1925: Poetry holds a small but important place in American literary culture. "He was the typical sacrifice to the mob," Williams concludes, "in a great many ways thoroughly disappointing.". Munson praises the book's prose "that puts muscle into its stride" and "superb wordings." The first woman we see in this book is Freydis, Eric the Red's daughter, who kills the women her husband will not kill. “There was something about Prohibition that went against the American grain,” a high school history teacher once said, quite innocent of her pun on this phrase, which means contrary to expectations, custom, or common sense. In "Voyage of the Mayflower" Williams discusses only those portions of Bradford's voluminous Of Plymouth Plantation which are reprinted in the leaflets under the title "Voyage of the Mayflower," while in "The Founding of Quebec," Williams' reading of Champlain is based entirely upon the passage from his lengthy relations that the leaflets print under the title "The Founding of Quebec." It seems silly to assign stars to these sorts of books—these Important Monuments of Culture—as though my or anyone's assessment that "it was amazing" has any meaning. Hard to comprehend how the author, a poet, and, incidentally, a physician,could have sustained such polarizing emotions. Everyone who wonders what it means to be "American", This is a difficult to read and powerful book. America was, to them, a savage land originally populated by primitive people and now populated by greedy businessmen. (Probably the most bohemian city in the United States in the early twentieth century was New Orleans, but it never became an important artistic center for anything except music.) (Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter is the best-known depiction of this.). In the chapter "The Virtue of History," Aaron Burr is the main character. Guimond, James, The Art of William Carlos Williams: A Discovery and Possession of America, University of Illinois Press, 1968. Williams had no extensive knowledge of American historical documents prior to writing his book. He arrives in Florida, only to be killed by an Indian's arrow. However, this is not to say that he is necessarily an admirable man. Williams sees the Puritans' legacy as wholly malignant. Williams makes Adams the living symbol of what is wrong with academic historians, claiming that "He has seen the time too near." We have here an American History lesson book about 200 pages from an American/New Jersey doctor. The record shows that she used her witchcraft to hinder witnesses from testifying against her. With this strategy foregrounded, Williams's book becomes a self-conscious example of Hayden White's observation that "history … is never history of, it is always also history for." A Spanish explorer and adventurer who settled in Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de Leon was the archetype of the greedy, foolish Spanish explorer. This chapter focuses on Daniel Boone, the pioneer who was the "great voluptuary born to the American settlements against the niggardliness of the Puritan tradition." "Rather the ice than their way." letter to Franklin about the absurdly disastrous events which beset his naval operations off the English coast during the Revolutionary War. I wanted nothing to get between me and what they themselves had recorded"—is not entirely consistent with his practice. That is, the qualities by which Williams links and contrasts these key figures are generated aesthetically by the book's network of images and symbols, rather than concretely by recourse to information which might in even the most rudimentary of ways be termed historical. From the India Christiana, a tract which Mather wrote for the ostensible purpose of converting the Indians to Christianity, Williams cites Mather's view of the Indians as "men Satan had whished away (via Asia)" at "the advent of the gospel." None of these could be mistaken for the ideal retiring, submissive, holy woman the Puritans sought to raise. It lacks scale.". Observations on earliest explorers are perhaps the most striking as they deftly weave together Williams' berserk commentary and lengthy selections from original sources such as the journal of Columbus. He was well aware that In the American Grain would serve him best if it would create the impression that he knew more about American history than he did, and he never let on to just how he came by his materials. This is the interest I see. Such a sexualized explanation of American history could be considered quite hostile to Puritan ideology. Where In the American Grain is a groundbreaking book is in its ambitions. Rather, he must fight it. I'll remember a few unique perspectives that Williams offers- whether it be Washington, the Salem witch trials or even earlier history. Williams self-consciously juggles these roles of student and teacher in his discussion with Valery Larbaud, posing himself alternately as a crude, untutored block and a knowing teacher of things American. And, of course, too impatient to explain the logical props on which his arguments stand, which is fine, since its style which is almost always half his point. 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