Review
This book is a literary-cultural event: the harvest of the past half-century of Emersonian revaluations and the harbinger, guide, and provocation for the next generations of Emerson scholars and critics. One cannot call a work on Emerson definite, even provisionally, but I cannot imagine that any Americanist--or, for that matter, anyone interested in America, specialist or nonspecialist--will be able to do without this book in the foreseeable future.
Book Description
�An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,� Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote�and in this book, the leading scholar of New England literary culture looks at the long shadow Emerson himself has cast, and at his role and significance as a truly American institution. On the occasion of Emerson�s 200th birthday, Lawrence Buell revisits the life of the nation�s first public intellectual and discovers how he became a �representative man.� Born into the age of inspired amateurism that emerged from the ruins of pre-revolutionary political, religious, and cultural institutions, Emerson took up the challenge of thinking about the role of the United States alone and in the world. With characteristic authority and grace, Buell conveys both the style and substance of Emerson�s accomplishment�in his conception of America as the transplantation of Englishness into the new world, and in his prodigious work as writer, religious thinker, and philosopher. Here we see clearly the paradoxical key to his success, the fierce insistence on independence that acted so magnetically upon all around him. Steeped in Emerson�s writings, and in the life and lore of the America of his day, Buell�s book is as individual�and as compelling�as its subject. At a time when Americans and non-Americans alike are struggling to understand what this country is, and what it is about, Emerson gives us an answer in the figure of this representative American, an American for all, and for all times.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/BUEEME.pdf
Emerson FROM THE PUBLISHER
""An Institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote - and in this book, the author looks at the long shadow Emerson himself has cast, and at his role and significance as a truly American institution. On the occasion of Emerson's 200th birthday, Lawrence Buell revisits the life of the nation's first public intellectual and discovers how he became a "representative man."" Born into the age of inspired amateurism that emerged from the ruins of pre-revolutionary political, religious, and cultural institutions, Emerson took up the challenges of thinking about the role of the United States alone and in the world. With characteristic authority and grace, Buell conveys both the style and the substance of Emerson's accomplishment in his conception of America as the transplantation of Englishness into the new world and in his prodigious work as writer, religious thinker, and philosopher.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
… Emerson did not fancy acolytes and disciples. If George Santayana or Ralph Ellison or even Thoreau ultimately chafed against or rejected him, so much the better. This is the last outpost of Buell's Emerson: we outgrow him, reinvent him and then we reread him. That is what Buell is doing, mindful that as one of Emerson's cagiest nondisciples, Walt Whitman, said, ''the best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant that destroys itself.''
— Peter Davison
Library Journal
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet, essayist, and philosopher whose provocative thoughts transcend a variety of fields, including philosophy, literature, and politics, to name but a few, and have inspired scholars for generations. To coincide with the recent bicentenary of his birth, these two books, which differ in approach more than in objective, offer revealing glimpses into his remarkable life and career. Emerson scholar Buell (Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Collection of Critical Essays) offers a nontraditional analysis of Emerson's achievements. Instead of producing a narrative biography, Buell covers "key moments of Emerson's career" and "major facets of his thought" in topics, e.g., the making of a public intellectual, religious radicalisms, and Emerson as anti-mentor, and puts these concepts into the context of the politics of the time (both in America and abroad) and of how those concepts have resonated through to the present day. As Buell puts it, his book offers a "portrayal of Emerson as a national icon who at the same time anticipates the globalizing age." Wide-ranging in scope and meticulous in attention to detail, Emerson is best suited to the specialist but still accessible to the novice. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. By contrast, Grossman (Choosing and Changing: A Guide to Self-Reliance), a psychotherapist and medical educator, is a dabbler (much as Emerson was) and a fan not only of the substance of Emerson's writing but of his style as well. His daybook gives quotes from speeches, journals, letters, and poems-some as brief as a line-to coincide with each day of the year. Some are glossed to provide context. Topics range from slavery, Mount Monadnock, and the temporal nature of beauty to grief at the death of his first wife and his musings on the young United States. Grossman feels that "the way to approach Emerson's mind is to dip into him frequently, almost at random, to find precisely the stimulus that perhaps only he could give." This book succeeds in offering the reader such an opportunity. Recommended for public libraries. [Several useful books on Emerson have come out this spring and summer to coincide with the bicentenary, including Ronald A. Bosco and others' Emerson in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates and Laura Dassow Walls's Emerson's Life in Science: The Culture of Truth.-Ed.]-Felicity D. Walsh, Atlanta Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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