Fighting Words: Polemics and Social Change in Literary Naturalism

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Donald Pizer is a notable exception (see, for instance, Naturalism and the Jews). While other critics certainly register some of the moral haze that surrounds the naturalists’ politics, we await a relatively frank assessment of literary naturalism ’s relationship to democracy, human rights, individualism, and other fundamental values of Western liberalism. 2. Louis Menand’s essay on Wright in American Studies traces the author’s enduring fascination with totalitarian power. 3. None of this is to minimize Dreiser’s significant charitable work. During his tenure at the Delineator, for instance, Dreiser devoted himself to child rescue efforts; he was associated with various other laudable causes over the course of his life. We can recognize and applaud those efforts while appreciating the gravity of his political shortcomings. Chapter 1 1. My understanding of Mencken draws on Teachout and Hobson. 2. On Wright’s discovery of Mencken, see Rowley, Richard Wright 44–47. 3. In “Memories of My Grandmother,” an unpublished essay in the Wright Collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale, Wright meditates on how his attitudes were inevitably shaped by Margaret Bolden’s powerful influence. 4. On the role of the virtuous young woman as the ideal consumer of literature , see Douglas, as well as Campbell, especially her chapter “The Iron Madonna.” 5. Some historians have seen Jackson’s populism as a direct precursor to that of Franklin Roosevelt—another great antagonist of Mencken’s. See Wilentz and Brand. 160 Notes to Pages 25–36 6. The most influential accounts of Puritanism in America are P. Miller The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (and The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, and Bercovitch Puritan Origins and American Jeremiad. 7. Indeed, it may have been the arbitrary and inexact nature of Mencken’s reading of Puritanism that made his reading of the naturalist rebellion so durable . That is, the place of the “Puritans” in Mencken’s analysis could be occupied by any number of other forms of cultural authority against which the naturalists were rebelling. 8. These statistics are quoted in “The Hypocrites Club,” Economist, March 13, 2008. 9. On naturalism’s relationship to anti-Semitism, see Pizer American Naturalism and the Jews. 10. The naturalists were “proto” social Darwinists only because that term wasn’t coined until the 1930s. 11. Dreiser always kept two sets of books, but it was not until his last years that he publicly embraced his contradictions, joining the Communist Party and finding God. 12. See Lears, No Place of Grace 117–24. 13. Norris did spend a short amount of time in the Uitlander’s militia in South Africa, although the evidence suggests that this was more of a personal adventure for Norris than “war” as it was experienced by the generation that came before and after his own. 14. Of course, the United States did participate in various military adventures over this time, but in all cases the action was so far away that it was evidently possible to retain an attitude of “innocent” jingoism. 15. Nonetheless, the most successful scholars in the humanities routinely indulge in polemic: Stanley Fish, Martha Nussbaum, Harold Bloom, Susan Gubar, Camille Paglia, Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Derrida, and Noam Chomsky are just a few of the scholars who leap to mind in this regard. Polemic, then, is institutionally frowned upon but paradoxically excusable or perhaps even necessary for admittance into the upper echelons of the profession. 16. See Hobson 341. 17. Zola’s impact on Norris, and on the American naturalists more generally, has been discussed at length by a number of critics, including Link 16–20, and Lehan “European Background” (among other places). See also Ahnerbrink 21–29. Chapter 2 1. See Link 10–20. 2. “Consider,” Mencken wrote, “[the pedagogue] in his highest incarnation: Notes to Pages 36–52 161 the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numbskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant and, for the most part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, that is, a committee of soap-boilers, nail-manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons” (Gist 102). 3. See McElrath and Crisler 188–198. 4. See Dudley 11...