Facts, Fables, and Footnotes for the Week of January 15, 2023

Click here to read this email in your browser.

Ghost Music

 

THIS WEEK IN
 
 
This Week in Literary History
 
 
JANUARY 15 — JANUARY 21
first American novel

The first American novel is published.

On January 21, 1789, Boston publisher Isaiah Thomas and Company published what is generally considered to be the first American novel: 24-year-old William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, which sold (albeit badly) for the price of 9 shillings.

 

It is the classic story of boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy and girl find out they’re siblings on their wedding day, girl promptly dies of consumption, boy eventually shoots himself while clutching a copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther to his breast. You know the tale. 

 

“The Power of Sympathy is not, as might be expected, a feeble echo or slavish imitation of a single British novel; it reflects a number of literary influences,” wrote William S. Kable in a 1969 introduction to the text. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, with which it shares its epistolary form, is the most obvious influence, but Kable also detects the impact of Laurence Sterne and Goethe, along with “allusions to La Rochefoucault and St. Evremond; to Swift, Addison, Gay, Shakespeare, and Lord Chesterfield; to Noah Webster, Joel Barlow, and Timothy Dwight.”

 

Okay—but is it any good? “The richness of literary allusion in The Power of Sympathy shows that it is the product of a sophisticated reader,” writes Kable, “but the novel is obviously the work of an unsophisticated writer. In important matters of plotting and characterization as well as in details of diction and grammar, Brown’s clumsiness is all too apparent. The variety of resources at his command contained the potential for a fine novel, but the ‘thinness of realization’ meant that his finished product fell far short of greatness.”

 

Alas. “Still, Sympathy fascinates because it’s so purely the product of a historical moment,” wrote Dan Piepenbring in The Paris Review. “In 1789, literacy was on the rise and the business of publishing, especially newspaper publishing, was coming into its own. Letter writing was increasingly popular—the medium of the written word felt more democratic than ever before. The country was new and hungry for stories about itself; what we think of as the American character had yet to be minted. Beneath Sympathy’s many layers of mawkishness, there are some uniquely American details—lavish descriptions of the Rhode Island (‘Rhodeisland’) greenery, for instance, and a surprisingly frank discussion of the South’s culture of slavery.”

 

And after all, it was only a place to start. 

 
 

SPONSORED BY GROVE PRESS

 

A gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery

Ghost Music

From the author of the “original and electric” Braised Pork (Time), An Yu’s enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musician.

Buy Now
 
 
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
10 Debut Novels Nobody Reads Anymore—But Should

10 Debut Novels Nobody Reads Anymore—But Should

American Literature is a History of the Nation’s Libraries

American Literature is a History of the Nation’s Libraries

How a Group of Young Writers and Poets Revolutionized 18th-Century Literature

How a Group of Young Writers and Poets Revolutionized 18th-Century Literature

 

BUT ACTUALLY

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”

—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
 
 

In other (old)

news this week

Victor Hugo finishes writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame (January 15, 1831) • The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes—a “sloppy, inconsistent, baffling, perfect” novel—is published in Madrid (January 16, 1605) • Anton Chekhov’s last play, The Cherry Orchard, premieres at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski (January 17, 1904) • Notable literary jerk Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is published in the US (January 17, 1964) • Isaac Asimov’s first full-length novel, Pebble in the Sky, is published by Doubleday (January 19, 1950) • Robert Frost recites his poem “The Greatest Gift” from memory at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy; it was the first time a poet had ever read at an inauguration (January 20, 1961) • Arthur Miller’s The Crucible opens on Broadway (January 22, 1953)

 
 
LIT HUB’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023

LIT HUB’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023

THESE ARE THE BESTSELLING BOOKS OF 2022.

THESE ARE THE BESTSELLING BOOKS OF 2022

GLIMPSES INTO KAFKA’S WORKSHOP

“WHAT EXCUSE DO I HAVE FOR HAVING WRITTEN NOTHING YET TODAY? NONE.” GLIMPSES INTO KAFKA’S WORKSHOP

 

 
 
Ghost Music
 
 

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” 

Susan Sontag

–SUSAN SONTAG

Born this week in 1933

“The beauty, and maybe also the horror, of writing anything is that every moment is potentially an unknown. It doesn’t have to be a big event. We might know what it’s like for us to face something, but it might not be clear to us how our character would deal with it. That in itself is a kind of discovery.”

Edwidge Danticat

–EDWIDGE DANTICAT

Born this week in 1969

 
Facebook TwitterInstagram

Copyright © 2022 Literary Hub. All rights reserved.

Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences