Myth Building and Cultural Politics in W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe
The mythic vision of America and its national pastime which W. P. Kinsella constructed in Shoeless Joe ([1982] 1991) has extended into millions of American imaginations, both in the form of the novel and its film adap- tation, Field of Dreams (1989).1 Kinsella built the myth, and people came to live it. Perhaps literary critic Neil Randall best articulates the popular response to Shoeless Joe when he calls it a "moral book" which "makes us come away in the end feeling 'pretty damn good about being alive for the rest of the day"' (1987, 181). But when we read beyond what Randall calls "fantasy and the humor of fellow-feeling," and explore the context of the novel's morality, an unsettling portrait of America emerges (1987, 173). In this essay, I will argue that Kinsella engenders a culturally conservative world, which reflects the historical circumstances of the 1980s and repro- duces the ideology of Ronald Reagan's presidency. By discussing the text within the framework of Reagan's America and the social ...
Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling
In his essay on Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Thomas Carlyle writes of a humor that manifests itself in smile rather than laughter. "Richter is a man of mirth," says Carlyle, whose humor is "capricious . . . quaint . . . [and] heartfelt" (15). The three adjectives represent for Carlyle the essence of what he terms "true humor" because they suggest Richter's enormous respect for humanity. "True humor," he goes on to say, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper" (17). These smiles are not Hobbesian smirks of superiority1 but genuine signs of compassion for, sympathy toward, and empathy with the object of the humor. Carlyle further provides a direct link between humor and both pathos and nobility; the link is the smile of the caring man. For Carlyle, this smile is one of "fellow-feeling":
Philip Roth’s Great Books: A Reading of The Human Stain
Philip Roth belongs to the first generation of American novelists for whom a university education in the liberal arts was the norm. This essay charts Roth’s developing acquaintance with classical literature, the starting point for Great Books courses in the 1950s, and the implications for his fiction of his understanding of the difference in scope and purpose between the two representative classical genres. It focuses on The Human Stain (2000), the novel in which he reflects most directly upon what tragedy and epic once did, and what might happen to novels if they became more like the one or the other.