Customer Reviews

American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation

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For us lay readers, books from academic presses can be dangerous: we so crave the erudition and level of scholarship that such a book might offer, but we balk at the sight of jargon (particularly if that jargon encompasses the phrase "policing the meta-text.") Crain's book is beautifully written and heavily researched, but is never given to terminology understandable only to people in his field. His account of the way in which personal life informs literary creation is fascinating--especially in the instances of Charles Brockden Brown using his friends as guinea pigs for his Gothic fictions, and of James Gibson and John Fishbourne Mifflin's love-infused diaries. Great stuff.

I read a lot of literary criticism, particularly of American literature. I found AMERICAN SYMPATHY to be an insightful, provocative, and sensitive study of a small group of American authors: Charles Brockden Brown, Emerson, and Melville. It's one of the best studies of recent years, utilizing the insights of gay and lesbian studies to reveal the depth of male-male love that these writers experienced and, at the same time, that generated some of their most interesting writing. It's a book about romantic feelings, not sex, so don't read it to find about the dark and dirty secrets of Melville or Emerson. Read it for its literary insights...and clear, well-written prose. This is literary criticism doing what it does best.

Caleb Crain's lively, provocative study is both a pleasure to read and a very important foray into a subject that has yet to receive much attention: the ambivalence towards friendship at the heart of classic American ideologies of self-reliance and democracy. Crain uncovers fascinating connections between the development of American literary art and evolving ideas about sympathy and intimacy in the early years of the American republic. The book convincingly argues that American literature continually grows out of, reflects, and sometimes masks mixed feelings about intimate friendship, at the same time that it charts the changing "style of relationships between men" in the developing nation. The revealing, groundbreaking chapters on the lives and works of writers like Charles Brockden Brown, Emerson, and Melville are brimming with both insightful analysis and narrative flair: unlike so many literary critics, Crain writes with verve and style, and knows how to tell a good story. Highly recommended for both American literature specialists and general readers.

Like most fans of Caleb Crain's writing, I became familiar with him through his pieces for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and Lingua Franca. The rapier wit and frank, clever assessments were those of a popular critic, yet his deep erudition -- lightly worn! -- suggested an academic training. Could it be?

Indeed it was. "American Sympathy" offers a chance for Crain fans to appreciate his first-rate mind at work in a scholarly setting. The book concerns a deep undercurrent in American literature, as well as the relation between that aspect of American literature and the defining ambitions of the American republic.

Just as the task for the Founding Fathers was to take the metaphorical ideal of fraternal, sympathetic friendship and make it real in the form of political institutions, so too, Crain argues, the task for American writers was to take that metaphorical ideal and dramatize it, be animated by it, embody it: What would it be for men to be genuinely committed to each other, but genuinely free? What did that sympathy look and feel and taste like?

The sensitive, caring, detailed analysis of actual texts brings Crain's arguments to life in a way much current literary "thought" never could (and, sadly, never would care to). A must-read, in particular, for fans of Emerson and Melville.

Crain is a prissy snob and NYT regular who has written two books one of which is out of print. These volumes will find their place among the unread and unremembered exercises in effete yuppie lifestyle decoration. On the basis of this anemic CV he's found a cushy seat to warm at the Modern Library's group of collective garbage mentalities including esteemed plagiarists & Pulitzer phonies Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose and the other wearisome profiles which blot the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, forefinger studiously poised beneath chin. Trash only of interest to sheltered Yale frat boys going through theyre mandatory Feminist/Homosexual postmodern semiotics discourse potty training.