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evan_streeby 's review for:
My three stars may seem a bit unfair. As a study of America’s unique flavor of pastoralism, this book could hardly do better. It is packed with information that helps understand our literary and cultural traditions, and the conclusions Marx reaches are, I think, largely correct.
My primary criticism concerns my, some might foolishly call “anachronistic”, belief that a book focusing on Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian idealism for seventy pages should at least spare a passing thought to the obvious contradiction evident in American society from day one that our “prelapsarian home” already had a gaping hole. That any pastoral dreams were contingent upon the enslavement of others seems like it would be ripe for analyzing, and I think this work is lesser for not having done so.
If you’re interested in the ways literature has influenced the American ideal, and vice-versa, including Shakespearean works, then this is your book! I just wish more had been said
My primary criticism concerns my, some might foolishly call “anachronistic”, belief that a book focusing on Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian idealism for seventy pages should at least spare a passing thought to the obvious contradiction evident in American society from day one that our “prelapsarian home” already had a gaping hole. That any pastoral dreams were contingent upon the enslavement of others seems like it would be ripe for analyzing, and I think this work is lesser for not having done so.
If you’re interested in the ways literature has influenced the American ideal, and vice-versa, including Shakespearean works, then this is your book! I just wish more had been said