The opening part of a three part book series, and what feels like was written initially with this book only in mind, this cultural history by Richard Slotkin takes on the notion of “myth making” in American history and literature. The book was published in the early 1970s, so it predates (and perhaps prefigures) a few seminal post-modernist texts like Lyotard’s Postmodernism, so the terminology some times feels a little lacking. What is not lacking is the thoroughness of the reading and the thoroughness of the evidence and argumentation.
Beginning with the earliest writings of the European colonizers writing in English, Slotkin moves to define his thesis in the early sections. He writes: “The mythology of a nation is the intelligible mask of that enigma called the ‘national character.’ Through myth the psychology and world view of our cultural ancestors are transmitted to modern descendants, in such a way and with such power that our perception of contemporary reality and our ability to function in the world are directly, often tragically affected.” Thinking of this book as historical argument, one of the important factors moving forward to is to consider that for the most part he’s explaining what is. One recurring theme of a lot of American Studies texts is looking for cultural parallels in events and language hundreds of years apart in time. So you might link Ahab with American military leadership in Vietnam, or even more succinctly, the use of the phrase “in country” during Vietnam links historically to the extermination of Native Americans during the “winning of the West”. The mythological aspects of this show up in the ways in which early character moments in American identity were linked, caused, or resulted from the literature and writing that occurred alongside.
He continues: “American attitudes toward the idea of a national mythology have been peculiarly ambivalent.” There’s a contradictory impulse in a lot of American culture between something being brand new, fresh, and exceptional, as well as something hearkening back toward a set of origins that prescribe actions in the contemporary. The ideas of newness and regeneration are often at odds with tradition and history, and not necessarily as competing ideas among rivals, but as competing within the same people, thinking, or texts.
So this book cannot be adequately summed up, but it’s an extremely thoughtful and engaging history, and while there is an overall set of ideas, each chapter is a separate text, often long and dense, and very interesting. It’s a book that both draws on books you know and gives you books to put on your list. And as someone who has read a lot of the book he investigates, you’re also saved from some of the worst dross the country has produced.
