The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Martin
Zehr.
~~~~~

_Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee, A
Reader's Companion_. By Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Rutgers University Press,
2015. Pp. 381. Hardcover. $34.95 ISBN 978-0-8135-7597-1.


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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Martin Zehr


Copyright (c) 2015 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.



 In her introduction to _Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden
Pond to Wounded Knee_, Shelley Fisher Fishkin provides a concise statement
of her mission, giving notice that her book "examines intersections between
public history and literary history, exploring the physical places that
shaped the lives and the art of authors who had a major impact on American
literary history . . ." (p. 1). In detailed explorations of thirteen sites
spanning wide swaths of time and geography, Fishkin weaves a tapestry of
culture, history, and individuals, many not in the forefront of the
accepted American literary canon, that underscores the critical importance
of background elements often ignored, even by those who appreciate the
great American "classics." Despite the implied premise of the importance of
connections of literature to these places and "landmarks," _Writing
America_ is no mere travelogue for the student of American literatures.


This book lists and describes over 150 sites on the National Register of
historic sites with connections to American literary creations and focuses
more narrowly on thirteen of these sites and regions to highlight the
diversity mirrored by the writing of authors including the well known,
e.g., Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Paul Laurence
Dunbar, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston
Hughes. One of the chief attractions of this book, however, is its
inclusion of lesser-known writers, in detailed discussions, including Anzia
Yezierska, Lawson Fusao Inada, Abraham Cahan, Gloria Anzaldua, Nella
Larsen, Rolando Hinojosa and Morris Rosenfeld. Most readers who are not
literature majors--including this reviewer--will finish reading this book
with the distinct feeling that they have been cheated in their heretofore
lack of awareness of the scope of the _real_ American literary canon. In
the process of reading this book, the reader is exposed to descriptions of
a variety of environments that fostered unique perspectives of the Americas
as lived in by their chroniclers. A portrait of the Lower East Side and its
tenements and sweatshops, for example, underscores the determination
required to escape, in short respites, its unrelenting stress through
creations like the vital Yiddish theatres of the first decades of the
twentieth century. In an era when politicians are shrill in their fretting
about "illegal" Hispanic immigrants, Fishkin's chapter, "Mexican American
Writers in the Borderlands of Culture," underscores, through recorded
literary memories, the lack of a "natural" historic border, citing writers
like Gloria Anzaldua, whose border is a "1,950 mile-long open wound" which
runs down the length of her body (p. 305).


The connections between person, place, experience and, ultimately, writing,
are frequently demonstrated through discussion of individual perspectives
and selective samplings from the writings of the authors. Thus, we are
given a primer of Thoreau's lessons on civil disobedience, solitude, nature
and simplicity in the context of the peaceful confines of Walden Pond,
where, as Fishkin reminds us, using his words, his meditations "were not
time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual
allowance… This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if
the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have
been found wanting" (p. 55). In her discussion of Sinclair Lewis's
_Babbitt_, Fishkin uses the words of his creation, the real estate salesman
and town booster George Babbitt, to illustrate the qualities required as
"signs of civilization," e.g., "one motor car for every five and
seven-eighths persons in the city . . ." (p. 236). Highlighting the
diversity of cultures and languages, we find, in a chapter anchored in the
tragedy of the Wounded Knee massacre, Nicholas Black Elk's prose recounting
of his first-hand experience of the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee Creek and
the subsequent killings, and the mocking verse of Zitkala-Sa, a Yankton,
South Dakota, Sioux writer, using a familiar patriotic hymn, "My Country,
'Tis of Thee,"  as the framework for her observation, as follows: "Land
where OUR fathers died" (p. 158). Elsewhere, Morris Rosenfeld, writing in
Yiddish, conveys, in "The Sweatshop," the dehumanizing impact of the
mind-numbing work which was too often the fate of the immigrant seeking a
better life in the New World. Another setting, Angel Island in San
Francisco Bay, where thousands of Chinese immigrants were processed until
its closing in 1940, is also the source of literature born of suffering. In
this case it is the poetry scrawled on its walls in Chinese characters by
detainees who, as Fishkin observes, "were . . . in prison, innocent men and
women detainees against their will, because of racist laws designed to keep
them and other working people who looked like them from entering the
country" (p.247). In conjunction with Fishkin's narration and the
well-chosen illustrations, excerpts from the selected writers give a
multidimensional perspective to each of the stops on this literary road
trip.


Common to many of these explorations is a focus on the racial, ethnic,
political and economic barriers encountered by sub-populations whose
experience of the dominant culture is documented in a variety of literary
forms. This tone is set in the first pages of the introduction, featuring a
photograph of Hannibal, Missouri's newest tourist attraction, a museum
named "Jim's Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center," and an accompanying
discussion of Hannibal's reluctant grappling with its racist and slavery
past. In subsequent chapters, the suffering and predations endured by
African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, European immigrants
populating the tenements of turn-of-the-century New York, and Mexican
American writers of the border regions are sometimes laid bare in painful,
undeniable detail, as the impetus for great writing produced by each of
these American populations. In one of the latter chapters, "American
Writers and Dreams of the Silver Screen," writer David Bradley provides a
very personal account of the fear and alarm engendered by D. W. Griffith's
incorporation of grotesque racial stereotypes in his film _The Birth of a
Nation_, and anti-Mexican racism is highlighted in the discussion of Edna
Ferber's novel, _Giant_, and its movie recreation. Racial stereotypes can
work in any direction, as shown in Fishkin's discussion of the novel
_Caballero_, by the Texas-born writer Jovita Gonzalez, which depicts "the
ignorance and prejudice that made intermarriage so dreaded for many old
families in this region" (p. 316). Another form of oppression is
highlighted in Fishkin's chapter titled "The Revolt from the Village," in
which the boredom and press for conformity experienced by Sinclair Lewis in
his hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota becomes the inspiration for novels
like _Main Street_ and _Babbitt_. Anyone wishing to pursue one of these
explorations in detail has as a convenient starting point the extensive
reference listings included in the "For Further Reading" sections at the
end of each chapter.


Every reader of _Writing America_ will approach it with their individual
reading histories, likely giving rise to other possible choices and
preferences of venues for discussions of connections between writers,
places and cultures. One could legitimately ask, what about the Red Cloud,
Nebraska of Willa Cather and Antonia Shimerda, William Faulkner's Oxford,
Mississippi, or Lisa See's Los Angeles? The impossibility of creating an
unwieldy, encyclopedic work following Fishkin's model is obvious, but, just
as obvious is her judicious choice of sites and subjects, classic and
contemporary, with a diversity of geography and cultures that can truly be
asserted as representative of the multitude of Americas. More important,
however, is the all-encompassing perspective intentionally adopted by
Fishkin as a framework for consideration of each of the separate authors
and subcultures chosen for _Writing America_. These vignettes can be seen
as repetitions of a template for future readings, i.e., instilling, if not
already present, a predilection to inquire, while in the process of
reading, about the sources of poetry and fiction not immediately accessible.


The sixty-three black-and-white photos and drawings included in this volume
provide glimpses of writers, homes, and environments juxtaposed with the
subject matter to "flesh out," as it were, Fishkin's stated intentions.
Some are familiar to students of American literature, e.g., the photo of
Twain standing in front of his boyhood home in Hannibal, taken during his
last visit, in 1902. Others, like that of the parlor of the Paul Laurence
Dunbar House in Dayton, Ohio, likely less familiar, illustrate the economic
status he achieved, despite the obstacles faced by an African American of
his era attempting to survive on his writing. A photo of the populated
reading room at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library
gives us a glimpse of the living center of the Harlem Renaissance of the
1920s. Some photos can be described as downright chilling, or revolting,
like the portrait of the assembled family of Japanese ancestry, packed,
tagged and awaiting transport to an internment camp in 1942 or the still
depicting the prelude to a lynching of a black man--actually a white actor
in blackface--from the film _The Birth of a Nation_. Photographic portraits
of writers like Anzia Yezierska, a Russian immigrant settling in the
tenements of New York in the 1890s, or Arthur Schomburg, whose lifelong
dedication made available an archive of writings by African American
writers that would otherwise be lost, attest to the comprehensive nature of
each of these multi-faceted vignettes, not to mention the monumental
achievement this work represents from the perspective of pure research.


A recommendation that Fishkin's book be required reading by undergraduate
and graduate literary majors would, certainly, be considered appropriate,
except for the fact that such an encomium would be the kiss of death, and
misses the attraction that this book undoubtedly has for readers unlikely
to inhabit either of these categories, including this reviewer. The writer
Erica Jong has entered her verdict, posted on the book's dustjacket, that
"She writes like an angel," an odd phrase of praise, considering that
Fishkin's international reputation is largely based on her Mark Twain
scholarship, explorations of facets of a career relying on a "pen warmed up
in hell," but, no matter. Perhaps this is Jong's acknowledgement of
Fishkin's ability to write plainly and without academic jargon, a blessing
to the book's readers. Among the other strong endorsements of this book,
that of Junot Diaz, author of _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_, that
"_Writing America_ is a triumph of scholarship and passion, a profound
exploration of the many worlds which comprise our national canon . . ."
hits the mark exactly.


If it is Fishkin's intent to blur the artificial distinctions between the
metaphorical and literal landscapes of literature, she has, through the
selected vignettes, succeeded beyond any reasonable doubt. As an
abstraction, it is easy to accept the proposition that all great writing is
in some way connected to time and place, but _Writing America_ renders this
assumption so obvious that its readers are less likely to engage with
fiction writing absent an implanted predisposition to hunt for its roots
beyond even the imagination of the writers included in this unique survey.
A book with this effect, even on its publication, can confidently be
predicted to encourage a paradigm-shifting look at authors and their
inspirations, including the terrain in which their writing is rooted.


_____


Shelley Fisher Fishkin is Professor of English and Director of the
Department of American Studies, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.


Martin Zehr is a psychologist in private practice in Kansas City, Missouri
and neuropsychologist at the Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute at St.
Luke's Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri. He is also a member of the Board of
Directors of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri.