Contemporary and Multicultural Voices

This is Unit Eighteen of American Literature, part two of two: the writers of sentence and system, the public poets, and two procedures that close the survey. Part one ended with a chronicler of working-class lives told in the fewest possible words. This part opens on his best-known story and then widens, and the unit's governing idea pays off here in a second way. The argument about who writes America changed the reading list, and it also changed what a reader has to do, because about half this exam prints a passage with no author attached. So the writers in this part are worth knowing by their surfaces. Carver stops short and McCarthy accumulates. Robinson lets a narrating voice dissolve into the material world around it. DeLillo builds systems nobody inside them can see whole, and rejects the label the exam uses for him. Wallace writes an essay that outgrows its own form in twenty footnotes. Edward P. Jones revives a nineteenth-century omniscience that consoles nobody. Then the public poets, a ten-play cycle, poetry at inaugurations, and the two procedures. By the end you will be able to read "Cathedral" and place Oates's story. To describe McCarthy's method and Robinson's self. To account for DeLillo, Wallace and Jones. To place King, the public poets and the inaugural tradition. And to place a contemporary work by its concerns and read a passage cold.

Nine entries on surfaces worth recognizing: a pencil shared by two men, a nightmare, a dissolving voice, a famous barn and an essay eating itself.

Two men, one pencil, one cathedral.

AML 1730 "Cathedral"

"Cathedral" gives its title to the nineteen eighty-three collection, and the anchor says Carver's stories reflect his own life in their heavy drinking, financial trouble and marital difficulty. The story's turn comes when a sighted man and a blind man draw a cathedral together. The change happens to the narrator rather than to his guest.

A song, a killer, and a story.

AML 1731 Joyce Carol Oates and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

The anchor records that Oates published the story in nineteen sixty-six, dedicated it to Bob Dylan, wrote it after hearing one of his songs, and based it loosely on the serial killer Charles Schmid. She has said it is the work she is most noted for. Its original title was "Death and the Maiden".

A nightmare, with a weak plot.

AML 1732 Cormac McCarthy and *Blood Meridian*

The witness describes a novel driven not by plot but by sensation, whose readers call it nightmarish and note that mundane passages give way abruptly to slaughter. Its central figure is a judge, and its ending is deliberately ambiguous. The prose concentrates on the material of the world, and the violence is sustained and deliberate.

Five sources, and a question.

AML 1733 McCarthy's Sources and the Question of Origins

The witness lists the novel's major sources: the Bible, *Moby-Dick*, *Paradise Lost*, the poetry of Wordsworth, and the historical narrative of Samuel Chamberlain. McCarthy engages both literary tradition and American history, and questions originality itself in doing so. The Chamberlain narrative is a historical memoir.

Emerson's eyeball, moved indoors.

AML 1734 Marilynne Robinson and *Housekeeping*

The witness places the nineteen eighty novel in a tradition of American writing about the individual and nature that runs through the Bible, Melville and Emerson. What Emerson described as becoming a transparent eyeball in the woods, Robinson brings into the built environment of a home. The lineage claimed is Emerson's rather than Thoreau's.

A voice dissolving into its world.

AML 1735 Ruth, Sylvie, and the Permeable Self

Ruth narrates, and the witness says the individual voice and its guiding consciousness are mixed up in the material substance of the world, which gives them a fixity and a fragility at once. Ruth struggles to fit a self into what counts as a normal person. Anonymity and ghostliness are the book's mode.

A barn famous for being photographed.

AML 1736 Don DeLillo and *White Noise*

The witness calls DeLillo one of America's premier postmodernist novelists and records that he rejects the term, placing himself in a line of modernists from Joyce through Faulkner. In *White Noise* the photographs of the most photographed barn in America are more real than the barn. The novelist rejects the label the exam uses.

An essay that outgrows its form.

AML 1737 David Foster Wallace and Narrative Excess

The witness offers Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster" as a good example of the narrative excess found in postmodern literature: a visit to a festival turns into a history of the lobster and then against the organizers, spilling into twenty long footnotes that are little essays themselves. The footnotes are the argument rather than an appendix.

An omniscience that consoles nobody.

AML 1738 Edward P. Jones and *The Known World*

The witness says Jones revives a nineteenth-century form when his narrator takes on a God-like omniscience, but that unlike the nineteenth-century narrators his provides little God-like consolation. The novel asks who counts as a knower and what can be known about the past. Readers find the chronology deliberately disorienting.

Seven entries: a horror writer taught as literature, two poets aimed at a general reader, ten plays, a slam, and poetry at an inauguration.

A horror writer, taught as literature.

AML 1739 Stephen King and the Popular Novel's Place

King was born in Portland, Maine, found H. P. Lovecraft in his attic, taught school, and published *Carrie* in nineteen seventy-three, his fourth novel but the first to appear. The anchor notes that *The Shining* was inspired by Shirley Jackson, and this course places him in the canon. *Carrie* was the fourth written and the first published.

Poetry aimed at a general reader.

AML 1740 Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, and the Public Poem

Pinsky is the only poet to serve three terms as United States Poet Laureate, performs with jazz musicians, and translated Dante's *Inferno*. Collins, called the most popular poet in America by a newspaper, writes in a conversational, clever tone and edited the *Poetry 180* anthologies. Popular here is a description rather than a judgement.

Everyday habits, and anxiety beneath.

AML 1741 Linda Pastan and the Domestic Lyric

Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize at Radcliffe, beating Sylvia Plath into second place, then spent ten years at home with three children before her first book. Her poems centre on family life and motherhood and probe the silent anxieties masked by everyday habits. *The Five Stages of Grief* is her best-known book.

Ten decades, ten plays, one city.

AML 1742 August Wilson's Century Cycle

Wilson's American Century Cycle, also called the Pittsburgh Cycle, is a ten-play series set one play to each decade of the twentieth century. *Ma Rainey's Black Bottom* covers the twenties, and he won Pulitzer Prizes for *Fences* and *The Piano Lesson*. He is called the theatre's poet of Black America.

A poetry slam out of a nightclub.

AML 1743 Emanuel Xavier and the Spoken Word

The anchor calls Xavier one of the most significant openly gay Latino voices in the spoken word movement. Of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican heritage, he was abused as a child and thrown out at sixteen, found the Nuyorican Poets Café, and created the Glam Slam in nineteen ninety-eight. He self-published his chapbook in nineteen ninety-seven.

Six poems, four inaugurations.

AML 1744 The Inaugural Poem: Frost to Gorman

As of two thousand and twenty-one four presidents have had six poems read at their inaugurations. Robert Frost was the first, reciting "The Gift Outright" from memory for John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty-one, and Amanda Gorman is the youngest person to have recited one. Frost abandoned his new poem in the snow glare.

A reading list rebuilt in twenty years.

AML 1745 Multiculturalism and the Widened Canon

The witness names scholars who supply the context for multiethnic literature, Lawrence Levine and Ronald Takaki, and places August Wilson's cycle alongside the novels of Walker, Wideman and Morrison. The reading list the exam tests was rebuilt in those two decades, and the exam's fifth period reflects that rebuilding.

Three entries to close: one procedure placing a work by its concerns, one for reading a passage cold, and the unit's capstone.

Six concerns, six shelves.

AML 1746 Placing a Contemporary Work by Its Concerns

The board rarely gives you a date for a contemporary passage, so place it by its concerns instead. If the subject is the legacy of slavery reaching into a present household, with the supernatural treated as ordinary, look to Morrison first. If two generations argue across a language the older one still thinks in, look to the immigrant writers, Kingston and Tan for Chinese America, Lahiri for Bengali America, Li-Young Lee in verse. If the land carries a ritual the plot is built on, and the loss named is a traditional life based in nature, look to Momaday, Silko or Erdrich. If a border is both a place and a legal status, look to Mora, Cisneros or Anaya. If a war is being remembered rather than fought, look to O'Brien in prose and Komunyakaa in verse. If a system is larger than anyone in it and nobody can see its whole shape, look to DeLillo. These are starting points rather than identifications, since several writers work more than one concern and a passage can belong to none of the six.

Five questions, asked of the page.

AML 1747 Reading a Contemporary Passage Without Its Context

About half the exam gives you a passage and no author, so build the habit of reading what is on the page. First, who speaks, and does the voice belong to a character or to a narrator standing outside? Second, how long are the sentences, and do they accumulate or stop short? Carver stops short; McCarthy accumulates. Third, is the ordinary world stable? If a dead child speaks or a barn is famous for being photographed, the strangeness is doing argumentative work. Fourth, what does the passage assume you already know, a scripture, a ritual, a migration, a war? That assumption often names the tradition. Fifth, where is the feeling: stated outright, withheld, or displaced onto an object such as a quilt, a wall, a cathedral drawn on a paper bag? An unfamiliar name in a passage is not evidence of anything.

An argument about who writes America.

AML 1748 Whose America: The Contemporary Argument

The literature of the last fifty years argues about who gets to write the American story, and the argument changed both the reading list and the forms. The witness dates the shift to the close of the nineteen eighties, when minority writing became a major fixture of the landscape in drama as well as prose. Toni Morrison sits at the centre of it. She edited other writers at Random House before publishing her own first novel in nineteen seventy, built *Beloved* out of a newspaper account of Margaret Garner, and named her own method enchantment, a blend of historical realism with tales she had been told as a child. Alice Walker took a Pulitzer and used her standing to put Zora Neale Hurston back in print. The Asian American writers arrived with Kingston's *The Woman Warrior*, then Tan and Lahiri, and the critical frame that came with them was the identity plot, the twentieth century's replacement for the nineteenth's marriage plot. Native American fiction flowered from Momaday's Pulitzer through Silko's chant novel to Erdrich's reservation tetralogy, and its recurring subject is the loss of a traditional life based in nature. Latino writing arrived as what the witness calls a relatively new group, with Hijuelos, Cisneros, Anaya and Mora on the border. Beside all of that the period kept writing about war, remembered rather than fought, and about systems nobody can see whole. The exam tests the widened list, and the way to meet it is to read the passage rather than hunt for the name.

That closes the survey. One unit remains, and it is about the exam itself. You can read a story whose turn comes when a sighted man and a blind man draw a cathedral together, and where the change happens to the narrator. You can place Oates's most noted story, written after a Bob Dylan song and based loosely on a real killer. You can describe McCarthy's nightmare driven by sensation rather than plot, and list the five sources the witness names for it. You can describe Robinson's narrating voice dissolving into the material world, DeLillo's barn that is more real in photographs, Wallace's essay outgrowing itself in twenty footnotes, and Jones's omniscience that consoles nobody. You can place a horror writer in the canon, two poets aimed at a general reader, a ten-play cycle set one play to a decade, and six inaugural poems across four presidencies. And you can place a work by its concerns and read a passage by asking five questions of the page.