Plunged into Flux and Ferment

"Men Writing in the Early Republic" by David Leverenz is one of the most interesting articles I have read in awhile.  Maybe I should say, "thought provoking"?  I tend to think about the perspective of women writers-- out of a habit I have developed in the last few years.  The ideas that early American male writers were writing as women, struggling with ideas of masculinity in marriage and fatherhood (and the relationship between fatherhood and authorship) is very different from what I usually consider in literary criticism.  Though I have studied the immortality of authorship-- which is like parenthood in a way-- it is usually from the perspective of masculine attempts to create life in the way women can create life, or in relation to "man's" desire for a legacy (related to ego).  Thinking of the American male author as creating identity and creating a new meaning of authorship in conjunction with the financial instability of authorship offers a new way to look at early American male psychology.  Though I am not sure that Leverenz's analysis of  early American male writers is completely convincing (were authors really "plunged . . . into flux and ferment" (356)?  Torn between making money and writing? Or tormented by not marrying and procreating?) as an eighteenth century British literature major, the very different American perspective on authorship is fascinating.  It seems logical that American writers who had to make their living by writing would struggle with identity considering the very different American perspective with its "aversion to everything that is not practical, operative, and thorough-going" ( Longfellow in Leverenz 359) as well as lingering ideas of aristocracy and who "ought" to write and who needs to write for money. 

This essay helped to pull together everything we have been discussing in class with the emerging early American print culture.  By looking at American manhood and how it is both an "obstacle and an asset" (360) to authors, the way the American male author-identity developed shows a parallel to the development of American identity.  The nation and the male author were both responding to the context of the new Republic, but the response is deeper than rebellion against British traditions, book production, copyright, finances, and social commentary.  To be an author in early American print was to "write about manly individualism . . . by incorporating its underlying flux of moods, fears, and resilience" (363). 

Though I feel I still do not fully grasp Leverenz's points, I feel he has brought up a subject that bears more thought, and which may be the key to understanding a much more complex view of authorship than I had from our other readings this semester.  Perhaps it is my modern fascination with identity formation, but this article points towards a nagging sensation that there is much more involved in American authorship than selling books and social commentary or even social activism.  However, I still do not fully understand the significance of this approach or my realizations, so this nagging feeling will have to just keep nagging.  

A hint about pirates:

What is a pirate's favorite letter of the alphabet?

RRRRRRR!