| A review of Jay Parini's Promised Land |
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"Any list like Parini has made will be scrutinized"Turned PagesBy Ken Reynolds 
Ken Reynolds
Any list like Parini has made will be scrutinized, and disputes over which books are included and excluded will tend to dominate discussions of his book. Parini acknowledges that reality, and states upfront that his is not a "great books" list; nor were the books chosen for their literary quality. His list is a personal choice of works "that played a role in shaping the nation's idea of itself or that consolidated and defined a major trend." As if to conciliate dissenters — he appends a list of one hundred other influential books. The books Parini selected for discussion are: Of Plymouth Plantation, The Federalists Papers, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, The Souls of Black Folk, The Promised Land, How To Win friends and Influence People, The Common sense Book of Baby and Child Care, On the Road, and The Feminine Mystique. Parini is a professor of English at Middlebury College. In addition to six novels and five books of poetry he has published biographies of Robert Frost, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. Parini's decision to write Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America set out a difficult and thankless task. He discusses the books in chronological order, gives each one a chapter and divides the chapters into four logical and easy to follow parts. Unfortunately the finished product left me feeling that he never fully committed to some of his choices.
Readers who want to know why and how the books on his list changed America will be disappointed. Rather than confining his observations to the titles on his list, Parini too often includes other work by the same author, and far too often works by other authors. There is more than ample information about books that followed his thirteen books and the connection often is not readily observable. Promised Land is more literary critique than history. In his summary of Uncle Tom's Cabin he writes "... a novel that never fails to move swiftly from vivid scene to scene. Stowe's language is clear and fresh throughout, as readable today as it must have been when it appeared in serial form." His observations about the writing are based on modern, not contemporary, values. In the chapter on Huckleberry Finn — before he credits Mark Twain with putting muscle on the American language and adding a pithy vernacular to our literary heritage — Parini says, "Twain was doubtless crude at times, and one sees elements of sexism and racism in his work that rankle, and should." It is as unwise to judge a book by its title as by its cover. Equivocation is not what I expected, but it is rampant in Thirteen Books That Changed America. Parini is successful in describing the changes effected by: Of Plymouth Plantation, The Federalists Papers, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Souls of Black Folk, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Dr. Spock's book of baby and child care. He falls short with the remaining titles. In Walden, Thoreau asks: "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?" Parini answers: "How many indeed? And how many of those would count Walden as this book? A fair number of them, I would guess." Guess? |
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