Academy Meetings

A New Literary History of America

Werner Sollors and Greil Marcus Introduction by Emilio Bizzi Courtesy Harvard University Press

This presentation was given at the 1945th Stated Meeting held at the House of the Academy on September 24, 2009.

Introduction

Tonight, we have the pleasure of hearing Werner Sollors is the Henry B. and Anne M. from Werner Sollors and Greil Marcus, who Cabot Professor of English Literature and will discuss their new book, A New Literary Professor of African and African American History of America. They have done an in- Studies at Harvard University. He has been credible job putting together in a single vol- called one of today’s foremost American- ume a cultural history of the United States ists; his writings about ethnicity, literature, in the last four hundred years. They have race, and history have broadened our un- considered a number of topics, such as ½c- derstanding of what it means to be Ameri- tion, drama, and poetry–but also a num- can. He was elected a Fellow of the Acade- ber of unconventional genres, such as reli- my in 2001. His co-editor, Greil Marcus, is Emilio Bizzi gious sermons, children’s books, political a writer, cultural critic, and acclaimed in- Emilio Bizzi is Institute Professor and Investigator addresses, and other topics, in order to pro- terpreter of the sound and soul of America. at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at vide a comprehensive view of the cultural His 1975 book, Mystery Train, rede½ned pop- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has currents in the United States. As Werner ular music criticism. been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts says in the book, the goal of the project was and Sciences since 1980. He served as the Acad- to produce not a comprehensive encyclo- emy’s 44th President. pedia but a provocation.

Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 7 Academy Meetings

lustrated wonderfully, of limited plot lines We tried to get contributing in literary history. There always arises a gold- en age, or there comes a decline. There are authors who had not previ- avant-garde writers; there are epigonal writers. The story is very quickly exhaust- ously published books on ed, and it doesn’t amount to a very thrilling plot line. And then there are the readily ac- topics they were assigned . . . cessible electronic tools that make it much Our slogan was always that easier today for a student–or for anybody– to get to the bare facts, those facts that a they should surprise not only nineteenth-century literary historian would have familiarized the reader with by em- the readers but also them- ploying a narrative. What do we do in the Werner Sollors age of Google with a literary history? selves with what they were Werner Sollors is the Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot I also think of my own students’ experiences writing. Professor of English Literature and Professor of with reading literary history. They tend to African and African American Studies at Harvard browse or look for particular information Thus the idea emerged to focus on the pro- University. He has been a Fellow of the American on one author or one moment. Very few cess of making as something that could hold Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2001. students that I know read a literary history together a volume on America. When we from beginning to end. look around the world today, we see that In the course I am teaching now, we turned Thinking of this state of affairs, I was very the whole world either loves or hates Amer- this week to Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad. happy when Lindsay Waters, Executive Ed- ica but knows American popular culture I came across the following passage in the itor for the Humanities at Harvard Univer- really well–much better than after World book: “The information the ancients didn’t sity Press, asked me, almost four years ago War II, when the early Americanists had to have was very voluminous.” (This is apro- to the day, to think of devising an American spread knowledge about writers like Mel- pos of passing the Rock of Gibraltar and re- literary history that would follow the mod- ville and Hawthorne through American alizing that they thought it was the end of el of the histories that Harvard University studies programs. Now, one can count on the world.) Mark Twain continues: “Even Press had published before: A New History the whole world knowing Superman or the prophets wrote book after book and of French Literature (1989) and A New History Rambo or whatever else the popular culture of German Literature (2004). They are organ- industry has exported. So our idea was to The idea emerged to focus ized as assortments of essays held together include in the process of making aspects of by a chronological grid. Each essay is intro- popular culture, not just of high culture, and on the process of making as duced with headlines and a particular date, we had to select them in a way that would but no attempt is made to create one period make sense for a volume in which literature something that could hold to- narrative or one continuous narrative from is still the central organizing device. gether a volume on America. beginning to end. When Greil agreed to become co-editor of The dif½culty we encountered in talking the book–which was the happiest moment for me, to think of co-editing a book with epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted about this project–in hundreds of email messages over the last four years–was the Mr. Lipstick Traces–we had to think about at the existence of a great continent on our the literary strand that could hold together side of the water. Yet they must have known question of, what is the difference when we try to approach American literary history? a great variety of topics and genres that in- it was there, I should think.” How can one cludes not only the literary genres Emilio address this voluminous lack of information Obviously, it’s a much shorter span than doing a history of German or French litera- already talked about, but also political texts, in a literary history at this moment? Javier the man-made environment, technological Solana, then Secretary General of the Coun- ture. Also, with German and French literature, one has a sense of a long-established inventions, and so forth. We decided on cil of the European Union, visited Harvard the aspect of literariness: of something that and said that what the European Union literary tradition that precedes the emer- gence of a nation-state. But in the United is textual, that can be read, that has a delin- needs now is a narrative. “There is no nar- eation resembling the literary. For example, rative to guide us,” he lamented. States, you ½nd so much emphasis on made- up things that are created under our noses: an entry on Chuck Berry mentions that he I think that also describes the task of liter- in print pamphlets, for example, we can wrote an autobiography, so the textual an- ary history today because there is a general trace a line from the ½rst visions of what gle is given there. We have a wonderful en- fatigue about grand narratives. There is the the American colonies could become to try on the Mergenthaler Linotype machine. problem, too, which David Perkins has il- such documents as the Declaration of Inde- (Mark Twain, of course, invested in the pendence. mechanical typesetter that didn’t make it,

8 Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 A New Literary History of America the Paige Compositor, and almost went four hundred possible topics. We could ½t Greil and I talked about the very protracted bankrupt as a result of it.) The Mergen- a few more than two hundred essays in the process of editing the essays down to the thaler typesetter teaches you interesting book, so we had to radically reduce the num- right size. They’re all between about 2,200 things, such as why we say uppercase and ber of essays. We tried to negotiate how we and 2,500 words, some a little shorter, some lowercase (because that’s really how the would give enough space to the high canon- a little longer. We also tried to “de-acade- typesetting worked: with a case that was ical authors like Hawthorne, Melville, T. S. mize” the book, so words like heteronormativ- higher up and a case that was lower), that, Eliot, Faulkner, and O’Neill; to authors who ity were struck (although I noticed that it again, relate directly to the textual. once were canonical such as Longfellow appears once in the book, prefaced by “what (who gets a very good essay in the book); gender theorists now call”). Greil is also With that in mind, we could include topics to middlebrow writers like James Jones, wonderful in getting rid of clichés and ½ller that would be, in a broad sense, literary– author of From Here to Eternity; to middle- words. from the ½rst map in which the name Amer- brow institutions, as shown by an entry on ica appeared to Obama’s election, the latter the Book-of-the-Month Club; and to writ- The book is a response to the of which was actually an afterthought. ers from minority groups who had no place When Obama was elected in November in some histories of the past, including, for predicament that we’re in: 2008, the volume’s last entry was an essay example, Chief Simon Pokagon, one of the on Hurricane Katrina. It seemed important ½rst American Indian ½ction writers. trying not to devise grand to include the 2008 election, and we thought of asking an artist to comment. It would The discussion of topics led to surprising narratives and yet still being have been too easy to have a political puff double entries where, in order to ½t differ- piece of sorts, of inflated hopes, of the rhet- ent subjects into one entry, wonderful able to provide something oric of the moment. We asked Kara Walker matches were made. Longfellow and Wil- like a historical overview. to contribute, and she did a visual piece, a liam Carlos Williams appear together as series of her paper cuts with some writing transnational poets. Dreiser and Wharton One of the things I am particularly happy in them. Again, the textual is there, but the are together in one essay; T. S. Eliot and with is the great number of minority writ- writing includes such phrases as wtf and D. H. Lawrence in another; Henry Ford and omg ers who are contributors but who don’t that I think the text messagers among Diego Rivera, brought together by an invi- write in the book about only the minority you can easily decode. tation to lunch that Ford extended to Rivera, group with which they are ordinarily asso- in still another. One of my favorites is the ciated; the essays on The Great Gatsby, on A The book allows you to pairing of Absalom, Absalom! and Gone with Boy’s Own Story, on Melville, Wharton, and the Wind, both published in 1936 as South- Dreiser, on The Wizard of Oz, on Tarzan, and create your own narrative ern epics but with quite different trajecto- on Babbitt offer such examples. ries. There’s John F. Kennedy’s inaugural by reading the essays in a address together with Joseph Heller’s Catch The formal unit that emerges from the 22, which gives you a sense of the surprising predicament of writing cultural history particular sequence. double entries. We tried to get contributing today, or writing literary history, when the authors who had not previously published narrative is exhausted is a book that allows The amazement at things that have been books on topics they were assigned; we did you to create your own narrative by reading created, that have been made, that have not want rehashes of already published the essays in a particular sequence. The book been made up is something that permeates writing, but writers who cared about the has a wonderful website (http://newliterary the volume, including not only memorable topics and would try to write surprising history.com) with twelve essays that you prose but also unforgettable visuals: the things. Our slogan was always that they can look at as samplers. It’s set up as a deck moments at which drip paintings, popular should surprise not only the readers but al- of cards–“Pick a card, pick any card,” as tunes, and technologies are created. As we so themselves with what they were writing. Greil has said–to offer a clue on how to thought of more and more topics, we read the book. You can click on a card to bounced ideas off each other, saying we Among the contributors are also a great have an essay come up, and you can then really want this and that–even the electric number of contemporary writers who com- read it in different ways. You can read the chair was on the board at one point. We be- mented on authors of the past: among oth- book in chronological sequences, where gan to realize, too, that it would be impos- ers, we have Walter Mosley writing on hard- you read ½ve essays that are all set in 1925, sible to have a single volume, even a volume boiled ½ction, Bharati Mukherjee on The or you can read it in any genre sequence in of one thousand pages, that could claim Scarlet Letter, Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry which you’re interested. It is, in its own something like complete coverage. We Finn, John Edgar Wideman on Charles Ches- form, a response to the predicament that found a very good board of editors who nutt, and Andrei Codrescu on the literature we’re in: trying not to devise grand narra- helped us, ½rst, to devise and settle on top- of New Orleans. tives and yet still being able to provide ics; the board also met with us twice in something like a historical overview. meetings where we came up with almost

Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 9 Academy Meetings

professor at Washington University in St. In every case, this is a mat- Louis–said, “What about Linda Lovelace?” Everybody turned to him, and he wasn’t ter of people attempting to kidding. We said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “This was a cultural turning talk to their subject matter point. Everything changed after this, and our culture was never the same.” The basic and make their subject mat- argument was this: Here’s someone who ter talk to them. It is literary has written four autobiographies with different “as told tos” and co-writers. Four au- in the best, most live, and tobiographies! Two were all about “I was a libertine. I did everything.” And two were, least pretentious sense. “I was a slave. I was forced to do everything.” Greil Marcus She wrote–she did not invent–but she would be perfect for these contributions. mined the confessional genre in a way that Greil Marcus is an author, rock critic, and col- So Ann got a copy of the movie online. It nobody else had. She both exposed every- umnist. His books include “Mystery Train: Im- seemed to be a tenth-generation dub, and thing she had to expose and hid within that ages of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music” (1975), she said it was very bad, hard to watch even. genre, as writers always do. This has been “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th But Ann dove into those four autobiogra- the dominant form of literature in this coun- Century” (1989), and “The Shape of Things to phies by Linda Lovelace. She excavated try over the last thirty or forty years. Who Come: Prophecy and the American Voice” (2006). those four books. She lived in those four better to represent this genre than Linda books. Lovelace? I would like to emphasize some other as- There did come a point during our brain- pects of this project, namely its fluidity. We He convinced us. We thought about who storming meeting when, as Werner said, we had a wonderful board of ten people who could write the piece: Ann Marlowe is a were saying, “Oh, the electric chair!” and took part in two two-day, early-morning- New York writer who wrote a book about “What about the Pez Dispenser?” (I don’t until-late-evening marathons without the heroin and a book about a love affair. She think that last one really came up, but it was slightest hint of testiness, of turf defense, now covers Afghanistan for The Weekly Stan- heading in that direction.) That’s when of “I know more about this than you do.” dard and The Wall Street Journal. She’s a very David Thomson, one of the few editorial That sentiment was always absent. I think conservative writer politically and a very board members who is not an academic everybody who took part in this project was unconservative writer in every other way. but is a great ½lm critic and ½lm historian, stunned by how much they didn’t know But it turned out to be like my effort to ½nd novelist, and social historian, just about about what has happened in the last ½ve someone to do the Absalom, Absalom!/Gone pounded the table and said, “This book has hundred years in this expansive territory. with the Wind entry. For that essay, I contact- got to get a lot more conventional before People were always open. ed Lee Smith, who is a great Southern nov- it gets crazy.” We turned around, and we elist born in Virginia and who now lives in turned back to Emerson, back to Heming- Every one of these essays is Chapel Hill. She has written, I think, nine way, back to Jefferson. We began to see that novels, my favorite of which is The Devil’s there needed to be anchors before we cut somebody confronting the Dream. This is a woman in her 60s–a white the anchor. We ended up with two entries woman in her 60s who is a deep Southern- on Emerson, on “The American Scholar” language of his or her sub- er. She said, “I’ve never read Gone with the and “The Divinity School Address,” and Wind; I’ve seen the movie.” I didn’t believe the easiest thing in the world would have ject and trying to ½nd the it, but she promised she had never read the been to ½nd experts on Emerson and have language that will open it up. novel. You can’t really say, “I’d like you to them give us a cool, plain, simple account take this on; it’s only a thousand pages.” So of how these addresses are touchstones in I called Bobbie Ann Mason, another South- American culture. But that’s exactly what Things were made up as we went along. ern writer from Kentucky and about the we didn’t want and exactly what we didn’t We did have a heroic meeting where we cut same age. Again: “I’ve never read Gone with get. We got someone who read these ad- everything down to 220 essays, maybe 240. the Wind; I’ve seen the movie.” I just didn’t dresses as if for the ½rst time and asked We thought we’d lose some essays by attri- believe it. questions like, What’s going on here? tion–as if that was going to happen after In the same way, when I called Marlowe and What’s happening? Why is this being said we’d already argued, discussed, and real- now? What does it sound like today? I re- ized a particular essay was crucial for the said, “Ann, how would you like to write about Linda Lovelace?” she said, “I’ve nev- member reading those entries and feeling book. Then came the point when Gerald as if I had never before encountered the Early–essayist, American culture critic, and er seen Deep Throat.” Here was this cultural illiteracy among people who we thought subjects of those essays. That sense of reve-

10 Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 A New Literary History of America lation happened again and again, and it’s We have had a lot of dif½culty explaining Greil Marcus why the book is something you can read for why this is called A New Literary History of pleasure, something that engages the read- America. What does that mean? We’ve come It’s a book to be read for pleasure as opposed er through the engagement of the writers up with a lot of really good or not-so-good to enlightenment. It’s not a book that’s sup- themselves. explanations. But the best came in one of posed to be good for you in that sense. My the early reviews of the book. It said, “This ideal reader has always been someone who The most frightening piece for me was is a literary history,” stressing the literary. is walking down the street and trips over a Robert O’Meally’s on Billie Holiday. The Every one of these essays is somebody con- book lying on the sidewalk. After he kicks pieces were supposed to be 2,500 words at fronting the language of his or her subject the book for having tripped him, he picks it most, and O’Meally’s was clearly over 6,000 and trying to ½nd the language that will up, opens it, and says, “This looks interest- words. There is only one way to cut a 6,000- open it up. In every case, this is a matter of ing.” Every essay here had to have enough word essay down to 2,500 words: with a people attempting to talk to their subject information in it so that someone who knew meat cleaver. I got it down to about 2,100 matter and make their subject matter talk nothing whatsoever about the subject not words, and it was a very shapely essay then. to them. It is literary in the best, most live, only could follow what was being said but also could be drawn in and engaged. That Part of what was cut from that essay, though, and least pretentious sense–if we’ve suc- was every writer’s job. People were not was a passionate cry about Gayl Jones, an ceeded. If we haven’t, we won’t have to ex- writing for their academic peers or their African American novelist who, in the mid- plain what it’s about. nonacademic peers. For me, it was the rev- 1970s, wrote two books, Corregidora and Eva’s elation of my own ignorance that was so Man, which got some attention. After that Question thrilling. Again and again, I read essays on she pretty much disappeared, although she subjects I know nothing about, and the wrote a couple of other novels years later. How did you think about the audience for writer had to be able to suck me in, had to Her personal life blew up, and she withdrew. this book, both your ideal audience and what leave me at the end saying, “I want to know People thought she was dead. So O’Meally you really think the audience will be now more about this.” The audience is anybody reshaped his material on Jones, and that that it’s done? who thinks this is a really great cover and became a new entry, on its own terms. Some wonders what’s inside. people have already said, “Gayl Jones? Who Werner Sollors knows about Gayl Jones? Who cares about We talked during the editing process about Gayl Jones? What about John Updike? Question removing the overly academic language, so What about Don DeLillo?” Well, what we had, ½rst, a general reader in mind, a about them? Jones is somebody we put our I was struck by the impression that you were reader who would not already be an expert money on; we put our bet on her. We’ll see innovating a kind of emergent process that on the subject and who would not say, “Oh, what happens. hadn’t existed before–that your process but you forgot this and that secondary es- was almost as important as your very cre- Kara Walker, who contributed the ½nal piece say.” Rather, we aimed for somebody who ative and innovative product. The hundreds on the 2008 presidential election, said at one would be opening to a subject as if for the of email messages back and forth, the brain- point, “I’m too busy. I can’t possibly do storming meeting, the ½guring out the jux- this.” She did say she wanted to make it The majority of entries tapositions, and the marathon winnowing clear that Harvard would not own the origi- meeting: all of that was essential in the cre- nals of the artwork that she supplied. She was always literary. ation of this vision of a new kind of literary said something like, “I’d feel really bad if history. Could you comment more on that Harvard owned the originals and then they and how self-conscious you were of it? turned around and sold them for a quarter ½rst time. We also agreed to reduce, perhaps of a million dollars.” I said, “Oh, really. completely remove, references that would Werner Sollors That’s interesting.” She didn’t mention imply the book was written only for an The self-consciousness went to the extent what she was being paid, which was really American audience. So phrases like “in our that, in one meeting, somebody proposed kind of that amount reduced by a certain tradition” or “in this country,” which are that the last entry should be about the pub- number of zeros. In the end, her attitude hard to translate into Chinese without de- lication of the literary history itself, which was, “I can’t possibly say no to this. You’re parting from the original, we tried to avoid. we fortunately got rid of. But I think the asking me to have the last word in the his- We imagined an intelligent, curious reader self-consciousness inherent in creating a tory of the country? Who could say no to anywhere, one who is not a specialist. (I think text such as we were–trying to be textual that?” And that’s pretty much how people nobody in the world can be a specialist on and literary in approaching American cul- reacted, one after the other. People who we all these topics.) That was the ideal that ture more broadly–was certainly there, invited to contribute to this book trusted we were going for. I don’t know who the and it created its own excitement. A num- the project more than we did. real reader is, but that was certainly the ideal we had in mind. ber of the members of the editorial board,

Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 11 Academy Meetings the contributors, and Greil and I felt we scribing exactly how and where Carrie Mee- Werner Sollors were all in the process together. It was, in a ber and Lily Bart would have met, if they sense, the most exciting project I’ve been a had. And you think, “I didn’t realize they I think that was a full account of the discus- part of in my whole academic life. You had met. Oh, wait a minute, they aren’t real.” sion. I can only go back to the point at which this invigorating feeling of something hap- we said we are not aspiring to full coverage. pening at the moment of deciding this or When we reached the end of the book, we Representing something by a suggestive es- changing that. Removing, for example, all realized we had a serious problem. The book say that’s in the vicinity should be suf½cient. birth and death dates of authors was a real was ½nished. Everything was in; everything relief. We said we’d put them in the index, was edited. Werner and I were patting each Question but by the time we got to the index, we for- other on the back, and we realized that there were two things we didn’t have: an essay on got about them. You can go to Wikipedia Can you say more about how you went The Sound and the Fury and an essay on Moby- and look them up; we don’t need birth and about keeping those pillars, and whether Dick. I won’t go into why that happened, but death dates. These were freeing moments you consciously crafted the book as a re- that’s where we were. So we flipped a coin: in the process that I found very exciting. sponse to more traditional histories of he did Faulkner; I did Melville. By then, American literature? Did you have the though, we knew what the book was. We Greil Marcus Norton Anthology in front of you to say, knew how people had risen to an occasion this is what we’re not doing? Bill Clinton once said something I really we hadn’t even fully de½ned. We knew what liked. I don’t know how true it is, but I liked we were up against, how high the bar was. Greil Marcus it. He referred to the old democratic princi- People will judge whether we came up to it. ple that most people can do most jobs. (I That’s a really good question because the think he was talking about putting together Norton Anthology did come up. It might have his cabinet.) That was pretty much the prin- Question been placed on the table at some point, and ciple we went on: that most intelligent, I think the reaction was, “No, we don’t want Did Elvis Presley come into the mix at any questioning people can write about damn to look at this. We really have to hash this point, and if so, is there a good story about near anything. We did go to people who out.” In terms of what you’re calling our how you dealt with him or chose not to deal pillars, there was never a question of Jeffer- with him? The question that runs son not being there. There was a question Greil Marcus about John Adams and which of his works through this book is this we were going to write about, but Adams That’s very tricky. Of course Elvis came up. had already broken his way into the room. notion that America is I felt uncomfortable about it and stayed out This meant we had to think in a different made-up, that it is invented of the discussion because I’ve written a lot mode for the next two hours. Who are the about Elvis–two-and-a-half books, actually. people or what are the works this book ab- and continually remade The argument was made for Chuck Berry, solutely has to have? For the ½rst couple of and as Werner said, this is a literary history. hours we focused on the “how cool would and reinvented. Chuck Berry wrote an autobiography. As a it be if” standard, and the book was getting piece of writing, it’s extraordinary, just as away from us. We went back to the question, had an interest and who knew something, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles is. Both of these books who does this book absolutely have to have? except sometimes people would say, “I are clearly written, and they weren’t written That was easy, because once you have John don’t know anything about this, but I’ll with somebody. You can read and you can Winthrop, Thomas Jefferson, Hemingway, give it my best.” Farah Grif½n accepted see the choices between words that the au- and Frederick Douglass, it becomes easier the notion of writing about Edith Wharton’s thor has made. This wasn’t read into a tape to drop other people. People begin to look The House of Mirth and Theodore Dreiser’s recorder. We thought, this is someone who small. That made our work easier. Sister Carrie in one essay because these nov- has shaped his story. He has made an effort els seem to tell the same story in very dif- to affect how people will understand who Werner Sollors ferent ways at pretty much the same time. he was and what he did. I think there was In the four-hundred-title grid, there was al- The story is about a rupture in the idea of something in The New York Times about ways a preponderance of traditional authors, what the country was and what it could be. Chuck Berry being chosen over Elvis be- and one of the things we wanted to do was Farah said she wanted to do this, and I said, cause he wrote his own songs, and I thought, not take just the modernist canon, but take “Great, Farah, this is terri½c.” Afterward, “Is that why? I don’t remember that.” That’s some of the writers who had been taken she said to me, “You know, I hate Dreiser, not a standard I believe in. It was because away: some of the genteel writing, some of and I’m not going to write about him.” I he wrote an extraordinary book. That’s why the middlebrow, any of the victims of mod- thought, “Okay, that was sort of the point, –and Elvis has gotten a lot of press. but what the hell.” I don’t know if she was ernism. The majority of entries, even in the pulling my leg, but she wrote an essay de-

12 Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 A New Literary History of America larger version, was always literary and had Question intentions. Sometimes the intentions aren’t a large substance that was that skeleton. so great. Hurricane Katrina and the re- The amazing thing was that we didn’t ½nd Was the decision to include Norbert Wien- sponse, both from the federal government authors to write about Moby-Dick and The er’s Cybernetics an easy one? How did you and, to some degree, the rest of the country Sound and the Fury. We had the fantasy of ½nd its place in the pantheon you were itself, raised the question of whether the including many contemporary writers, so I creating? country really exists at all as anything more can tell you the list of contemporary authors than a marketplace. And that question, we Werner Sollors I asked to write on The Sound and the Fury found, came up again and again. If you can who either didn’t grace the request with an I’m very happy that David Mindell, who make something, if you can invent some- answer at all or simply said no. Melville and wrote the entry, is sitting there in the back. thing as enormous, both as an idea and as Faulkner were always supposed to be in there We wanted to have one of the tracks in the the reality of a nation that is also a conti- and, indeed, are in there: Faulkner with that literary history be about histories of inven- nent, it can be unmade. If you can make it tions, technology, and science in the Unit- up, somebody can attack the premises on ed States. Wiener’s book was a perfect ex- which you created this thing. Knock all the The dif½culty of setting ample of a text that created a word that cre- floorboards out, and that question is alive ½ction that followed Euro- ated a whole ½eld; it is clearly related to the throughout the book. I’m not going to an- history of technology. The entry is a fasci- swer for Werner, but this book left me with pean norms on American nating one and dates the book wonderfully. a deeper sense than I ever had before of It ½ts into this post–World War II moment. how contingent, delicate, at-risk, in jeop- soil–What could an Ameri- We were happy with the choice and with ardy this enormous adventure has always the essay that came from it. With the histo- been and remains. can Gothic novel be like? ry of technology, we could have very easily Should it have Indian atroc- had 150 essays about just that, but, again, Werner Sollors the inclusion of a text that had enormous I may be the more Pollyannaish and opti- ities in it to say something consequences made the difference in our mistic ½gure there, but I think the contin- local?–these are the early selection. gency of creativity is certainly something I took from reading so many essays about moments in the book. areas where I had no expertise whatsoever. Question I’ll give you an example. I asked a famous writer to contribute an essay on Henry half-entry together with Gone with the Wind How are you left feeling or thinking about Roth’s Call It Sleep. The writer said, “I can- and Melville with his later writings. But we America? not do this,” and I said, “Why not? You like realized we couldn’t do without Moby-Dick the book.” The writer said, “This is a man and The Sound and the Fury. That’s how we Greil Marcus who had writer’s block; he didn’t write ended up writing these entries ourselves. It It was Werner’s idea that the book should anything for sixty years. If I write about his wasn’t that we were becoming conservative end with a piece that we would write to- book, I may catch it. I may not be able to at a crucial moment, just that our attempts gether on Hurricane Katrina. I didn’t really write.” This was a joke, but the fear that as to get contemporary writers to write about know why he made that suggestion, but it you face an empty page, as you start to cre- these books had failed, This surprised me, was a challenge–and not just because we ate something from scratch that the cre- as it seemed to be easier to get contempo- had to work together and write something ation can stop, is also very real and serious; rary writers to write on a whole variety of in 2,500 words that wouldn’t be redundant it can lead to depression, to an implosion of other works. I still think it would be a great upon redundant, given the enormous whatever beautiful creativity you thought project to put together a collection of con- amount that had already been written you had. The sense of contingency in the temporary authors writing a literary histo- about that event. As we thought about it, amazing variety and beauty of things that ry of the past, including personal essays on it raised the question that runs through have been created, be they legal texts or po- the writers who meant most or least to them. this book, this notion that America is made- ems or visual objects, and that have de½ned up, that it is invented and continually re- culture is very present. To see this happen- made and reinvented. Sometimes those ing in the various activities is both thrilling inventions fail. Sometimes they blow up and intimidating because you realize the in people’s faces. Sometimes they produce contingency is all based on man-made ma- the worst consequences with only the best terials. There’s this feeling that it can stop, that the creativity can end.

Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010 13 Academy Meetings

Question Greil Marcus When did American literary history begin? There’s another way of looking at it, too: if You mentioned John Winthrop, but who this book is successful, the different entries are some of the early ½gures you deal with? argue with each other over that very question. There’s no single essay in which some- Werner Sollors body says, this is where American literary history begins; but in some ways, the es- We start with a map that Martin Waldsee- says that go up to 1800 are all staking claims. müller drew and with Matthias Ringmann, Traditionally, the earliest American literary who coined the new continent America af- genre is the Puritan sermon. That’s where ter Amerigo Vespucci (adding that since all people began to work out the language the other continents had been named after needed to describe this place and what it women, he was happy to name the new one has to become. How to put this into new after a man). We did not want to open with words was a tremendous struggle. In some Columbus because it was highly predictable, although I think the ½rst name in the book, nonetheless, is Columbus, even under the There’s no single essay in Waldseemüller entry. We have Spanish set- tlers and then move to the Puritans and which somebody says, this early Southern texts fairly quickly. Then is where American literary it’s a more traditional assortment of writers–Charles Brockman Brown, James Feni- history begins. more Cooper, Irving, and Hawthorne–so we get a rich array of the early Republic writ- ways, that de½nes the whole Puritan exper- ers. Intermingled are visual texts: there’s iment. On the other hand, there is a shock- the Declaration of Independence and Win- ingly original entry early on by Adam Good- throp’s Arbella speech. There’s also a won- hart about John Smith as a writer. Suddenly derful essay on the Great Awakening that you realize that, no, it’s not the sermon. asks whether there really was such a thing, The ½rst American literary genre is people or whether it was something historians cre- going back with strange tales of wonder or, ated. The book deals with many familiar in the case of Smith, strange tales of per½dy, topics but also some unusual ones: for ex- envy, and every one of the deadly sins; tales ample, Charles Willson Peale’s exhibition of what the colonists were like and of how of a mastodon at his museum in Philadel- the place was hell on earth. Reading this phia and John James Audubon’s response book, I know exactly where American liter- to Alexander Wilson’s drawing of the bald ary history begins; it begins with the Dec- eagle. The dif½culty of setting ½ction that laration of Independence, the struggle to followed European norms on American soil ½nd the words to de½ne this place. Some- –What could an American Gothic novel body said, “Okay, we’ll just make it up,” be like? Should it have Indian atrocities in and that’s what happened. When I look at it to say something local?–these are the this book a year from now, I’ll have a com- early moments in the book. pletely different answer.

14 Bulletin of the American Academy, Spring 2010