The Iowa Review
Volume 9
Issue 2 Spring
1978
Autobiography and the Making of America
Robert F. Sayre
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Article 2
and the
Autobiography
Robert F. Say re
Making of America
THAT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
is a common form of American
expression
now seems to be well
In the last ten or fifteen years a number of
recognized.
on the subject, more
are in the
books and articles have been published
now have courses in it or in some aspect of
and many universities
works,
are even accused of riding a
it.1 Students and teachers of autobiography
or of turning to this "new" field now that there is
band wagon,
supposedly
left to write about poetry and the novel. But the wonder
is that
nothing
so
to
scholars
have
taken
is not
that
literary
long
acknowledge
something
rich and culturally revealing.
only currently interesting but also historically
Forms of autobiography,
loosely defined, appeared in the earliest explor
the new land.
ation narratives and travellers' tales describing
and promoting
Another
form appeared in the colonial chronicles
and settlers' narratives,
like William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation and John Winthrop's
Journal.
In the 18th century, when Americans
had still not written
any plays or
a number of them wrote distinctive
novels or much poetry of distinction,
diaries and autobiographies:
the diaries of Samuel Sew all and William Byrd,
the Journal of Sarah Kemble Knight,
the Personal Narrative of Jonathan Ed
the Journal of John Woolman,
and Cr?vecoeur's
Letters from an
wards,
American Farmer. From these traditions emerged many of what have since
the classics of American
become
literature?like
Franklin's Memoirs
(as he
called them), Cooper's
A decent appreciation
ing of American
Yet
what
makes
Pioneers, Waiden,
of autobiography
literature in general.
this
approach
now
and The Education ofHenry Adams.
to the understand
is a prerequisite
attractive
and
even
obvious
is that
in
writers
have refitted autobiography
in so
contemporary
of Lillian Hellman
many provocative ways: from the very private memoirs
to the very public and self-publicized
of Norman
adventures
personal
from the elegant soul-searching
to the sweeping
of James Baldwin
Mailer;
of Malcolm
of Vladimir
X; from the witty
apologetics
literary experiments
to the glittering
Nabokov
of
Tom
Wolfe
and
the
showmanship
"personal"
seems to be both one of the oldest forms of
journalists. Autobiography
the last decade
American writing
and also one of the freshest and most lively. Where only a
short while ago it was assumed to be one of the most predictable kinds of
was born ..."
now is
and all that?it
writing?"I
anything but. It has
been re-invented with the authors' re-inventions
of themselves.
In a period
which has produced so much dislocation
of personality?from
the break-up
of old cities and neighborhoods,
from changes in family patterns and sexual
of racial and class boundaries,
and from the
habits, from the explosion
even of
commercialization
and
self-history
personality?our
generation has
1
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had to reformulate
the basic integer of society and history. The search for a
new culture requires the search for a new self.
The trouble with these seemingly
sound and widely
accepted generaliza
one
of
is
them
that
could be made of almost any other
tions, however,
every
are
history. Cultural
period of American
change and personal dislocation
are
one
not exceptions
most
in America;
the
of
the
which
rule,
may be
they
reasons why
in America
is indeed a traditional
important
autobiography
form of expression. Therefore,
for both permanence
accounting
ographical
impulse or necessity;
it takes. And
that finally
state
the
the critic is one of
the problem
confronting
of the autobi
and change: the permanence
the changes and varieties in the expressions
can we do this without making
the critically meaningless
are in some sense autobiographical?
of writing
claim
to
all kinds
another
problem
way,
what
are
common
the
elements
Or
in
some
Can one definition
manifestations?
apply to
a
of
and
wide
of
range
range
literary masterpieces
(paradoxical
in America
vernacular
forms? For autobiography
ly) almost anonymous
means not only the comparatively
referred
famous works
to; it also
just
means
and "autobiogra
Indian captivity narratives
and the "biographies"
so many
thing with
both awide
different
phies" of notable Indian chiefs, the countless success stories of businessmen
the protest stories of ex-slaves
and celebrities,
and oppressed workers,
the
the deceit
of immigrants,
tales of pioneering
and of the "Americanization"
ful apologies of scoundrels and rogues, the utterly artificial "True Confes
of romance and pornography,
the formulae of high
sions" in magazines
school
yearbooks,
Autobiography
common
machine-made
suits,
clothes,
use
albums, curriculum
vitae, and Who's Who.
photograph
a sometimes
is an industry,
sometimes
hand-made,
old
family
cars,
in work
and
and
houses,
for
like
commodity,
mansions
and pick-up
it is a necessity,
entertainment,
whenever
clothes
"grubby"
trucks with
or
almost
we
and
campers.
a
necessity,
we
are
say who
three-piece
And
which
like
we
and where
the history of each one comes out of each one," said
"Slowly
then there will be a history of every one." And
Gertrude
Stein. "Sometime
a democratization
this very universality
and levelling. As Stein
enforces
went on: "Every one is always busy with it, no one of them then ever want
we've
been.
to know
it that every one looks like some one else and
one
dislikes to hear it."2
every
As Americans
quantity
ought to know well, however,
do not necessarily produce quality. Whatever
praises the
no more
to
Americans
been
like
have
sing,
capable
might
raphy than have the writers of other nations. There is no
they see it mostly
and concentration
literary nationalist
of great autobiog
American
egotist
even his great admirer Mark Twain. There is
to come near to Cellini?not
no American
nor any great autobiographer
of the intellect and
Rousseau,
or
no
nor
even the refined if
like
like
Mill
Newman,
self-analyst
Jung,
spirit
of
like
constricted
Puritan
familial
necessarily
autobiographers
oppression
readers would find Thomas
Edmund Gosse and Samuel Butler. And most
2
a gross substitute for Proust. But there may be
good reasons for these
seems to have
in American
deficiencies
An American
self-assessment.
an
needed to be an American
then
and this places
first,
autobiographer,
some limits on his or her achievement.
with
this ex
Being an American,
a
to
write about, is
but it may also exclude
perience
special opportunity,
of autobiographical
other dimensions
writing.
In all these respects, one could compare American
to
autobiography
American
In
domestic
architecture.
both
there
have
architecture,
especially
been masters,
like Franklin and Thoreau,
as well as
Sullivan and Wright,
to more
hundreds more who have conformed
conventional
styles, and
Wolfe
thousands working
from the equivalent
of mail-order
catalogues,
design
books, custom, and habit. They have built the lives and the homes in which
the masses of Americans
have Hved: self-images which are, in fact, shelters,
or uncomfortable,
be they comfortable
suitable or pretentious.
And what a
on self-histories:
of
work
Stein's
said
"his"
affirms
remark
"these
developer
even
Yet
look
different."
their
houses are all alike?they
likeness
be
only
iswhy the study of
trays the tastes and aspirations of the inhabitants, which
cannot
in
of
like
the
domestic
architecture,
America,
study
autobiography
It contains both classics and commer
be confined to the work of masters.
cials, works of high and popular culture.
Another
similarity to architecture, which
World Elsewhere, stems from that American
as
self-expression
a house.
The
Poirier
Richard
tendency
"American
in A
discussed
to think of style and
it novel,
book"?be
or
poem,
an ideal house (like Thoreau's),
a house of fiction
autobiography?builds
on
an
which
the
is
(like James's)
shabby, imitative, or mun
improvement
we
are
born and raised. The autobiography
dane houses in which
is, or can
be,
that
second
tive
power.
We
house
into
make
it ourselves,
we
which
are
then
re-born,
re-make
carried
by
our
own
crea
it new.
it; make
from the memo
Perhaps the urgency of this building comes, ultimately,
in this new
have that as immigrants
ry Americans
they were once homeless
on
that they had to crawl into cellars
the sides of hills, into sod
world,
houses
tually
and
own
or
log cabins,
a house
meant
into
tenements
success,
arrival
vacated
(or
by
a second
someone
arrival)
else.
into
even
To
the
new
civilization.
This is why
the house (not clothes) is the major metaphor
in
In a larger sense, civilization
American
itself has been the
self-expression.
national expression:
the cutting of forests, building of railroads and high
of mines,
of
and the coeval building
ways,
raising of factories,
digging
the homesteading,
thousands of authorities and institutions,
the domesticat
is that it has
ing of the continent. And the special virtue of autobiography
so many builders have compiled
been a form in which
records of their
It describes their hundreds of careers and achievements
work.
and also their
their
which
the na
character,
achievement,
composes
unifying
collectively
tional character. Their need to write and record has been as urgent, in some
cases, as their need to build.
3
American
is like and unlike other autobiog
autobiography
are
as
and not different. America
Americans
different
has
raphies simply
are
its courrier du bois. Most Americans
had its backwoodsman,
Canada
are
so
South
Africans
and
Australians.
many
Germany,
immigrants;
Eng
Therefore,
land, and other nations
tunes,
labor
leaders,
have
reformers,
also had inventors,
and
founders
so on. Moreover,
of industrial
autobiography
for
is cer
to these similarities
the only kind of testimony
and differences.
too. But au
film
and
such
differences
novels, poetry,
express
Biographies,
can
more
a
individual.
It is
should
like
be, perhaps
be,
house,
tobiography,
to
to
to
meant
America
tell
has
the person's opportunity
him,
say what
I Lived For." And what Thoreau
"Where I Lived and What
clearly implied
in his simple-seeming
is basic: the "where"
chapter title is that a connection
tainly not
and place is closely linked to the "what for" of values and ideas.
au
the least physically
settled of all American
Scott Fitzgerald?maybe
of house
thors,
a
renter
statement when
and
hotel-dweller
he wrote
a more
extraordinary?made
in the 1930s that America
was
essentially
emphatic
an idea.
a land, England was a people, but America,
having about it
was
to
was
utter?it
still that quality of the idea,
the graves at
harder
faces of its great men,
and the
Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous
for a phrase that was empty before
country boys dying in the Argonne
their bodies withered.
Itwas a willingness
of the heart.3
France was
We
not
of the heart" is the idea, but we can
"willingness
From the times of Columbus,
broader perception.
the ideas of America have gone up like lights along
in notebook
and magnified
and journal, then illus
life and built into civilization.
agree that
certainly agree with the
and John Smith,
Cortez,
the shore, to be reported
may
trated in human
au
I would
which
like to study is the connection
between
to
see
some
I
of
would
like
what
America.
and
of
these
ideas
tobiography
the lives which Americans
the ideas have been, how they have organized
to have built
For Americans
have lived and the stories they have written.
two or three
in a mere
of Civilization
this "House"
and Autobiography
hundred years is an impressive
feat. We may be critical of it, but we still
The matter
at the extent of the work and the unity of purpose,
in spite
have to wonder
went
constant
of
into it. A study of
conflict and disagreement,
which finally
some of the major autobiographies
the unifying
may help us to see what
purposes and methods were.
of America
and ideas at about the
That Fitzgerald made his association
time when he was writing
his "Crack-Up"
essays and his last autobio
In the 1920s, he
examining.
graphical novel seems like a coincidence worth
own actions
and
his
had also been autobiographical,
his
fitting
yearnings
into thinly disguised stories which made him a hero of his generation. As he
4
said later, in "Echoes of the Jazz Age,"
1931, the 1920s "bore him up, flat
tered him and gave him more money
than he had dreamed of, simply for
telling people that he felt as they did. ..." But having been a hero and then
having been ditched, he began to think harder about the relation of a hero to
America.
The same nation that had lifted him up, making
him rich and
and great debts.
famous, had put him down,
leaving him small markets
of the 1930s beat out
Worse yet, he was a scapegoat on whom Americans
their shame for their own earlier extravagance
and irresponsibility.
Adula
tion had turned to scorn, from many of the same people. So it was not the
"A
"land" or the "people" who had changed; it was the idea of America.
"
to
seems
of
chosen
transcend
of
heart
these
shifts
and
political
willingness
It could apply equally well to a Twenties millionaire
economic weather.
like
Stahr. But primar
Gatsby and a Thirties Hollywood
producer like Monroe
If he could satisfy himself
like
that a president
ily it applied to Fitzgerald.
Lincoln and the soldiers of Shiloh and the Argonne
had it too, that seem
ingly objectified his heroic idea.
he was
In a general way, however,
guiltily confessed in the "Crack-Up"
to which he had
still doing something
essays. There, in the midst of describ
and his overdrawn
resources, he
ing his loss of vitality, his discouragement,
for
he
that
had
had no con
his
years
twenty
discovery
reported
alarming
science of his own. He had been living by or living off the virtues of other
to list five of them. In intellectual matters his con
men, and he proceeded
For his ideas of "the good Ufe," he borrowed
science was Edmund Wilson.
from another friend. In literary style, he did not imitate the friend (obvi
"because my own style. . .was formed before he pub
ously Hemingway),
Iwas on a
lished anything, but there was an awful pull toward him when
fourth man was his silent adviser in "my relations with other
which
seemed better than using Emily Post's "systematized
vul
people,"
was
but
His
still
borro
the
had
conscience,"
fifth,
garity,"
wing.
"political
it revived, he took it from a lively
been almost dead for ten years, but when
younger man. Then, with the list made, he realized that "there was not an
a basis on which
T any more?not
I could organize my self-respect." He
was without
a "self. . . like a little boy left alone in a big house."4
To most readers this has seemed like a shocking exposure of the barren
spot." A
ness
areas did
In none of these most
values.
important
or
a
secure
of
the
cultural
tradition.
have
Reli
parents
example
Fitzgerald
was
no
were
The
instruction
he
in
books
and
had
received
gion
help.
college
no help. His "self was just a boyish
selection of the attributes of five
looked superior in one thing.
friends, each of whom
From Fitzgerald's
it is easy to see that the "individuality"
that
example
of American
lies behind autobiography
and which Americans
supposedly
patriotically
as the publicists pro
endorse may be a sham. Is it a nation of individuals,
to imitate and be some
each scrambling
claim, or a nation of conformists,
are less opposites
But
in
else?
and
America
body
individuality
conformity
5
in Democracy
in America,
observed
than complements.
the
As Tocqueville
same revolutions
"to seek the
that set men free to make up their own minds,
reason of things for oneself, and in oneself alone," also set free the
energies
of public opinion, which "does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it im
poses
them
and makes
them
the
permeate
of
thinking
everyone
. . . ."5But
as it is, Tocqueville's
the subtler ways in
analysis failed to perceive
which
this dialectic of individuality
and conformity
has worked
in America.
see
not
an
somehow
could
of
Tocqueville
beyond
image
solitary, be
or
individualists
the
American
Voltaire,
leaguered
(like Descartes,
village
mob.
is not
confession
atheist) surrounded by a disapproving
Fitzgerald's
that he took his conscience
from public opinion but from five compara
and accomplished
friends. His selection of these five,
tively distinguished
out of all the possibilities,
was the act of an individual, of someone
indepen
dent from both the mob and the pressures of tradition and
authority. At the
same time, it is a sign of what makes
so
like all the
Fitzgerald
charmingly
rest of us. He is like the undergraduate
to be as bright as A, as
who wants
like C, as good looking as D, and so
good in sports as B, a class president
on. Or he is the adult who wants X's
interesting job, Y's fine house, and the
respect of Z. The bad word for this, of course, is envy, and we
community
should not deny its bad effects. But the good word for it is emulation,
the
ambition to improve one's self by equalling or surpassing an esteemed rival.
as he
the original authority on the "instinct of emulation,"
Significantly,
to whom
it was an instinct second only to self
called it, was John Adams,
as a force in human life, and he studied carefully its
preservation
application
valuable
to
politics
and
education
his
Unfortunately,
essays
and
on
to
their
it were
role
written
in American
as
a
part
of
government.
an
extensive
done as translations and commentaries
critique of the French Revolution,
on an Italian historian, Enrico Caterino Davila, who had written on the 16th
in France. The later essays were
also interpreted by
century civil wars
Adams'
enemies
as
advocating
monarchy,
so he
quit
the
project.
The
com
of this almost unbelievable
bination
of intentions
muddle
and allegedly
treasonous position has kept the essays, called Discourses on Davila,
from
ever being known
to more
than a few dedicated
scientists
and
political
on a difficult
Adams
admirers. But they are brilliant speculations
subject
to discuss frankly.
which
is also embarrassing
convic
is Adams'
is relevant in them to American
What
autobiography
of inherited titles and aristocratic
tion that the revolutionary
abandonment
more
for the ((distinction"
the
rank makes
all
everyone
compete
fiercely
can only be received from other people?"to
be observed,
consid
which
For
admired
his
fellows."
these
and
ered, esteemed,
by
praised, beloved,
takes.
kinds of attention are many,
and so are the forms which emulation
it isAmbition. When
it aims at power, as ameans of distinction,
is now in
that another, who
it is in a situation to [be apprehensive]
When
6
it is in a
ferior, will become superior, it is denominated Jealousy. When
at the superiority of another, and desires to bring
state of mortification,
him down to our level, or to depress him below us, it is properly called
it deceives aman into a belief of false professions
of esteem
Envy. When
or admiration, or into a false opinion of his importance
in the judgment
of the world,
it is Vanity.6
to others, and even
from their benevolence
Only a few men seek distinction
to vice and riches, which
in them this urge is weaker
than the temptations
are the much easier ways of winning
attention. Yet worse
than poverty and
man suffers
as painful "as the gout or stone" is neglect
The
poor
234).
(p.
most because "he is only not seen" (p. 239).
Thus a man seeks to make himself known not only from a desire for
is not so
praise but from a fear of being despised and obscure. Where Adams
on
or
so
imitation
difference
and
emula
is
the
between
clear,
passionate,
is in the sentence beginning,
he makes
tion. The clearest differentiation
is imitation and something more?a
desire not only to
"Emulation, which
.
seems
to
or
to
He
."
but
excel.
resemble,
place them on a
equal
(p. 267).
in which
imitation is doing as well as someone else, emulation
continuum,
or
not try to excel by being altogether different,
One
better.
does
doing
someone
course
to
course.
a
The
is
fame
different
by following
choosing
more.
and accomplishing
Indeed, this is implicit in
already accomplished,
his
selection
"fame,"
of
"ambition,"
"emulation"
"vanity,"
as his name
"pride,"
or
for
this great
one
of
the
other
not
instinct?
terms
in
the
the de
usual moral vocabulary. Any of those terms would have prejudged
sire as impure. "Emulation"
is entirely neutral; its moral value is not in itself
but in how it is used, or who is imitated and excelled. For the vice-president
in 1790, the way to "distinction" was in im
of the United
States, writing
itating
other
worthy
men
and
trying
to excel
them!
The emulation
that Adams personally practiced, however, was primarily
He and his friend and rival Jefferson,
of classical or European models.
whose
ideas about an "aristocracy of merit" were basically similar, formed
from the
their rhetoric, their gravitas in public duty, their "architecture,"
on the ancients. So,
most advanced improvements
neither of
significantly,
sense. Adams' Puritan inheri
in the modern
them were autobiographers
tance made him exquisitely
in his diaries and re
self-critical and meticulous
sense of history made him
cords of private and public affairs. Jefferson's
a final record of his work. But they had not im
in compiling
scrupulous
of the men around them, certainly not in the almost
itated the manners
of Fitzgerald,
chameleon manner
and therefore could not have the same
sense of being like their contemporaries.
Their lives could only be impor
tant for their actions; they had not lived in order to resemble or feel like
other men. Neither
did they expect others to imitate them. Close imitation
of one's own life might be expected only of sons. But even sons would,
like
7
other
educated
men,
also model
and generals.
magistrates
Plutarch
their
lives
had
served
on
the classical orators
serve
them; he would
and
later
too.
generations
one
When
emulates
one's
the
contemporaries,
becomes
self
much
differ
ent. Our
as in Poe's
first response is to imagine that it vanishes altogether,
short story, "The Man of the Crowd."
The narrator ofthat
story is so in
on
an
man
seen
old
the
streets
he
London
has
he
that
follows him
trigued by
all night long. Eventually,
he becomes
obsessed by the man's aimlessness
and pictures him as an image of modern
"the genius of great
vacuity,
the man who "refuses to be alone." One possible meaning
of the
in
is
the
that
the
man's
narrator,
shadow, has
story
everpresent
becoming
on
become
he
criminal.
All
the
abuse
this
chosen
double
equally
heaps
to
come
similar
and
in
of
the
19th
himself,
many
up
applies
century
parables
crime,"
like the model
in vice
involving a doppelganger. The imitator becomes
as in virtue. The model knows no more
than the imitator. Or the
. . .
model had modeled
the original
himself on yet another person
possibly
imitator. On the other hand, the narrator in such stories, by being the pur
suer and speaker, is still different. The self may be an
enigma, as hard to
or
as
one
to
fathom
tries
any other self
being whom
study, but the power to
describe
that enigma clarifies and distinguishes.
unlike Poe's
Futhermore,
obsessed narrator, one does not have to fasten like a shadow or leech on one
stories
as well
other
individual
alone. One can, like Fitzgerald,
choose
at
we
five
least
others!
whether
discriminatingly
Finally,
like it or not, the dynamics
on
of modern
enforce
these
imitations
society
us. If we are to be different from our fathers and also different from the
or the grizzly patriarchs
white marble
gods they found in Plutarch,
they
chose from the Bible, then we must imitate contemporaries.
We don't want
to
live
If we
in our
(or non-individual)
and still choose
fathers'
houses,
even
in a restored
Mt.
Vernon
or Monticello.
the most modern
and
replicas of them, we want
plumbing
we
as
a
it
matter
So
take
of
faith
that
every
air-conditioning.
generation
must have its innovators, growing
from native roots or coming from exotic
and restorers?all
of
foreign shores, and also its critics, revisers, publicists,
whom
choose
affect
us.
To
have
a conscience
which
is not
one's
own
seems
an
or sim
abominable way to live. But then, when one makes
that discovery
one
more
must
can
tear
to
the
it
and
hell.
And
it,
go against
up
go
ply
easily
start
all over.
as the emulative
self is as a person, being both individualistic
Enigmatic
inclined now to admiration of one person and then of some
and imitative,
one quite different,
that self may be even more complex in its behavior as an
Iwant to look at some examples. But first let me re
Later
autobiographer.
so far. American
I have
view some of the observations
autobiographers,
to the ways
are mainly
in which
different from others according
noted,
are like American
America
has been different. Their works
houses, with
many
8
imported
styles?The
English
Puritan,
the Palladian
Historical,
the
mix
to suggest a few?and
these
autobiographers
Journalistic,
new
The
write
about
also
forms
and
with
House,
They
experiences.
styles
which has been erected so rapidly over the building
American Civilization,
3000 by 1500 miles. Just as important, autobiography
site of approximately
the House
and has helped create the na
in building
has been an instrument
the methods
and purposes of the builders. Au
tional character by defining
Mercantile
has been a way for the builder to pass his work and his lessons
tobiography
as Franklin said. Autobiography,
to "my posterity,"
to later generations,
certain
it has also encouraged
in
but
America,
therefore, has been essential
The
has
its
limits.
at the expense of others.
House
kinds of expression
Franklin's large role in these developments
should by now be fairly clear.
to the
The version of his life which he called his Memoirs was as necessary
as his other domestic
of America
like the lightning
making
improvements
rod and the "Pennsylvanian
Fire-Place." And just as he never patented those
inventions but allowed anyone to imitate them (the directions printed and
to anyone's
postal service), he had no objections
He
life.
it.
his
wanted
and
Unlike
worthy
imitating
Jefferson,
expected
and most of the other leaders of the Revolution,
he
Adams,
Washington,
not in public affairs,
had not emulated great classical or European models,
his models had
literature, or architecture. As he tells us in the Autobiography,
a
been plain writers
like Defoe
and Bunyan,
little
Addisonian
improved by
as
In
he
And in
domestic
his
utilitarian.
very
grace.
arrangements
began
men
he
of
and
service
he
virtues
esteemed
whom
rank
simply those
public
var
Cotton
like
Bradford
the
had observed,
successful printer, and
Mather,
ious colonial leaders. Franklin is so sterotyped as "self-made"
that this point
sent out over his efficient
is Franklin's selec
needs emphasis. One of the themes of the Autobiography
as Fitzgerald might have called them, the ideas he
tion of his "consciences,"
men in different fields
would
live by and also some few of the distinguished
as a young man, he sometimes hoped
whom he imitated and from whom,
to gain favor. The balancing
theme is the bad behavior of some lazy men
and braggarts who are not to be imitated and several of whom go "down to
out of the way in the West
Indies. In between
is the support
Barbadoes,"
Franklin exchanged with other plain young tradesmen,
like the members
of
his Junto. As unknown
business to
they recommended
leather-apron men,
one another and, thanks to the "Standing Queries"
that Franklin drew up
at each meeting,
for discussion
kept each other abreast of new ideas, new
and new community
business opportunities,
projects. The pattern for suc
cess used by Franklin
also to tradewith
and his friends was not virtue and industry alone; it
each other in ideas as well as business and to gather
could be valuably prom
and everything which
around them everybody
oted. The Junto seems to have been cart junta, a group of intriguers, but
a combination
of business service club and intellectual society. Ap
mostly
of both kinds are historically
descended from it.
propriately,
organizations
was
9
A major intention
it for imitation
of the Autobiography
is to reveal this pattern and pro
in America.
elsewhere
In 1771, when Franklin started
it, he might have told many other stories, such as the story of his scientific
fame. But as James M. Cox
experiments which had won him international
has recently pointed out, the timing was significant.
InMay,
1771, he had
written
the Massachusetts
Committee
of Correspondence
(Thomas Cush
and
Samuel
the American
Otis,
ing, James
Adams)
virtually
predicting
rebellion and its outcome.7
It is natural to believe
that in August,
1771,
when he began writing
the Autobiography,
these and many other differences
between England
and America were
still in his mind. Though
he liked
was
an
and
the
of
that man,
England
enjoying
hospitality
English bishop,
Jonathan Shipley, "almost alone among the bishops upheld the rights of the
American
colonists
and of the British dissenters."8
Franklin's
tradesman's
it
in England, was more common
had counterparts
in Amer
story, though
ica. To Americans
itwas, or would become,
aversion of national epic?and
one that they must seek to repeat without
shame. Up until he wrote
(as, in
deed, for long after), most successful tradesmen were still ashamed to admit
mote
humble
and aped the upper classes. John Adams,
for example,
origins
man
the
that
"from
to
obscure
had
bear
"a load of
thought
beginnings"
sordid obloquy
and envy"(Discourses,
p. 237). But Franklin could speak
plainly about his success and seek imitators. His audience was not to be his
to come. Thus his address
but the generations
of Americans
contemporaries
of the opening
one, who was
apprentices
and
to his "Dear Son"?not
the actual
part of the Autobiography
over forty years old and governor
of New Jersey?but
the
tradesmen,
the
legions
of
American
"sons"
who
might
some day read him when
they were just starting their businesses. When he
returned to the Autobiography
in 1784, after the Revolution,
he included the
letters from the two friends, one English
and the other American,
who
to
an
continue.
life
to
him
His
would
be
explicitly urged
youth,
example
a book "worth all Plutarch's Lives put
and an advertisement
for America,
together."
as biography
The limits of Franklin's Autobiography
nearly all stem from
the shaping of the hero to this didactic national purpose. Because
the por
trait of the young Franklin is so convincing
and because the man writing
takes such fulsome pleasure in him, despite his "errata," it is hard to believe
that the young Franklin was not pretty much as described?a
precociously
lad who for a time wasted himself in satire, disputatious
bright, ambitious
ness and occasional
then knuckled down to work hard (and be
rowdiness,
to work hard), to thrive, and to
known
help others (except, of course, his
But those who know
the rest of his writing
still know
the
competitors).
distortion.
The young man
in the Autobiography
a boy's
is, patently,
Franklin (full of malice towards little boys, Mark Twain pointedly
said); the
boy's way with his girls and the man's way with
men barely get mentioned.
His love of learning,
10
and other
girls, women,
travel, and leisure enters
as the reward of early industry. His cultivated
18th century play
mostly
are enough present, however,
to make
fulness and his cunning opportunism
or
us wonder whether
he is sometimes
himself,
satirizing
letting readers
the limits of his own self-portrait.
know that he regrets the omissions,
For
as an American,
his limits were the utilitarian, mercantile
culture he
to symbolize. Once
it had its fire companies
and insurance plans,
clean streets and street lamps, schools, hospitals,
and all
libraries, militia,
the rest of Ben Franklin's improvements,
the hero might
relax a little?stop
Crusoe
like a Robinson
tirelessly
behaving
things in from the
lugging
to
wrecked
improve every part of his island. But
ship (England) in order
this different hero would have to await the civilization of the land.
In contrast to Franklin in 1771 and after, Walt Whitman
in 1855 was a
writing
wished
career
His
nobody.
as a schoolteacher,
newspaperman,
hack
writer
and
car
to have been modest
to a fault; itwas in no way distinguished.
penter
an
In fact, Whitman might make
interesting study in the misery of the un
known, uncelebrated,
ignored man John Adams described. To my know
but the work carried such
ledge, he never spoke of himself as a "nobody,"
seems
in 19th century America
that I think it fits.* Moreover,
his sadly
lecture notes from the 1850s suggest how desperate he was from
to be known.
emotion
maniacal
wanting
The
idea of live addresses
to the people,
adm. 10#., North and
the different
State
Washington,?at
(Mo.)?Richmond
Capitols?Jefferson
(Va.)?Albany?Washington
the grand ideas of American
ensemble
&c?promulging
liberty, con
&c
&c.
centrativeness,
individuality,
sprirituality
with respect to the effects and fascinations
Keep steadily understood,
. . . that
of Elocution
although the Lectures may be printed and sold at
the end of every performance,
nothing can make up for that irresistible
attraction and robust living treat of the vocalization
of the lecture, by me,
must defy all competition
?which
with
the printed and read repeti
tion of the Lectures.9
South,
East
directly
and West?at
are so obvious here were equally
Perhaps the delusions of grandeur which
obvious to the first readers of Leaves ofGrass?one
of the reasons they found
or just ridiculous. Whitman's
it so embarrassing
and offensive,
brag was
like that of a stump orator who had no reputation, no qualifications,
and no
shame.
to writ
reputation has not always been the easy inducement
nor
a
it
it
that
is now,
lack of
ing autobiography
great barrier. Puritan and
Yet previous
*
Consider
the title of the autobiographical fragment by Louisa Catherine Adams
and Emily Dickin
(JQA's wife) begun in 1840, "The Adventures of a Nobody,"
son's
works
poem,
by
"I'm
sensitive,
Nobody,
unrecognized
Who
Are
You?"
Consider,
too,
that
these
are
both
women.
11
Quaker conversion narratives were written by earlier nobodies who felt that
God's grace was more than sufficient subject, and Whitman
has a few strik
to these writers. As the "sinner" was once out of the
ing resemblances
sight
so the "nobody" was/is out of the sight of friends, admirers,
of God,
the
of this is that in Whitman,
the corollary
praise of other people. And
America
and nature and the emulation of other men replace God as the im
issues for writing.
As Daniel
Shea has
agents and compelling
pelling
are
there
connections
between
the
of John
noticed,10
intriguing
beginning
Woolman's
Journal?
felt a motion
I have often
of love to leave some hints in writing
of
and now, in the thirty-sixth
of God,
experience of the goodness
I
of
work
this
year
my age,
begin
my
?and
divine
to "Song
the Unes Whitman
added
"motion
and "goodness
and energy
of love"
of Myself,"
which
stressed not a
of God" but his American
origins
and hope.
tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
My
the same, and their
Born here of parents born here from parents
the
parents
I, now
same,
years old in perfect
thirty-seven
to cease not till death.
Hoping
In a word,
health
begin,
had not experienced
the "goodness
of God" but the
was
so
It
what
had
formed
when he began
that
him,
goodness
to celebrate his "self," he celebrated it. But as well as being his place of birth
and nurture, America was an idea and ideal which he strove to embody.
as a land expressed his spiritual and physical muscle.
America
Itwas new,
Whitman
of America.
unknown,
wild,
and
He
untamed.
was
youthful,
also
unknown,
rowdy,
and "barbaric." And since these traits were mostly
identified with theWest
and the frontier, he identified himself with the West,
too, even though Uv
ing
in
would
represent
treated all men
own diversity,"
uttered
America,
Manhattan.
these
as
America
ideas of life, Uberty,
volutionary
zen,
and
Brooklyn
and the pursuit
values
in "a
a nation
stood
of happiness.
separate
simple
for
He,
the
one
person,"
re
as a citi
who
and women
equally, who resisted "anything better than my
to freedom,"
who had this "deathless attachment
and yet
"the word
the
word
The
En-Masse."
of
democratic,
paradoxes
as
out-of-many-one,
as well.
as
new-and-yet-ancient,
were
to be
his
per
sonal paradoxes
share in all the success and suffering of
a
or rather emulate her
as
imitate America,
the nation
whole. He would
man
the ideal-common
other
best, and become
(also a paradox) whom
Americans
could
imitate,
He would
remember,
and
one
day
celebrate.
are familiar enough not to need elab
in these identifications
set out on his ambitious program of writing
oration here. When Whitman
of America
the autobiography
the eponymous
and becoming
voice of the
The
12
ironies
people, he initially shrieked in registers he could not sustain. By
the late 1850s he was a victim to shames and self-doubts he had not antici
American
pated.
that I have dared to open my mouth,
Oppress'd with myself
Aware now that amid all that blab whose
echoes recoil upon me
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd,
untold,
altogether
unreach'd.
I
. . .
further irony is that even as he wrote out of this anguish, in poems Uke
even left
"As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," he never told his readers?or
evidence to his biographers?about
the precise causes of it.Was it the death
of some lover? If so, was the lover male or female? Was he batt?ng over his
some more general crisis of middle age?
Was he undergoing
homosexuahty?
The
to be "undisguised
all his earher imperatives
and naked," he here
Despite
became pecuUarly guarded and secretive. Later, he was almost equally indi
rect and evasive in talking about the origins of Leaves ofGrass and the "long
to itwhich Emerson had wondered
about. In his more factual
foreground"
the man, and
Specimen Days, which did celebrate Whitman
autobiography,
care
not just an idea, he continued
all
his
for
America
and his
expressing
as
into
withdrew
but
his
"the
poems
simultaneously
public persona
good
gray poet." That title, given to him by his pub?c relations man WilUam
O'Connor,
was
notes
digging
himself?some
in which he could stroll about,
like a big heavy overcoat
out of the pockets
various
and expressing
of
aspects
some utterly trivial?but
in which he could also
important,
wrap himself in continued mystery.
When we talk of the Whitman
tradition
in American
poetry, we are still
a
with
Does
he
for
Western
this
stand
like
mystery.
wrestling
populism
an affirmative
embrace of native themes like Hart
Sandburg and Lindsay,
Crane, an identification with common objects and experience Uke WilUams,
or the post-Christian
asked, "Walt Whit
poetics of Stevens? As Ginsberg
man, which way does your beard point tonight?" Still, all these poets (and
of self with an idea. They differ,
others) have attempted his identification
or
in what they construe the idea
ideas to be. American
poetry is
mainly,
in a person, and the
because the ideas need embodiment
autobiographical
or John Brown but the
most available person is not Columbus
or Hiawatha
poet, standing for all heroes.11
Yet wide as the range is between FrankUn the successful tradesman and
Whitman
the anonymous/eponymous
poet, the two of them by no means
or all the varieties of American
of
all
American
encompass
autobiography
heroics. Although
there
autobiographical
they have had many followers,
are still several other individuals and types who must be considered. How
has the idea of America
served and been served by the autobiographers
who
success and have not been able to praise its
have not been a part of American
13
if at all, have they seen their
life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? Where,
Franklin's
and therefore
lives as representative
(in
phrase) "fit to be im
like Henry Adams, Henry
disaffected men
itated"? What of upper-class,
on the one hand, and of black and radical au
James, and Robert Lowell,
Frederick
and Malcom
like
X, on the other?
Douglass
tobiographers
we
can
was
aware of his difference
see,
Adams,
clearly
Henry
thoroughly
and Whitmanian
traditions. As grandson of presi
these Franklinian
on
a
to
the
White
House. As heir to family
he
have
seemed
dents,
legacy
and power, he could hardly present himself as a common man or a
wealth
success by his own efforts. He was, as he says, born in the shadow of the
from
and "on the summit of Beacon Hill"
Boston
State House
(or near it). From
moment
of
the
this
and privileged
that
on, however,
meaning
distinguished
a
in
To
Education.
be a Boston,
issue
his
inheritance becomes
continuing
a
to
he
is
circumcised
Unitarian
Adams,
suggests,
being
comparable
the identity of both fixed by ancient tradition and both
Jerusalem "Cohen,"
in the races of the coming century." Such a
therefore "heavily handicapped
in every sense of the word,
is more
than a nasty
outlandish
comparison,
anti-semitism.
The stereotypical
of Adams's
Jew, while being
expression
the racial opposite of the Boston gentile, is also a product of ancient patriar
on which
the Puritan patriarchy
it
strongly modeled
chy, indeed, the one
the
and ancestral "races" of the 20th century,
self. And in the economic
"Adamses"
of old New England heritage and the "Cohens" of Poland and
Russia would
eventually find themselves
running together. To do so, both
of long-accustomed
would have to unburden
themselves
tradition. Which
new
more
to
of
the
would
conditions
America
be one
would
readily
adapt
of the questions
"education"
of
of the Darwinian
the
battle
for survival,
the "free fight,"
the
century.
and contrasts to Jewish immigrants
remind us of
Adams'
comparisons
to
the
and
the immense
America
1890s
early 1900s,
during
immigration
of his caste. Could
which
these
alarmed so many of the "old" Americans
or
would
learn
American
"hordes" be assimilated
and would
ways,
they
the country? One answer was in Jacob Riis's The Making
they "overwhelm"
one of the most popular autobiographies
of the
of an American, which was
wrote
The
in
but
Education.
which
Adams
his
scrappy
good-natured
period
im
immigrant Riis, who had personally worked with New York
in
reform
and
Adams
had
and
had
succeeded
(where
journaUsm
migrants
could absorb
failed) was a reassuring illustration of how America
previously
next
and
all
its immigrant flood if each generation
the
helped
together im
in
which
cities
Uved.
Further
the
and
testimony
they
neighborhoods
proved
came from other autobiog
to immigrant drive and successful assimilation
Danish
Jane Addams's
raphies of the period like Edward Bok's and S.S. McClure's.
at
at
the
from
the other
Hull-House
looked
Years
(1910)
Twenty
problem
an
of
of
old
how
estabhshed
but
she
showed
that
the
side,
family,
daughter
14
such a woman
could find herself by working
and how
with
immigrants
could increase its richness from their diversity.
as we know, "stood alone." He pictured himself as having noth
Adams,
to
do
with
the ideas of America
represented
by these immigrants,
ing
in working
whether
with
them and learning from them or, God forbid,
having them emulate him. And yet one of his professed purposes in the Edu
America
cation was
or elsewhere,
to be men of the
in universities
"to fit young men,
if it does not have some
An "education"
is hardly worth describing
instructive value, and in away The Education is an even more didactic book
The
than Franklin's. But it teaches a good deal of the time by negatives.
at
the
in
his
in
directed
father's
the
traveller
"Adams,"
boy
irony
study,
world."
the ineffectual writer of history
Europe and "private secretary" in London,
is
and "pilgrim of world's
intended to warn younger
fairs,"
supposedly
men of the errors of this simple and trusting acceptance of tradition, this
or this high-minded
the
dilettantism,
pursuit of reason and order. Adams
author shows the "faults of the patchwork" worn by Adams
the character.
(one of the "sons" of Franklin) would get a sensible educa
tion in mathematics
and foreign languages from a pub?c school, would not
a scientist or engineer,
live in Europe,
would
and would
be
become
in
his
the
rather
than
idealistic
life.
Learn
from
and
expedient
private
pub?c
the Virgin
is dead. As every reasonably percep
efficiency of the Dynamo;
are also
tive reader knows,
these implied
recommendations
however,
or
are
tones
in
of
such
mixed
asserted
affirmation
and
negatives,
despair that
A true American
the
reader
at
must
once
examine
more
closely.
Does
Adams
really
mean
world
and the modern
and
really so dull, pragmatic
I
amoral? Is this the world
that I, the reader, want to live in? If it is the world
live in, is not Adams' own world of elegant insinuations,
of great historical
and vital curiosity still a better one?
vision, and of broad knowledge
this? Are America
The
result,
paradoxically,
is that Adams
draws
us
into
at least
a part
of
the
world from which wealth
and caste and tradition initially excluded us. On
cruder levels, we envy him. He gives us enough of a picture of the bygone
world
of his grand
pleasures and securities of that "eighteenth-century"
father
that we
want
to know
more
about
it. We,
or
the modern
scholars
and
act for us, rush to annotate him and assemble
editors who
information
about his famous friends and acquaintances,
his house designed by H.H.
his clever wife, his travels, the books he read, and so on. Or, if
Richardson,
seems futile, we may reahze that Adams
this bores us and eventually
is bet
ter emulated
than envied. He is a standard of excellence. His critique of
modern
society is one that we learn from. Even as he talks of disintegration,
he possesses
spiritual and intellectual
integrity. And by having demolished
so much of the provincial America
of his own inheritance and the b?nd,
in which he lived, he has helped to make
grasping, materiaUstic America
the
visions which he told us were impossible.
broad, synthesizing
attempt
he does not make us "men of the world,"
he does make us wish to be.
us
If
15
Americans
like Henry
and
James, Edith Wharton,
privileged
as Adams did.
Lowell did not write such ambitious autobiographies
Nevertheless,
they were like him in also rejecting the confined though com
fortable societies in which
they grew up. As authors they almost had to, and
we should remember all the uncles and cousins they describe who went on
living in their tight New York or Boston upper class, collecting rents, man
Other
Robert
are, as a group, people who
aging trusts, and whatnot.
Autobiographers
have been different from the family, friends, and the people around them.
one of the basic pieties of close-knit
also offend or risk offending
They
so essential to keeping
which
is deemed
the
society?privacy,
bourgeois
secrets of family business and hiding scandal. But what partially sustained
in the rebelUons against these customs?and
what
they im
a
an
to
sense
in
their
readers'
that
American
plicitly appealed
psyches?was
that it ought to be adventurous,
life should not be confining,
open, and free.
The higher idea of America
thus helped to liberate them from the actual
in which
America
they were raised. Henry James quoted with approval his
that the children would
father's letter to Emerson
be taken to
explaining
a
sensuous
French
and
"to
German
and
such
absorb
education
get
Europe,
these writers
here." The father had written,
"get a better sensuous edu
are Ukely to get here," but James wanted
to make the point
And even though James hardly proposed his own unusual
he did often think of it as having made Europe and this
as they can't get
cation than they
more emphatic.
life as a model,
liberation more available to other Americans.
European
on
The theme of upper-class
flight to Europe is a sort of refined variation
of flight from slavery,
theme in Black autobiography
the ever-recurring
abroad.
and flight, also, from America
flight from the South to the North,
Both
testify, even if largely unaware of each other, to that fundamental,
in America
the idea of freedom
and
contradiction
between
continuing
mean
human fulfillment
and the reaUties of oppression,
and
conformity,
narrowness
of
spirit.
They
are
the
countermeasures
to
the
success
stories
and the assimilated
Indeed,
immigrants'
proud tales of "Americanization."
of these dominant
the smugness and boastful patriotism
types is part of the
encountered
affirms
by the others. National
complacency
oppression
as
of the oppressed
the condition
all the harder to
America
it is, making
change.
one constantly finds refutations, point
in Black autobiography
Therefore,
after point, of the white
ideas of America, white
concepts of white charac
words
about slave sing
ter, white
concepts of black. Frederick Douglass's
a
are
ing
good example:
to
since I came to the north,
been utterly astonished,
as
evi
of
the
who
could
among slaves,
persons
singing,
speak
to conceive
It is impossible
and happiness.
dence of their contentment
are
most
of a greater mistake.
Slaves sing most when
they
unhappy.
I have
find
16
often
error and compla
of these kinds of corrections
of white
prevalence
and other escaped slaves were writing
for
cency also indicates that Douglass
awhite audience. That was the audience that needed to be
But
since
taught.
that audience had not been slaves (at least, in the physical sense), the author
The
expect it to imitate him. Its liberation had to be from
to knowledge,
and therefore Douglass's
political
ignorance
goal was to
teach and persuade rather than to acquire white
imitators. His original ex
ideal but an American
shame which
perience did not represent an American
had to be changed.
Yet in another sense Douglass
and other outstanding
black authors have
an
American
One
of
the
of his Narrative
ideal.
features
is
represented
special
obviously
did not
that it does not tell the story of his flight itself. That might
compromise
those who helped him, he says, and only help masters
in preventing
other
With
seems
to
this
the
of
escapes.
story missing,
suspenseful part
Douglass
have been the more detailed in telUng the stages of his resolution
to escape.
The long sequence of episodes
in his learning how to read and write, his
from his masters,
his criticism of other slaves, and
growing
independence
his blood-chilling
with
the
slave-breaker make a much more
fight
Covey
a
story than narrative of escape could ever be. It is similar to re
profound
the emergence
of his own concept of
narratives, with
ligious conversion
as
a
himself
the stages of grace and salvation.
free-man-to-be
supplanting
in this story the acquisition of a hard-won,
secret and subversive
Moreover,
education is perhaps the most important part, for it is finally the equaUzer of
white and black and the object which
the Southern masters had guarded
most closely. With an education he can not
only "write my own pass" to be
off the plantation
a
itself
(in
significant symbol), he can also turn upon slav
an articulate
He can become
ery the power of language and persuasion.
hero, one who can tell his own story and use it in the Uberation of other men
and women.
story,
Douglass's
this
including
emphasis
on
education-as-freedom,
is
in so many Black
repeated
James
autobiographies?Richard
Wright's,
it is truly archetypal.
X's?that
It also shows why au
Baldwin's, Malcolm
tobiography has been the major kind of literature for blacks and most other
oppressed
from
the
Americans.
status
of
The
the
unknown
person
who
and
can write
inarticulate.
one's
He
that story to others and to the stories of others. The
of autobiography?its
authenticity
historicity?give
and
own
she
can rise
story
can thus
relate
assumed accuracy and
it greater authority
than the fictions of novels or the theater,
since the fictions are
especially
more
to
or
written
have
been
whites
likely
by
people who have not had
these experiences
The autobiographer,
themselves.
in writing
his or her
becomes
known
the
most
want
to
individual
Americans
be.
story,
Or to return to the earlier image, the
heroes enter the
autobiographical
find
in
homes
America.
House;
they
17
I have tried to do in this essay is to show the
What
relationship between
ideas of America
and a number of different or even contradictory
kinds of
American
I
at
As
look
back
I
find
that
them,
autobiography.
they make
a
or a hori
kind
of
American
m?ndala,
something
roughly approximating
a compass rose of four significant Ameri
zontal wheel with four directions,
can directions.
In the East is Benjamin
FrankUn, looking further East to his
and
model
writers
Uke Defoe
and Bunyan,
but also
EngUsh origins
EngUsh
to
to
the
West
and
other
directions
the new Americans who would
looking
one day imitate him. In his
Autobiography his Ufe was a kind of instrument to
be studied and adopted by other men who wished
to become prosperous
a
In
not
and useful.
the South, which
is
direction
but a
just
geographic
is Douglass,
who used his life more as an instrument of
condition,
In coming from slavery and oppression,
he and other black or
persuasion.
once excluded
a
told
which
would
story
people
change the national charac
to conditions
it responsive
it had previously
ter, or renew it by making
ig
nored. Properly or not, to Douglass
and other former victims,
the axis of
America
did not Ue east and west, between
tradition and opportunity,
but
between oppression
and freedom. And the freedom needed renewal and re
as much as the oppression
definition
needed to be escaped.
InWhitman,
the mythically
an
wild and unknown West was America,
to
to
the
with
it
himself
and
A
both.
poet
inspiriation
identify
"promulge"
he is the antithesis of the practical, famous FrankUn. His "au
noisy mystic,
does not tell how to ...
it says start to, then becomes
the na
tobiography"
tion and man. FinaUy Adams
that looks
represents that northern elevation
back on harsh simpUcity but also looks in the other directions
for its own
Wealth
and caste and the excellence of an
escape and for new opportunity.
different
cestors
are
a burden,
pendence.
1
As
attempt
this
but
they
summary,
are
also
I am
also
critical
aware
standards
that
this
and
essay,
sources
for
of
reasons
inde
of
to famous autobiographies.
has given too much
attention
The
economy,
men and women
of the frontier, the 19th century ministers
and missionaries
who frequently wrote
their life stories, the rogues and schoolteachers
and
business
leaders are missing.
So are the memoirs
of military
leaders and
some of which
also have the inward-looking
of au
dimension
statesmen,
a
But
there
of
the memoir
may be final lesson in this. Neither
tobiography.
the pub?c person nor the private experience of the uncelebrated
person rep
resents the ideas of America
in the way that these more famous
autobiog
ideas to the exclusion of private
raphies do. As the one is apt to promote
so consciously
life, the other chronicles private experience without
identify
one
a
it
with
too
a citizen, the other
national
The
in
ideas.
is
much
way
ing
takes his citizenship more or less for granted. Thus neither has been so valu
as the autobiographers
able to other Americans
to whom
in the
citizenship,
we
broadest
issue in their whole
Whether
sense, is a major
development.
like them or not, FrankUn and Whitman,
and
Adams,
Henry
Douglass
John
18
have been leading architects of American
Fitzgerald
character. They have built the houses in which many of the rest of us have
lived. But all of them address, primarily, men, or men and boys. Henry
the
of Clover
Adams's
total suppression
Hooper's
story?whatever
more
a
to
an
reason?now
and
reversion
Uke
looks less like
idiosyncracy
on
went
in the house?
American
type. To tell the rest of the story?what
Adams
will
and Scott
be a challenge
for the years ahead.
NOTES
see Albert
E. Stone, Jr., "Autobiography
and
Qn autobiography,
review-essays
11 (Winter,
American
American Studies: An International Newsletter,
Culture,"
1972), 22-36; and
in American
F. Sayre, "The Proper Study?Autobiographies
Robert
Studies," American Quar
1 For
two
terly, 29 (Summer,
2 Gertrude
Stein,
1977), 241-262.
of the Making
"The Gradual Making
Press,
1957), pp. 139, 141.
(Boston: Beacon
3 F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crack-Up,
ed. Edmund Wilson
of Americans,"
in Lectures
in America
1956),
(New York: New Directions,
p. 197.
4 Fitzgerald,
p. 79.
in America,
5 Alexis
ed. Phillips
de Tocqueville,
Democracy
Bradley
(New York: Vintage
Books,
1960), vol. 2, pp. 3, 11.
on Davila,
in The Works of John Adams,
6 John Adams, Discourses
ed. Charles
Francis Adams,
vol. 6 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown,
1851), pp. 233-4.
7 James M. Cox,
47 (1971), 261.
and America,"
"Autobiography
Virginia Quarterly Review,
B. Willcox,
The full text of the letter is in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
ed. William
vol. 18
Press,
(Yale Univ.
1974), pp. 102-104.
8 Carl Van Doren,
Press,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York: The Viking
9 Clifton
(ed.), Walt Whitman's Workshop
Joseph Furness
(Cambridge,
10 Daniel
B.
Shea,
Jr., Spiritual
p.255.
11 In this discussion
of Whitman
I have drawn
America,
as Poem
Place as Person
on
Autobiography
of the poet's
identification
E. Folsom,
"America,
by Lowell
of Rochester,
1976.
and the tradition
the dissertation
as Poet,"
in Early America
University
1945), p. 413.
Mass.,
1928), p. 33.
Press,
(Princeton Univ.
1968),
of himself
with
The Metaphor:
19