European Journal of American Culture - Volume 33, Issue 2, 2014

This article examines the eight forewords, written by Morrison herself, that accompany all the recent Vintage editions of the novels except A Mercy (2008) and Home (2012). It reads them as a significant yet little-discussed contribution to her corpus of non-fiction work. Examining how the forewords came about and their apparent purpose, I collate the new perspectives they provide on Morrison’s narrative project, the insights they contain about American/transnational historical, political and literary cultures and the glimpses into the novelist’s life story they afford. I focus on what might be lost through their existence rather than what might be gained. I analyze in detail the ways in which Morrison’s foregrounded summaries of her central concerns diminish the reader’s active and participatory role. Making connections and comparisons with her published essays and interviews, I argue that the forewords undermine both the authority of the reader and the sense of a collaborative project which Morrison had until now invested with such political importance. Resisting the hagiographic tendency of some Morrison criticism, I explore the potentially problematic conflicts and inconsistencies about audience and reception; about definitive and ‘indefinitive’ editions; and about the empowerment or disempowerment of the reader; that the appearance of these prefatory essays has engendered.

Slums of Beverly Hills and The Breakfast Club show that the key to class mobility is affordable housing in an otherwise high-dollar school district. This residential basis to the interconnection of romance, education and class mobility in suburban high school movies reveals zoning as the essential foundation to the suburban way of life. The logic of zoning is the imagination and ideology of American suburbia, promising universal mobility only to circumscribe it spatially. Zoning’s ‘rational’ delineation of allowable building is of paramount concern to mobility or economic inequality. Actually, existing zoning is the key ideological component to suburban life, which makes its invisibility in literary and film studies troubling. Slums of Beverly Hills and The Breakfast Club solve the problems of suburban inequality discursively; Brian and Vivian only change their thinking about the organization of their families, educations and social interactions, not the spatial organization of their home town. Suburban high school films continue to believe in the promise of class mobility that zoning-enabled and facilitated education holds out, the very definition of an ideological solution to the problem rather than a concrete change to the built environment.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is a cultural representation of the public memory of the president. The site, located in Boston, Massachusetts, welcomes thousands of visitors each year, and its exhibits aim to enhance their understanding of the Kennedy presidency. This article examines the purposes of the Kennedy Library and Museum and explores its content in order to establish whether the museum provides an accurate representation of John F. Kennedy’s achievements in office. While the approach adopted is principally one of historical enquiry in order to test the content of the museum against the president’s record in office, the range of political issues covered and the focus on a cultural symbol of his rule should make the article accessible to scholars in other disciplines. The article argues that the founders of the Kennedy Library and Museum, who were all close Kennedy associates, were keen to provide a permanent memorial to the president that focused on the idea that his achievements in office outweighed his personal flaws. Reflecting their views and the influence that they have had over the wider public perception of President Kennedy, the Kennedy Library and Museum therefore provides an overwhelmingly positive representation of the president.

Puritanism, in Martha Graham’s dance work, has been an important conception for the development of her style, but has not been thoroughly analyzed by scholars. The Ancestress, in one of her most interesting and neglected pieces, Letter to the World (1940), embodies a powerful interpretation of Puritanism. The idea of focusing on a single character stems from the resonances it produces on the choreography and on Graham’s production at large.

Letter to the World is about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and personality, and the Ancestress represents the puritanical force of tradition that attempts to stop the growth of the poet’s (creative) life. In this sense, she can be compared to Mother Ann Lee, leader of the Shakers, who preached chastity among her acolytes and to the way William Carlos Williams portrays the Puritans in his book of essays, In the American Grain (1925), a book that influenced Graham’s vision. Puritanism undergoes an interesting transformation this time in one of Graham’s dance’s most celebrated pieces, Appalachian Spring (1944), where the Revivalist sums up what the Ancestress represented with three twists in terms of name, gender and dance.

Robert Duncan Round-Up

Reading Duncan Reading: Robert Duncan and the Poetics of Derivation, Stephen Collis and Graham Lyons (eds) (2012) Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 271 pp., $45.00 (pbk), ISBN: 1609381165.

Duncan, Robert, The H.D. Book, Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman (eds) (2011) Berkeley: University of California Press, 693 pp., $36.95 (pbk), ISBN 0520272625.

Duncan, Robert, The Collected Early Poems and Plays, Peter Quartermain (ed.) (2012) Berkeley: University of California Press, 822 pp., $45.33 (hbk), ISBN 0520259262.

Duncan, Robert, A Poet’s Mind: Collected Interviews with Robert Duncan, 1960–1985, Christopher Wagstaff (ed.) (2012) Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 488 pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 1583944540.

Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography, Lisa Jarnot (2012) Berkeley: University of California Press, 481 pp., $39.95 (hbk), ISBN 0520234162.