Literature, American

John Ashbery says that reality includes our imperfect perception of it, and his poems are demonstrations of the indirect "ways" in which reality comes at him. With a cursory reading of Ashbery's poetry, it seems to mirror the modern state of chaos and unconnectedness, but on subsequent readings, after the anxiety of feeling lost has subsided, many connections begin to surface. His ideas on uncertainty and creativity cross disciplinary boundaries in such fields as science, philosophy, mathematics, psychology, history, and religion. Rather than recounting his own experiences in his poetry, he uses abstract language to describe the manner in which he experiences reality, thereby making the experience available for all readers. Major unifying motifs in his poetry are (1) the amalgamation of dualities; (2) the close attention we must pay to learn from the numerous oblique and incomplete ways that knowledge comes to us; and (3) the identification of ourselves through others. Since we never complete our accumulation of knowledge about the world and ourselves, we are perpetually revising, questioning, and continuing our conversation with humanity.

Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, is a well
organized and intricately detailed work which uses as its
basic metaphor the middle poem of the Divine Comedy by
Dante Al ighieri. Thematically, structurally, and
symbolically, Fitzgerald's novel parallels Dante's poem,
incorporating the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the
Mirrors of Narcissus motif, Dante's idea of Amore, and the
symbolic figure of Beatrice. Critics have overlooked Dante
as a source for Fitzgerald's work and therefore have not
adequately explained the thematic concerns of this novel.

John Barth's Sabbatical: A Romance parodies both Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and the genre of
sea fiction. Through careful attention to the sea fiction
tradition, its metaphors of sea, ship, and voyage as
microcosm, Barth examines the function of myth in life.
Parallels in form, structure, content, and theme establish
the use of contemporary anxieties as symbols for the universal
forces opposing humanity. Sabbatical illustrates the
correlated dualities of the mundane and fantastic, reality
and the imagination, and society and the individual.
Allusions to Poe, and to Pym, substantiate this re generation
of myth. Both wandering hero myths apply the fantastic, the
doppelganger, and gothic romance in elevating the artist to
immortality throu g h the narrator's act of articulation. The
voyage of the protagonists is illustrative of their passage
through life. Therefore, Barth's cyclic regeneration
attempts to explore the convergence of polarities inherent in
all literature.

The existential philosophy of the post-war period is reflected in Shirley Jackson's last novels. The Sundial mirrors the anguish and intellectual alienation of a family trying to come to terms with the annihilation of their world. The Hunting of Hill House deals with the forlornness and emotional alienation that result from the discovery that man is completely alone because there is no God. We Have Always Lived in a Castle is concerned with the psychological alienation and despair that arise from the realization that the potential for happiness is limited by man's self-destructive tendencies. Examined together, these novels present an existential viewpoint that corresponds to the turmoil of the post-war world.

Santayana's thought underlies much of Eliot's poetry. Both Eliot and
Santayana were skeptics, and Eliot's skepticism is documented in the
quartets, a work that is a personal journal of his search for faith.
That search was to be an unsuccessful one, for Eliot realized the impossibility
of union with the Absolute. The symbolism of the rosegarden,
the bedded axle-tree, the still point, and the clematis, when
analyzed, demonstrates Eliot's concept of a clockwork universe, a universe
that is unknowing and uncaring. Eliot reaches that concept,
basically, because of Santayana's influence.

In the years following World War I, William Faulkner
implied to his family and acquaintances that he had been a
pilot in the RAF. Some people even thought that he had flown
combat missions in France and had been wounded. He maintained
this fictitious persona throughout his life, and it was
accepted by most scholars and biographers. Several of
Faulkner's early works featured aviators as central characters,
and he treated them as romanticized, tragic heroes as
he did Confederate cavalry officers. Pylon, which was written
after he had actually started flying, reflects an awareness
of the psychology of flying not seen in his earlier works.
Faulkner's "wounded pilot" persona was only one facet of his
imaginative and creative personality, but knowledge of this
persona is necessary to the understanding of the man and thus
his art.

The Julia character, as depicted in the essay in Pentimento,
provides a character model for Lillian Hellman's plays.
Julia's strength of personal responsibility provides Hellman
a measure by which her characters succeed or fail, a
criterion upon which personal worth is judged. Julia's
strength, compassion, and personal responsibility are
depicted in varying degrees in the characters created in
Watch on the Rhine, The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes,
Another Part of the Forest, The Searching Wind, and The
Autumn Garden. As reflected in the plays, Julia is
Hellman's model, her ideal; she is the vehicle for Hellman's
strong personal and social statements.

Gardner's use of unreliable and often intrusive narrative
voices is a structural key to the world view presented
in his novels. All the narrators, whether they be
involved central characters or intrusive third-person
voices, journey toward knowledge and affirmation in
art. In The Wreckage of Ag'athon, the aged seer is
driven by the chaos he cannot untangle to create his
own rationale. Grendel embraces a nihilistic world
view until the monster is finally lifted to a limited
sort of vision as a shaper of experience. The voice
of The Sunlight Dialogues is limited omniscient, yet
the narrator intrudes, reminding the reader that he is
dependent upon an involved point of view. In the
dream-narrative of Jason and Medeia, perhaps the best
utilization of an involved, fallible narrator, the
journey toward affirmative vision balongs more to the
narrator than the hero.

Adolescents play an integral role in Carson McCullers' work, particularly
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, and
Clock Without Hands. In these novels the characterizations of Mick,
Frankie, Jester, and Sherman are drawn with an intuitive awareness
of principles of adolescent psychology. McCullers focuses on the
expectations, uncertainties, and contradictions of the adolescent
years. However, her novels are much more than stories of troubled
teens. Largely because of their adolescent characteristics, Nick,
Frankie, Jester, and Sherman serve as fitting symbolic vehicles for
McCullers' exploration of such ageless themes as the search for self
and the search for love.

A dominating principle in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
is that of mutability - the belief that the universe does and
should exist in a process of constant change, His use of the
seasonal cycles integrates that process in both their
physical appearance and as states of imaginative perception
for the poet. Stevens draws a deeply thematic analogy
between the relationship of imagination and reality and the
flowering and unveiling of the physical world. nis poetics
alternate from the first hint of string with its hope of
new fictions to the wintry bareness of perceiving things
exactly as they are. In so doing, the poet's constantly
altering perceptions affect each season, bringing new
responses and transformations to the natural world. In
realizing that the poet discovers his own analogies and
resemblances in the desired changes of weather and seasons,
the reader is rewarded with a deeper and at once more
crystallizing knowledge of his work.