I might acknowledge that hauling the cumbersome American Literature anthology was advantageous for those of us in need of a little pre-spring break muscle toning. Although Whitman who said, "I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the sound terms," might have applauded our anthology, democratically allotting each of the artists the same generic tissue-like paper with the same scrawny text, I am glad to be done with it. Missing from its pages, are the visual images and material objects that bring the individual writers and the world that prompted their texts to life. The ENAM 312/712 class web site has enhanced our understanding of the texts we have read by introducing the material objects of popular culture as a proscenium for each work. Miles Orvell's The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture 1880-1940 comes at American literature through the same back door. Orvell looks to the major shifts in material culture and the arts starting in the late nineteenth century to explain parallel changes in American literary themes and form. Exploring the dramatic shifts in technology and explosion of material goods, Orvell argues that the literature during these decades reflects a consistent tension between imitating pre-existing forms, either inherited from Europe or mass-produced by a machine and a new passion for "the real thing" - the authentic or original possession or experience.

Orvell begins, conveniently for the purposes of our course, with a chapter on Whitman. As the first author of his day to embrace the changing conditions of modern life in his work, Whitman used free-verse catalogue - a series of concrete, single images of people, things, or places - to capture the energy and innovation of the city. He cites Whitman's work as the literary equivalent to the introduction of the camera in the 1840s, arguing that it was the invention of the camera that provided the foundation for Whitman's way of looking at the world. While Whitman encouraged readers to engage in "contact with real things themselves," he himself spent hours perusing daguerreotype galleries in Manhattan saying, "You will see more life there - more variety, more human nature," as he studied the pictures. I enjoyed the chapter on Whitman because while I had always imagined Whitman as a rebel moving against the tide of popular culture, Orvell demonstrates how his work shows an immersion in the trends of his day. Whitman's work was controversial because it called for the artist to assimilate the realities of the city as viewed through the naked eye, rather than adjusting its picture to appease the expectations of a so-called elite culture.

Orvell also addresses the distinction between Realists (such as Twain and James) and those who told reality as their story (Dreiser and Crane). The industrialization of the late nineteenth century made it possible for elite objects and culture to be imitated, mass produced, and distributed among the middle class. Although this democratized the marketplace making expensive items more readily available, it also introduced Americans to the possibility of fraud. For the first time someone could purchase a couch that looked authentically European and find that the upholstery was not hand sewn and a wood graining surface had been painted over an artificial material. As people began to question the authenticity of the world around them, photo-journalism became increasingly popular, promising to represent the objective perspective and tell the "truth." While James appreciated the "deceptive atmosphere of art" and saw the artist as one who had, "the control of the angle in depicting a scene visually, the control of what the reader knows at any given moment, all to achieve a calculated effect," Dreiser wrote photographically by describing pictures of "real life" synthesized through his mind. While Twain's art lay in his ability to create an illusion from inside a studio, Crane fused art with his own personal experiences - such as being wrecked in a boat - to create the final narrative. As with Whitman's work, Orvell explains how both Crane and Dreiser's works were symptomatic of the larger social and industrial changes.

Following this pattern with American literature through William Carlos Williams' poetry, The Real Thing complements the ENAM 312/712 curriculum by showing how the "things" in our class' isolated time period helped mold the literature of the day. Grounding the writers of a time period in their material surroundings makes them more accessible. Orvell dismantles the notion that the writers on our syllabus were isolated inspired men who thought great things by showing each author's work as a telling of their own physical world. His points would be useful in convincing my future high school students that their writing about the material culture and their own personal experience is worth writing about, that they have something valuable to say.

Unfortunately, Orvell's reading of the time period is limited by his neglect to include any of the non-white or female authors on our syllabus (Dickinson, Chestnutt, Chopin, and Gilman), while thoroughly addressing including all of the white males authors on our syllabus during the prescribed years. I question whether his thesis about the relationship between authenticity and imitation in material culture and literature would hold weight with the writing of Dickinson or Chestnutt, writers marginalized by the common material culture. Although Orvell's argument might only hold true for the selected demographic group he includes in his book, I enjoyed following the connections he made between physical trends in photography and technology and the form and themes of the authors. In spite of the hole in Orvell's approach, I would recommend The Real Thing for the tangibility it brings to the literature we are reading.