IVIV (1) The American Novel and Its Tradition, a classic before Pynchon

[Mark Kohut]

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The American Novel and Its Tradition 
by Richard Chase
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Write a ReviewPublisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Pub. Date: January 1957
ISBN-13: 9780801823039
284pp
Edition Description: New Edition
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 Synopsis

"Since the earliest days," writes Richard Chase in this classic study, "the American novel, in its most original and characteristic form, has worked out its destiny and defined itself by incorporating an element of romance." 

The best novelists, he argues, have found uses for romance beyond the escapism, fantasy, and sentimentality often associated with it. Through romance, these writers mirror the extremes of American culture — the Puritan melodrama of good and evil, or the pastoral idyll inspired by the American wilderness.



--- On Wed, 8/26/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (1)
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 7:26 AM
> >
> > do you think it's an excursion into romance territory
> again?
> > as you had a thesis about romance vs novel (did I get
> that right?)
> > involving a forgotten generation of bawdy funny
> feeling-rich american books?
> > (gotta find that post again...)
> > and thus that most people don't respect romances like
> they do novels.
> 
> That Pynchon is an American is fairly obvious, but for
> several
> reasons--and it was cool for Pynchon--the critical industry
> didn't
> quite see it that way at first and so the postmodern
> critical theory
> folk kept talking about his works as if they were written
> by some
> French professor. So the idea that his works might be
> mistaken for
> Salinger's was no more absurd than the idea that he might
> be Deleuze,
> Zoyd might be an autobiographical anachronism worth writing
> a
> disertation or two on. Recently, we've been reading about
> Pynchon &
> Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, and Toni
> Morrison,
> Wallace, Gaddis, Roth, Updike, Moody, DeLillo, Melville,
> Poe,
> Williams, Emerson, James, other Americans North and South.
> And, I
> expect to read something on the influence of Brasilian
> authors on
> Pynchon's works any day now. The Gabriel José de la
> Concordia García
> Márquez comparisons are important and I'll just note that
> Pynchon,
> Roth, Ma'rquez are all pushing the the "pornographic" more
> and more as
> they age and this is not endearing them to certain females
> and males
> in the academy.  And, out there in the reading world,
> let's say there
> is a certain prudishness that the "92nd Street Y
> gray-hairs,"  hip as
> they may once have been back in the day, still attach to
> authors. Last
> year (?), seeing half the crowd nearly napping,  Derek
> Alton Walcott
> read a poem to wake them up. Some started humping in the
> seats whiles
> others grabbed their crotches in mid-dream, but half got up
> and
> walked, not out, cause the wine was free and he was signing
> books too,
> bit to the adjacent room. But Pynchon has been, as is the
> American
> Tradition, arguing that the Tradition of American Gothic
> and Romance
> (and sure its roots are English and European--Luddite) has
> earned a
> place in the world of serious prose fiction. The classic
> American
> statement on this is not Pynchon's Luddite Essay but
> Hawthorne's
> Preface to The House of the Seven Gables. A novel every
> student of
> American Literature should read. Not that I don't love that
> Scooby-Doo
> Real Estate connection, but Hawthorne's novel about the
> Pyncheon's is
> a bit more important. The moral, that Ahab story form the
> book of
> Kings that fascinated Hawthorne and Melville and has, for
> better or
> worse, been as important to the American Romance Tradition
> as Genesis
> and the Fall of Adam and Eve.
> 
>  WHEN A WRITER calls his work a romance, it need hardly be
> observed
> that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its
> fashion and
> material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to
> assume, had
> he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of
> composition is
> presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to
> the possible,
> but to the probable and ordinary course of man's
> experience. The
> former--while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject
> itself to
> laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may
> swerve aside
> from the truth of the human heart--has fairly a right to
> present that
> truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the
> writer's own
> choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so
> manage his
> atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights,
> and deepen
> and enrich the shadows, of the picture. He will be wise, no
> doubt, to
> make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated,
> and,
> especially, to mingle the marvellous rather as a slight,
> delicate, and
> evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual
> substance of the
> dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however,
> to commit
> a literary crime, even if he disregard this caution.
> 
> Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral
> purpose,
> at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be
> deficient in this
> particular, the author has provided himself with a
> moral;--the truth,
> namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into
> the
> successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary
> advantage,
> becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief;--and he would
> feel it a
> singular gratification, if this romance might effectually
> convince
> mankind--or, indeed, any one man--of the folly of tumbling
> down an
> avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads
> of an
> unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them,
> until the
> accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original
> atoms.
> 
> AND, from the Custom House, Scarlet Letter.
> 
> If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour,
> it might
> well be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight, in a familiar
> room, falling
> so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so
> distinctly,—making every object so minutely visible, yet
> so unlike a
> morning or noontide visibility,—is a medium the most
> suitable for a
> romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests.
> There is
> the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment;
> the chairs,
> with each its separate individuality; the centre-table,
> sustaining a
> work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the
> sofa; the
> book-case; the picture on the wall;—all these details, so
> completely
> seen, are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they
> seem to
> lose their actual substance, and become things of
> intellect. Nothing
> is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and
> acquire
> dignity thereby. A child’s shoe; the doll, seated in her
> little wicker
> carriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been
> used or
> played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality
> of
> strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly
> present as
> by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar
> room has
> become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real
> world and
> fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet,
> and each
> imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might
> enter here,
> without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping
> with the scene
> to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a
> form,
> beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of
> this magic
> moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether
> it had
> returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our
> fireside.
>   The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential
> influence in producing
> the effect which I would describe. It throws its
> unobtrusive tinge
> throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls
> and
> ceiling, and a reflected gleam from the polish of the
> furniture. This
> warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of
> the
> moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and
> sensibilities of
> human tenderness to the forms which fancy summons up. It
> converts them
> from snow-images into men and women. Glancing at the
> looking-glass, we
> behold—deep within its haunted verge—the smouldering
> glow of the
> half-extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the
> floor, and a
> repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture, with
> one remove
> farther from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative.
> Then, at such
> an hour, and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting
> all alone,
> cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth,
> he need
> never try to write romances.
>   But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House
> experience,
> moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of fire-light, were
> just alike in
> my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail
> than the
> twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of
> susceptibilities, and a
> gift connected with them,—of no great richness or value,
> but the best
> I had,—was gone from me.
>   It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a
> different order of
> composition, my faculties would not have been found so
> pointless and
> inefficacious. I might, for instance, have contented myself
> with
> writing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of
> the
> Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to
> mention; since
> scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter
> and
> admiration by his marvellous gifts as a story-teller. Could
> I have
> preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the
> humorous
> coloring which nature taught him how to throw over his
> descriptions,
> the result, I honestly believe, would have been something
> new in
> literature
> 
>