--that March could be said to represent: an essential middle-class faith that as unfair as American social conditions might be, things were, after al, worse elsewhere and, besides, things here ere no doubt getting better. As we shall see, Howells's divide opinion concerning America, as well as his doubled perspective in the novel, expressed itself in the figure of the would-be anarchist, and German immigrant, Lindau. A peculiar double motion occurs between March and Lindau. Ultimately, Lindau complicates March's response to the distinctly undemocratic social conditions that Hazard portrays, while at the same time March absorbs and drains the venom from Lindau's critique. …

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception

Jupiter Hammon and the biblical beginnings of African-American literature

This critical edition of the works of Jupiter Hammon, the first black writer in America, modernized for 20th-century readers, includes vital background on Jupiter Hammon's life and times. Lack of information on striking similarities between northern slavery (particularly in Hammon's home state, New York) and the southern colonies, and on the slaves' survival strategies, has led to misinterpretation and lack of evaluation of works by 18th-century slave writers like Hammon, Wheatley, Occum, Equiano, and others. Equally important is the explication of Biblical symbolism that these writers used in surreptitious code to inspire rebellion against slavery.

Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism

From the late 1860s until her death in 1910, Rebecca Harding Davis was one of the best-known writers in America. She broke into print as a young woman in the 1860s with Life in the Iron Mills, which established her as one of the pioneers of American realism. She developed a literary theory of the commonplace nearly two decades before William Dean Howels shaped his own version of the concept. Yet, in spite of her importance to the literary and popular culture of her time, she has been, for the most part, ignored by scholars. Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism helps to change that.

Reviews : The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception. Edited by Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin and Gunther Holst. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 314. $29.95. The Shifting Fortunes of Wilhelm Raabe: A History of Criticism as a Cautionary Tale. By Jeffrey L. Sammons. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992. Pp. xiii

Reviews : The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception. Edited by Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin and Gunther Holst. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 314. $29.95. The Shifting Fortunes of Wilhelm Raabe: A History of Criticism as a Cautionary Tale. By Jeffrey L. Sammons. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992. Pp. xiii

My Father's Shadow: Intergenerational Conflict in African American Men's Autobiography.

In My Father's Shadow, David L. Dudley explores a line of African American men's autobiographies. starting with Frederick Douglass and moving on through Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Eldridge Cleaver, and Malcolm X. In life, these writers did not enjoy normal relationships with their fathers, who were all unknown, absent. or abusive. Damaged and damaging father-son relationships in childhood, Dudley contends, spill over into adult personal and artistic relationships, clouding and complicating the already complex issue of identity that lies at the core of any autobiographical endeavor. Dudley identifies a kind of inter generational Oedipus conflict: each rising autobiographer seeks. through his text to displace his predecessor in order to gain imaginative space for himself as well as a position of authority in the black (and sometimes, white) community. As each writer strives to come to terms with the powerful father figure in the black male autobiographical tradition. he also wrestles with the larger issue of his own identity in relation to the literary and cultural traditions in which he lives and writes. Dudley also traces the triumph of these writers as they establish their own identity in the face of great personal and societal odds. My Father's Shadow is an important contribution to the study of African American literature, history, politics, and culture. It will also serve as an examination of the experiences of seven writers as they struggle with what it means to be a black man and a black writer in America.

The Power behind the Pronoun: Narrative Games in Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Looking at the abundance of critical literature on Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler (Iwn) and marveling at the differences between some of the interpretations critics propose, one cannot help wondering what it is about the book that sparks such a variety of reactions. Is it just the usual proliferation of critical commentary that arises once a book has been found worthy of the New York Times Book Review? Although one cannot deny Calvino a certain amount of postmodernist trendiness-after all, we are looking at a novel that investigates the (erotic) properties of reading and writing and gives disciplines of literary theory their money's worth in cunning references to major ideas from Plato to Derrida-Iwn is more than just a collection of smart narrative gimmicks. There is a fundamental unreliability at the heart of the text, which seems to say yes to every critic's question and thus negates them all. This refusal to take sides suggests that we are dealing here with a playful text, a narrative designed to mock the existing order, ringing with what Mikhail Bakhtin describes as the laughter of carnival that asserts and denies . .. buries and revives (12). Granted, the idea of literary play and literature as play is hardly new and has had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s with the so-called postmodernist writers in America and their European colleagues, such as Calvino and Raymond Queneau, the founder of Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature). However, the ludic strategies Calvino employs in Iwn defy the initial impression of

Introduction

Introduction Karen Patricia Smith (bio) It is with great pleasure that I present to you a special section devoted to Black literature for children. The Black tradition in literature embraces the images, emotions and ideals of a people whose present identity, while grounded in the realities of that present, encompasses the dreams, actions and accomplishments of a vibrant heritage. This is a heritage which continues to witness various stages of recognition in the eyes of the world, not always in the progressive sense, but always within the context of continuous social struggle. It is a heritage which calls upon the traditions of Africa, the Carribean, South and Central America, the United States and indeed all of the world's lands where Black culture has flourished. Within the experience of the Afro-American lies the grace of creative possibility; the artist gives voice to that possibility through words or illustrations, the vocal or visual affirmation of what was, what is and what can be. In her essay "On Being a Black Writer in America," Virginia Hamilton speaks of the Black experience and how her heritage has influenced her work for young people. She states her belief in the value of sharing that heritage and its realities with all people through the vehicle of the literary gift: What being black means is a constant in myself and my work. It is the belief in the importance of past and present Afro-American life to the multi-ethnic fabric of the hopescape and the necessity of making that life known to all Americans. It is the belief in the preservation of the life and literature, the documentary history in schools and libraries for succeeding American generations. It is the imaginative use of language and ideas to illuminate a human condition, so that we are reminded then again to care who these black people are, where they come from, how they dream, how they hunger, what they want. (Hamilton 17) The roots of Black tradition are strongly connected to African lore. Waterman and Bascom in an article in Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, comment upon both the present wide distribution of the beliefs connected with African lore as well as its resilience in survival ability (Waterman and Bascom 18). Some of the stories associated with the traditions are widely known. Others remain virtually unknown to westerners. The folklore of the Luo people of East Africa, for example, is not well known in the Western world. The Luo have a rich tradition which includes the art of riddling and the sharing of proverbs and beast tales. The tricksters, Hare and Hyena, also play major roles in Luo folklore (Onyango-Oguto and Roscoe 30). The figure of Hare appears in many African traditions and has also been transplanted to North America. When he appears, Hare is often realized as a character who is able to overcome any supposed physical weakness and, through his wits, is able to get the better of adversaries even though they might be physically stronger than he is. Wits are an important attribute in African folk-tale tradition. Among the Ibo and Yoruba people of Nigeria, the trickster Tortoise is a prominent figure. He is so popular here that an entire collection entitled Twilight and the Tortoise by Akinsemoyin, chronicles his escapades (Onyango-Oguto and Roscoe 30). Anansi, also known as "The Spider," as well as by several other names in various regions, is a well known trickster figure from West Africa who also figures prominently in the Carribean as well as Afro-American traditions. An article by Carla Hayden and Helen Kay Raseroka, "The Good and the Bad: Two Novels of South Africa," and a second article by Meena Khorana, "Apartheid in South African Children's Fiction," seek to give fresh perspectives on literature created for South African children. The actions of the government of the turbulent and deeply troubled Republic shall continue for some time to raise powerful political and social issues. Literature often provides an important forum in which conflicting belief systems are pitted one against the other. In addition to the artistic considerations, literature can be a potent socializing tool for all, and...

On Being a Black Writer in America

On Being a Black Writer in America Virginia Hamilton (bio) I write for young people in part because my rural childhood was filled with light, openness and time for my imagination to soar. I keep wonderfully clear memories from that period. And as a novelist, I am able to transform that which evolves from my own experience of living into a coherent fictional form. This may be the fundamental meaning of self-expression: the discovery by the author of new ways of expressing real sources of living that are particularly hers. Thus, writing over a period of time does indeed stand for what she has lived and what living has meant to her. I have written twenty books for young people starting from the read-alone age to young adult age, so that now a brand new generation of the young is acquainted with them. I considered myself a fictionist although I have written biographies of the great baritone, Paul Robeson, and the fine scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois. Over the years, I have attempted through my books to bring to children and young adult readers something of value lives from the unique American black perspective, as well as to shed light on the real concerns of young people in a world in which survival becomes for them increasingly more difficult. Through character, time and place, I've attempted to portray the essence of a race, its essential community, culture, history and traditions, which I know well, and its relation to the larger American society. I endeavor to demonstrate the nexus the black group has with all other groups, nationalities and races, the connection the American black child has with all children and to present the best of my heritage. I consider myself a student of history as well as literature. My books generally have an historical aspect that becomes an integral part of the fictions. A novel taking place in the present will often evoke an atmosphere of former generations. We carry our pasts with us in the present through states of mind, family history and historical fact. No one source is more specific to and symbolic of my writing than the historical progression of black people across the American hopescape. Historically, Americans have thought of themselves as egalitarian, aware at least of a constant assertion of the equality of all. We proposed a unique concept, that the young have the right to books reflecting their cultural and racial and spiritual heritage. Cultural democracy was to be the giant step on the way to equal education and the first [End Page 15] principle to the attainment of human equality. We assumed as a human right that all people have free access to information about themselves and their pasts. While many of us hold to the same beliefs, others attempt to censor what American young people will read, by removing so-called controversial books from library shelves and, more subtly with books by and about blacks, by simply not making them available, by not purchasing them. In some cases, works by and about blacks are said to be too sophisticated, too high art for the young. Books like my own, which are occasionally mildly experimental —with subject matter having to do with mental dissociation, graphic imagery of nuclear explosions, Amerindian and black survival in a hostile majority society, children alone and hungry for love and companionship —are said to be, and often by those adults who should know better, only for the especially gifted child. It is rather interesting that the awards some of my works have received often contribute to the apparent suspicion that the works are "art" or "literature" and therefore too difficult or too special for the usual or ordinary child. These adults would keep the young at a safe and quasi-literate level, where their response to life and to the world remains predictable and manageable. The way I counteract such backwardness is by keeping fresh my awareness of young people's keen imaginations and by responding to their needs, fears, loves and hungers in as many new ways as possible. Whatever art I possess is a social action in itself. My view is that...

Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville, the Harlem Renaissance and the Mythologies of Black Women

When Gwendolyn Brooks published her first collection of poetry A Street in Bronzeville (1945) with Harper and Brothers, she already enjoyed a substantial reputation in the literary circles of Chicago. Nearly a dec­ ade earlier, her mother Keziah Brooks, had arranged meetings between her daughter and James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, two of the most distinguished Black writers of America's Harlem Renaissance. Determined to mold Gwendolyn into a lady Paul Laurence Dunbar, Mrs. Brooks proffered poems for the famous writers to read. While Johnson's advice to the young poet was abrupt, eventually he exerted an incisive influence on her later work. In a letter and a marginal note included on the returned poems, addressed to her on 30 August 1937, Johnson praised Brooks's obvious talent and pointed her in the direction of Modernist poetry: My dear Miss Brooks: I have read the poems you sent me last. Of them I especially liked Reunion and Myself. Reunion is very good, and Myself is good. You should, by all means, continue you[r] study and work. I shall always be glad to give you any assistance that I can. Sincerely yours. James Weldon Johnson.

Wallace Stegner’s Family Saga: From The Big Rock Candy Mountain To Recapitulation

University of California, Santa Cruz F O R R E S T G. R O B IN S O N Wallace Stegner’s Family Saga: From The Big Rock Candy Mountain To Recapitulation We can make closer contact in fiction than in reality; more surely than we know the secrets of our friends we know how this writer who is something like ourselves looks upon himself, how he fronts his life, how he, another waif in a bewildering world, has made out to survive and perhaps be at peace. Wallace Stegner, The Writer in America I It is one of the few really glaring contradictions in Wallace Stegner’s work that he has been hostile to fiction of the “confessional” stripe and at the same time preoccupied, in much of his very best writing, with the intimate details of his own life.1The dramatic focus of this autobiographi­ cal impulse has been the triangular relationship between the novelist’s fictional double, Bruce Mason, and his parents, George and Hilda Stegner (Bo and Elsa Mason). The story first surfaces in The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Stegner’s widely acclaimed classic of the American West. Here, in what he has characterized as “family history reasonably I have a debt of gratitude to Margaret G. Robinson, my collaborator on several Stegner projects, for her very valuable suggestions and encouragement during the making of this essay. 1In The Uneasy Chair (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1974), for example, he applauds the fact that Bernard DeVoto was “more inclined to think than to throb, more inclined to consult fact and experience than wishful theory, more interested in communication than self-expression, exhibitionism, or public confession” (128). 102 Western American Literature straight,”2Stegner shapes the sharply polarized figures of his parents into a kind of template for the measurement and understanding of western American history. On one side is the father, Bo Mason, restless, energetic, independent, the socially irresponsible pursuer of the main chance in the wild, wide open West. On the other is the mother, Elsa Mason, the embodiment of home, the family, continuity, culture — civilized forces inimical to the headstrong individualism of her husband. The chronicle of their historically representative struggle gives way, in the novel’s later chapters, to the emergence of their son, Bruce Mason, into early adult­ hood. As yet not fully formed, Bruce is nonetheless the living receptacle of the polarized forces that have shaped him. Indeed, at the novel’s close, as he stands beside his father’s grave, young Mason takes it as his principal task in life to oversee the blending of parental energies that will combine in his own destiny. Perhaps it took several generations to make a man, perhaps it took several combinations and re-creations of his mother’s gentleness and resilience, his father’senormous energy and appetite for the new, a subtle blending of masculine and feminine, selfish and selfless, stubborn and yielding, before a proper man could be fashioned. He was the only one left to fulfill the contract and try to justify the labor and the harshness and the mistakes of his parents’ lives, and that responsibility was so clearly his, was so great an obligation, that it made unimportant and unreal the sight of the motley collection of pall-bearers staggering under the weight of his father’sbody, and the back door of the hearse closing quietly upon the casket and the flowers.3 Since 1943, when The Big Rock Candy Mountain was published, Stegner has made periodic passes over the familial territory that he first surveyed nearly 40 years ago. Memories of the site and circumstances of his childhood turn up in The Sound of Mountain Water (1969), and a brief but very candid discussion of his parents appears in Wolf Willow (1962). Meanwhile, his fiction, reflecting Stegner’s belief that “we are born to write one story,”4has circled back time and again to the cluster 2Forrest G. Robinson and Margaret G. Robinson, Wallace Stegner (Boston: Twayne, 1977), p. 18. 3The Big Rock Candy Mountain (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1943), p. 515. Hereafter the pagination of quotations from this volume is indicated in the text. 4Forrest...

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Iran Under the Pahlavis. Edited by George Lenczowski Islam in Tropical Africa, 2nd edition. Edited by I. M. Lewis A Palestinian Agenda for the West Bank and Gaza. Edited by Emile A. Nakhleh Michigan Oriental Studies in honor of George C. Cameron offered by the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the University of Michigan. Edited by Louis L. Orlin. Ann Arbor The Peasant Venture: Tradition, Migration, and Change among Georgian Peasants in Turkey. By Paul J. Magnarella The Arab Press. By William A. Rugh Imale: Yoruba Participation in the Muslim Tradition. A Study of Clerical Piety. By Patrick J. Ryan Studies on Islam. Translated and edited by Merlin L. Swartz Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World. By Anthony Welch Decision on Palestine: How the U. S. Came to Recognize Israel. By Evan M. Wilson Media Briefing Packet: The Middle East. Compiled by Sheila A. Scoville The Image of Islamic Civilization. Edited by Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Beg Studies in Islamic Economics. Edited by Khurshid Ahmad Social Life under the Abbasids 170–289 AH; 786–902 AD. By M. M. Ahsan Mystical poems of Rumi. By Jalal aldin Rūm?. Translated by A. J. Arberry Concept of Islamic State. By the Islamic Council of Europe. Edited by Salem Azzam Readings on the History of the Holy Land—From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Ray L. Cleveland Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. By Michael M. J. Fischer Lebanon in Crisis: Participants and Issues. Edited by Edward P. Haley and Lewis W. Snider Mizh: A Monograph on Government's Relations with the Mahsud Tribe. By Evelyn Howell Intellectual Modernism of Shibli Nu'mani: An Exposition of His Religious and Socio‐Political Ideas. By Mehr Afroz Murad Egyptian One‐Act Plays. Selected and translated by Denys Johnson‐Davies Al‐Jujani's Theory of Poetic Imagery. By Kamal Abu Deeb Children of Gebelawi. By Naguib Mahfouz. Translated by Philip Stewart Mundus Arabicus [An Annual Devoted to Arabic Literature]. Vol. I, 1981. Arab Writers in America: Critical Essays and Annotated Bibliography The Fundamental Principles and Precepts of Islamic Government. By Abolhassan Banisadr Islam and Power. Edited by Alexander S. Cudsi and Ali E. Hillal Dessouki Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi. By Robert Grant Irving Akbar: The Architect of the Mughul Empire. By Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi Don't You Hear the Thunder: A Dutchman's Life Story. By D. van der Meulen New Paths in Muslim Evangelism: Evangelical Approaches to Contextualization. By Phil Parshall Muhammad Iqbal und dei drei Reiche des Geistes (Muhammad Iqbal and the Three Realms of the Spirit). Edited by Wolfgang Koehler The Arab World, 4th Edition. By William R. Polk The Early Abbasid Caliphate. By Hugh Kennedy The Islamic State. By Asghar Ali Engineer Beyond Camp David: Emerging Alignments and Leaders in the Middle East. By Paul A. Jureidini and R. D. McLaurin Beyond Camp David The Camp David Framework for Peace: A Shift Toward Shared Rule. By Daniel J. Elazar Beyond Camp David The West Bank and Gazn: Toward the Making of a Palestinian State. By Emile A. Nakhleh Beyond Camp David Iran under the Safavids. By Roger Savory The Economic History of Turkey 1800–1914. By Charles Issawi Cultures of the Islamic Middle East: a guide to introductory readings for the non‐specialist. By John W. Bagnole Nubian Ceremonial Life. Edited by John Kennedy Muslim Society. By Ernest Gellner Muslim Women: In Purdah and Out of It. By Jamila Brijbhushan Women in Islam: By Naila Minai Women's Status in the Muslim World: A Bibliographical Survey. Compiled by lnger Marie Ruud

Western Writers of America: Silver Anniversary Anthology ed. by August Lenniger, and: Spurs: Western Writers of America introduction by S. Omar Barker

Western Writers of America: Silver Anniversary Anthology ed. by August Lenniger, and: Spurs: Western Writers of America introduction by S. Omar Barker

The Filipino writer in America—old and new

(1976). The Filipino writer in America—old and new. World Literature Written in English: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 406-414.

Artists and Writers in America

Previous articleNext article No AccessArtists and Writers in AmericaGarnett McCoyGarnett McCoy Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 16, Number 41976 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/aaa.16.4.1557111 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1976 Archives of Amer. ArtPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reviews

Reviews THE JEWISH WRITER IN AMERICA , by Allen Guttmann . Oxford University Press , New York , 1971 ; pp. x, 256 ; £3.60. DOUGLAS HEWITT DOUGLAS HEWITT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 21, Issue 9, September 1974, Pages 359-b–360, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/21-9-359b Published: 01 September 1974

Flannery O'Connor's Rage of Vision

IN DISCUSSING THE WRITER in America, A. Alvarez has noted that the ubiquitous violence which threatens to devour us in this age has been internalized by the artist who works out in the microcosm of his self the destructive potentiality of the time.' Certainly the times have provided spectacular metaphors for the darkest side of the mind; the violence of Dachau, Hiroshima, Mississippi too easily supports our most primitive fears. But the writer does more than assimilate the outer world to his purposes; he also projects his own corresponding impulses onto the macrocosm, shaping through his fictions world which reflects his specific inner vision. For the writer, the inner and outer worlds merge in imaginatively extended country, and in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor that country is dominated by sense of imminent destruction. From the moment the reader enters O'Connor's backwoods, he is poised on the edge of pervasive violence. Characters barely contain their rage; images reflect hostile nature; and even the Christ to whom the characters are ultimately driven is threatening figure, a stinking, mad shadow full of the apocalyptic wrath of the Old Testament. O'Connor's conscious purpose is evident enough, and has been abundantly observed by her critics: to reveal the need for grace in world grotesque without transcendent context. I have found that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil, she wrote,2 and she was not vague about what that devil is: an evil intelligence determined on its own supremacy. It would seem that for O'Connor, given the fact of Original Sin, any intelligence determined on its own supremacy was intrinsically evil. For in each work, it is the impulse toward secular autonomy, the smug

The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity

Journal Article The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. By Allen Guttmann. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. x + 256 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $7.95.) Get access Hyman Berman Hyman Berman University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 59, Issue 2, September 1972, Pages 480–481, https://doi.org/10.2307/1890276 Published: 01 September 1972