Van Wyck Brooks and the American Character

I have been working my way through three volumes of Van Wyck Brook's quintilogy on American literary history, The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (1936), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915 (1940); and The World of Washington Irving (1944); all found in our local used bookstore. Brooks was once a well-known name among the educated class, a mentor and intellectual compatriot of Lewis Mumford, and a leading literary critic for nearly a half-century. His writing is among the most idiosyncratic I have encountered, lyrical and emotional, overflowing with the most minute observations, yet unanchored by any but the flimsiest organization.

His deep love of New England and in particular the transcendentalist authors leaves me largely an interested observer of his work and style, though hardly an adherent. But he wrote in an era when liberalism and conservatism were not nearly as ideologically opposed as they now are, and when the fine craftsmanship of a deeply-read mind could appeal to those on either side of the ideological divide.

I wrote a brief piece on his elegiac description of "the best Boston and Cambridge type" of personality from the early 19th century, and how so very far from that idealized type we have traveled to our world today of crude, ignorant, and unrestrained public personages. You can find it here.