Charles Brockden Brown: An American Tale by Alan Axelrod (review)

114Reviews But Packman himself fails to follow Todorov, for Packman ignores the first of Todorov's worlds: the world of the characters. Packman glories in pacmanship; he implies that Nabokov 's works are only games (serious though thosegames may be), that the works are only selfreflexive . He ignores the humanity ofthe characters and their moral vision, so well delineated by Ellen Pifer in Nabokov and the Novel ( 1980). His discussion oí Pale Fire, for instance, focuses on Gradus' gradual approach and materialization and Nabokov's play with frames— there, certainly, and important—but he ignores Kinbote's anguished loneliness and Shade's robust earthiness. He misses too Lolita's humanity. He treats Lolita's body as only a literary text, as only an object of literary desire. Yet even Humbert progresses beyond the reification of Lolita, eventually acknowledging his own monstrosity in ignoring her needs, eventually acknowledging her humanity. Packman, however, does not. He is right to point out that Nabokov is self-reflexive but wrong to imply that that is all there is. Wheaton CollegeBeverly Lyon Clark Axelrod, Alan. Charles Brockden Brown: An American Tale. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1983. 203 pp. Cloth: $22.50. In his introduction to Charles Brockden Brown: An American Tale, Alan Axelrod proceeds from two premises about Brown, both of which appear in his assertion that "Brown is a significant AMERICAN author" (p. xviii). The emphasis on "American" will perhaps be less controversial than the assumption thatBrown is "significant." At issue here isnot a questioning ofthe skill in arguing thispremise. Theproblem rather is thatAxelrod takes the assertion ofhis premise on Brown's significance as sufficient. His offering a few cases ofBrown's influence on others serves to further different arguments rather than to advance a case for that significance. Stated more positively, Axelrod plays fair with his subject. Brown is significant. With that out ofthe way, he is saying, let us study the writer. This he proceeds to do, and the readerwho is not bothered by the leap of faith required to accept the assertion will find much in this book that will be of unusual value to Brown scholars. The case ofBrown's relation to Benjamin Franklin offers a useful example, particularly in connection with Arthur Mervyn. Various critics have speculated on Brown's response to Franklin, but it remains for Axelrod to chart meticulously the textual route from Brown to Franklin's Autobiography and to show how Brown could have and probably did engage that work. This kind of scholarship not only enhances Axelrod's own reading oí Arthur Mervyn but helps validate speculations along similar lines thathavepreviously appeared. Connections with other writers also emerge, some more persuasively than others. The link that Axelrod shows between Brown and Shakespeare in Arthur Mervyn emerges convincingly, although the connection with Milton in Ormond lacks similar rhetorical force. Yet throughout his book, Axelrod offers valuable and imaginative scholarly discoveries and associations. Ifnot all ofthe information is new, Axelrod has nevertheless offered a fine achievement in bringing so much useful scholarship together. On thiscount, it is hard to imagine readers ofthe book responding withoutappreciation ofthe contribution thathas been made. Therewill be differences ofopinion , of course, over the use that Axelrod has made of his scholarly examinations. Thethesis ofthe book is perhaps best articulated in the followingpassage: "All ofBrown's novelsoccupy theemotional, intellectual, andcultural territoryofJanus, lookingforwardinto the darkness of the private self and backward into the public light of society; ahead into the wilderness and back into civilization; west toward a New World, east toward an Old. Within Studies in American Fiction115 the novelist there is this Janus, too. But if the 'double mental existence' Brown described to John Bernard enabled him to glimpse worlds dark and light, it failed, we shall discover, to tell him which of the two he might call home" (p. 28). Within this thesis, Axelrod argues, as the subtitle of his book suggests, that Brown manifests an "Americanness." This view ofBrown implicitly carries with it a traditional approach to American intellectual history, one that sees our major writers as wedded to their culture in such a way that the definition of one implies the definition of the other. Thus, it is...