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De Maupassant (search for this): chapter 10
d's pictures of life in the middle West are sombre, but not morbid. In one respect his work and that of Frank Norris present an odd paradox. Each of these writers set out with the stated intention of breaking away from the literary traditions of the East. They did, so far as the Eastern states of North America are concerned; but they did not hesitate to go still farther east, to France and Russia, for their-models. Mr. Garland's earlier tales have much of the ironical compactness of de Maupassant, and Mr. Norris's novels could not have been written but by a worshiper of Zola. It cannot be expected that the spirit of the West will find perfect expression under such a method. If America cannot find utterance in terms of England, she certainly cannot in terms of France. There are certain racial prescriptions of taste and style which cannot be safely ignored. Apart from the question of method, the substance of Mr. Norris's books is of exceptional power, and his early death depriv
Jane Austen (search for this): chapter 10
, when we are listening to conversation, a musical voice gratifies us almost more than wit or wisdom. Mr. Howells is without an equal among his English-speaking contemporaries as to some of the most attractive literary graces. Unless it be in Mr. James, he has no rival for half-tints, for modulations, forsubtile phrases that touch the edge of an assertion and yet stop short of it. He is like a skater who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of a pool a few yards square. Miss Austen, the novelist, once described her art as a little bit of ivory, on which she produced small effect after much labor. She underrated her own skill, as the comparison in some respects underrates that of Howells; but his field is the little bit of ivory. This is attributing to him only what he has been careful to claim for himself. He describes his methods very frankly, and his first literary principle has been to look away from great passions, and to elevate the commonplace instead by
Daniel Boone (search for this): chapter 10
ed as far as Kentucky brought back this tale of An Empty the early solitude there as it had Continent. been fifty years before that time. The first explorer, Daniel Boone, he told us, who died in 1820, used to travel absolutely alone for weeks together in the Kentucky forests with only his rifle for company. He could not take ee were springs in the Licking Valley where twenty thousand buffaloes came and went, and whole Indian tribes followed their tracks. The Indians never once even saw Boone, for they did not suspect that any white man could be there; and he avoided their tracks and never saw them. After a while, there was another white explorer, Simon Kenton, whose coming into that region was unknown to Boone. They had approached the valley from opposite directions; each recognized by signs that there was a human being somewhere near, but. out of sight. Then began long hours of noiseless manceuvres on each side, spying, evading, listening, concealing, climbing, burrowing, ea
John James Audubon (search for this): chapter 10
any, France, Austro-Hungary, could be laid together in a small portion of it. The mere size of a country is not a criterion of its productiveness in art, but it is reasonable to suppose that some of the vast energy hitherto employed in the task of opening the West will presently be spared from the toil of practical life, to give a good account of itself in literature. Early writers about the West. The first authors who came from the West to delight our young people at the East were. Audubon, the ornithologist, who had a way of interspersing between his bird sketches certain intermediate chapters called Episodes, usually personal narratives in the woods, beginning in 1831--and Timothy Flint, who wrote Ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and also who wrote from Cincinnati to the London Athenaeum and had his books translated into French. These books, with those of Peter Parley (sometimes written by Hawthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and river
Eli Perkins (search for this): chapter 10
w content to let the reputation of our humor stand or fall by the quality of the American joke. Artemus War. So far as pure humor is concerned, there has never been a distinct boundary line between England and America. Nor can we say that what is called American humor belongs distinctively to the West. The early humorists were mostly of Eastern origin, though bred and emancipated in the Westthus Artemus Ward was from Maine, Josh Billings from Massachusetts, and Orpheus C. Kerr and Eli Perkins from New York. The prince among these jokers was Artemus Ward, who as a lecturer glided noiselessly upon the stage as if dressed for Hamlet, and looked as surprised as Hamlet if the audience laughed. The stage was dark, and the performance was interrupted by himself at intervals, to look for an imaginary pianist and singer who never came, but who became as real to the audience as Jefferson's imaginary dog Schneider in Rip Van Winkle, for whom he was always vainly whistling. This unsee
Nathaniel Hawthorne (search for this): chapter 10
m the West to delight our young people at the East were. Audubon, the ornithologist, who had a way of interspersing between his bird sketches certain intermediate chapters called Episodes, usually personal narratives in the woods, beginning in 1831--and Timothy Flint, who wrote Ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and also who wrote from Cincinnati to the London Athenaeum and had his books translated into French. These books, with those of Peter Parley (sometimes written by Hawthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi (1814). About 1835 Oregon expeditions were forming, and I remember when boys in New England used to peep through barn doors to admire the great wagons in which the emigrants were to travel. Then came Mrs. Kirkland's A New home, Who'll follow? （1839)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (search for this): chapter 10
keymaking fame are said to have been talking about horses at Washington; and Representative Crane of Texas asked them, Why do you not talk of something else? Of literature, for instance, to improve your minds? I like poets, he said, especially Emerson and Longfellow. Longfellow? interrupted Colonel Pepper; oh, yes, I know Longfellow; he is the best horse ever raised in Kentucky. That was the point from which Western literature started; and its progress has been so recent that it is not pos all, Mr. James has permanently set up his easel in Europe, Mr. Howells in America; and the latter has been, from the beginning, far less anxious to compare Americans with Europeans than with one another. He is international only if we adopt Mr. Emerson's saying that Europe stretches to the Alleghanies. As a native of Ohio, transplanted to Massachusetts, he never can forego the interest implied in this double point of view. The Europeanized American, and, if we may so say, the Americanized
1814 AD (search for this): chapter 10
-and Timothy Flint, who wrote Ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and also who wrote from Cincinnati to the London Athenaeum and had his books translated into French. These books, with those of Peter Parley (sometimes written by Hawthorne), gave a most vivid charm to the Western wilds and rivers. In The pioneers Cooper made us already conscious citizens of a great nation, and took our imagination as far as the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark carried us beyond the Mississippi (1814). About 1835 Oregon expeditions were forming, and I remember when boys in New England used to peep through barn doors to admire the great wagons in which the emigrants were to travel. Then came Mrs. Kirkland's A New home, Who'll follow? （1839). Besides this we had Irving's Tour of the prairies (1835) and his Astoria the following year. The West was still a word for vast expeditions, for the picturesqueness and the uncertainty of Indian life, and not for the amenities of a civilized condit
1860 AD (search for this): chapter 10
in death; a whole family made interesting, even charming, to us, then vanishing mercilessly in a meaningless border feud: this is a distinct step forward in American literature, and cannot be put out of sight either by too ambitious efforts like his Joan of Arc or by free and easy journalistic extravaganzas like Innocents abroad. W. D. Howells. The first Western writer really recognized as taking the position of a literary leader at the East was, of course, Mr. Howells, who came East in 1860 and has always remained. The peculiar charm of Howells's prose style has, doubtless, had its effect in disarming criticism. He rarely fails to give pleasure by the mere process of writing, and this is much, to begin with; just as, when we are listening to conversation, a musical voice gratifies us almost more than wit or wisdom. Mr. Howells is without an equal among his English-speaking contemporaries as to some of the most attractive literary graces. Unless it be in Mr. James, he has no
1850 AD (search for this): chapter 10
but as most of their work was based upon reading rather than experience, it had nothing characteristically Western about it. Most of them turned instinctively, ere long, to the Atlantic coast for sympathy and bookstores, as the Atlantic states had looked to Europe. I shall always remember with satisfaction the delight with which Elizabeth Whittier, the poet's far more brilliant and vivacious sister, used to tell the tale of how their mother was once called to their modest front door, about 1850, by two plump and lively maidens who inquired for her son. They were told that he was not at home. They cheerfully announced that they would come in and wait for him; and on being told that he was in Boston and might not return that day, they said that it was of no manner of consequence; they had just arrived from Ohio, were themselves authors, and would come in and remain until he got back. So they came in and waited, and proved to be Alice and Phoebe Cary. They were brought up in an Ohi
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