After our class discussion last week, I found myself contemplating Starr's account of - or obsession with, depending on your personal view - American exceptionalism. In the previous three chapters, he goes to great lengths to state the case for American exceptionalism, and as Melissa stated in her blog last week, "Early in chapter two, after citing some American accomplishments in media, he [Star] notes that, during the same period, British North America (henceforth Canada), had made little communications progress. Why was America successful when Canada was not? The answer might shock you (sarcasm intended): because of 'the political transformation of American society in the previous half-century' (49)." Well summarized, Melissa! Starr most certainly makes the claim that this unique political structure sets America apart from any other country, especially the "mother country" and her affiliates. Moreover, he strives to prove this claim by directly linking American political policies with the rise in communication, ending Chapter Three with the claim that "the United States had started down a distinctive path in communications that would influence its institutions long after its early head start in the half century after the Revolution" (111). Well, with a claim like this, one can only assume that Starr's subsequent chapters will aim to prove America's influential power long after the days of the early Republic.
With that in mind, I was a bit surprised to read the opening of Chapter Four: "Even Europeans in the early 1800's who admired America's self-government, prosperity, and common schools were unimpressed with American literature and culture" (113). On the one hand, Starr stays true to his view of the exceptional political system in America; however, this exceptionalist view does not translate to exceptional culture. In all honesty, I found this a bit refreshing, as there is a clear point to make here. What was the cultural impact of literature in America during this time? Whereas the political revolution was, in fact, revolutionary, what place did American literature have in America and in Europe? Apparently, American literature was actually not that exceptional in regards to "accepted" traditions and norms. In the early nineteenth century, British reprints were primarily in the public domain, and according to Starr, "reflected the continual appeal of older classics as well as the persistent sense of American cultural inferiority" (122). In the early years, it seems as though Americans rejected British political order but had a reliance on European classics. Was this, perhaps, one area where America had yet to insert a certain identity, unique and set apart from England? Well, is would seem that America cannot be exceptional at everything all at once (did I just speak too soon?).
Yes, I did! It does not take Starr too terribly long to make the case that America is in fact exceptional when it comes to print, literature included. Starr borrows a quote from Noah Webster to emphasize this: "'America must as independent in literature as she is in Politics, as famous for arts as for arms'" (120). Of course "she" must! So, how might America do this? How can this new country - with an exceptional political system (take this however you may) - also have exceptional literature? The answer lies not in the great works that could be immediately produced but in price for literature: "the rise of cheap books and other forms of cheap print [...] reflect distinctive patterns of nineteenth-century American consumer markets" (126). According to Starr, it was crucial to appeal to the mass population - that was the model in this country - and "Americans readily accepted products which had been deliberately designed for low cost, mass production methods" (126). It was not about leather bound books that attracted an elite readership; rather, Starr makes the claim that it was about mass readership - that if America was going to be exceptional, it was in the broad appeal to the literate population, both in urban and rural settings. And, literature did in fact flourish. The new outlets, like dime novels, "broke down the traditional hierarchy of taste that had been expressed in the physical form of the book," and people began to read more and more and more because they could afford the literature (138).
Starr does, however, want to thoroughly make the point that "low price did not necessarily mean lowbrow" (124). And, this is true to some extent, as he does use the example of Longfellow, who made his works accessible to the mass public. Moreover, Starr point out the all-male cast - Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, etc. - as examples of an "genuine indigenous literary tradition in America" (137). He strives to claim that people were not just reading lowbrow fiction in an affordable format, but that great American writers were publishing during this time. Yes, I am a fan of the early American writer, but I think that it is crucial to point out that if we are following Starr's pattern of American exceptionalism, it came from the accessibility to literature that was not as prevalent in Europe. This set America apart, if we are still focusing on American versus Western European traditions. With accessibility grew a literary culture, but it was only because people began to read, could afford to read, and read mass quantities due to the low prices. Starr wants to transition to exceptional American literature by quoting from Larzer Ziff: "there were American books of the first rank, by prevailing provincial standards but by the standards of world literature" (138). And, while the quality of writing in fact be a valid point - that is a topic for another day - it is not what makes America "exceptional" during this time. If Starr wants to stay true to the exceptionalist claim, then we must focus on the accessibility of texts in nineteenth century America, as that was truly a new era in readership for the mass population and not overreach even more than we have already done.
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