Volume 36, Number 2 · February 16, 1989
Tin Cans in the Rockies
By Robert M. Adams
The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in the United States
by Leo Marx
Oxford University Press, 357 pp., $29.95
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916–1984
edited by Mary Street Alinder, edited by Andrea Gray Stillman
New York Graphic Society/Little, Brown, 402 pp., $50.00
'Americanists' enjoy a special title, comparable (so far as a quick run through the analogies serves) only to 'Sinologists.' Their title, of course, doesn't imply that they are experts on South or Central America, doesn't even mean that they recognize much of interest to them in Canada. They are students of the culture of the United States, sometimes with a perceptible bias toward the northeast quadrant of the United States. Their major interest is literature, seen, however, in relation to the social, intellectual, and political values of the nation, and one can pretty well count on their taking four particular books as the cornerstones of their work. Behind Thoreau's Walden and Melville's Moby-Dick looms, for most Americanists, the polymorphous presence of Emerson; and among works of modern literature, they are likely to be most devoted to The Great Gatsby. Though they enjoy a wide franchise in discussing things American, 'classic American literature' not infrequently comes down to a few themes and familiar examples. Forgoing the international perspective can sometimes be a handicap.
Review, 2819 words
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