Bret Harte, Literary Critic by Patrick D. Morrow (review)

Reviews 147 family begins with the death of her son and the loss of the ranch to the assaults of civilization. Like the unpredictable country where “wagon wheels exposed the rocks and ground the dust as fine as the flour the women made biscuits with,” Melissa feels a torturing emptiness. Her dissatisfaction is assuaged by an affectionate moment with a cavalier cowboy (whom she helps to escape after a range killing) and the independence enforced by Ben’s desertion. Despite its psychological hold on her she is compelled to leave the sere tenacious land called “The Mesa,” which has so shaped her life. Melissa’s travels to earn her keep reward her with a miner’s adoration, the privilege of cutting her long hair, and the right to smoke a cigarette. The courage with which she returns to the perdurable mesa seems like an island of emotional fertility in the midst of an arid desert. Noble has dedicated her book to “the pioneer women who survived a life of suppression,” and this fictional account of one woman’s life is cer­ tainly marked by feminist strains of frustration and resentment. However, Filaree does not overemphasize the martyrdom of the pioneer woman. Ra­ ther, it celebrates her adaptability and accomplishment. This novel is a spunky commemoration of the stubborn spirit of the frontier to resist, sur­ vive, and prevail. BOBBIE BURCH LEMONTT, University of Tennessee Bret Harte, Literary Critic. By Patrick D. Morrow. (Bowling Green: Bowl­ ing Green University Popular Press, Publishers, 1979. 193 pages, $10.95.) Except for the “Condensed Novels,” Bret Harte’s literary criticism has received comparatively little attention, a situation Patrick Morrow sets out to remedy in Bret Harte, Literary Critic. “We can never form an accurate analysis and estimation of Bret Harte until this pervasive but neglected aspect of his work is understood,” Morrow contends. And, he adds in his Preface, “Harte’s critical beliefs, especially as practiced in his fiction, shaped the entire local color era of American literature,” and “for better and for worse, Bret Harte brought the Eastern literary establishment’s values to Western writing.” Morrow, professor of English at Auburn University, moves rather sys­ tematically toward his goal of analyzing Harte’s critical beliefs, practices and development and placing him in the historical context of nineteenthcentury literary criticism. The first chapter studies Harte’s concepts of litera­ ture as seen in his own creative writing. Succeeding chapters trace Harte’s development as writer and critic — through his “Bohemian days” and his editorship of the Overland Monthly, to his “decline as a writer and lec­ turer in the 1870’s,” and, finally, to “his productive later period” as a critic of current literature and popular romances and as a parodist. 148 Western American Literature Morrow’s basic contention, elaborated in the final chapter, is that Harte was “a practical critic” who “understood the value of well-crafted form and appreciated the power of an audience’s expectations.” He “learned to stay clear of literary theory and concentrate on a close reading of literature” and on “evaluating a piece of literature on its own merits.” In his method­ ology, then, “Harte was a precursor of the New Criticism.” Morrow notes the seeming contradiction between what Harte the critic advocated and what Harte the writer was sometimes producing, especially in later years when the writer was “trapped by a rapidly diminishing suc­ cess and a rapidly increasing overhead.” Throughout a long career “Harte the critic demanded realism in all writing,” Morrow points out. “That our concept of realism has shifted away from Harte’s should not obscure the fact that in a genteel age of over-upholstered prose, . . . Harte championed a precise and penetrating realism, joining Howells and James in pioneering the way for a new fiction.” Though the last chapter discusses Harte’s “allegiance to the literary theories of such British realists as George Henry Lewes, George Meredith, and David Masson,” the final emphasis is not on Harte’s realism, but on his importance as a transitional figure caught between Realism and Romanti­ cism. Credit is also given Harte for literary counsel provided other writers, for the accuracy of his critical estimates of his...