Academy Meetings

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.

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