University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English English, Department of April 2007 Writing and Circulating Modern America: Journalism and the American Novelist, 1872-1938 Derek John Driedger University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Driedger, Derek John, "Writing and Circulating Modern America: Journalism and the American Novelist, 1872-1938" (2007). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 5. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. WRITING AND CIRCULATING MODERN AMERICA: JOURNALISM AND THE AMERICAN NOVELIST, 1872-1938 by Derek J. Driedger A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: English Under the Supervision of Professor Guy J. Reynolds Lincoln, Nebraska May 2007 WRITING AND CIRCULATING MODERN AMERICA: JOURNALISM AND THE AMERICAN NOVELIST, 1872-1938 Derek J. Driedger, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2007 Adviser: Guy J. Reynolds My research began with the question, “How did former journalists depict aspects of the newspaper environment in late-nineteenth, early-twentieth-century fiction?” A historical reading of journalism and fiction places the emphasis on what historical moments or trends these writers documented, and how they presented their worldview. To present findings on how a journalism career proved beneficial for a novelist, I examine arguments debating the shared space between fact and fiction when writers tried to raise their readers’ cultural awareness. My study pays particular attention to newspapers such as the New York Herald, the New York World, and the Atchison [Kansas] Globe. I also find evidence in journals devoted to literature and the writing process such as Forum, Writer, and the New York Times Book Review. My study constructs journalism-derived definitions of realism, naturalism, and modernism to chart America’s literary developments. These developments regularly cross through urban sensationalism, country journalism, exposés, editorials, and hyper- textual presentation. I organize these developments through fact-fiction dialogs where both journalists and novelists attempted to engage readers in their material. Ultimately, I conclude texts by the paired journalists-turned-novelists covered similar topics in both genres. However, in each case the second writer portrayed the shared topic with increased cynicism toward American society. Each chapter explores the literary reputations, journalism, and newspaper related- literature of ten journalists-turned-novelists: Mark Twain, E. W. Howe, W. D. Howells, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, George Samuel Schuyler, Willa Cather, and John Dos Passos. My conclusion offers other avenues available for study in a journalism-literature discussion, such as travel writing by journalists-turned-novelists, or explorations of the journalist-turned-novelist trend in other countries. My research continues the journalism-literature discussion by such scholars as Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Michael Robertson, John C. Hartsock, Nicole Parisier, and David T. Humphries. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I dedicate this dissertation in memory of Dr. Randy Florell, Dr. Sue Rosowski, and Ben Driedger. Each exemplified encouraging lessons about education and influence. I would like to thank all of my family who stayed (or tried to stay) interested in what I was doing down in Lincoln. I would especially like to thank my wife, Rebecca, who always allowed what little extra space we had in our apartments to serve as my office. She remained supportive of my efforts to complete this dissertation when I needed it the most. To my daughter, Racquel, you were the best distraction a dissertation writer could ask for. My committee, and especially my advisor, Dr. Reynolds, provided direction to what started as a formulaic project. Their suggestions, insights, and scholarly examples expanded the scope and usefulness of this project. WRITING AND CIRCULATING MODERN AMERICA: JOURNALISM AND THE AMERICAN NOVELIST, 1872-1938 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………......1-20 CHAPTER ONE: Bennett-Style Storytelling and the Late-Victorian Journalist-Turned-Novelist: Twain’s Pre-Roughing It Journalism Experience and Howe’s The Story of a Country Town…………………………………………………………………….......21-58 CHAPTER TWO: Pulitzer-Era Sensationalism and the Journalist Anti-Hero: Howells’s A Modern Instance and Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods…………………59-97 CHAPTER THREE: Drawing National Attention to Local Stories, 1919-1920: Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and Lewis’s Main Street…………………………….98-130 CHAPTER FOUR: Exposing the Newspaper’s Ideological Control, 1927-1931: Sinclair’s Oil! And Schuyler’s Black No More……………………………………131-174 CHAPTER FIVE: Modernism and the Journalist-Narrator, 1931-1938: Cather’s Shadows on the Rock and Dos Passos’s U.S.A…………………………...175-217 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………....218-220 ENDNOTES…………………………………………………………………….....221-244 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………...245-273 APPENDIX A: Inset Stories in Shadows on the Rock and Corresponding Motifs………………....274-276 1 Introduction Two major recorders and circulators of America achieved prominence during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century: journalism and the novel. My title contends journalists and novelists preserved, or recorded, their perspective in print. They then shared, or circulated, their writing to a reading public eager to learn and enjoy America’s intricacies. In this study I primarily explore debates regarding how journalists and novelists could best engage readers. As I apply the term, “engaging” means the writer’s ability to facilitate a reading experience stimulating intellect, emotions, and imagination. Engaging texts also sustain multiple readings, offering new insights to active readers each time. I adopt my definition from distinguished reviewer Hamilton W. Mabie’s Forum article “The Most Popular Novels in America” (December 1893). Hamilton’s article countered the idea “that magazines and the newspaper have taken the place of the sound and classic works upon which earlier and happier generations were nourished” (508). After analyzing his results compiled from library check-out records, Mabie proclaims the reading public prefers literature “when it is vitalized by deep and real human interests. It is clear also that this same public retains its old-time liking for a strong story-element; in other words, for dramatic quality and power” (514).1 I contend each journalist-turned- novelist sought “dramatic quality and power” to stimulate intellect, emotions, and imagination. For the remainder of this study, my use of “to circulate” in verb form indicates not statistics, but the process through which writers attempted or caused engaging reading experiences. While the writers examined here reached various literary levels 2 through journalism, they all sought to achieve the novel’s enduring social voice by raising/circulating cultural awareness.2 My study’s secondary emphasis examines arguments debating how selected journalists-turned-novelists shaped American literary realism, naturalism, and modernism. Many influential novelists publishing from the 1870s to the 1930s worked on newspapers and/or magazines; thus they learned to engage readers with both fiction and fact. Since journalism offered an apprenticeship for more novelists than any other profession, journalism history offers valuable insights into post-Civil War to pre-World War II literature. To find these insights I analyze journalism history (mostly involving newspapers) alongside literature written by journalists-turned-novelists emphasizing the newspaper influence or environment. My study spans the Gilded Age to the Great Depression, beginning with Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872), and ending with John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy published as one volume (1938). American literature developed in several directions between these texts: from William Dean Howells’s utilitarian realism to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s defeatist naturalism; from Upton Sinclair’s expansive muckraking to Willa Cather’s modernist history. To study and connect realism, naturalism, and modernism to journalism, I assign each literary tradition a journalism-oriented definition. Eric J. Sundquist’s preface to American Realism: New Essays (1982) indicates why a journalism-oriented definition for realism appears practical. Sundquist explains: “No genre—if it can be called a genre—is more difficult to define than realism, and this is particularly true of American realism. In material it includes the sensational, the sentimental, the vulgar, the scientific, the outrageously comic, the desperately philosophical” (vii). Sundquist’s analysis closely 3 matches journalism as all the listed “material” regularly appeared in newspapers. Stephen Crane’s New York Times article “Howells Fears Realists Must Wait” (October 28, 1894), offers an earlier realism definition involving two prominent