origins of modern American literature

[cesaydah]

I was looking at the Emile Zola section on Forums site. And I was wondering if anyone might have a response to a provocative thought that's been kicking around in my head since I went on an Zola jag maybe 10 years ago. I came to Zola after reading Frank Norris' "McTeague," which, I learned had links to Zola's "L'Assommoir." Norris was Theodore Dreiser's first editor at Doubleday and was instrumental in bringing the Chicago novelist to the American public. From Dreiser and his concern with the everyday, there's a direct link to Hemingway and his chronological peers. For all intents and purposes, 20th century American literature started with Hemingway: You can say what you want about anybody else and you'd probably be right. But it would be hard to deny Hemingway's pervasive influence on every writer (male or female; good, bad, or indifferent) who followed.
So when I followed McTeague with a reading of "L"Assommoir," I discovered the debt that Norris owed Zola. "McTeague" doesn't simply follow "L'Assommoir"; it's a rewrite. And it cannibalizes from other Zola novels. Norris cribbed last scene of "McTeague," a vicious fight to the death of two men in Death Valley, from one of the last scenes in "La Bete Humaine," a fight to the death between two men on a train running out of control in the French countryside.
With that revelation, I had to conclude that what we now understand as modern American literature (the concentration on the everyday, the outrageousness of otherwise ordinary characters, the fatalism in a world of possibilities) has its source in Zola, particularly his Rougon-Macquart series.
I realize that, even if true, this is a thoroughly useless insight. I'm putting it out there to see if anyone might think otherwise.

[Pike Bishop]

That's an interesting story and thanks for sharing it with it. However, there are some significant problems with your proposal:

1. Modernist American literature doesn't just focus on the "everyday, the outrageousness of ordinary characters, or fatalism in a world of possibilities." In fact, those aren't the key aspects of Modernism at all. That is more of a description of Naturalism than Modernism.

2. There is no one source of any genre of any Art genre. That is far too reductive and has no basis in historical or aesthetic reality.

3. Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser weren't Modernist authors; they were Naturalist authors. That is probably the reason you came up with your Naturalist "description" of Modernism.

4. If you told any of the group of Faulkner, Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Pound, and/or Stein their "source" was Zola, they would either laugh or take great offense.

[cesaydah]

That's an interesting story and thanks for sharing it with it. However, there are some significant problems with your proposal:

1. Modernist American literature doesn't just focus on the "everyday, the outrageousness of ordinary characters, or fatalism in a world of possibilities." In fact, those aren't the key aspects of Modernism at all. That is more of a description of Naturalism than Modernism.

2. There is no one source of any genre of any Art genre. That is far too reductive and has no basis in historical or aesthetic reality.

3. Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser weren't Modernist authors; they were Naturalist authors. That is probably the reason you came up with your Naturalist "description" of Modernism.

4. If you told any of the group of Faulkner, Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Pound, and/or Stein their "source" was Zola, they would either laugh or take great offense.

Thanks for the response.

I guess I'm not thinking clearly about the difference between modern and Modernism.
What I am fairly confident about is that there is a qualitative difference between American writers of fiction before the Naturalists and after. I ought to think more about what it is. But that's the source of my observation on this chat network.