Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H. L. Mencken 1907-1945 ed. by Thomas P. Riggio (review)

and convincingly in the evolution of McMurphy and the transformation of Bromden, who serves so eloquently as the spokesman and integrating principle in the novel” (p. 104). Porter suggests that, “although moving and sad, the death of McMurphy is realistic and necessary to document at once the forces of oppression and fear and the power of love to overcome such forces” (p. 104). Porter is at his best when providing character sketches, especially of Bromden, whose “spiritual renascence, verbal resourcefulness, and heroic resolve at the end project a poetic response to the possibilities of life” (p. 104). Relying on newspaper articles, interviews, and the current scholarship to complement his own arguments, Porter makes a major contribution to our understanding of Kesey’s vision. Readers will discover new information concerning Kesey’s life and his creative process. Porter reports, for instance, that “at the suggestion of psychology graduate student Vik Lovell, to whom Cuckoo’s Nestis dedicated, Kesey [became] a volunteer for government drug experiments from the summer of 1960 to the spring of 1961, when he [took] a job as a psychiatric aide in the veteran’s hospital in Menlo Park,” two events, Porter claims, that prepared Kesey for the composition of his first published novel (pp. xvi-ii). If his close study of the novel seems a bit dated or old-fashioned as a critical approach, Porter nonetheless succeeds in presenting a convincing thesis with which few, I think, could quarrel. For instance, Porter uncovers “two remarkable pages of rhyming prose that Malcolm Cowley [with whom Kesey studied at Stan­ ford] apparently discovered while the book was in progress and that Kesey later deliberately extended” (p. 83). Porter demonstrates, by shifting Kesey’s prose into verse form, the way in which such rhyming becomes part of Kesey’s narrative strategy. The result, for Porter, is that the “poem” spotlights two major points, “that McMurphy’s role as ‘dedicated lover’ was assigned to him at an early age and that Bromden’s increasing tendency to express himself in rhyme is symbolic of his growth toward mental wholeness” (p. 84). Finally, Porter places Kesey within the tradition of American fiction-making, suggesting the literary connection of Bromden to Chingachgook, Queequeg, Jim, and Tonto; and of McMurphy to Natty Bumppo, Ishmael, Huck, and Lone Ranger. Thus McMurphy “grows into the model of frontier hero” (p. 82) whose “conflict with Big Nurse,” writes Porter, “car­ ries the weight of American literary history” (p. 12). Porter outlines a Kesey who appears keenly aware of his literary predecessors. Through a consideration of the structural, psychological, mythical, and archetypal dimensions of the novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest": Rising to Heroism provides a clear account of Kesey’s indebtedness to past American writers and how he re-invents in Cuckoo’s Nest a unique vision, based on heroic struggle, that explains Bromden’s famous line, “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” Georgia State University Matthew C. Roudane Riggio, Thomas P., ed. Dreiser-Mencken Letters: The Correspondence of Theodore Dreiser & H. L. Mencken 1907-1945,2 vols. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. 870 pp. Cloth: $69.95. This massive collection consists of over one thousand significantpieces of correspondence between two of the most prolific American men of letters in the twentieth century. It begins with Dreiser’s letter to Mencken in 1907, when Dreiser, editor of The Delineator, suggested that Mencken, already an established newsman and editor in Baltimore, bring out a popular edition of Schopenhauer, and ends with Mencken’s reply to Dreiser’s Christmas card two days before Dreiser’s death in 1945. Unlike a typical collection of letters, the volumestell in considerable detail and with lucid notes one ofthe most exciting legends in modem American literature. The result is an exemplar of the much needed new breed of literary biography for American realist writers, and it ranks favorably with such biographies as Mark Shorer’s SinclairLewis: An American Life, W. A. Swanberg’s Dreiser, and Michel Fabre’s The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. Like a useful biography, this book thrives on a main theme that is cogently tied in with seemingly insignificant sub-themes if presented in...