Property and Vision In 19Th-Century America
Quentin Anderson
When an American tries to suggest the character of his country, he is less likely to refer to national traits or past events than to persons who, like Emerson, Thoreau, or Whitman, still define our hopes and exemplify our individualism. All three took title to a wholly self-sufficient comprehension of the world simply on the ground that an individual could do so if he tried. They are still called upon to reinforce our sense of ourselves; a common though tacit claim to their self-sufficiency appears in the habit we have of insisting that we have sprung from our own conception of ourselves. Remembering Fitzgerald's novel, one might call it the Gatsby effect—an inordinate claim on reality which provides its own certification. In Gatsby's case this involved the ability to convert shameful gains into the substance of an all-enclosing imaginative construction, a dream to live in. When Gatsby remarks that Daisy's affection for Tom is "just personal," he is being a thorough Emersonian; his imaginative incorporation of Daisy precludes a significant relation between persons.
The cherished figures of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are not constrained by history; they float free of time and we like to think we can emulate them. There was a period not long after its founding in the 1960's when the New York Review of Books often made a striking discrimination between the books and topics on which Americans and Englishmen were asked to write. The high apocalyptic note was struck by the Americans. It was they who could cast wide the net of judgment and never snag it on anything sticking up from the past; they emerged from the constraints of their histories as from a chrysalis, and spoke as if from the mount. The magazine nevertheless acknowledged the claims of the past; books which traveled the muddy road of history were reviewed, and it was the English who were hired to do this job—it was the English who took in our temporal washing while the Americans kept their eyes fixed on landscapes of unconditioned hope.
