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Title: Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction by Philip Fisher ISBN: 0-674-00409-4 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 1.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: What a Bad Book
Comment: I wish I had read the on-line reviews of this book before wasting my money on it. It won a big award and had decent blurbs, and when I dipped into it in the bookstore it seemed interesting. Then I took it home and read it, or tried to. The problem with it is that the author doesn't stay with a topic long enough to say anything meaningful about it. What might seem like range is merely superficiality. And the reviewer who noted that the author gets his facts wrong is putting it mildly. This is perhaps the most disappointing academic book I've read in the last ten years.
Rating: 1
Summary: An Impressively Poor Book
Comment: 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.
Rating: 1
Summary: More American flag waving
Comment: _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.
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Title: Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward ISBN: 074325547X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 19 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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