The Air-Line to SeattleUniversity of Chicago Press, 1984 - 238 pages In this controversial, wide-ranging, and fearlessly candid book, Kenneth S. Lynn argues that too many of our current commentators on the American past are out of touch with historical reality. His targets range from the currently fashionable but fantastic idea that the Declaration of Independence derives from a communitarian rather than individualistic philosophy to misinterpretations of the lives of Emerson, Walter Lippmann, Hemingway, and Max Perkins. In each case Lynn reveals the tendency of literary and intellectual historians to impose precooked formulas upon the evidence they profess to study. |
Contents
Prologue The AirLine to Seattle | 1 |
Falsifying Jefferson | 9 |
Emerson the Man | 23 |
Speaking for Whitman | 33 |
Welcome Back from the Raft Huck Honey | 40 |
The Masterpiece That Became a Hoax | 50 |
The Rebels of Greenwich Village | 60 |
The Strange Unhappy Life of Max Perkins | 93 |
More Facts | 132 |
Only Yesterday | 140 |
The First Ladys Lady Friend | 152 |
Malcolm Cowley Forgets | 163 |
Versions of Walter Lippmann | 172 |
The Regressive Historians | 185 |
Self and Society | 212 |
| 219 | |
Common terms and phrases
Allen American Bailyn Becker believe Berg Big Two-Hearted River biographer Bruccoli career century Chesnut's Cowley Cowley's critics culture Declaration diary early editor Eleanor Ellen Emerson essays fact father feelings felt Fitzgerald Gatsby Genovese genteel tradition Golden Mountains Greenwich Village H. L. Mencken Hadley Harvard Hemingway Hemingway's Henry historians Huck Huck's Huckleberry Finn ideas Ideological intellectual Ishmael Jefferson Lasch later Leitner letter literary lived Lorena Hickok Lucy Mercer Malcolm Cowley Mark Twain Marx Max Eastman Max Perkins mind Miss Hickok moral mother never Nick Adams novel once Perkins's political psychological published question rebels Revolution Roosevelt Santayana says Schlesinger Scott Fitzgerald Scribner sense sexual slaves social society sort Stearns Stearns's story Sun Also Rises tell tion told turn twenties Walter Lippmann wanted Whitman Widow wife William Wills's woman women writing wrote York young