Van Wyck Brooks - A Writers Life

By Raymond Nelson

Former library hardback book with dust jacket protected by mylar. Shows little sign of wear. Pages neat, clean and unmarked. Orders ship within 24 hours. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525030549
• ISBN13: 9780525030546
• Release Date: October 1981
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Van Wyck Brooks

Van Wyck Brooks was one of the premier critics of American literature and culture. In one of his theories he contends that early American literature was negatively affected by the duality of idealism and materialism. He wrote three biographies of major writers to illustrate this theory, one on Henry James, who, Brooks believed, fled to Europe rather than face the problem; another on Mark Twain, his most controversial book, in which he attempted to show how Twain was a failure, unable to fulfill his potential because of his "crippling" Calvinistic background; and the third on Emerson, whom he thought a success. All this was prelude, however, to his major work, a multi-volume series of critical books, spanning the time from Washington Irving up to about 1915. Nelson relates that Brooks, before starting, had decided to read EVERYTHING written in the 19th Century, and one gets the feeling from these works is of a man filled with authority and confidence in his judgments. Nelson's biography covers the important points in Brooks's life, though it's somewhat shallow and doesn't delve much beneath the surface. His writing style is pedestrian. Brooks, unfortunately, has fallen from favor and has pretty much disappeared from the literary scene, even in the historical sense. Hopefully his work will not be totally forgotten.