Gary Snyder and the American Unconscious: Inhabiting the Ground

261 Pages·1991·15.043 MB·English

by  Tim Dean

Gary Snyder and the
American Unconscious
Inhabiting the Ground
Tim Dean
GARY SNYDER AND THE AMERICAN
UNCONSCIOUS
NEW DIRECTIONS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
General Editor: Eric Homberger, Lecturer in American Studies, University of East
Anglia
'American studies', however diversely defined, has been dominated by the preoc
cupations of scholars in the United States, for whom the discovery of a 'usable past'
and the definition and redefinition of literary tradition went hand-in-hand with the
changing agendas of nationalism. Foreign writers and scholars have occasionally
made significant contributions to the debate in the United States, but they have
seldom possessed a collective sense of the uniqueness of their perspective upon
American civilisation. This series is designed to foster a distinctively 'European'
perspective upon American culture. It will contain books which range widely across
disciplines. There is much talk of the end of the Cold War and an increased concern
at the ecological crisis of industrial societies. The rapidity of social and political
change around the world, and the extent to which the American people are
themselves in the midst of 'a muddled and sometimes contradictory reappraisal of
the very foundations of the postwar political settlement, have begun to raise
questions about literature and culture and their relations in the social order. The
contributors to the series will not necessarily all be Europeans, nor will they speak
with a single voice about America and its culture. But they are asking the kind of
questions about the American experience which urgently need to be asked.
Tim Dean
GARY SNYDER AND THE AMERICAN UNCONSCIOUS: Inhabiting the Ground
Michael K. Glenday
SAUL BELLOW AND THE DECLINE OF HUMANISM
Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik and Marie-France Toinet (editors)
THE RISE AND FALL OF ANTI-AMERICANISM: A Century of French Perception
Vincent Piket
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS: The Growth of a Novelist
Mark Shechner
THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS AND OTHER ESSAYS
Further titles in preparation
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Gary Snyder and the
American
Unconscious
Inhabiting the Ground
TIM DEAN
The Johns Hopkins University
flfl
©Tim Dean 1991
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First published 1991
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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and London
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Dean, Tim. 1964-
Gary Snyder and the American unconscious: inhabiting the
ground. —(New Directions in American Studies).
1. American culture
I. Title II. Series
973.927
ISBN 0-333-49294-3
For Helen McNeil
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Plates viii
List of Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgemen ts X
Chronology xiii
Introduction: For All 1
1 The American Unconscious 12
Theorising the Unconscious 12
Beginning the History of the American
Unconscious: Puritanism and Literary Nationalism 26
The Turner Thesis 40
The Indian 50
Hollywood Westerns 63
American Westernism 78
2 The Real Work: Inhabiting the Ground 83
Riprap 84
Myths & Texts 95
Myths & Texts as a Reply to The Waste Land 126
Histories and Postmodernisms 138
Axe Handles 145
American Sublimity 159
Cherchez la Femme 176
The Poetics of Nominalisation 185
Notes 194
Index 236
vn
List of Plates
1 Joseph Wright, The Indian Widow (1785), Derby Museum and
Art Gallery, Derby.
2 Cover photograph from Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (1965),
by Harry Redl.
3 Frontispiece daguerreotype for Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
(New York: Brooklyn, 1855; first edition).
4 'Sourdough Mountain Lookout, Summer 1953', frontispiece to
Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (1965).
5 Frontispiece to Gary Snyder, A Range of Poems (London:
Fulcrum Press, 1966).
6 Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868),
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull, granddaughter of William
Brown Dinsmore, who acquired the painting in 1873 for 'The
Locusts', the family estate in Dutchess County, New York.
7 Ansel Adams, Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park,
California, 1960.
The author and publishers have made every effort to contact all
copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked,
they will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the
first opportunity.
vm
List of Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used throughout to refer to
sources of quotations from Snyder's work:
AH Axe Handles (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983).
BC The Back Country (New York: New Directions, 1968).
EHH Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow
Dharma Revolutionaries (New York: New Directions,
1969).
LR Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 1947-1985 (San Francis
co: North Point Press, 1986).
MT Myths & Texts (New York: New Directions, 1960).
OW The Old Ways (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977).
RR Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems (San Francisco: Grey Fox
Press, 1965).
RWave Regarding Wave (New York: New Directions, 1970).
RWork The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979, ed. William
Scott McLean (New York: New Directions, 1980).
TI Turtle Island (New York: New Directions, 1974).
IX