Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction [Hardcover]

Philip Fisher (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674838599 | ISBN-13: 978-0674838598 | Publication Date: May 30, 1999 | Edition: 1

In this bold reinterpretation of American culture, Philip Fisher describes generational life as a series of renewed acts of immigration into a new world. Along with the actual flood of immigrants, technological change brings about an immigration of objects and systems, ways of life and techniques for the distribution of ideas.

A provocative new way of accounting for the spirit of literary tradition, Still the New World makes a persuasive argument against the reduction of literature to identity questions of race, gender, and ethnicity. Ranging from roughly 1850 to 1940, when, Fisher argues, the American cultural and economic system was set in place, the book reconsiders key works in the American canon--from Emerson, Whitman, and Melville, to Twain, James, Howells, Dos Passos, and Nathanael West, with insights into such artists as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. With striking clarity, Fisher shows how these artists created and recreated a democratic poetics marked by a rivalry between abstraction, regionalism, and varieties of realism--and in doing so, defined American culture as an ongoing process of creative destruction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The final sentence of Philip Fishers rich investigation into the American commitment to novelty and innovation has the ring of a campaign promise: This book was written to affirm my conviction that in America in the year 2000 it is still the new world. Fisher, a professor of English at Harvard, has previously published on American literary realism, abstract art and the culture of museums. Here he offers an unexpectedly patriotic analysis of what he describes as Americas lack of culture. If culture, in the anthropological sense, refers to traditional, enduring ways of life handed down from parents to children over multiple generations, Fisher argues, then 19th- and 20th-century America has had nothing of the kind. Instead of culture, we have a culture of creative destruction, perpetual immigration, novelty, innovation, mobility and childrens wise refusal to heed the advice of parents. By immigration Fisher means something much larger than the literal introduction of the nonnative-born to the U.S. Americans have always been immigrants, he asserts, adapting to a permanently unsettled rhythm of creation and destruction. While much of the book, which is written in an epigrammatic style with a minimum of footnotes, is based on Fishers close readings of Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Thomas Eakins and other American authors and artists, his surprising and wide-ranging reflections on the principle of creative destruction in commerce and technology deserve a readership well beyond specialists in American literature and art.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this provocative look at an ever-changing American society, Fisher (English & American literature, Harvard Univ.) considers how the works of great writers reflect the dynamics of cultural change and assimilation. Using examples from such prominent 19th- and 20th-century authors as Twain, Whitman, and Dos Passos, Fisher shows how American writing has been informed by capitalism, economics, democracy, and the unrelenting rise of technology. For Fisher, the rapid technological advances that have characterized American life in recent generations combine with the ongoing process of immigration to produce an America that is always new. Immigration, with its mix of cultures, becomes not only a way of effecting real change in society but also a metaphor for each generation's "immigration" into a place where skills and knowledge must be constantly updated to keep pace with technology. Recommended for academic and larger library collections, this is an optimistic book that champions American life and literature.AEllen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (May 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674838599
• ISBN-13: 978-0674838598
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,146,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An Impressively Poor Book, February 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction (Hardcover)

The very first sentence of Philip Fisher's book says a lot. It reads, "Of all American literature the scene that stays longest in many reader's minds is the one in which Tom Sawyer paints Aunt Sally's fence." The irony is, of course, delicious. Tom Sawyer paints Aunt Polly's fence, not Aunt Sally's. Aunt Sally is neither in Missouri nor in _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer__; she's in Arkansas and __Adventures of Huckleberry Finn__, published eight years later. And just so that the reader will not think this a typo, Fisher repeats his huge gaff twice a few pages later. Why does this matter? Because scholars feel, quite reasonably, that if a critic cannot even get the basic facts of a text correct, then such sloppiness extends to that critic's interpretations. In this case, they do. In __Still the New World__, Fisher is attempting to give us the grand picture, much like such earlier critics like Alfred Kazin and Edmund Wilson were wont to do. But he possesses neither the insight of such critics, nor their extraordinary grasp of the field. And so, Fisher's book breaks down into a lot of impressive sounding but ultimately groundless assertions about American literature and culture, many of which are culled, without attribution, from the works of less ambitious but much more credible scholars. Reading this book, I had the uncanny feeling that I had heard this all before. And so I had, in different places. A final irony. This book shared the inaugural Truman Capote Award for literary criticism with a terrific book on creativity by Elaine Scarry. Both authors are professors at Harvard, and Harvard chooses the recipients of the award. Fisher's book is also published by Harvard University Press. A little incestuous? Perhaps. Would that there were someone at that distinguished press who had a background in American literature and who could edit. Then Fisher would have been spared his embarrassing goof, and the press would have been spared this rehash of what has been said before.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Well-Written, July 5, 2000

By 

GM Rieker - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction (Hardcover)

I have not come across many academics who write as lucidly and compellingly as Fisher. His prose is a pleasure to read! His observations about American culture, technology, and identity are compelling and convincing. Fisher argues that American culture is an historical anomaly, in that we assume that our lives will be radically different from those of our parents' generation--for thousands of years in human history this was not the case.

A great read for anyone interested in fame, the American Dream, immigration, American Lit, and race and class issues.

A great way to introduce mid-level English undergraduates to good, readable, provocative scholarship. Would be a good companion to Whitman, Anderson, James, etc.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More American flag waving, November 1, 2001

By 

Cynical Charlie (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction (Hardcover)

_Still the New World_ was published to rave reviews and won awards, but it's a book that should be approached with a good deal of skepticism.

Fisher's thesis is that American democratic and technological society presents us all with a level playing field. Apparently the speed of technological change makes us immigrants of us all, since every generation is presented with a new world, a new set of challenges. Apparently, again, we all have equal access to this new world; we can all make use of it to the same degree and profit from it en masse.

Fisher goes further to celebrate the sameness of American culture--claiming that suburbs from Boston to LA are all essentially the same: people live in the same houses, drive the same cars, buy the same products, watch the same shows on TV, eat the same food. This isn't a problem for Fisher, but is instead something to be celebrated as the triumph of a Cartesian democratic space.

I would suggest that Fisher has been closeted within Harvard Yard for too long. It seems flippant at best, arrogant and ignorant at worst, to suggest that we're all immigrants and have access to the same opportunities. Would Mr. Fisher care to think about being a non-white immigrant into this country he might realize that all immigrants are not equal. To claim that being faced with new technologies is kin to being an immigrant to the country is implausible, as if being unable to set the VCR is as serious a problem as facing a prejudiced and often racist immigration process.

He glosses over the detrimental effects of the sameness of American culture (even as he overstates that sameness). Large, multi-national corporations and chain stores have ruined small businesses nationwide, and the goods that we are fortunate enough to buy in most of this country are made at the expense of people in other countries or poorer regions of this one.

To suggest that all suburbs are the same is ludicrous: even without leaving the Boston area Fisher should compare Cambridge to some of Boston's poorer working class neighborhoods.

Fisher celebrates America's greatness, but in fact he's performing a dangerous sleight of hand, ignoring many of the social problems that we're facing.