The storyteller at the heart of the new novel from the author of “Infatuations” is as unreliable as they come — and that, writes Tom Le Clair, is a good thing.
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Overview
This ebook edition has been proofed, corrected, and compiled to be read with without errors!
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Contents:
Chapter 1 The Spirit of Place
Chapter 2 Benjamin Franklin
Chapter 3 Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
Chapter 4 Fenimore Cooper's White Novels
Chapter 5 Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels
Chapter 6 Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 7 Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter
Chapter 8 Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance
Chapter 9 Dana's Two Years Before The Mast
Chapter 10 Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo
Chapter 11 Herman Melville's Moby Dick
Chapter 12 Whitman
***
CHAPTER 1
The Spirit of Place
WE like to think of the old-fashioned American classics as children's books. Just childishness, on our part. The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has babbled about children's stories.
Why? — Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.
There is a new feeling in the old American books, far more than there is in the modern American books, which are pretty empty of any feeling, and proud of it. There is a 'different' feeling in the old American classics. It is the shifting over from the old psyche to something new, a displacement. And displacements hurt. This hurts. So we try to tie it up, like a cut finger. Put a rag round it.
It is a cut too. Cutting away the old emotions and consciousness. Don't ask what is left.
Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day. And that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. Truth lives from day to day, and the marvellous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.
The old American artists were hopeless liars. But they were artists, in spite of themselves. Which is more than you can say of most living practitioners.
And you can please yourself, when you read The Scarlet Letter, whether you accept what that sugary, blue-eyed little darling of a Hawthorne has to say for himself, false as all darlings are, or whether you read the impeccable truth of his art-speech.
The curious thing about art-speech is that it prevaricates so terribly, I mean it tells such lies. I suppose because we always all the time tell ourselves lies. And out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth. Like Dostoevsky posing as a sort of Jesus, but most truthfully revealing himself all the while as a little horror.
Truly art is a sort of subterfuge. But thank God for it, we can see through the subterfuge if we choose. Art has two great functions. First, it provides an emotional experience. And then, if we have the courage of our own feelings, it becomes a mine of practical truth. We have had the feelings ad nauseam. But we've never dared dig the actual truth out . of them, the truth that concerns us, whether it concerns our grandchildren or not.
The artist usually sets out — or used to — to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never . trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Now we know our business in these studies; saving the American tale from the American artist.
Let us look at this American artist first. How did he ever get to America, to start with? Why isn't he a European still, like his father before him?
Now listen to me, don't listen to him. He'll tell
***
Contents:
Chapter 1 The Spirit of Place
Chapter 2 Benjamin Franklin
Chapter 3 Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
Chapter 4 Fenimore Cooper's White Novels
Chapter 5 Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels
Chapter 6 Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 7 Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter
Chapter 8 Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance
Chapter 9 Dana's Two Years Before The Mast
Chapter 10 Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo
Chapter 11 Herman Melville's Moby Dick
Chapter 12 Whitman
***
CHAPTER 1
The Spirit of Place
WE like to think of the old-fashioned American classics as children's books. Just childishness, on our part. The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has babbled about children's stories.
Why? — Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.
There is a new feeling in the old American books, far more than there is in the modern American books, which are pretty empty of any feeling, and proud of it. There is a 'different' feeling in the old American classics. It is the shifting over from the old psyche to something new, a displacement. And displacements hurt. This hurts. So we try to tie it up, like a cut finger. Put a rag round it.
It is a cut too. Cutting away the old emotions and consciousness. Don't ask what is left.
Art-speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day. And that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. Truth lives from day to day, and the marvellous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.
The old American artists were hopeless liars. But they were artists, in spite of themselves. Which is more than you can say of most living practitioners.
And you can please yourself, when you read The Scarlet Letter, whether you accept what that sugary, blue-eyed little darling of a Hawthorne has to say for himself, false as all darlings are, or whether you read the impeccable truth of his art-speech.
The curious thing about art-speech is that it prevaricates so terribly, I mean it tells such lies. I suppose because we always all the time tell ourselves lies. And out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth. Like Dostoevsky posing as a sort of Jesus, but most truthfully revealing himself all the while as a little horror.
Truly art is a sort of subterfuge. But thank God for it, we can see through the subterfuge if we choose. Art has two great functions. First, it provides an emotional experience. And then, if we have the courage of our own feelings, it becomes a mine of practical truth. We have had the feelings ad nauseam. But we've never dared dig the actual truth out . of them, the truth that concerns us, whether it concerns our grandchildren or not.
The artist usually sets out — or used to — to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never . trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Now we know our business in these studies; saving the American tale from the American artist.
Let us look at this American artist first. How did he ever get to America, to start with? Why isn't he a European still, like his father before him?
Now listen to me, don't listen to him. He'll tell
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940012144300 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 01/22/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 527 KB |
About the Author
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist, storywriter, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. Among his works, Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913, The Rainbow in 1915, Women In Love in 1920, and many others.
Date of Birth:
September 11, 1885Date of Death:
March 2, 1930Place of Birth:
Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, EnglandPlace of Death:
Vence, FranceEducation:
Nottingham University College, teacher training certificate, 1908From the B&N Reads Blog
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