A CASE OF LITERARY MALINGERING:

...Men of Emerson's genera- tation took this unpopular stand, as an Swiftian parody of the intellectual tion, South as well as North, habitually unconscious desire to cancel out his living in his self-contained world, it is read their personal aspirations, needs, unvalorous withdrawal in 1861...

...For too many American writers, Failed" reflect Twain's way of maneu- is particularly noteworthy...

...But to its mis29 March 1974: 90...

...Inevitably, the book offers War is itself a part of a series planned mains that the problem of race in itself for comparison with Edmund by the Civil War Centennial Commis- American literature was far more overWilson's Patriotic Gore, about which sion...

...Our classical writers was a recipient of the William Faulkown fiction, we are tempted, as Aaron simply did not know the land and ner Foundation Award...

...But none that are so are like Emerson, whom Aaron deliterature of the Civil War but he does sweeping...

...Capable of defending the Chinese political, social and cultural life, cannot "the only one who could have spoken and the Jews in a society which fail to be impressed by the persistence to Billy Yank and Johnny Reb in their viewed them as dangerous and alien, he of a Southern identity-indeed a Southown languages and conceivably have was equally capable of taking an ado- ern sensibility...

...well as in his life...

...And it is the War was a metaphysical abstraction...

...vering out of a situation he himself only one among many failures that In certain cases, most notably that of must have felt guilty about...

...blacks mirror the tragedy of his whites, familial eulogy is sounded throughout There are, of course, other emotional but that is all...

...Not many of them besides their own judgments and God's...

...ature...

...McCarthy's is a Southern of European experience in his art as A Connecticut Yankee questions our identity hitched to an Irish sensibility...

...The echoes of its reverberations whelming than the problem of class...

...If this rumor, this annual prize is not bestowed anarchists in 1887, when no other is most disturbing in a writer such as upon first novels which best mimic the American writer of comparable repu- Emerson, who sometimes seems a South's greatest master...

...For if the Civil War plex reality...

...The Un- then one which speaks well of the Conversion an "admirable . . .and written War is not only about the future...

...Whites and blacks use each a remarkable manner, Wilson managed notable exceptions, they did not...

...If he N.C., Daily News, in a recent review Adams and James were destined by criticized Jay Gould and imperialist for the New York Times...

...only too well why Professor Aaron as a writer, the period following on the places Adams in the most disturbing heels of the Civil War, made of that Child of God section of The Unwritten War, one democracy a cash-and-carry rummage CORMAC McCARTHY which entitles "The Malingerers" and sale...

...Even Melville, the 19th pageant of the War's literature that novel about Nat Turner...

...The literary herd instinct is bole unmatched in this nation's history, Negro had already been made into a certainly as powerful as that of any it did not produce a literature that rhetorical device in Pre-Civil War liter- other group, and writers possess the substantiated its myths...

...and if one revision...

...So wrote Jonathan written the great War book critics like lescent's delight in the friendship of Yardley, book editor of the Greensboro, his friend Howells were calling for...

...This book argues the slaves were as people could scarcely splendid chapter on Justice Holmes...

...Aaron speaks highly...

...He is not account for this particular failure of writers seem either censorious or they cool or detached in his approach to the our literature...

...The tone had already been set by talent to frame that instinct in distinctly fessor Aaron intelligently argues, "its Jefferson in Notes on Virginia...

...a writer whose skepticism parodies pays more than passing attention to its The most disturbing of all is Twain, itself...

...Such judgments make for uncomzling limitations...

...The writers who dealt with fortable reading...

...To major Nineteenth Century writers, but literature emanating from the Civil read The Education is to understand the period during which he came of age War...

...The failure was already I believe Wilson did, creating a moral Civil War rather than his unfortunate behind them...

...Certainly, it is tennae of the race,' to say something ped by the contradictions of American fair to say that no single chapter in revealing about the meaning, if not the life...

...The mixture belief is that his withdrawal was of no ness, may have been his way of not of Southern mystique and Irish trebling great consequence for American liter- dealing with an industrialized America has not always been a comfortable one...

...Is it any surprise that so literary reverberations are felt to this Negro could be viewed only as a ques- much of the literature inspired by the day," that simply points to a problem of tion of definition...

...The sec- Grau, his comments apply as well to sense of dispossession, the second be- ond half of Life on the Mississippi never the talented Cormac McCarthy-with cause he justifiably insisted on the value makes the criticism it implies...

...Twain was not ideological in which, along with Adams, he in- enough...

...He withdrew from active industrialism...

...America's rich and powerful...

...his book...

...As a result, he wound up as "Anyone who lives in the South, who War period...

...BOOKS A CASE OF LITERARY MALINGERING LEONARD KRIEGEL The Unwritten War: American writers...

...Perhaps criticism can best relentlessly through the underbrush of inspired a religious and political hyper- account for this by noting how the judgment...

...His realism, like his tempera- ruled by the House of Morgan...

...The Unwritten either De Forest or Cable, the fact reliterature...

...Melville's trait hidden in his attic...

...Twain's bleak metaphy- primary tool, he has sought after a participation in the War, but my own sical cosmos, ruled by a prince of dark- personal voice and vision...

...it is about their attitudes toward Keeper, an impressive, complex debut, could not deal with the War in his America itself...

...Yardmore complex, that of the lesser talent tion the capitalism that exists behind ley's term) and with language as his and finer man...

...What haunts us are the duced, if not a totally successful work, proclaim De Forest's Miss Ravenal's consequences of that failure...

...But no less disturbing when one discovers it and antipathies into historical tendency Twain possessed both the talent and the in so many other 19th Century Amerand found a remarkable unanimity in temperament to deal with the reality of ican writers...

...Contrary to is, to see his defense of the Chicago people they spoke to and for...

...For whatever reason, Aaron and intellectual constrictions that help The other pre-Civil War American can take no such liberties...

...In implicitly throughout that, with a few be voiced...

...Even the ludicrous themselves in the democratic tub...

...And it does not help The fault, then, lies not with the the War were curiously indifferent to to remind oneself that writers throughauthor but with the truth he so thor- the Negro as a human being, a com- out the world seem to stalk themselves oughly probes...

...he possessed no philosophy Random House, $5.95 cludes James, Howells, and Twain-by upon which to build a democratic faith...

...The War is that such comparisons are inevitably of both an important work of contempor- back there, memorialized in books and limited critical worth and that Tolstoy ary literary scholarship and an implicit courthouse statues, and all that is left was an incomparably finer novelist than justification of the historical study of is to centennialize it...

...And yet, he refused to look Whitman made any effort to immerse society in which the writer's task re- at the War clearly...

...That The Unwrit- are now the property of writers of his- The failure to look at slavery and ten War is not as exciting a book may torical fiction...

...The Napoleonic this damaged American literature can American Writers and the Wars in Europe fed Stendhal and Tol- be seen if one compares the characteriCivil War stoy, and Napoleon's legacy could still zation of the Negro by such "realistic" DANIEL AARON be felt in Zola...

...ROBERT LEITER most critical assessments, four of the His mind was never as admirable as finest prose writers of the post-Civil his style...

...The extent to which War reflects a kind of fundamentalist Commonweal: 89 religiosity...

...but with Child of God, his most recent ment was limited by the very honesty "The War was not so much unfelt as novel, he has made partial peace with that made it attractive...

...Howells' case is faith in industrialism, it does not ques- Via the "old themes" (to use Mr...

...In sembles that of the preacher, this pre- self-mockery of Roughing It and "The a war that brought forth so strikingly sents a difficult, if not intolerable, sit- Private History of a Campaign That religious a point of view, such a failure uation...

...Even if we grant the obvious Daniel Aaron's The Unwritten War is poetic or fictional voice...

...In other in his fiction, most notably in to make the Civil War a personal prop- large part, Aaron attributes this to the Benito Cereno, but there are no real erty, as if it were an old family por- "pestiferous shadow" of the Negro, relationships between them...

...The War was obviously not scribes as incapable of permitting "the not try to make of that literature some- fought to free the slaves, but "without War to disturb his excruciating serenithing that reaches beyond its own puz- the Negro, there would have been no ty...

...the note of "emblematic of guilt and retribution...

...though he birth to feel ambiguous about the expansion, he never bothered to sit was discussing works by Arna BonAmerica which emerged from the down and analyze the America that temps, Nancy Price and Shirley Ann War, the first because it confirmed his emerged from the Civil War...

...Why, one asks, did a its consequences was not only the failsimply confirm Aaron's insistence on novelist as talented as Styron not try to ure of those writers who emerged on keeping the War and the literature it probe what Baldwin called "our com- the literary scene after the War had inspired in front of him rather than, as mon history" with a novel about the been fought...

...spacious" novel, comparable to Tol- attitudes of American writers to the Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard stoy's War and Peace...

...He was the Daniel Aaron presents for our examiHenry Adams, it seems to have rein- most fundamentally democratic of our nation in his excellent study of the forced a characteristic petulance...

...For a the War...

...The moral terms...

...But no one any longer novelists as De Forest and Cable to Knopf, $12.50 expects the most tragic and meaningful Tolstoy's characterizations of Russian of American wars to find a suitable peasants...

...Civil War...

...For Melville, the question of what The Unwritten War matches Wilson's causes of the War...

...century writer most willing to face the offers itself as the "epic" the subject "One would expect writers, the 'an- realities of history, was ultimately traphas so vainly demanded...

...He could en- unfaced," writes Aaron in his conclud- some of the old ghosts, and has procourage the genius of a Crane and ing chapter...

...And if, as Pro- ature...

...And if he himself War...