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wmhenrymorris's review
This book is lit. I don't understand a ton of the context, but from what I can tell and part of why it's so fascinating, is that it's responding to new criticism -- and esp. the new critics -- and so you get some new criticism, you get Freudian theory, you get some D.H. Lawrence, you get the beats, you get references to the stuff going on in the sixties, you even get some glimmers of post-modernism, but it's very much outdated as soon as it comes out because of the hard turn towards theory, but at the same time, it's making some great points about new criticism and America's conception of itself -- it's just doing so from a different place than the postmodernists. And Anderson's specific readings of a Whitman poem and James's The Golden Bowl are prickly and fascinating.
Above all, while I can't claim to follow everything, I think what Anderson is arguing about his core idea of the imperial self is useful. Maybe even right on point. And while this book may not be entirely relevant anymore for literary critics, as cultural history, as something that has something to say about how Americans view themselves, it's useful. Maybe even right.
Above all, while I can't claim to follow everything, I think what Anderson is arguing about his core idea of the imperial self is useful. Maybe even right on point. And while this book may not be entirely relevant anymore for literary critics, as cultural history, as something that has something to say about how Americans view themselves, it's useful. Maybe even right.
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