The Oxford Handbook of Literary Naturalism (review)

My review copy of The Oxford Handbook of Literary Naturalism arrived coincidentally just as I was beginning a summer graduate seminar on American naturalism. I read the book while teaching the class and advising the students as they researched their papers and presentations. The book quickly entered the seminar and proved its usefulness in the most concrete way possible: it passed from student to student, with one borrowing it from another as they researched. There can be no better proof that The Oxford Handbook of Literary Naturalism is an exemplary teaching aid.

The book presents a thorough thematic survey of naturalism and its contexts with a strong secondary emphasis on its major practitioners. That is, the book is organized primarily according to ideas, not authors, and the discussions of writers and major texts—which are ample—occur in the service of explications of ideas like atavism, where Frank Norris, for example, receives appropriate attention from contributor Gina Rosetti. Analysis of major naturalist writers is thus sprinkled throughout the book; Norris, for one, is also discussed at some length by Zena Meadowsong in relation to machine culture, by Jeanne Reesman in relation to race, and by Richard Lehan in the context of the ideological legacy of Herbert Spencer—and that’s just a partial list of Norris citations in the volume.

The roster of contributors is populated by many of the usual suspects, but notable scholars of the field like June Howard, Jude Davies, and the monumental Donald Pizer are balanced by a contingent of younger voices. The volume likewise takes up old and new ideas: there is an obligatory focus on determinism that is counterweighted by extended consideration of contemporary scholarly concerns like commodity culture and the influence of melodrama. There are also some welcome surprises, like chapters on poetry and drama, to name two subjects that I did not anticipate. The bottom line is that this book covers almost any naturalism-related subject that you might reasonably think of these days. It’s not a “handbook” unless you have hands the size of catchers’ mitts. With 28 chapters encompassing more than 500 pages, this book is more like an encyclopedia. (Editor Keith Newlin has experience with encyclopedias too, having edited a useful one on Dreiser.)

For all of these reasons, The Oxford Handbook of Literary Naturalism is an exemplary text for classroom use. But I have no plans to require the book when I offer my naturalism seminar next. Why not? Because I cannot in good conscience expect a student to pay $150 for it. Newlin has assembled a splendid teaching book, but it’s priced as though it were a reference work, aimed at the deep pockets of libraries (though it should be mentioned that this pricing strategy of soaking the libraries is questionable also—they have less to spend on acquisitions than they used to). What can the Oxford marketers have been thinking here? Unless a much cheaper paperback edition appears, this fine volume will pass before fewer readers than it deserves.