Pub Date : 1963-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S052450010000262X
T. Tanner
ions and generalisations only had 'barren insulated facts' to work from. When young Hemingway watched the modern world at war he 'saw nothing sacred': 'Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages... the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.' Such 'barren insulated facts1 are like Hugh McVey's pebbles, not like Margaret Fuller's. Behind the material world tnere is no God, no Over-Soul: only a horrible nothingness nada for Hemingway, 'a vastness and emptiness1 for Anderson. The Hemingway hero has to orient him self as best he can by limiting himself to what the eye can witness, what the hand can verify. Which is why Hemingway devised the style he did: it is a Style which believes only in the authenticity of concrete particulars and works hard to separate out individual sense impressions and exclude all vague generalisations. Hemingway is a man trying to estab!"-h some personal moment by-moment; order and significance by carefully picking over the fragments of a world no longer held together by the large affirmations of the transcendental ists. Where Emerson saw all fragments of concrete reality as being hinged to some superior Reality on which they readily opened, Hemingway saw only detached details of matter, marooned in a meaningless void. Emerson's wondering is a constant act of worship: Hemingway's lucid scrutiny betokens a continuing effort of orientation. Emerson praised God by looking through matter; Hemingway saved himself by holding onto it. Emerson believed what he could infer; Hemingway relied only on what he could see and touch. Instead of the consolations of religion we have the consolations of sensation. Vague general isations have been abandoned in favour of increasingly accurate perceptions. The transcendental ists asserted that a man who could not see God everywhere was blind. The blind men of a later age had to return to a brail Ie-l ike reading of the world. Let us return to Tocqueville's point by quoting a worried entry from Thoreau's Journals which nicely bears out its validity. 'Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it.' This hastejtowards universal generalisations seems to have had a peculiar magnetism for American writers at the same time as they have shown a real genius for the unbiased notation of concrete particulars. Certainly, much of what I have said attempts to suggest that American writers have shown an increasing suspicion of vague generalisations, and from Mark Twain onwards we have a series of writers who work increasingly hard to keep their gaze on the veridical details of the phenomenal world. And yet their emancipation from This content downloaded from 207.46.13.12 on Thu, 12 May 2016 05:56:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
{"title":"Pigment and Ether: A Comment on the American Mind","authors":"T. Tanner","doi":"10.1017/S052450010000262X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S052450010000262X","url":null,"abstract":"ions and generalisations only had 'barren insulated facts' to work from. When young Hemingway watched the modern world at war he 'saw nothing sacred': 'Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages... the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.' Such 'barren insulated facts1 are like Hugh McVey's pebbles, not like Margaret Fuller's. Behind the material world tnere is no God, no Over-Soul: only a horrible nothingness nada for Hemingway, 'a vastness and emptiness1 for Anderson. The Hemingway hero has to orient him self as best he can by limiting himself to what the eye can witness, what the hand can verify. Which is why Hemingway devised the style he did: it is a Style which believes only in the authenticity of concrete particulars and works hard to separate out individual sense impressions and exclude all vague generalisations. Hemingway is a man trying to estab!\"-h some personal moment by-moment; order and significance by carefully picking over the fragments of a world no longer held together by the large affirmations of the transcendental ists. Where Emerson saw all fragments of concrete reality as being hinged to some superior Reality on which they readily opened, Hemingway saw only detached details of matter, marooned in a meaningless void. Emerson's wondering is a constant act of worship: Hemingway's lucid scrutiny betokens a continuing effort of orientation. Emerson praised God by looking through matter; Hemingway saved himself by holding onto it. Emerson believed what he could infer; Hemingway relied only on what he could see and touch. Instead of the consolations of religion we have the consolations of sensation. Vague general isations have been abandoned in favour of increasingly accurate perceptions. The transcendental ists asserted that a man who could not see God everywhere was blind. The blind men of a later age had to return to a brail Ie-l ike reading of the world. Let us return to Tocqueville's point by quoting a worried entry from Thoreau's Journals which nicely bears out its validity. 'Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it.' This hastejtowards universal generalisations seems to have had a peculiar magnetism for American writers at the same time as they have shown a real genius for the unbiased notation of concrete particulars. Certainly, much of what I have said attempts to suggest that American writers have shown an increasing suspicion of vague generalisations, and from Mark Twain onwards we have a series of writers who work increasingly hard to keep their gaze on the veridical details of the phenomenal world. And yet their emancipation from This content downloaded from 207.46.13.12 on Thu, 12 May 2016 05:56:56 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"29 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125524530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002606
P. Marshall
Between 1700 and the outbreak of the Revolution over 800 travellers left accounts of their American experiences. After 1750 the value and variety of their information increases considerably as colonial society develops and matures, while opportunity and interest grows in the observation of a scene marked by its diversity and rapidity of change. Travel had become easier and journeys more ambitious. When in 1708, Dame Knight ventured overland from Boston to New York her trip proved difficult and unusual, and her comments on the standards of hospitality she encountered were blistering. By the 1760s travellers found that the journey from Virginia to Maine presented no enormous problems. Taverns might be dirty and inadequate, ferries could prove expensive and temperamental, but the discomforts to be endured were limited to occasional misfortunes of this kind. Further south, it was true, the roads deteriorated sharply, particularly along the less used route between North and South Carolina. Here horses were difficult to obtain, and a guide was advisable, or at least a compass. Inland in New England the road between Boston and Albany was new and presented some difficulties, but despite this a commissioner of customs and his wife were able, in 1772, to travel by coach from Boston to Canada and back. As travel became less of an adventure, diaries and letters dwell increasingly on picturesque detail rather than practical hazards; there was security and leisure to admire scenery, for which the highest term of praise was ‘romantic’, and to linger in cities whose buildings and social life could be considered truly ‘elegant’.
{"title":"Travellers and the Colonial Scene","authors":"P. Marshall","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002606","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1700 and the outbreak of the Revolution over 800 travellers left accounts of their American experiences. After 1750 the value and variety of their information increases considerably as colonial society develops and matures, while opportunity and interest grows in the observation of a scene marked by its diversity and rapidity of change. Travel had become easier and journeys more ambitious. When in 1708, Dame Knight ventured overland from Boston to New York her trip proved difficult and unusual, and her comments on the standards of hospitality she encountered were blistering. By the 1760s travellers found that the journey from Virginia to Maine presented no enormous problems. Taverns might be dirty and inadequate, ferries could prove expensive and temperamental, but the discomforts to be endured were limited to occasional misfortunes of this kind. Further south, it was true, the roads deteriorated sharply, particularly along the less used route between North and South Carolina. Here horses were difficult to obtain, and a guide was advisable, or at least a compass. Inland in New England the road between Boston and Albany was new and presented some difficulties, but despite this a commissioner of customs and his wife were able, in 1772, to travel by coach from Boston to Canada and back. As travel became less of an adventure, diaries and letters dwell increasingly on picturesque detail rather than practical hazards; there was security and leisure to admire scenery, for which the highest term of praise was ‘romantic’, and to linger in cities whose buildings and social life could be considered truly ‘elegant’.","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128296725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002679
P. Taylor
{"title":"Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a more detailed account of the lands of Utah edited by Wallace Stegner (Harvard University Press, London, O.U.P., 1962, 40s.; pp. xxvii, 202.)","authors":"P. Taylor","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002679","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124499202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002485
J. Hawgood
{"title":"How the West was Won - Robert V. Hine, Edward Kern and American Expansion (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1962. $6.00. Western Americana Series, Vol. 1. xix + 180 pp. + 53 b. and w. illustrations at end).","authors":"J. Hawgood","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002485","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114393559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002461
M. Bradbury, A. Goldman
{"title":"Stephen Crane: Classic at the Crossroads","authors":"M. Bradbury, A. Goldman","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002461","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132669823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002540
R. Rose
{"title":"Stanley Lieberson Ethnic Patterns in American Cities (Free Press of Glencoe, New York, 1963, 38s. pp. 230).","authors":"R. Rose","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002540","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"1966 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129718211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002436
D. Watt
When I was first told, as a boy, how to keep my petty cash accounts, my instructor, in a rash moment, once let me see her own. The largest single item on the debit side stood opposite the initials “G.O.K.” Intrigued, I asked who the mysterious “Mr. K. was”. “No-one”, was the reply, “it stands for “God only knows”. The money is gone – on what I could not tell you. G.O.K. balances the accounts and takes care of my ignorance”.
{"title":"American ‘Isolationism’ in the 1920s: is it a useful concept?","authors":"D. Watt","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002436","url":null,"abstract":"When I was first told, as a boy, how to keep my petty cash accounts, my instructor, in a rash moment, once let me see her own. The largest single item on the debit side stood opposite the initials “G.O.K.” Intrigued, I asked who the mysterious “Mr. K. was”. “No-one”, was the reply, “it stands for “God only knows”. The money is gone – on what I could not tell you. G.O.K. balances the accounts and takes care of my ignorance”.","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131978551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002527
David McIntyre
{"title":"Don E. Fehrenbacher Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in 1850's (Stanford University Press, 1962; Oxford University Press, 38s., Pp. ix, 205)","authors":"David McIntyre","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002527","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125004959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002503
E. Wright
{"title":"Leonard W. Larabee (ed.) The Papers of Benjamin Franklin Vol. 5, July 1 1753 – March 31 1755 . (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962, 80s.) Pp. xxvi, 575.","authors":"E. Wright","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002503","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125525328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1963-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S0524500100002448
Andrew Hook
{"title":"John Nichol, American Literature, and Scottish Liberalism","authors":"Andrew Hook","doi":"10.1017/S0524500100002448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0524500100002448","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":159179,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1963-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127330248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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