New American Lit. Vol. Sparks Debate

A panel of scholars of American history and literature sat in front of a stone fireplace and under the painted gaze of their deceased predecessors to debate how best to represent the American literary tradition in a single volume at an event on Friday in the Barker Center’s Thompson Room.

The group of eight entertained a packed room with a heated debate, inspired by the publication of A New Literary History of America, a collection of over 200 provocative entries spanning the entire history of America.

Edited by rock ’n roll critic turned scholar Greil Marcus and Professor of African American Studies and English Werner Sollors, the book does not seek to create a new American literary canon, but instead it includes entries that cover a more diverse group of literary figures including John Winthrop, Diego Rivera, Chuck Berry, and Barack Obama.

The tome runs to well over a thousand pages and includes entries from more than 200 contributors. Marcus and Sollors completed the work of compiling and editing the volume after four years, and it was published last week by the Harvard University Press.

In selecting the contributors, Marcus said that he and Sollors posed the questions: “Who do we want to hear from? Who will tell us something we don’t know?”

The result is a volume that assembles the work of visual artists, novelists, as well as traditional scholars. But Sollors emphasized the book is “not an encyclopedia but a provocation.”

Some entries explore the connections between two subjects, while others are works of art. The volume ends with a set of nine prints by artist Kara Walker, who is known for creating black cut-paper silhouettes, depicting the election of Barack Obama.

But many of the scholars on the panel raised questions about whether or not the book presents a clear narrative of American history.

Entries in the volume are placed in chronological order, but they are not grouped into themes or historical periods.

“I agree that the brio-creating strategy is very energizing,” said English Professor Lawrence Buell. “But I can see that there could be a problem if we had to depend on it to the last as a form of historiography.”

While he was reading it, Buell said, the book felt as if it “started the universe anew in every chapter.”

But Marcus contended that if the book does not have a historical skeleton, it doesn’t need one. “What it is in pursuit of is a heart,” he said. “That might tell us a lot about where the country is and where it needs to go.”

—Staff writer Alex M. McLeese can be reached at amcleese@fas.harvard.edu.