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“Young America” and the Anti- Emersonian Western John Williams’s Butcher’s Crossing Anthony Hutchison In October 1870 Bret Harte published a review of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s latest essay collection Society and Solitude in Overland Monthly, the lively new San Francisco- based literary magazine already being lauded in the East for its “Far Western fl avor” and “Pacifi c freshness” (qtd. in Tarnoff 159). Overall, Harte was content to defer to the celebrated “Sage of Concord,” eff ectively using the occasion to endorse the idea of Emerson as an authentically national fi gure wholly worthy of the cultural esteem bestowed upon him by his fellow American citizens. “Th ere remains to Mr. Emerson, we think,” the piece concludes, “the praise of doing more than any other American thinker to voice the best philosophic conclusions of American life and experience” (387). Harte’s forerunning judgment nonetheless sounded a few more equivocal notes. Notably, given his own relatively recent success producing fi ction depicting the pioneer mining communities of California, Harte took issue with Emerson’s portrayal of the American West. Th is was presented in the “Civilization” chapter of Society and Solitude where the region is interpreted as a benign domain in which powerful
Western American Literature – The Western Literature Association
Published: Nov 23, 2020
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