In the American Grain
"In the American Grain" is a seminal work by William Carlos Williams that challenges traditional narratives of American history by presenting a collection of subjective literary histories. The book's unique approach diverges from the conventional understanding of history as a linear, organized narrative, offering instead a multifaceted exploration of key figures, events, and ideals that have shaped the American experience. It spans a range of topics, starting with the European discovery of America and progressing through significant historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln.
Williams employs a variety of narrative styles, including first-person narratives and fictionalized journal entries, which provide a personal lens through which readers can engage with historical content. Initially met with criticism upon its release, the work has gained recognition over time, appreciated for its innovative literary form and its cultural insights. Scholars have since revisited the text, examining its implications for understanding American identity and history. Ultimately, "In the American Grain" serves as a modernist reflection on the complexities of the American character, aiming to evoke a sense of pleasure in earthly realities while encouraging readers to rethink established historical narratives.
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Subject Terms
In the American Grain
Identification: A collection of twenty-one prose essays about American history
Author: William Carlos Williams
Date: 1925
Considered the most important of Williams’s early works, In the American Grain countered the conventional idea that history is an organized construction based on only one version of a person or story. With its unusual presentation style, the book had a major impact on the literary form as well as historical and cultural understandings of what it means to be American.
William Carlos Williams’s first commercially published volume, In the American Grain, was critically disparaged in its first year of publication and quickly cast aside by the publisher as a result. Only D. H. Lawrence defended Williams’s attempts to present history in a different way. Fifteen years after its original publication, the book was brought back to literary attention by a new set of critics who saw it more objectively. In the decades following its resurgence in academic study, its chapters have received both individual and collective attention from experts in literary, historical, and cultural areas of study.
In the American Grain is a collection of subjective literary histories that depict American figures, events, and ideals. Williams’s reliance on the actual words of many of his sources provides a deep and creative insight into the people, places, and themes depicted, while his method of presentation conveys a sense of his own personal vision as seen in his critically controversial beliefs about his topics. His viewpoint is consistently positive as he makes an effort to encourage readers to discover pleasure in earthly realities.
The first few essays consider issues surrounding the European discovery and exploration of America by figures such as Leif Ericson, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, Juan Ponce de Leon, and Samuel de Champlain. The essays then progress chronologically through significant American topics, including the Mayflower, Reverend Cotton Mather, pioneer Daniel Boone, Revolutionary War hero George Washington, printer Benjamin Franklin, and slavery, ending with poet Edgar Allan Poe and President Abraham Lincoln. Williams’s prose varies in form, sometimes appearing as a first-person narrative, sometimes a fictionalized journal entry, and sometimes a third-person commentary.
Impact
In the American Grain is significant for its literary characteristics as well as its study of history. Williams experiments narratively and linguistically with key pieces of American history and culture, which, though problematic to some readers, nevertheless celebrate the American character while seeking new ways of understanding it. Located firmly in the modernist tradition of the 1920s, the essays show gratitude to the American past while breaking away from established views of politics, social issues, and religion.
Bibliography
Conrad, Bryce. Refiguring America: A Study of William Carlos Williams’ “In the American Grain.” Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Lowney, John. The American Avant-Garde Tradition: William Carlos Williams, Postmodern Poetry, and the Politics of Cultural Memory. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1997.
Pritchard, William H. Lives of the Modern Poets. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.