A n n i h i l a t e d Annihilated Space Samuel Sewall Roger Williams John Winthrop Michael S p a c e Wigglesworth Edward Taylor William Byrd Cotton Mather Jonathan Edwards Royall Tyler Thomas Jefferson Michel-Guillaume American values, core structures framing everyday life and shaping the tough- Crèvecoeur Henry David est-minded literature, pulse here under the eye and hand of a superb anatomist of Thoreau Benjamin contemporary American hopes, fears, and dreams deep-rooted in national bedrock. Franklin Charles I have read [Annihilated Space] with care, immense pleasure, and great profit. Brockden It is magisterial. Brown James It demonstrates the deep, enduring worth of American Studies and confirms American Literature and Society Stuart Levine Fenimore from the start an understanding of literature as the portal to so much else. —John R. Stilgoe, Harvard University Cooper Edgar Poe Ralph Waldo Emerson Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne Harriet Beecher Stowe Walt Whitman George In what must prove to be the capstone of a long career of investigating the social Washington Harris Mark Twain Emily Dickinson William Dean and cultural history of America as presented by our literature, Stuart Levine delves Howells Kate Chopin Harold Frederic Henry James Frank Norris deeply into many of our classic works and many of our classic writers. He notes re- vealing parallels between such apparently different works as Moby Dick and Rabbit, Run, or The Blithedale Romance and The Damnation of Theron Ware. And unearths the commonalities that mark them all as peculiarly American. A N N I H I LATE D Using the elements of “modernization” as the basis of his analysis—as he has done throughout his career as editor, writer, and teacher—he brings new insights and Stephen Crane Edward new life to time-honored literary works. At the end of the analysis and discussion of Bellamy Theodore Dreiser Thorstein any of these well-known works, the reader feels he must read them once more—in a Veblen Henry S PAC E Adams Willa stronger light and from a sharper angle. In short, as Levine notes, he is using Ameri- Cather Claude McKay T.S. Eliot Henry Roth Robert Frost Robert can literature to call out our social and cultural history—investigating “circles” and American Literature Penn Warren e.e. “webs” of relationships in our complex and variegated communities—and then he is cummings Ralph reversing that approach by using social and cultural history to enhance and encour- and American Society age fresh investigations of our literary heritage. Ellison Toni —Richard Boudreau, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin/ Stuart Levine LaCrosse Morrison Elmer Rice Wallace Stevens J.D. Salinger Thomas An ingenious and profound rereading of American literary classics, at once real- Pyncheon John Barth Vladimir istic but also hopeful, informed by Levine’s varied careers and travels and everywhere Nabokov Donald Barthelme John evincing humor, insight, and humility. O'Hara William Faulkner John —Alan Gribben, Editor, Mark Twain Journal Updike Ernest Hemingway Walt Kelley Arthur Miller Allen [A] formidable analysis of American culture. Ginsberg W.D. Snodgrass Carol Stuart Levine has spent a lifetime involved in writing about and teaching Ameri- can Studies. His work has helped to define the academic subject and Annihilated Hebald Flannery O'Connor Katherine Space is a model of scholarship in the field. Anne Porter —Charles L. P. Silet, Emeritus Professor of English, Iowa State University American Literature and American Society i Annihilated Space uses American literature to understand our social history. Flexible and inclusive, it shows multiple ways in which na- tional fiction, drama, journals and poetry reveal us. The study builds upon a lifetime of scholarship and experience in areas as diverse as contemporary conditions among Native American peoples, the social structure of the audience for “classical” music, the history of American art, street life in Mexico City and, of course, American literature and the American experience. It suggests approaches that “work” even on pieces set outside the United States, in one case revealing American social history in a novel with no American characters. Some works treated in this lively discussion are acknowledged masterpieces. A few are things critics generally dislike—but they can be entertaining to discuss, and very useful to an open-minded student of society. Much of this unusual book grows out of studies by Professor Levine published in Comparative Literature, Harvard Studies in Eng- lish, American Studies, American Quarterly, The Canadian Review of American Studies, New England Quarterly and other peer-reviewed scholarly outlets, and out of concepts developed in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Professors he taught on the subject. ii Annihilated Space American Literature and American Society iii ANNIHILATED SPACE American Literature and American Society Stuart Levine Main and Fulton iv Annihilated Space Other books by Stuart Levine Are You Superman? (Main and Fulton; Amazon/Kindle, 2014). The Craftsmans’ Memory/Billy Budd in the Context of the Earlier Novels (Main and Fulton; Amazon/Kindle, 2014). Killing in Okaraygua/An Inspector Irronogaray Mystery (Main and Fulton; Amazon/Kindle, 2012). Main and Fulton books are available @ kubookstore.com Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine, eds., Edgar Allan Poe, Critical Theory/ The Major Documents (University of Illinois Press, 2009). (On-line edition: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine, eds., Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka (Uni- versity of Illinois Press, 2004). Stuart and Susan Levine, Edgar Allan Poe/Thirty-Two Stories (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002). The Monday-Wednesday-Friday Girl and Other Stories (Woodley Press, 1995). Winner of the Robert Gross Award for Fiction. Stuart and Susan Levine, The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe/An An- notated Edition (the first fully-annotated edition of the complete short stories) (Bobbs-Merrill, 1976) (Fourth printing, 1979) (University of Illinois Press, 1990). Edgar Poe, Seer and Craftsman (Everett/Edwards, 1972). (With Nancy O. Lurie) The American Indian Today (Everett/Edwards, 1968). Winner of the Anisfield-Wolfe Award in Race Relations (Revised version, Penguin Books, 1970). (Edited), Charles Caffin, The Story of American Painting (with a study of Caffin by SGL) (Johnson, 1970). Materials for Technical Writing (Allyn and Bacon, 1963). Copyright © 2016 Stuart Levine all rights reserved American Literature and American Society v Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 You Can Drink the Water 25 -1- John Smith 27 -2- Rigid or Flexible? Haughty or Friendly? 30 -3- Radical Values in Conservative Societies 43 Chapter 2 Common Sense and Literary Evidence 61 Chapter 3 In Which Ralph Waldo Emerson Invents the Interlinked World 75 Chapter 4 Poe as American Emblem 97 -1- Poe as Patriot 101 -2- Poe and the Media 104 -3- Poe and Popular Culture 108 -4- Poe and American Values 111 Chapter 5 Hawthorne and the Industrial Revolution 119 -1- Clifford and the Water-Cart 120 -2- Holgrave 126 -3- Hawthorne and the Media 131 Chapter 6 The Pequod Meets the Soulsbys: Moby-Dick as Social History 137 -1- Industry, Modernization, Know-How 138 -2- Race and Ethnicity, 1851 142 -3- Race and Ethnicity, 1896 150 -4- Ishmael, Theron and Michael 155 -5- Values 158 -6- Who is Nice, and Why 166 vi Annihilated Space Chapter 7 The Death of the Beautiful Woman 173 -1- Eliza and Achsa 174 -2- Celia 182 -3- Persis and Penelope 190 -4- Edna 196 Chapter 8 Literature and Modern America: Five Novels 211 -1- Twain Takes his Stand 212 -2- Billy Budd and the Postmodern World 217 -3- Racism and Urban Community in McTeague 224 -4- Sister Carrie and Social Theories 234 -5- Colonel Cantrell and Poor Richard 245 Chapter 9 Recapitulation 255 -1- Coming on Line 256 -2- The Old Road: As I Lay Dying, Call it Sleep 260 -3- Home to Harlem 270 -4- “The Cutting Edge of Literary Advance” 278 -5- Two Plays 284 -6- Rabbit, Run 287 Appendix 1 An Explanation of the “Sacred Values” 311 Appendix 2 The Dog Ate My Flash Drive 321 Index 331 American Literature and American Society 1 Introduction Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action ad- mits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn. Emerson, “Circles” My method in this study is essentially simple. I propose to ex- amine a series of literary works for evidence about the characteristics of American society and culture, and then to relate the evidence to a group of hypotheses about American social history. To begin, I would like to explain briefly my rationale for proceeding this way and my own feelings about the shape and direction of American social history, not in order to argue with the reader who may believe in a different interpretation, but rather to let him know where I stand. This might make the book more useful for the reader who, disagreeing with my conclusions, can still make use of the texture of my argument or the procedures I have followed. Because I would like the book to be as useful as possible to people in different fields, I will try to avoid on the one hand, lengthy expositions of historical, social or sociological theory, and on the other, matters of purely literary-critical interest. In general I would like my discussion of American society to grow from the texture of the literary works themselves. Let me say at the outset that I recognize a kind of ambiguity in what I propose: if it is not entirely clear whether this book is intended to use literature to expound social history, or social history to enrich our appreciation of literature, well and good. I like that ambiguity. I have both intentions in mind, and do not feel they are in any way incompatible.