Main characteristics of American literature.

Lecture 4

 

American literature

Literature

1. Дудченко М.М. Література Великобританії і США. Навчальний посібник для студентів вищих навчальних закладів (англійською мовою). – 2-ге вид., доп. – Суми: ВТД «Університетська книга», 2006. – 445 с. – С. 379-432.
2. Зарубежная литература ХХ века: Учебник для вузов/ Под ред. Л.Г. Андреева. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – М.: Высш. шк., 2003. – 559 с. – С. 490-518.
3. Пронин В.А., Толкачев С.П. Современный литературный процесс за рубежом: Учебное пособие М.: Изд-во МГУП, 2000.- 168 с. On line at: www.hi-edu.ru/x-books/xbook026/01/part-006.htm
4. VanSpanckeren Kathryn. Outline of American literature. – Chapters 7-10. - On line at: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/oaltoc.htm
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ American _ literature

 

Main characteristics of American literature.

American literature is rather young that is why it didn’t have many periods or stages, which were common for other literatures.

This literature didn’t originate from folklore like many other national literatures: its beginning came from personal journals, religious writings and travel accounts of the first settlers, and its development was closely connected with development of journalism.

Thus, prose predominates in American literature, especially short stories, novellas and novels.

America is called “ a melting pot of nations ”, and it is true because American culture has been formed by accumulating and melting many cultures. It means that it is multicultural and heterogeneous by nature.

From the beginning, the Americans have examined and attempted to explain themselves in their literature, and the perplexing question “What is an American?” has never lost its interest either inside or outside the American boundaries. Thus, the problem of identity (national, cultural, class or sexual) is one of the main aspects of American literature.

European tradition of writing was, on the one hand, the ideal for many American writers, but, on the other hand, they always tried to reject it and create something new.

The majority of the first settlers were English that is why English became the main language of American literature. Among the immigrants the Puritans predominated. They were the religious people with strict moral rules such as necessity of hard work, honesty, thrift and absence of amusements. The Puritans followed many ideas of the Swiss reformer J. Calvin, who considered people to be basically evil. Their religious consciousness was rather symbolic that is why since their times symbolism has been playing a great role in American literature.

Such features of American literature as rhetoric, moral instruction and pragmatism are the results of the Puritanical influence. They are closely linked to the Age of Reason, or Enlightenment, when a young American state was formed. The ideals of democracy were the spiritual bases of the nation and its literature as well.

American literature has a unique combination of traditionalism and experimentation, pragmatism and romanticism. Dangerous life and beautiful nature influenced this literature even more than moralist principles, thus, romanticism became very important in American culture, and the romantic tradition has been the leading one in the USA.

A term “ wilderness ” is characteristic of American literature. It defines a wild natural environment that makes a person lonely and abandoned. Man and nature remain the main motifs for American literature too.

Periods of American literature.

1620-1776 – early American and colonial period.

1776-1820 – democratic origins and revolutionary writers.

1820-1860 – the romantic period

1860-1914 – the rise of realism

1914-1945 – modernism and experimentation

1945-1965 – realism and experimentation

1965–up to the present – postmodernism, multiculturalism and experimentation.

The later works by Robert Penn Warren, John Steinbeck, Katherine Anne Porter, Ernest Hemingway.

JOHN STEINBECK 1902-1968

John Ernst Steinbeck is one of the best-known and most widely read American writers of the 20th century. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, he wrote the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1940), both of which examine the lives of the working class and the migrant worker during the Great Depression. Steinbeck populated his stories with struggling characters and is often considered an exponent of the naturalist school. His characters and his stories drew on real historical conditions and events in the first half of the 20th century. His body of work reflects his wide range of interests, including marine biology, jazz, politics, philosophy, history, and myth.

Seventeen of his works, including Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1955), went on to become Hollywood films, and Steinbeck himself achieved success as a Hollywood writer, garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, in 1945.

He was known by many as a regionalist, naturalist, mystic, and proletarian writer. He was also respected for his empathy for the migrant workers of the time.

The Grapes of Wrath won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and established Steinbeck as one of the most highly regarded writers of his day. Steinbeck produced several more successful works during his later years, including Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), East of Eden (1952), and Winter of Our Discontent (1961).

Toward the end of his life, Steinbeck achieved a gratifying success with the award of the Nobel Prize in 1963, and with the publication in that year of Travels with Charley, a nostalgic account of a trip across America with his aged poodle Charley. But his reputation is grounded on those earlier novels which portray California as the real and symbolic land of American promise.

Steinbeck creates vivid portraits of the landscape and demonstrates how people are shaped and manipulated by their environments. John Steinbeck's themes come from the poverty, desperation, and social injustice that he witnessed during the Great Depression of the 1930's, a time when many people suffered under conditions beyond their control. His works reflect his belief in the need for social justice and his hope that people can learn from the suffering of others. Though many of his characters suffered tragic fates, they almost always managed to retain a sense of dignity throughout their struggles.

Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

The story is about a Long Islander named Ethan Allen Hawley who works as a clerk in a grocery store he used to own, but is now owned by an Italian immigrant. His wife and kids want more than what he can give them because of his lowly clerkship.

Feeling the pressure from his family to achieve more than his current station, Ethan considers letting his normally high standards of conduct take brief respite. He finds out that the immigrant that owns his store is an illegal alien, turns him into the Immigration and Naturalization Service and receives the store by deceiving the immigrant. Ethan continues to have feelings of depression and anxiety brought about by his uneasy relationship with his wife and kids, risky flirtation with Margie Young-Hunt, and consideration of a bank robbery scheme.

The story resolves when Ethan gives the town drunk - his childhood friend Danny - enough money to get so incredibly intoxicated as to die shortly thereafter of acute alcohol poisoning; due to an arrangement made with the drunk prior to his death, Ethan then becomes a "somebody" in the town by inheriting a large, valuable tract of land needed by local businessmen to build an airport. This puts him post-story in the position of being able to get in on and even manipulate and control the behind-the-scenes dealings of the corrupt town businessmen and politicians. (Somehow Ethan assuages his guilt, having known fully well beforehand what the drunk would do with the money, apparently by telling himself that dying is what, in fact, the drunk/bum really wanted.) No longer will he or his family want for anything. Contrary to what one might think, Ethan is not satisfied with his newfound financial success. His family is not immune to problems either; his son won a nationwide essay contest entitled 'I Love America' and earns fame until it is known that he plagiarized almost all of his essay. Ethan contemplates suicide, but does not go through with it lest "another light go out," a reference to his daughter Ellen who is portrayed as a mirror image of Allen.

 

Symbolism of character

The Old Man and the Sea allows various interpretations. Hemingway emphasizes that

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in.... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. (Time, July 7, 1999)

The style of the work, the simplicity and the concreteness of its descriptions, provides a rich opportunity for symbolic interpretations. Some insights follow.

Santiago as a defeated hero. Santiago, the main character in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, may be seen as a defeated hero. He represents the courage, strength and endurance of the human race. He, like all men, struggled with faith (the fish) and both hated and loved life (the sea). The thing that truly defeated Santiago was his pride.

Santiago represents humankind. Hemingway compares him to Jesus Christ on several occasions. Santiago "...picked the mast up and put it on his shoulder and started up the road. He...[sat] down five times before he reached his shack" (121) much like Jesus did on the journey to his crucifixion, carrying the cross. Later Santiago sleeps "...face down... with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up" (122), the position of Jesus on the cross. All throughout the book the old man wishes for salt, a staple seasoning in the human diet. He is a fisherman, similarly to Christ's disciples.

The marlin represents religion; the fish has been a symbol of Christianity since its early days, and the sea represents life as it is thought to be where life began, and is a staple in our survival as humans. The marlin swims through the sea as religion weaves through life. Santiago struggles with the fish as humans often do with their faith. Santiago loves the fish as men love their gods, and he hates the fish as men hate their gods. The fish was beautiful and huge and Santiago felt a connection with it, he considered it his brother. Hemingway says that Santiago is not a religious man, but he seems to have some faith as shown by his offers to say his "Hail Marys" if he catches the marlin.

Santiago is ultimately defeated by his pride. He goes too far out to sea and thinks that he can conquer the sharks. Santiago questions sin, and pride is the ultimate sin in Christian discourse. He even apologizes to the fish, as a man would apologize to his god, for his pride. The old man's pride breaks his heart and he spits it out in the night.

Santiago is a hero, but he is defeated. He wins over his adversary, whom he considers his brother, but is still not victorious because he does not reach his goal. He wins over his religion (the fish), but life (the sea) makes sure he does not get what he wants by sending the sharks to destroy what he has won. Santiago did not give up; he ultimately won over his main adversary but did not get the meat of the fish as he had wanted. The ordeal destroyed him, but he did not give into the pain. Although he lives in the end of the book, a part of him died. But it died a hero.

Santiago as an undefeated hero. Santiago's contemporary fishermen go out to fish with nets, which is a commercially profitable practice. It, however, requires little skill; it is nothing more than a chore. After 84 days without catch, Santiago sustains himself on what little food a bartender sends him out of pity. Yet he still waits for his big fish. It is more important to him than hunger. And the big fish finally arrives.

Santiago ignored hunger to prove his fishing prowess, but he is not entitled to keep his catch. His amazing fortune is balanced against his material loss. While being able to come out on top in his struggle against the fish and against the pain and frailness of his own body, this is to be his only reward. His fortunes turn when he refocuses from passion for catching the fish to greed for profiting from it. The sea does not reward greed.

Yet Santiago has not lost. One recurring theme in Hemingway's works can be summarized by his quote: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." Santiago is punished for his greed, but nothing can take away the glory of his achievement.

 

Major works

· The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Holden Caulfield

· Nine Stories (1953)

· Franny and Zooey (1961)

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. First published in the US in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day for its liberal profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst; it was the thirteenth most frequently challenged book of the 1990s according to the American Library Association.

The novel has become one of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, and a common part of high school curricula in many English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 60 million.

The novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage alienation and fear. Written in the first person, The Catcher in the Rye relates Holden's experiences in New York City in the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school.

Holden Caulfield is the protagonist and narrator of the story. Holden is a sixteen year old with a bit of grey hair making him look more mature, who has just been expelled (for academic failure) from a school called Pencey Prep. He is intelligent and sensitive, but Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult world. However, the criticisms that Holden aims at people around him are also aimed at himself. He is uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, and at times displays the exact phoniness, meanness, and superficiality of the people he says he despises. Holden fails to view himself as the child that he is.

The novel covers a few important days in the life of the protagonist Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, lanky, highly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. Because he is so critical of others, and points out their faults only to exhibit them himself later, Holden is widely considered to be an unreliable narrator, and the details and events of his story are apt to be distorted by his point of view. Nonetheless, it is his story to tell. Many flashbacks throughout the entire book create a feeling of knowing Holden.

On the first page of the book, the reader is given a clue that Holden is narrating the book from a psychiatric hospital in California: " I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.... D.B. [Holden's brother] comes over and visits... practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. "

His story starts on Holden's last day at Pencey Prep. He is standing on the crest of a hill that overlooks the football field. It is the final game of the season, but Holden has never cared much for established tradition. He instead runs across the street to the residence of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. It is revealed here that Holden has been expelled, and that he doesn't particularly care. Mr. Spencer is disappointed in Holden, and lectures to him about the importance of hard work and education. Holden becomes annoyed and lies about having to remove some equipment from the gym to get out of the discussion.

Back at the dorm, Holden talks to his roommate, Stradlater, a tall, good-looking ladies' man. Holden sees him very differently, describing him as a "secret slob" because he would shave and groom himself for women, but doesn't bother to clean the dirty, rusty razor he uses to do so. Stradlater returns home early from a date with Jane Gallagher, one of Holden's childhood friends with whom he has had a long-standing infatuation. During Stradlater's date, Holden had been told by Stradlater to write an essay for him on "a room or something", as the exact topic was never explicitly stated, but as long as it was descriptive Stradlater says. Holden finds inspiration in writing about his late brother Allie's baseball mitt. Allie was Holden's younger brother who died of leukemia and had written poetry in green ink on his mitt so that in the outfield he could have something to read. When Stradlater returns and finds what Holden has written about, he gets annoyed. Holden tears up the essay out of anger. A short while later, Holden inquires Stradlater what he did on his date. Stradlater refuses to answer his questions, but more specifically whether or not he had sex with Jane Gallagher. Holden becomes infuriated and tries to hit his unsuspecting roommate. Stradlater easily wins the fight, as Holden himself is not particularly strong, but also in part claims to be a pacifist.

His socially inept neighbor, Robert Ackley (called Ackley for short), is also introduced. Ackley's relationship with Holden is fairly complex: On one hand, Holden expresses disgust at his hygiene, acne, and personality, yet spends time with him of his own free will; he is drawn to Ackley because there is nobody else, going to movies and having snowball fights with him even though he comments on how abrasive Ackley is.

That night, considering everything, especially the fact that he will be leaving Pencey very soon anyway, Holden packs a suitcase and leaves Pencey before the actual last day of school, and decides to stay in New York for the remainder of the period. En route, Holden meets the mother of one of his schoolmates, Ernest Morrow. This schoolmate is an antisocial bully, but Holden decides to lie to the mother because she was seemingly very attractive despite her age. He tells her that her son is a terrific young man and very friendly, and that when other students wanted to nominate him for class president, he humbly refused the honor. Holden tells Mrs. Morrow that his name is Rudolf Schmidt, who in reality is the dorm janitor. She is also the first person Holden asks out for a drink since his exodus from Pencey. However, like most of his encounters, she declines the offer.

Arriving at New York, Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel where he becomes increasingly disappointed by his surroundings, "screwballs all over the place." Having nothing much to do, he calls up a girl, Faith Cavendish, whom he was totally unaquainted with (a friend of a friend), to meet her for a drink, despite it being very late. She also says no. Unable to get comfortable, Holden goes down to the lobby downstairs in the Lavender Room to relax, trying his best to fit in with most of the older people. He makes a move on the young women sitting in the table nearest him, but they only laugh at him. Eventually they give in and Holden dances with each one of them. He enjoys the night but notes many times to himself they have almost nothing in common, thus plugging any opportunity to further a relationship.

Holden continues to wander New York City encountering more people in the midst, each escapade leaving him somewhat more depressed than before. Many times in between chapters, he remembers nostalgically of him and Jane doing various things to keep himself calm. As he becomes increasingly lonely and depressed, he takes another cab to a different bar, Ernies, to get drunk. Typically he derides this one too saying there were too many phonies in there. He is forced to leave when he accidentally runs into his brother's annoying ex-girlfriend.

Back at the hotel, Holden encounters the elevator boy, Maurice, who offers to send up a prostitute to his room for five bucks. In a rather rash decision, he accepts the offer hoping the experience will cheer him up. But when the the young girl, Sunny, comes to his room, Holden cannot bring himself to have sex with her, feeling much too depressed. He tells Sunny he is recuperating from a surgical operation on his clavichord, an obvious play on clavicle and spinal cord, and pays her, instead, to sit down and keep him company for a while. Later, she leaves, only to return with Maurice shortly after, who intimidates Holden and uses brute force to hustle an extra five bucks from him.

The next day, he makes a date with one of his previous girlfriends, Sally Hayes. They attend a matinee performance of The Lunts and later go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, but retire indoors to talk once their ankles tire. Their conversation soon turns into a fight and the experience leaves him more depressed, as he realizes that they do not have much in common. Holden in a final attempt to make peace with Sally gets a sudden idea to leave and go Northeast, live off of the land and build a cabin, offering Sally a chance to go with him — get "married or something". Sally rejects him and his idea, especially after Holden plaintively blurts out that she's "a royal pain in the ass." At that point, Sally becomes offended and walks out on the date.

After he gets drunk at a bar and almost drowns looking for ducks in a pond in Central Park, Holden then decides to surreptitiously visit home to see his younger sister Phoebe. During a short conversation with Phoebe, Holden reveals the meaning of the novel's title. The idea is based on a misreading of a line in the song "Comin' Thro' the Rye," by Robert Burns, which Holden heard a young boy singing. The young boy mistakenly substituted "When a body catch a body, comin' thro' the rye" for "When a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye." Holden interpreted the line literally, imagining a field of rye at the edge of a cliff, in which children constantly wandered, and that someone had the job of catching any who might fall. Thus, he says that he wants to be the catcher, because it serves a real purpose in a world that is otherwise so often phony/trivial. Holden quickly leaves the apartment as his parents come home from a party.

Holden goes to a former teacher's house, Mr Antolini, where his teacher gives him a speech about life and how, in order to live happily, Holden has to be prepared. Holden views Mr. Antolini as a father-figure and holds much respect for him. Mr. Antolini speaks as if he has been in Holden's situation before, hopelessly hating every person he ever sees. After preparing the pull out couch with Mr. Antolini, Holden awakes to find him stroking his head. Holden, taken aback by this, interprets this as a sexual advance, and runs out of the apartment to sleep in Grand Central Station, against the wishes of Mr. Antolini who says he was just admiring him.

In the morning, he decides to hitchhike west and build a cabin for himself away from the people he knows. However, he can't leave without saying goodbye to Phoebe first. Holden gives someone at her school a message to give to Phoebe explaining the situation. He tells her to meet him outside the nearby museum at lunchtime so he can give her back her money she had lent to him. At the same time, Holden witnesses several "Fuck You" messages graffitied on the walls, and worries what effect it would have if the children were to see it.

When Phoebe finally arrives at lunchtime, she is carrying one of Holden's old suitcases full of clothes. Phoebe tells Holden that she is going with him. He angrily refuses, feeling that he has influenced her to want to go with him instead of staying in school. She cries and refuses to speak to him. Knowing that she will follow him, Holden walks to the zoo, letting her anger lift. After walking through the zoo, with a short distance between them, they visit a park across the street. Phoebe starts talking to Holden again, and Holden promises to forget about his plan to run away and return home on Wednesday. He buys her a ticket for the carousel in the park and watches her ride an old horse on it. As Holden watches her ride the carousel, his own mood lifts. Soon he is nearly moved to tears with remorse, longing, and bittersweet happiness.

At this point in the book, the reader is given more clues that Holden is narrating the book from a mental hospital. He explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He finishes talking with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody".

Major themes

Given that Salinger has never commented on the work and its intended meanings, interpretations are fractured and vary from reader to reader. However, there are certainly a few themes which are discussed in the book — it is what Salinger actually meant that is under contention.

Phoniness

A major theme is what Holden calls "phoniness." He feels surrounded by dishonesty and false pretenses, and throughout the book is frequently picking out the "phonies" he sees around him. There is evidence that Holden exhibits much of the same "phoniness" he denounces in others. Holden also puts on pretenses, lies, and makes irrational and contradictory assumptions to mask his feelings and actions from others, which further alienates him from society. However, many others say that this is a misinterpretation of Holden's use of "phoniness", and that while he lies and exhibits other flaws, he doesn't fall into his own category. Possibly, the "phoniness" is about not being honest with yourself about your feelings of pain and disappointment. Holden's "phonies" rarely give the impression of admitting their flaws and insecurities, and this could be what he has in mind when he labels them as such. In contrast, though Holden labels other people as "phonies," Holden reveals much of his own carnality, showing himself to the readers as being self-righteous and judgmental. Sometimes, he himself can be a bit phoney, such as the time he decides he's going to pretend to be a deaf-mute so he doesn't have to speak to anyone. Either way, Holden believes that he is honest with himself, and the reader, throughout the book.

A reoccurring event in this book is Holden’s disdain for anything that robs the innocence from children. After he awakens to his favorite teacher Mr. Antolini rubbing his head, Holden even admits that he was previously taken advantage of by adults. Child exploitation is seen by Holden as another way how adults destroy childhood innocence. Holden's fascination with young children deals with his deeper desire to return to the innocence and truth that only children have. In a world where he considers adults and phonies to be equivalent, children are considered to be a fresh escape from Holden's middle-class background.

Loss of innocence

One more significant theme is that the loss of innocence might be unavoidable. Holden's idea of a "catcher in the rye" illustrates how he wishes to wipe out corruption from the world and protect children, such as his sister, from becoming like the many "phonies" he hated; e.g., adults. This is clearly illustrated by Holden's attack on Stradlater after the date with Jane Gallagher. Nevertheless, Holden finds it impossible to maintain innocence. After seeing some vulgar graffiti (saying "Fuck You") on the walls in his sister Phoebe's elementary school, a bastion of learning and culture, he tries to rub them off. In disgust, he states "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the "Fuck You" signs in the world." To Holden, the "Fuck You"s represent the things that remove the innocence of people. Thus he realizes that he won't be able to protect children from the world indefinitely. Holden believes that society will never get better, and it will always have some sort of flaw.

Also, in Holden's scheme of moving west and building a cabin, he mentions that he may have children, but hide them, probably to maintain their innocence.
Throughout the story Holden tries to maintain innocence. One situation Holden finds himself in is his dorm at Pencey Prep and is ready to leave for the movies and he begins to "[pack] a snowball with [his] bare hands…," and then admits "I didn’t throw it at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn’t throw it at anything."

Adolescence

Running contrary to the desire to maintain innocence is Holden's obviously strong desire to be an adult and live in the adult world, for which he is not prepared. He probably doesn't want to be a kid anymore, but still feels like the adult world is cruel and unfair. He's stuck in between child and adulthood. He is immensely frustrated by his repeated attempts to fit into adult society, foiled by his saying something wrong, or simply being seen as an adolescent by the adults around him. He spends much of the novel pursuing women, attempting to lose his virginity. He also tries to drink alcohol in every bar he can, but is turned away because he is too young. Having been rejected, Holden's response is an even stronger rejection of the people with whom he was trying to fit in. This resentment, combined with his observations of "phoniness" in many of the people around him, cause him to be outcast by society and to sometimes view himself as a loner with outsider status. Holden also changes his mind at the end of the book when he lets Phoebe grow up.

Education

Another theme in the book is whether or not Holden's education is important. Holden has failed out of several schools in his career, and exhibits no signs of remorse or promise of change. In the final chapters of the book, his former teacher, Mr. Antolini, tells Holden that it is imperative to his future that he apply himself at school, that he believes that education helps to arrange the ideas of brilliant and creative people — a group to which he presumably believes Holden belongs. Whether this speech is intended to be considered true is convoluted by the ambiguous actions of Mr. Antolini shortly after Holden goes to sleep. At the end of the book, Holden states that he thinks he will apply himself in the next school he's going to, but that he isn't sure and that he won't be until he gets there.

Style

Stream of consciousness

This style, used throughout the novel, refers to the use of seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes used in an apparently random medley, but in fact in a highly structured way, that is used to illustrate a theme. For example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events (such as picking up a book or looking at a table) unfold into long discussions about past experiences.

Controversy

The Catcher in the Rye has been shrouded in controversy since its publication. Reasons for banning have been the use of offensive language, premarital sex, alcohol abuse, and prostitution.

Mark David Chapman, murderer of musician John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.

Critics see Holden as a disturbing influence on youths they consider to be "social outcasts". Holden is portrayed as a juvenile who rejects and is rejected by many peers and individuals. Critics hold that people like Chapman and Hinckley come to relate themselves to Holden, the person that nobody understands and that cannot understand anybody else.

Thirty years after its first publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was both the most banned book in United States as well as the second most taught book in public schools.

It was number 13 on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books from 1990-2000. It was one of the ten most challenged books in 2005.

Notwithstanding the above, the story remains required reading in many U.S. public school English literature curricula.

Dating the story

The Catcher in the Rye takes place in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, which is about the time the novel was written. World War II was over and the atomic bomb, which was mentioned in the book, had already been invented. The death of Allie, Holden's younger brother, is given to be July 18, 1946, and it is stated Holden was 13 at that time. It follows, therefore, that the bulk of the story takes place in approximately December of 1949 and the story's "present" is the summer of 1950. Given that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1949, the two days that consume most of the novel are most likely December 18 and 19; if it were one week later, the second day of Holden's romp would be Christmas, and if it were one week earlier, Pencey would be letting its students out two full weeks before Christmas.

 

The canon of the Beat Generation: poetry by Allen Ginsberg, On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

The Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959) are often considered their most important works.

Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat Generation sometime around 1948 to describe his friends and as a general term describing the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: "This is the beat generation"). The adjective beat (introduced to the group by Herbert Huncke) had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out," but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of upbeat, beatific, and the musical association of being "on the beat."

Calling this relatively small group of struggling writers, students, hustlers, and drug addicts a "generation" was to make the claim that they were representative and important—the beginnings of a new trend, analogous to the influential Lost Generation.

In trying to define the "Beat Generation" it's important to note that "Beat Generation" was originally a reference, not only to Kerouac's inner-circle, but to the burgeoning counter-culture. The press attached to the name "Beat Generation" as a reference to only a small group of writers, friends of Ginsberg, Kerouac or Burroughs. Thus the joke among Beat writers (attributed to both Gregory Corso and Gary Snyder) persisted in various forms: "Three friends do not make a generation." The press also mistakenly pointed to Ginsberg and Kerouac as leaders. This often leads to confusion about who actually belongs in the so-called "Beat Generation." Writers who may qualify as part of the "Beat Generation" may deny they were ever a part of it based on this limiting definition the press had given it. For example, they'll say they're friends with Ginsberg and Kerouac, not followers. This leads to two ways to identify writers as members of the "Beat Generation," a broad and narrow definition. A narrow definition of the Beat Generation would include only the closest friends who relatively consistently defined themselves as "Beat" writers; this list may include: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky. If "Beat Generation" is defined broadly, this smaller group is often just called "The New York Beats," though Orlovsky had little connection with New York. William S. Burroughs, one of the most important figures of this group, always adamantly denied he was a part of the "Beat Generation," but an accurate list of the close inner-circle would have to include him. Even Kerouac in his later career denied he was part of the "Beat Generation." In this sense movements like the San Francisco Renaissance and the Black Mountain poets would be completely separate movements.

The members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian ecstatic epicureans, who often engaged in a spontaneous creativity. The style of their work may seem chaotic, but the chaos was purposeful; it highlighted the primacy of such Beat Generation essentials as spontaneity, open emotion, visceral engagement in often gritty worldly experiences. The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.

Jack Kerouac (pronounced [dʒæk kɛrwæk]) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation.

Kerouac enjoyed some degree of popular appeal but little critical acclaim during his lifetime. He is now, however, considered to be one of America's most important and influential authors. His spontaneous, confessional prose style has inspired numerous other writers and musicians, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bangs, Richard Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Kerouac's best known works are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and Visions of Cody.

Kerouac divided most of his young adult life between roaming the vast American landscape and life at home with his mother. Faced with a changing post-war America, he sought to find his place, but came to eventually reject the values and social norms of the Fifties. His writing often reflects a desire to break free from society's structures and to find higher meaning.

This search led Kerouac to experiment with drugs and to embark on trips around the world. His writings are often credited as the catalyst for the 1960s counterculture. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of forty-seven from an internal hemorrhage, the result of chronic alcoholism.

Kerouac is considered by some as the King of the Beats as well as the Father of the Hippies, although it must be said that he actively disliked such labels, and, in particular, regarded the Hippie movement with some disdain. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas he developed in his Buddhist studies, beginning with Gary Snyder. He called this style Spontaneous Prose, a literary technique akin to stream of consciousness.

Kerouac's motto was "first-thought=best thought", and many of his books exemplified this approach including On the Road, Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur, and The Subterraneans. The central features of this writing method was the idea of breath (borrowed from Jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and not editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in Beat Generation poetry who also edited some of Ginsberg's work as well). Connected with his idea of breath was the elimination of the period, preferring to use a long, connecting dash instead. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks. When spoken, the words might take on a certain kind of rhythm, though none of it pre-meditated.

On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, written in April 1957. This largely autobiographical work, written as a stream of consciousness and based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America, is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. As the inspiration came from real life, hundreds of references in On the Road have real-world counterparts.

The book became an overnight success, and gathered an epic mythos that was worthy of its fame. As the story goes, On the Road was written by Kerouac in three weeks while living with his second wife, Joan Haverty, in an apartment at 454 West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, which he typed on one long scroll of teletype paper, which Kerouac called "the roll." The roll does exist — it was purchased in 2001 by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.4 million — and it was indeed typed in a blazing three weeks, with no margins, single-spaced, and no paragraph breaks. But the myth of the story overlooks some of the finer points of the novel's composition. Much of the book was actually written as it happened, over the seven years of Kerouac's travels, in the small notebooks that he always carried with him and wrote in during his spare time. The myth also overlooks the tedious organization and preparation that came before Kerouac's creative explosion, as well as the fact that Kerouac revised the novel several times before Malcolm Cowley of Viking Press agreed to publish it.

As of 2006, the book is to be the subject of a forthcoming film, also titled On the Road. Walter Salles is signed to direct, and casting is scheduled to begin later in the year.

Viking Press hopes to publish an uncensored version of the book, containing elements that were deemed unsuitable when it was first published, by the end of 2007, the 50th anniversary of its original publication. Also, Viking plans to fulfill Kerouac's unrealized desire to "...reinsert my pantheon of uniform names..." or in other words remove the pseudonyms used for the characters throughout the book, thus the opening sentence, "I first met Dean Moriarty..." would be changed to "I first met Neal Cassady..."

Michael McClure, a poet in San Francisco who was involved with the Beats said that "the world that [they] trembling stepped out into in that decade was a bitter, gray one." In his article "Scratching the Beat Surface," he describes the time as "locked in the Cold War and the first Asian debacle," in "the gray, chill, militaristic silence...the intellective void...the spiritual drabness."

This is the world in which Kerouac takes his journeys that become the material for On the Road. Salvadore (a.k.a. Sal) Paradise, the narrator of On the Road and the character identified as Kerouac's alter ego, is a literate keeper of American culture. We become intimately aware of an elusive narrator, but fixated upon the epic hero of the novel, Dean Moriarty (a pseudonym for Neal Cassady, who was also a part of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters). The narrator tells us in the opening paragraph that "with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of [his] life you could call [his] life on the road." Dean is the instigator and the inspiration for the journey that Sal will make, the journey that he will record.

The characters are introduced to us in brief vignettes, in a way reminiscent of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; New York City is the starting point, and Sal wants us to understand the people we will be dealing with. The arrival of Dean is the catalyst; Sal describes him as “simply a youth tremendously excited with life.” He also sees “a kind of holy lightning...flashing from his excitement and his visions." When Dean meets Carlo Marx (a pseudonym for Allen Ginsberg), Sal’s closest friend in the city, Sal tells us that a “tremendous thing happened," and that the meeting of Dean and Carlo was a meeting between “the holy con-man with the shining mind [Dean], and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx." Sal remarks that “everything that was to come began then”, in their meeting. Carlo tells Dean about the friends around the country, their experiences, and Sal is telling us that he is following them “because the only people for [him] are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn burn burn...”

Sal describes Dean’s criminal tendencies as “a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy...something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides).” The early descriptions of Dean establish a religious motif; people and their personalities are regularly referred to as holy or prophesied. Dean is “a western kinsman of the sun”, and this pagan comparison is yet another supernatural moment in the description of Dean Moriarty. Sal introduces him as the savior of his generation; Sal says that “all [of his] New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired...reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love.”

Sal’s journey continues with his arrival in Chicago. He dates the narrative at 1947, marking it as a specific era in jazz history, “somewhere between its Charlie Parker Ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis,” and it inspires Sal to think of his friends “from one end of the country to the other…doing something so frantic and rushing about.” Sal doesn’t say what they are frantically doing, and this is the premise of the narrative. Sal is hardly immune from this. After napping in Des Moines, he wakes up, “and that was the one distinct time in [his] life...when [he] didn’t know who [he] was.”

In San Francisco, Sal confronts social expectations. He takes a job as a night watchman at a boarding camp for merchant sailors waiting for their ship. When he finds the work distasteful, he tells his supervisor that he “wasn’t cut out to be a cop.” In response, Sal is reminded that “it’s [his] duty.... [He] can’t compromise with things like this.” Sal’s aversion to commitment and duty ensure that he does not hold this job for long, and he is soon on the road again, where he meets one of his biggest temptations.

Her name is Terry, and he meets her on the bus to LA. She is a Mexican who has run away from her husband. They spend “the next fifteen days…together for better or for worse.” Sal spends the better part of a week with Terry and her family in a migrant worker’s camp. The agrarian lifestyle initially appeals to Sal, and he says that he “thought [he] had found [his] life’s work.” The economic reality sets in and Sal begins to pray “to God for a better break in life and a better chance to do something for the little people [he] loved.”

The next significant character that Sal meets is the “Ghost of the Susquehanna”. His role “is to complete the triad” (Goldstein) of symbolic structure in the narrative.

Sal’s continued journey on the road is entwined with the making of Dean as the epic hero: Dean Moriarty, the “son of a wino”. Dean has spent time in prison, for stealing cars. Sal discusses what effect this experience had on Dean saying, “only a guy who’s spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes.... Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.” Dean’s imprisonment, according to Sal, is when his heroic personality was solidified. Prison had the effect of fueling his obsession with the road. What makes him heroic to Sal is his free nature, and his reluctance to tie his spirit to social demands. This self-centered personality causes Dean to “[antagonize] people away from him by degrees.” The institution of marriage is particularly difficult for Dean, and by the end of the novel he is “three times married, twice divorced, and living with his second wife.” This decline of Dean makes up the second part of the novel, and culminates in the end of Sal’s journeys.

Sal’s travels erode into disappointment. He slowly becomes more dissatisfied with what he finds on the road, and he begins to look back on his previous travels in a more cynical way. His companions begin to be people from lower classes, old Negroes and Mexican whores. Back in Denver, and very alone, he speaks in verse saying, “Down in Denver, down in Denver/All I did was die.” We begin to confront the possibility that this journey and Sal’s hero Dean were both failures.

After reuniting with Dean, Sal begins to sense Dean’s decline and labels him “the HOLY GOOF”, when earlier he was called holy in a reverent tone. Dean’s abilities falter. When confronted with his abandonment of wife and child, he is silent. Sal explains, “where once Dean would have talked his way out, he now fell silent.... He was BEAT.”

Sal’s last attempt at finding an answer to his problems is a trip through the Mexican countryside to Mexico City with Dean and a hanger-on picked up in Denver. The travelers perk up as soon as they hit the Mexican border, and some of the novel's more memorable scenes depict their marijuana-fused introduction to Mexican culture, including a vivid (but expensive) sojurn to a bordello offering mambo music and underage prostitutes. (Indeed, throughout the book, both Sal and Dean betray a robust attraction to extremely young girls.)

Upon arriving in Mexico City, he immediately develops dysentery, and the final betrayal occurs when Dean leaves him behind, feverish and hallucinating. Sal reflects that “when I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.”

The novel ends a year later in New York. Dean comes back to New York to see Sal and arrange for Sal and his girlfriend to migrate to San Francisco with him. The arrangements to move fall through and Dean returns to the West alone.

Sal closes the novel sitting on a pier during sunset, looking west. He reminisces on God, America, crying children, and the idea that "nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old," and ends with “I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

 

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s.

Lecture 4

 

American literature

Literature

1. Дудченко М.М. Література Великобританії і США. Навчальний посібник для студентів вищих навчальних закладів (англійською мовою). – 2-ге вид., доп. – Суми: ВТД «Університетська книга», 2006. – 445 с. – С. 379-432.
2. Зарубежная литература ХХ века: Учебник для вузов/ Под ред. Л.Г. Андреева. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – М.: Высш. шк., 2003. – 559 с. – С. 490-518.
3. Пронин В.А., Толкачев С.П. Современный литературный процесс за рубежом: Учебное пособие М.: Изд-во МГУП, 2000.- 168 с. On line at: www.hi-edu.ru/x-books/xbook026/01/part-006.htm
4. VanSpanckeren Kathryn. Outline of American literature. – Chapters 7-10. - On line at: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/oaltoc.htm
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ American _ literature

 

Main characteristics of American literature.