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Introduction: The American Novel
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16464 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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5 / 1989 |
304 Words |
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The May issue features an extended discussion of the American novel, organized around a long essay by James W. Tuttleton, associate dean of arts and sciences at New York University. In his lead essay, "Tracking the American Novel into the Void," Professor Tuttleton provocatively addresses two questions: What is distinctively American about American novels? And does the history of the American novel reveal a continuity of characterstics that can be described as typically American? Tuttleton responds to both questions affirmatively and goes on to provide illustrations for his views.
In a selective survey of American literature, he emphasizes the role of allegory and fantasy, even in works that are conventionally interpreted as social novels. Though Tuttleton does not deny that Henry James, Edith Wharton, and other respected American novelists wrote about class and social values, he insists that their themes and concerns are less instinctively American than European. By his reckoning, American society, having fewer hard class distinctions than its European counterparts, has produced less first rate social literature than the France of Honore Balzac, the Germany of Thomas Mann, or the England of Charles Dickens.
The respondents to Tuttleton's essay, Denis Donoghue, David Reynolds, Kenneth Lynn, Josephine Hendin, Audrey Foote, Chilton Williamson, Jr., and Virgil Nemoianu, all dissent from its argument or at least try to offer modifications. Some reinterpret Moby Dick and other novels cited by Tuttleton as being predominantly social commentaries. Others maintain that Tuttleton overstates his case, which he reconstructs in a concluding statement that takes account of his critics. All the responses are appropriately polemical, including
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