Making Americans: An Essay on Individualism and Money

Drawing on the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, John Dewey, and Henry James, an essay on individualism discusses how these famous "individualists" responded to the economic realities of capitalism. By the author of The American Henry James.

This densely erudite volume examines writers who have grappled with American culture by preaching individual transformation rather than social change. Anderson ( The American Henry James ) begins with Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, showing how their views conflicted with those of the more socially oriented Hawthorne and suggesting that Melville offered a middle ground. John Dewey, he writes, attempted to unite Emersonian individuals as "the bearers of civilization," while Henry James's view of selfhood, which American intellectuals embraced in the 1950s, merely allowed the individual to escape from communal life, and "has not cracked the money firmament under which we walk." Anderson's supposition that in America, in contrast to Europe, money is "the containing framework of our culture" deserves more exposition. He does not attempt explicitly to link his theme to political life until late in the book, when he suggests that those who turned to psychoanalysis, embraced Communism or dropped out of society like the Beats were as deeply influenced by ideas of radical individualism as their 19th-century forebears had been.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this ambitious essay, noted cultural critic Anderson ( The Imperial Self, Knopf, 1971. o.p.) explores the intimate connection between two peculiarly American traits: individualism and capitalism. The author argues that the desire to create and possess the self in America arose in the late 19th century as a response to the loss of self experienced in a society dominated by the values of industrial capitalism. Anderson traces this thesis through the writings of Emerson and Whitman, Melville and Henry James, Diana Trilling and Allen Ginsberg, to demonstrate that this quest for self-identity is ambiguous because it requires isolation of the self from a community of others and is expressed largely in the language of the marketplace. Anderson's essay, which recalls the best cultural criticism of the Fifties, deserves to be read along with Lionel Trilling's Beyond Culture (HBJ, 1965; 1978, reprint) and The Opposing Self (HBJ, 1955; 1978, reprint) as well as the writings of Richard Poirier ( The Renewal of Literature , LJ 3/1/87). Highly recommended.
- Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.