Fielder on the American Writer:

[ish mailian]

“The American writer inhabits a country at once the dream of Europe
and a fact of history; he lives on the last horizon of an endlessly
retreating vision of innocence — on the ‘frontier,’ which is to say
the margin where the theory of original goodness and the fact of
original sin come face to face. To express this "blackness ten times
black" and to live by it in a society in which, since the decline of
orthodox Puritanism, optimism has become the chief effective religion,
is a complex and difficult task.”

p. 27 Revised Edition of _Love and Death in the American Novel

BTW the previous quote, on flight and guilt, the one that drew some
attention here, can be found on page 26.

Note that optimism is the "chief effective religion."


As so many American writers, including our very own Mr. P. have
described America as nation that worships optimism, Franklin's kite,
as long as there is a tail of money tied to it, critical readers are
often asked to consider how the marriage optimism and money is
manifest in America. In CLR James's brilliant study of Melville he
says, "The Gospel of America has been, first, above all things,
devotion to work."

p. 7 Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways
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