The American Classics: A Personal Essay [Hardcover]

Professor Denis Donoghue (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2005

How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? In this provocative new book Denis Donoghue essays to answer these questions. He presents his own short list of “relative” classics--works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time—neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise, and hyperbole.
Donoghue bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville’s Moby-Dick, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Examining each in a separate chapter, he discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and he offers his own contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post–9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. Donoghue extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his strange new book, one of our leading literary critics anoints five books as American classics. These works, or more appropriately, these writers—Melville, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman and Twain—are forced to be representative of the ante- and post-bellum cultures that produced them and those that followed. Donoghue begins by tracing all of American thought to Emerson, which puts the critic in a bit of a bind, since he can't find anything positive to say about the man or his writing. This leads Donoghue to condemn all of American literature as driven by a need to escape the limitations of the culture in which it is rooted. Although each essay presents an interesting argument and Donoghue makes some acute literary observations, the book as a whole is hampered by the naming of Emerson as the progenitor of American letters. For Donoghue also decries that some recent American political thinkers claim Emerson as the father of American imperialism—which is the villain of Donoghue's account, embodied by George Bush and the military-industrial complex. Whatever contemporary critique is contained in the book is so intermittent, though, that it seems more of an intrusion than an integral part. Donoghue, Irish by birth, has put himself into the enviable but bizarre position of allowing himself to love America and its literature only insofar as he can condescend to it. Agent, Georges Borchardt.(May)
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Review

“Donoghue’s great gifts of intelligence and scholarship, judgment, and wit are all on display here in first-rate form. Like the American classics he analyzes, this book makes powerful claims on our attention.”—Stephen Railton, University of Virginia

"Donoghue's great gifts of intelligence and scholarship, judgment and wit are all on display here in first-rate form. Like the American classics he analyzes, this book makes powerful claims on our attention."-Stephen Railton, University of Virginia (Stephen Railton )

"Donoghue's confrontations with five classic American authors are fresh and provocative-not least in their willingness to link his writers' concerns with current political issues. A must read for all Americanists."-Joel Porte, author of Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed (Joel Porte )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1St Edition edition (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300107811
• ISBN-13: 978-0300107814
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,659,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Similar to Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature, September 16, 2006

By 

Bo K. (California!!!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The American Classics: A Personal Essay (Hardcover)

Donoghue doesn't very much care for these 5 central books in the US canon: Walden, Huck Finn, Scarlet Letter, Leaves of Grass and Moby Dick. He correctly finds in them, without explicitly citing Lawrence, that they are all essentially books about solitary, hyper-individualists, "cold, isolate, stoic, alone- a killer," as Lawrence labeled the American soul.

Like Bloom, whom he doesn't appear to like, Donoghue correctly puts Emerson as the sagacious center of the American literary tradition. The problem being that, for Donoghue, that has doomed American culture to a spirit of excessive individualism and a rejection of the value of community. Donoghue then explicitly criticizes American society for its bellicosity, pomposity and ignorance during the current Bush II administration. It is interesting to read a critic who is unafraid of bringing political issues into his work. Most dance around such questions or avoid them altogether, though even in its absence, the political is always found within works of human artifice, as thinkers such as Frederic Jameson and Edward Said have made so clear in their work.

Essentially, Donoghue is correct in his assessment of these central American works. THey are excessively individualistic, often naive, and quite indicative of a society that, at least at the time of their having been written, was likely incapable of any literature more profound.

Like many persons critical of American lit, Donophue does evince a fondness for Henry James, who was undoubtedly a very sophisticated writer; the problem is, very few people actually read him today, and so James does not provide much of a corrective against the Emersonion individualist vision.

One slight problem I have with the book is that Donoghue does not more explicitly address his essentially Catholic viewpoint. Some of the writers that he cites as more mature than these Americans are Joyce, Greene and Eliot, Catholics all. THe problem with the AMerican/ Emersonian line is that is quite the opposite; it is a tradition far more radically "protestant," and this is a central issue for Bloom in his work on AMerican writers.

Thus the unstated but clear theme of Donoguhue's book is that he dislikes these American books because they do not participate in the world view that would be found in the works of more Catholic/ European writers. There is nothing wrong with Donoghue feeling this way; its a matter of taste. I am probably not in disagreement with him. But I think it would have deepened his analysis in this book had he more explicity recognized the difference in religious sensibilities between the European tradition which he enjoys and the American, "hyper-individualist" tradition of which he is so critical.

Interesting to me also that Donoghue does not comment upon the work of Wendell Berry, an American who does indeed write as a part of the Catholic tradition, whatever that might actually mean, and is unfortunately not widely read in the US as he is probably a little too sophisticated for the reading tastes of the general American public.... And, strangely, he does not touch upon Poe at all either, a writer who has been so influential in European literary circles...

But, as Donoghue says, his book is more a piece of autobiography than strict criticism. Obviously he is not striving for comprehension in a work of a little over 200 pages.

IN any case, I definitely recommend this book for any intelligent reader looking to deepen her understanding of the American tradition and its relation to the European.

3.0 out of 5 stars A Dusty Review of the Classics, December 1, 2008

By 

Jeffrey C. Swenson "Timberlane" (Garrettsville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The American Classics: A Personal Essay (Hardcover)

If a literary critic takes on as dusty a subject as "The American Classics," generally the point is either the reevaluation or reassertion of the literary canon. "A Personal Essay"--the subtitle to Denis Donoghue's look at the big hitters of American Literature--reveals itself as a lie by book's end. Donoghue does provide a solid background on the critical history of the canonical works of Whitman, Twain, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville, and this book would be a good primer for any English major interested in American Literature. But Donoghue's critical approaches and insights prove anticlimactic. In his discussion of Thoreau's _Walden_, for example, Donoghue lays out a central critical debate concerning the work: is it pastoral or ecological? Professor Donoghue asserts it is neither, and his tacit defense of this assertion relies on the "personal" nature of the book. It's neither because he says it's neither. Retreating to subjectivity is a freshman dodge, and Donoghue repeatedly runs for the safety of personal ground. _The American Classics_ provides a wealth of information on five great works, but it neither inspires nor treads new ground. Unfortunately, the dust will gather quickly on this volume.

3 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Emerson and not The Great Gatsby--give me a huge break!, January 15, 2007

By 

J. Clemons "clotblaster" (Surfdom California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The American Classics: A Personal Essay (Hardcover)

Donoghue often has interesting things to say in the essays in his books. I started to doubt his judgment when he went way "over the top" in praising Blood Meridian in a recent book. I like Cormac M. very much but Sutree and All the Pretty Horses are far superior as stories and themes. I enjoyed Blood M. but its clunky and overwrought prose undermined its value as a novel. Also, his injecting George Bush into a book was just plain stupid. Does Donoghue really want to be classed with Said. His earlier books were better but unfortunately his ego, much like Vendler's, simply can't be supported by his writing and interpretation. I would skip this book and read Hugh Kenner and Guy DAvenport and then read the books and poems that they analyze so acutely.