Who Are the Major American Writers? A Study of the Changing Literary Canon by Jay B. Hubbell (review)

157 in Touch the Sun money is king. The Misses Rowson and Radcliffe were interested in the economics of virtue—Mrs. Klem is interested in the virtue of economics. The book ends, predictably enough, with the 1875 Virginia City holocaust, where John and Cassandra find themselves to be the two most beautiful and rich people in town. They agree to tie the knot, despite their past relationship of mutual financial betrayals, passionate nights of love fol­ lowed by days of screaming arguments, and even an illegitimate conception (discreetly miscarried). It is, after all, the best deal all around. Patrick Morrow, University of Southern California Who Are the Major American Writers? A Study of the Changing Literary Canon. By Jay B. Hubbell. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1972. 369 pages. $11.75.) Since 1820, when Sydney Smith asked his snobbish question—“Who reads an American book?”—Americans have played the game of author-ranking: is Irving better than Cooper, Hawthorne better than Poe? Hubbell’s book is a history of “the great changes in literary taste and fashion which have taken place in the last century and a half.” He poses and answers some interesting questions. Why did our great-grandparents so adore Longfellow and so de­ spise Whitman? Why did the novels of E. P. Roe and Mrs. Mary J. H. Holmes sell like hula hoops while those of Howells and James were literary Edsels by comparison? Thoreau jokingly wrote, “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myselfl” Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald—for a time all three were relatively unknown. Hubbell explains these and many other fluctuations in the American literary stock market by examining a variety of materials: critical polls, “literary his­ tories, anthologies, reviews of books, magazine articles on individual authors and on American literature in general, results of the elections to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pulitzer, Nobel, and other literary prizes and awards, and various other attempts at ranking our authors in the order of their importance.” Hubbell’s use of these materials gives an idea of the process known as the “test-of-time”— the way works of literature survive or fall into obscurity, and sometimes reemerge . Hubbell found that creative writers often have better judgment than newspaper critics or academics, but no group’s judgment has been infallible. Critical oversights often seem to stem from the younger generation’s failure to understand and appreciate the work of their elders, who in their turn are too often incapable of seeing any value in the efforts of the youngsters. Hub­ bell found that time is the most dependable measure of literary greatness. He concludes that ten American authors of the nineteenth century have survived as major writers; he says we are too close to twentieth-century writers to award them any laurels confidently. What does Hubbell, what do we mean by “major” and “minor,” anyway? How do we distinguish the “sub-literary” from serious literature? Hubbell does not discuss these questions directly, presumably because he sees his pur­ 158 Western American Literature pose in this book as “that of historian.” Nevertheless, our answers to these questions determine who we enshrine among the literary elect; and this elect receives our attention: new editions, paperbacks, inclusion in anthologies, articles, and other notices. "Lesser” writers wind up in library storage under a foot of dust. Consider the lot of so many good writers from beyond the hundreth meridian. Hubbell himself ‘‘was actively engaged in the promotion of young writers in the South and West”—for which he deserves much credit—yet the materials he has canvassed mention relatively few writers of our region. Willa Cather, Mark Twain, Hamlin Garland, Bret Harte, Helen Hunt Jackson, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, John Steinbeck, George R. Stewart, Nathaniel West, Stewart Edward White, and Owen Wister appear in the various polls and other sources examined by Hubbell—only Twain is a major figure, though Cather and Steinbeck receive a great deal of mention. What hurts is that so many names are not even mentioned! Here are some of the non-Western names...