The Bohemians: Mark Twain And The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a thin book that purports to describe how four writers -- two of whom you have probably never heard of -- "reinvented American literature" in the 1860s. Actually, it's a love letter to the author's admirable home town, San Francisco. Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith are the 19th century writers you may not know. Mark Twain and Bret Harte are the others. The profiles are entertaining -- the author's description of a catered dinner, hosted by William Dean Howells, with Bret Harte as the guest of honor and Henry James, Henry Adams, and a senescent Ralph Waldo Emerson all in attendance is worth the price of admission -- but the critical analysis is low cal. “The Western experience,” Joan Didion said of the American West in her review of Mailer’s _The Executioner’s Song, “a nihilism antithetical not only to literature but to most other forms of human endeavor, a dread so close to zero that human voices fadeout, trail off, like skywriting.” It was a point that she would repeat, in many variations, throughout her career. It was a point many would insist upon, both before her and after her: The West was a blank canvas, empty, waiting to be created. Ambrose Bierce and George Sterling and Jack London created the idea of California (and the West) in the first decades of the 20th century. No, it was Carey Mcwilliams as well Kenneth Rexroth and those of the San Francisco Renaissance who did so in the 1930s and 1940s. Nuh-uh. It was the beats in San Francisco and Chandler in LA. The West is constantly reinvented, and each invention is said to be ex nihilo.Ben Tarnoff’s looks at one of the earliest groups to claim that they invented the Californian—Western—frontier—_American_—style. And it is a fascinating book, as smooth as butter on a griddle.Tarnoff tells the story Mark Twain, Brett Harte, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles Warren Stoddard from the beginning of the Civil War until the early 1880s (with an epilogue that takes each character to their death). All met in San Francisco and were marked by their Western experience. Writers, they challenged the ethicism dominant in American literature, tried to capture regional dialects, tell stories of real people, and used irony and parody to puncture American hypocrisy. These were the preamble to a more full-blown realism championed by William Dean Howells.Twain is the center of the story, as is appropriate, given his emergence as America’s most influential writer. Coolbrith gets the least amount of attention—not surprising given that her output is the least well known (except among students of California history), her role as personal as literary, helping to keep the various personalities together: Twain and Harte, especially, battled each other, Harte receiving early acclaim before flaming out; Stoddard battled his own homosexuality until he found release in Hawaii and support from (who else?) Whitman, though his literary output, too, was limited.Tarnoff does not break new ground, but that doesn’t really seem to be his point. He wants to tell a good story, which he does, covering material others have, but lightly and smoothly. One does not have to wade through Twain’s ponderous autobiography (only recently published in complete form for good reason—as Tarnoff makes clear, Twain needed a good editor, and he didn’t have one for the autobiography) understand the dynamic among these neophytes, and the forces that led them to devote themselves completely to literature or to other pursuits.The four authors differed in many ways. Twain was considered a bumpkin early on, and his work light, because it was humorous. Harte retained something of the moralist, but in a different direction—he attacked racism and racially-biased murder—was a fop, and upheld a more standard form of literature, even as he abandoned the Christian piety that underwrote it. Coolbrith also challenged norms, especially the straight-jacket into which women of the time were forced into. Stoddard worked to find his voice, first following Harte and Coolbrith’s lead, finally adopting a slightly ironic voice that also hinted (strongly) at his own sexual proclivities.These Western writers, sure that they were for once channeling the true experience of the west—a point that Tarnoff seems to want to make, even as he is forced to admit that even at the time there were other writers, offering a different, more sentimental and Romantic perspective—formed the bedrock of later literary experiments. They were—with the exception of Coolbrith—championed by literary leaders of the east, including Howells. (Harte, though, failed in his attempt to become an Eastern literary light.)Tarnoff is often too given to melodrama, making every encounter the most important, every innovation the key one, every frontier the site of reinvention—echoing Didion, even as he places the nihilism earlier in time. But these are minor foibles. This book would make a great beach read, the cast of characters and era familiar, but perspective off-centered enough to make it all seem new. Really well done.
What do You think about The Bohemians: Mark Twain And The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature (2014)?
Purportedly about 4 writers, it is mainly written about Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
—Chevaun
