In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Book Reviews 211 "Crack-Up" essays. What emerges in the way Dolan organises these readings are the vast similarities between the texts, like how each author relied heavily on their own powers of revision or on their editors and what this suggests about the modern "self." But Dolan always returns to the specific tension between the self and society: the plurality exhibited by Hemingway when juggling his concerns between consciousness and society; the disappearance of the "11' in Cowley's consciously generational history; Fitzgerald's modification of his popular persona and Edmund Wilson's further revision of Fitzgerald for his posthumous public. The author notes how each of the authors he examines reflects a common movement from a profession of their uniqueness to an acknowledgement of the plurality in their society. But the example of writers like Gertrude Stein, Mary Antin, and Skip James is often raised here (if never fully discussed) and the suggestion remains that if the works of the canonical figures of the "lost generation" intimate the existence of a richer cultural heritage, other texts are again overshadowed by yet another set of rereadings of Hemingway, Cowley, and Fitzgerald. CraigMonk Memorial University of Newfoundland George Hutchinson. The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1995. Pp. 541. If George Hutchinson originally underestimated the breadth of his proposed study of the Harlem Renaissance, one gets the sense that he was forced to revise the scope of his project quickly. He admits that this book was originally intended to be a set of rereadings of important African-American texts from the first half of the twentieth century. But, to his amazement, Hutchinson found lacking a great deal of the scholarship that addresses the cultural and intellectual background to the Harlem Renaissance. As a result, the introduction to a project conceived as a discussion of big books has itself grown into a very big book wholly preoccupied with an investigation of the complexities of the institutions whose development defined the dimensions of the modern American cultural field. While the finished product is dense 212 Canadian Review of American Studies and imposing, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White more than acquits itself through its own meticulousness: for if it can never reduce difficult issues to the simplicity of "black and white, 11 the book fully addresses its topic from "a to z.11 Hutchinson proceeds to a great extent from the argument that currents of resistance to the dominant culture challenge the status quo by equally relating to that culture while maintaining and advancing its fundamental autonomy. The implications for a study of African-American literature are far-reaching. Hutchinson argues for a model of inclusiveness, pointing out that the Harlem Renaissance disclosed its interest in promoting a general American cultural nationalism. But while an interest in inclusiveness might suggest that he risks concerning himself exclusively with the narrow subject of the relationship between the artists of the Harlem Renaissance and those white members of its audience, Hutchinson emphasises that race relations makes up only one aspect of the background to the cultural field he wishes to explore. He pays a great deal of attention to the developments in philosophy and the social sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that shaped the intellectual and cultural legacy inherited by African Americans in subsequent decades. But while his interests are certainly extensive , the heart of this study is clearly devoted to a consideration of writing. The bulk of this book, and by far its most lively aspect one might argue, deals with the development of the institutional structures that came to advance modern literature. What ensues is a careful tracing of the relation between the New Negro movement and the publishing houses and magazines that nourished the American cultural scene in the period between the world wars. While the commercial magazines of this era, titles like the Saturday Evening Post, had very little to do with virtually any of the interesting literary movements of the time, support of the Harlem Renaissance was not restricted to militant African-American journals like Harlem or Fire!! or even more mainstream publications like The Crisisor Opportunity. In fact, a great variety...

pdf

Share