Henry nash smith virgin land pdf

Warlike skills, practical cunning, and sheer ferocity are developed to the highest degree. Coyner's fictionalized narrative The Lost Trappers is in substantial agreement with Sealsfield's, although it has less of his overstraining and love of hyperbole. Coyner asserts that the mountain man rejects civilized life deliberately because he despises its dull uniformity and monotony when compared in his mind with the stirring scenes of wild western adventure.

He is impatient of the formalities and the galling restrictions of well organized society, and prefers the latitude and liberty of a life in the woods. As the literary Western hero moves beyond the Mississippi he is becoming more and more fully assimilated to the mores of the Indian.

This is in accord with factual reporting by firsthand observers in the mountains. Lewis H. In the trappers' camps Garrard experienced "a grand sensation of liberty and a total absence of fear. The best known mountain man was Kit Carson, who owed his fame to Jessie Benton Fremont's skillful editing of her husband's reports on his exploring expeditions in the early 's.

The momentary effect was to make of the fur trapper and mountain man just such a pioneer of empire as the glorifiers of Kentucky had tried to make of Boone in earlier decades. This in turn implied that Carson must be depicted according to canons of progress and civilization and even gentility that had not previously been invoked in discussion of the mountain man.

Carson, like Boone, had now to be transformed into one of the best of those noble and original characters that have from time to time sprung up on and beyond our frontier, retreating with it to the west, and drawing from association with uncultivated nature, not the rudeness and sensualism of the savage, but genuine 85 THE MOUNTAIN MAN simplicity and truthfulness of disposition, and generosity, bravery, and singIe heartedness to a degree rarely found in society.

Barbaric life in the wilderness held grave dangers for the ethical purity considered obligatory in national heroes. But if the typical Wild Westerner was, as the contemporary journalist just quoted was forced to admit, "uncurbed," a prey to his own base passions, still an unassailable formula could be found for Carson: "In the school of men thus formed by hardships, exposure, peril, and temptation, our hero acquired all their virtues, and escaped their vices.

The pure and noble Carson was developed in later years by a series of biographers. The first of these, DeWitt C. Peters, was an army surgeon who had been stationed near the famous scout's home in New Mexico during the 's, and who made use of an autobiographical narrative dictated by the hero.

The Peters biography appeared in before Kit's death and established the genteel interpretation of his character. Kit himself complained that Peters "laid it on a little too thick. Commenting upon the return of a trapping expedition under command of Ewing Young to Santa Fe in , Peters confronts the fact that according to Carson's own account the mountain men went on a long spree.

But this will never do. The biographer therefore commits the following extravaganza: Young Kit, at this period of his life, imitated the example set by his elders, for he wished to be considered by them as an equal and a friend. Abbott, in , are based on Peters and the Fremont reports, with various flourishes on the theme of the mountain man's spectacular refinement. Burdett implies that Carson never touched liquor, and emphasizes his extreme frugality amid men who loved to spend a year's earnings in a single splurge.

As Abbott remarks, "Even the rude and profane trappers around him could appreciate the superior dignity of such a character. This is probably the book dealing with his exploits that Kit found in October of that year amid the plunder taken by Apaches from a wagon train they had stampeded.

He was decently embarrassed by it. The subliterary story of adventure 87 THE MOUNTAIN MAN deliberately contrived for a mass audience, called "steam literature" because it was printed on the newly introduced rotary steam presses, was developed by editors of the weekly story papers established in imitation of the penny daily newspaper in the late 's and early 's.

At first the story papers relied heavily on pirated British fiction. Ann S. Stephens, who later found steady employment on Beadle's staff. Gleason and Ballou also pioneered the development of a national system of distribution by maintaining agents in nine cities, including Samuel French of New York.

After holding the lead for five years it yielded in turn to the New York Ledger, which Robert Bonner bought in and publicized by the most sensational methods. In he forced Gleason to sell out to him, and after various experiments, in inaugurated a series called The Weekly Novelette, selling for four cents. To provide fiction for these various periodicals Ballou had enlarged his staff. Several of the newly added writers also went over to Beadle later, including Dr. John Hovey Robinson, A.

Duganne, and the veteran E. Judson "Ned Buntline". Ballou himself was the author of at least two stories published later by Beadle. Under Ballou's guidance these writers, by the late 's, had developed the standard procedures of the popular adventure story. Bennett's and Averill's stories belong to this class. The logic of the Far Western materials has begun to make itself felt. He is introduced to both the official hero and the reader by the device of a miniature, described with a quaint hagiological charm which is only increased by the contrast between subject and medium.

Gone is the humility of the former servant, but gone also is the power to commune with nature. He no longer looks to God through nature, for nature is no longer benign: its symbols are the wolves and the prairie fire. The scene has been shifted from the deep fertile forests east of the Mississippi to the barren plains. The landscape within which the Western hero operates has become, in Averill's words, a "dreary waste.

This portrait of Kit Carson establishes the lines along which the Wild Western story was to develop for the next half century, until it should reach the seemingly indestructible state of petrifaction which it exhibits in our own day and is apparently destined to maintain through successive geological epochs while subtler and more ambitious literary forms come and go. In Averill's tale the stage is already set for the entrance of Erastus Beadle.

A half hour later, and the streets of the great city would be nearly deserted. It was with a violent start that he suddenly woke. Ah me! My sister! Ah, poor girl! Alas, this shabby dress, this threadbare garb speak plainer than words. A few yards, more or less, in a costly piece of broadcloth, what are they?

I never stooped to that: I never pleaded the excuse for sinning thus, though who, in truth, is most to blame? When but a dog's compensation is given us, what wonder is it that the clerks of the city cheat and betray their trust? It was uttered, the talismanic word!

Where should I gain the necessary means? O, torture worst of all. But at this point it was that his excitement, his grief, his despondency, now at once appeared, and in a startling shape, to have reached their climax. His dark hazel eye lighted up swiftly, as a clouded sky by the tempest lightnings, gleamed with a new and strange meaning. It was a heavy iron key, odd in its formation, and with it in his grasp he paused not, halted not, nor hesitated, till, on bent knees, he knelt before a massive Salamander Safe that stood concealed within a hidden recess.

What, ah, what could be his secret purpose. Let his bloodless face and lips compressed and teeth tightly clenched over that, and that stern look of desperation on one and all, tell, alas, but too intelligibly. It is found! The very next moment, the critical moment of his destiny, the daring hand of the merchant's clerk was buried amid piles of silver and gold, and passing over packages of bank notes, or rattling amid bags of glittering coin.

And now, as in silence, in secrecy, unseen by any save God's omniscient eye, over that princely treasure he bent, a fearful thought had roused a fearful struggle in his soul. He hesitated, he faltered, he paused. I feel my very reason shaking, my brain reeling within me. What was I, in my wild delirium, about to do? Rob, plunder my employers, betray their confiding trust, cover myself with eternal infamy, aye, and madman that I was, make my idolized sister blush to own me for a brother.

O, never, never, O my God, while reason is spared, while mind, with mind and sense, remains, will I be criminal. I must have air and exercise. This is too much for my poor frame and weakened body. Then, as if eager to shut out even the mere signs of the wealth that had so tempted him, he hurriedly closed the safe door and relocked it, in his impatience to begone, neglecting, however, to withdraw and conceal the key.

Heaven knows, after such a scene, I need it. Fatal omission! Thus it was that he hurried on, objectless and purposeless, as concerned his destination, anxious only to drown thought in action, till at length it was with something bordering on a start of surprise, that he found himself on Charlestown Bridge. Almost gasping for breath, panting with haste, he bent his uneven steps across the bridge, trusting to the change of scene to work that composure of mind he found it impossible, by the force of will to acquire.

But in vain! Before he was conscious of the fact, he had left Charlestown itself behind and entered the suburbs of Old Cambridge. Only when, recalled to himself by a strange incident, did he discover that he stood within the precincts of the University grounds, the fine old park of Harvard College, with its branching elms and shaded walks.

Startled at once, his mind, for the first time experiencing the vainly sought distraction, he hurried down and adjoining avenue, guided by his ear, which told him he was rapidly approaching the immediate scene of the contest.

As he drew nearer and nearer, oaths and angry defiances were distinguishable, and in another instant he had emerged upon a scene that fired him at the sight. Yes, by Heaven! Anything to save me from myself and drown the reflections that nearly drive me mad.

Have at them, then. Right and left he fought, mixing with this allies. Spite of the odds against them, the apprentices gallantly held their own, while the spirit and resolution which have ever been so oddly characteristic of such contests between the parties. The apprentices began to gather courage afresh, and made a yet stouter stand, repeatedly incited to new exertions by the hoarse voice of one of their party who seemed, by common consent, to be their leader in the fray.

What's to be done, what's to be done, Harry? Hark ye, my fine lads, friends and enemies both! All tuned to make good their escape, all save the stout fellow in the laborer's dress, who, with a ferocious oath, had thrown himself suddenly forward upon his late antagonist, at the very instant the young leader of the student band likewise turned to follow the retreat of his companions, and roughly seizing the youth by the throat, the man, by a strong effort, bore him back across his own powerful knee, and dashed his clenched fist, with its full force in the other's exposed face.

What was the startling surprise of the merchant's clerk, when he saw the Herculean laborer kneeling on the panting chest of the prostrate youth, with two powerful hands clutching the student's throat, in the act of strangulation. The astounded spectator could scare credit his senses, so startled was be by the sight. Not an instant too soon was he! When at length the young student, whose narrow escape from death, in one of its most dreadful forms, we have chronicled, began to recover from the fearful effect of his partial strangulation, he first opened his eyes on the form of the merchant's clerk, supported in his arms.

Eugene Lincoln! You here! With your wealth, your talents, your noble spirit, why will you thus heedlessly endanger so much. But banish such apprehensions, friend of mine," added gaily the young speaker, with a cheering warmth and frankness in his tones, which had a bold and manly richness in their every mellow accent.

A brother, do you say? No key to a mystery so strange as this? The unaccountable disappearance, the secrecy maintained toward me, the studied silence upon a subject so full of exciting interest to a whole family, and the peremptory interdiction of recurring to that which naturally must call forth such curious and eager inquiry, have at all times excited me almost beyond endurance.

And can you wonder, considering everything, that it is so? I long questioned with myself whether I should break it to you at all, though we have been bosom friends for years. The merchant's clerk had nervously grasped his friend's arm, and, with his lips sternly compressed, was gazing intently into the student's startled face.

Tell me, Henry Vernon, tell me why is it that you thus seek her out? Answer me, truly, Harry. Still, 'tis a brother's duty to guard even against that possibility. I tell you, Eugene Lincoln, you have mistaken me, though it be but by a passing thought. Sooner than wrong in word or act your gentle sister, I would freely, gladly, have surrendered the life one moment since preserved by you.

And here I tell you, to your face, Eugene, that if any other than you had dared to breathe that dark suspicion, I would have struck him dead at my feet! No, no, Eugene Lincoln you wronged me there.

By Heaven they are upon us! Across to Charlestown, over Charlestown Bridge, into Washington street, once more, successively he passed, and in an hour regained at length the store whence he had that night departed, little anticipating the adventure that had befallen him. More than once, in his various movements had be passed, unsuspiciously, the ponderous iron safe, with the key so thoughtlessly left in the guarded lock.

Could be but once have dreamt how soon the consequences of that unwitting, unconscious negligence, were to manifest themselves, his rest would have been even more uneasy, his slumbers yet more broken than they really were.

He lay, tossing uneasily upon his bed, for nearly half an hour in disquietude. He would have given the world for one hour's unbroken, refreshing rest, but the disturbed state of his chaotic mind forbade it. Gradually, however, a drowsiness stole slowly over him, and sweet slumber began to be less obdurate.

At length he slept, but it was only by fits and starts. Two or three times he opened his heavy eyelids, at close intervals, fancying he heard a noise. But strengthening drowsiness had deadened his senses by this time, and turning over, mechanically, he faced the wall opposite, and again lost himself, through various disturbing noises appeared ever to haunt his restless dreams.

This was of brief continuance, however. The stupor of sleep full upon him, he sluggishly started up in the bed, and with a vacant look gazed wonderingly around. The fresh air completely scattered sleep from his sealed eyelids, however, and left him shivering and shuddering with the same dreamy consciousness of freezing chill, the same icy feeling. Thoroughly awakened, the succeeding moment heard, clearly and distinctly, a sound that startled him.

That startling sound, that icy chill, both seemed to proceed from the wall, the opposite wall toward which the restless sleeper had turned his face. That sound itself, he fancied, was the jingling of precious coin.

What Beadle contributed was persistence, a more systematic devotion to the basic principles of big business, and the perception that Boston was yielding first place as a publishing center to New York.

Victor, a former newspaperman from Sandusky, Ohio, who supervised the production of dime novels and other series for thirty years.

Edward S. Ellis's Seth Jones, which appeared as No. Beadle's total sales between and approached five millions. An audience for fiction had been discovered that had not previously been known to exist. Beadle has some claim to rank among the industrial giants of his day.

In his field, as an organizer and promoter of a basic discovery made by his predecessors, he was a figure comparable to Rockefeller or Carnegie. Victor's contribution to Beadle's success was the perfection of formulas which could be used by any number of writers, and the inspired alteration of these formulas according to the changing demands of the market.

Prentiss Ingraham, son of the author of The Prince of the House of David, produced more than six hundred novels, besides plays and short stories. The individual writer abandons his own personality and identifies himself with the reveries of his readers. Eventually, however, the industrial revolution in publishing leads to more and more frenzied competition among producers and destroys even this value in the dime novel.

Orville Victor said that when rival publishers entered the field the Beadle writers merely had to kill a few more Indians. The outworn formulas had to be given zest by a constant search after novel sensations.

Circus tricks of horsemanship, incredible feats of shooting, more and more elaborate costumes, masks, and passwords were introduced, and even such ludicrous ornaments as worshippers of a Sun God devoted to human sacrifice in a vast underground cavern in the region of Yellowstone Park.

By the 's the Western dime novel had come to hinge almost entirely upon conflicts between detectives and bands of robbers that had little to do with the ostensibly Western locales.

The derivation of the Beadle Westerns from the Leatherstocking series, evident enough on the basis of internal evidence, is certified by Orville Victor's explicit testimony. The strongest link connecting the Beadle Westerns with Cooper is the representation of a benevolent hunter without a fixed place of abode, advanced in age, celibate, and of unequalled prowess in trailing, marksmanship, and Indian fighting.

That this group of characteristics, within certain limits of variation, had come to exist as a persona, a mask, is already evident in Paulding's Kentucky hunter Bushfield in Westward Ho! This is done in the most famous of all Beadle Westerns, Edward S. The pretext for Morton's odd persistence in concealing his identity is so flimsy he had heard that his sweetheart had ceased to care for him while he was away fighting in the Revolution that one feels Ellis must be employing the persona for its own sake.

It is the hero's assumed role that gives the title to the book, is illustrated on the cover, and engrosses the author's attention. Ellis long continued to be a prolific contributor to the various Beadle series, and his handling of traditional formulas and stereotypes retained its appeal for decades. The action takes place in southern Ohio in the early nineteenth century. Stephens, for example, the majestic woman of letters who wrote Malaeska, the first of the Beadle Dime Novels, in turned her gaze from the classic ground of the Hudson Valley to write Esther: A Story of the Oregon Trail.

Stephens is fully conscious that the persona exists, both for her and for her readers. Stephens's Waltermyer owes something to Boone of Kentucky, while Seth Jones hails from Vermont, we are forced to recognize two distinct although not inharmonious strains of influence which impinge upon Leatherstocking's upstate New York tradition.

The new forces correspond to the two great cycles of frontier humor in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Down East tradition and the Southwestern tradition.

Either could be merged with the Leatherstocking persona to repair that neglect of comic possibilities which is so marked in Cooper. Seth Jones has much of the comic stage Yankee, including the cracked voice. Other writers are better able to equip their aged hunters with suitable tall tales Joseph E. Badger, Jr. A Romance of the Illinois, is rather elaborately developed in this manner.

I was got by a bull whale out o' a iceberg. Unfortunately, the tradition of backwoods humor was not always handled with so much feeling for its true nature. Edward L. Wheeler, whom we shall encounter presently as the celebrated creator of Deadwood Dick, used it a great deal, but he exaggerated the eccentric aspect of Southwestern exuberance to the point of imbecility.

Wheeler's character Old Avalanche, unwarrantably described as "a genuine northern mountain man," who makes his first appearance turning handsprings and accompanied by a pet black goat named Florence Nightingale,20 is allowed to talk endlessly in a dialect that Wheeler intended to be outrageously funny, but it is now unreadable even under the urging of scientific curiosity. This character appears repeatedly in the Deadwood Dick series and does not improve on longer acquaintance.

By preference they pursue their specialty of rescuing beautiful heroines from the Indians. When the Indians begin to yield place in the dime novel to road agents or counterfeiters as the standard enemy, the hunters of the Leatherstocking type lend a hand in fighting the newer foes. It should be added that Leatherstocking's notorious virtue was a hereditary trait. Young, handsome, and actually or potentially genteel trappers and hunters are almost as numerous as the older hunters descended directly from Leatherstocking.

We may note some of them in Ellis's works. The relation of the characters to one another is placed quite beyond doubt when Biddon sacrifices himself so that Todd and Irene Merment may be saved and eventually wed.

His right to mate with Edith Sudbury after her rescue from the Indians is authenticated by the pangs of sensibility he experiences when he clasps the heroine's almost fairy hand.

The touch of this delicate member on the horny palm of the hunter is a moment charged with meaning in the development of the Western hero. In Ellis's The Hunter's Cabin. He is represented as a former associate of Daniel Boone28 and likewise has some of the traits of the Indian hater who had been a recognizable figure since the time of James McHenry's The Spectre of the Forest Ferrington uses a conventional rhetoric but the potential conflict between forest roughness and the heroine's gentility is delicately acknowledged in a passage that demands quotation.

Ferrington and Annie are in a cabin besieged by the Indians. That was the case here. This book provided a useful, if somewhat judgmental, overview of American thinking about the frontier.

For example, he refers to how London is in ruins. It took me a little bit to think to check the copyright and realize that, when Smith was writing, London had not fully recovered from the Blitz. I think my biggest distraction, though, was entirely of my own making. As he discusses the difficulties of life on the frontier in the s and the relevant literature, all I could think of was Laura Ingalls Wilder. Would need to review my grad school notes, but as I recall this was a foundational work in the history of the American West.

Aug 22, Cat rated it it was amazing Shelves: culturalhistory. An excellent book on several levels. I highly recommend it for all of those interested in American History, Cultural Studies and Sociology. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate the development of the American myth of the "Garden of the World". Smith argues persuaively that the idea of the American continent as a garden: fertile, lush and tamed or tameable , deeply influenced the course of American history.

As Leo Marx said in his similarly awesome "The Machine in the Garden", the brillance An excellent book on several levels. As Leo Marx said in his similarly awesome "The Machine in the Garden", the brillance of this book lies in how Smith demonstrates how ideology drives action or, alternatively: how ideas drive behavior.

Smith divides "Virgin Land" into three parts. By way of a prologue, Smith notes that the idea of "Manifest Destiny" did not develop as soon as the settlers arrived, but rather was developed by American Philosophers and Politicans and land speculators.

In the first Part, Smith describes how the initial push westward was justified via the idea that a passage west would increase trade with the Orient. Smith notes that this idea dervied from 18th century Mercantilist economic theory and was therefore "archaic" a favorite term of Smith's in this book from the very beginning. The Second part of the book "The Sons of Leatherstocking" uses the literary character of Leatherstocking as an entry point for a discussion of the development of the western hero figure in literature.

I found his discussion illuminating. In the third and final part of the book, Smith lays out the characterstics of American Agarianism which would come to define westward expansion after the Civil War. He also documents how this same philosophy of agarianism prevented later reform of the Homestead Act even after it became clear to many that the Homestead Act had failed miserably in its goals.

Smith also discusses the struggle by authors to develop authentic western "characters" and relates that struggle to the emegerence of the "Garden of the World" symbol. This really isn't the forum to tease out all the different issues presented, thoughtfully, in this classic book. I recommend it highly. Sep 22, Samuel rated it it was amazing. As the first published work by an "American Studies" PhD in , this book holds a special symbolic place in my book shelf.

Although to speak collectively of "an American" way of thinking has been continually viewed as speaking too broad and thus too narrow to be academically viable, Henry Nash Smith uses literature such as Dime Novels and James Fenimore Cooper novels as well as mythological figures such as Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill along with traditional historic narratives of a politi As the first published work by an "American Studies" PhD in , this book holds a special symbolic place in my book shelf.

Although to speak collectively of "an American" way of thinking has been continually viewed as speaking too broad and thus too narrow to be academically viable, Henry Nash Smith uses literature such as Dime Novels and James Fenimore Cooper novels as well as mythological figures such as Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill along with traditional historic narratives of a political nature to track the American notions of "the West" and "the frontier" during the nineteenth century.

He organizes his arguments into 3 sections or myths: the passage to India, the mountain man tall tales, and the garden of the world. Smith reveals rather convincingly that myths of the American West were used by politicians as a means of gaining votes and keeping power even in the face of harsh realities.

Slogans such as "rain follows the plow" and the West serving as the "safety valve" against overpopulation of cities kept America always looking to the West as a constant source of hope: commercially, socially, and politically.

The agrarian ideal of a nation of yeoman farmers was never realized though it was continually sought after by many American philosophers and politicians. Overall however, the myth masked class stratification in the guise that anyone unhappy with low labor wages could move west and farm. But as any true myth, these promises were half-truths exaggerated out of proportion.

I believe what is most important to take away from this reading is to understand that myths, symbols and folklore play important roles in American history and culture. It is important to keep these in our minds as we seek to study history--it is a messy but important endeavor. Nov 18, Mike Fink rated it it was amazing.

This is a great book about a subject with which I'm more or less obsessed. Smith follows the trajectory of a number of interrelated and sometimes actually disparate myths about the American West as they conspire, collide, and transform throughout the course of American history--largely 19th century American history. Expansionism, slavery, the rise and fall of political parties, literary trends and novelties, the history of science: this book touches on a little bit of everything in the course This is a great book about a subject with which I'm more or less obsessed.

Expansionism, slavery, the rise and fall of political parties, literary trends and novelties, the history of science: this book touches on a little bit of everything in the course of its argument and ends in a very satisfactory, very authoritative way. I'm going to have to read it again taking notes this time. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.

Virgin land Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? By charting the long history of imagined versions of American Empire, Smith began his book with the writings of those who had tried to envision the dominant position the United States had now apparently achieved.

But even if Smith worked within a victorious culture, his book is not triumphal. Despite the problems with Smith's casual definitions of symbols and myths, he used his history of the imagination to remind readers who were watching wartime unity dissolve and a culture turn to the suppression of dissent that in politics what passed as reason, learning, and experience was shaped by the illogical dictates of myth.

Politics was sometimes irrational, and empirical facts alone could not necessarily counter opinion bolstered by the compelling patterns of myth. Within the academy, Smith offered something novel to students. By subjecting political writings to close reading, Smith invited graduate students in English to escape the sterile confines of New Criticism. He asked them to pay attention to the rhetorical appeals and intellectual structures of all sorts of [End Page ] texts, from celebratory poems to cheap fiction.

He asked intellectual historians to consider the emotional appeal of ideas, and he tempted Western historians to escape a dreary positivism by looking at people's perceptions of "facts. Smith never worked out the theoretical models that would have let him deliver on his promises, and although he pursued his interests in a democratic literature, he wrote books about Mark Twain and not interdisciplinary studies of rhetoric and politics. On reflection, Virgin Land is better, richer, more nuanced, more sensitive to conflict, more concerned with politics than I remembered.

On its own terms, Virgin Land is absurdly thorough, introducing readers to an enormous cast of obscure characters and the obscure products of their imaginations. Smith displays himself as an admirably patient reader of the prose of small-time journalists, journeymen politicians, hack poets, forgotten novelists, and James Fenimore Cooper.

And despite recollections to the contrary, the dime novel occupies only a small part of Smith's study. Virgin Land is divided into three sections, each exploring permutations on a theme and each overseen by a presiding presence. Smith opens with a discussion of the "Passage to India," and traces the idea of the American Empire down through the intellectual heirs of Thomas Jefferson.

In the second section, he follows the traces of Daniel Boone through "The Sons of Leatherstocking," and in the third and final section, he turns his attention to the image of America as "The Garden of the World," and to the symbol of the agricultural empire of the yeoman farmer. Lines of "intellectual patrimony" p. Subjects are politicians, policymakers, poets, geographers, explorers, novelists, newspapermen, entertainers, and historians, all participating in an intellectual project best understood as an ongoing imaginative exercise and not as an attempt to wrestle with reality.

Regardless of hard facts to the contrary, Smith's mythic West prevailed. People more [End Page ] easily revised their lives to suit the myth than revised the myth to suit their experiences. Politicians, novelists, and even historians persisted in living in oblivion, in making policy and telling stories following a logic dictated by myth and myth alone.

It is important to remember that the contention that the quintessential Americans were those who had landed in the East and gone West to farm or had thought about doing so was not Smith's answer. It was rather the idea he traced through American writing.

He found it in those who imagined the United States as a commercial empire, linking the trade routes of the Atlantic and Pacific; in writers who tried to make frontier figures into democratic heroes; and in statesmen who tried to enact by statute the agrarian utopia of virtuous yeomen. There are obvious problems with Smith's work: he says very little, for example, about the native peoples who lived on the land, virgin and otherwise; he has a very limited sense of the American audience; and he never tries to make clear whose interests are being served by a particular version of a myth of virgin land.

He does not proceed by a careful exposition of the place of images, but instead argues by example, and he never clearly states what he wants readers to understand about the connections between fact and imagination. Several critics have jumped on the few sentences in which Smith laid out his position on myth and fact in his clear and simple prose.

They exist on a different plane. But as I have tried to show they sometimes exert a decided influence on practical affairs" p.

For a man who argued by a sheer accumulation of evidence, this was perhaps enough, but Smith's unfortunate metaphor of different planes left several readers scratching their heads. Alan Trachtenberg suggested that he perhaps meant "dimensions"; Patricia Limerick that he meant "time zones. Limerick ignored the fact that Smith practiced a critic's close reading that brought texts into the present and used a simple narrative history that watched projects unfold in the past.

Initially, few complained. Historians like Ralph Henry Gabriel and Richard Hofstadter read the book as a portrait of the contradictions that shaped both the writings of Cooper and Turner and the agricultural policy of the United States Congress. Their attempts are preserved in the titles and subtitles of the books they wrote. Leo Marx, for example, insisted on reading in American literature permutations on a pastoral ideal freed from a particular regional history.

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America follows a literary trope, ignoring Smith's messier ventures into politics and popular culture. A decade later, in The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters , Annette Kolodny made obvious the sexual play of Smith's metaphor and asked readers to think about gender, language, psychology, and the actual land on which people lived.

By taking up a single figure, Ward was perhaps better able to explain the political consequences of mythmaking. Stories about Jackson, which had little to do with the facts on which they were supposedly based, provided foundations for political actions which in turn produced the social reality in which people then had to live.