QUOTE: I try not to take The Nation too seriously (as you no doubt know), but this annoyed the hell out of me, the most offensive passage offered here:
"...Mark Twain, whom she calls the "first real American writer," so eat your heart out Bradstreet, Edwards, Franklin, Irving, Douglass, Emerson, Thoreau (especially you, Henry, you civilly disobedient antiwar tree-hugger, you)."
-I wouldn't find this to be particularly overstating the case, were it not for the fact that there is a strong school of thought (of which I am a member), which insists there was no American fiction to speak of before Twain, only American imitations of European styles. And to attack the First Lady for having a legitimate view of American literature (she reads! even when they're smart, they try to make them stupid!*) is totally uncalled for.
* This is another one of those instances when I feel compelled to defend the intelligence of the Bushes, which, I believe, is more of a sign of the outrageousness of most lefty views of them than it is of my great and abiding love for them.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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