Review by Choice Review
Here is contextualization with a vengeance. Reynolds (CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College) reconstructs Whitman's life and times in massive detail, clarifying the dynamic and often complex interaction between the poet and the carnivalized social, political, and cultural contexts of 19th-century America. With amplitude surpassing that of previous biographers, Reynolds reveals the extent to which Leaves of Grass was indebted to the "wildest players" of American life: sensational novelists and journalists, street toughs, vehement actors, slang-whanging orators, native humorists, Italian divas, singing families, blackface minstrels, daguerreotypists, luminists, genre painters, Emersonian transcendentalists, reformers, physiologists, phrenologists, mesmerists, spirit-rappers, free lovers, and trance poets, to mention some of the more prominent. Reynolds also exhumes figures in the Whitman biography who have been either underappreciated or ignored altogether, for example, Ralph Smith, McDonald Clarke, George Lippard, Junius Brutus Booth, Justus Liebig, Alexander von Humboldt, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Thomas Lake Harris. One finishes this book persuaded that Leaves of Grass was, as the poet himself said, "the age transfigured." Like Reynolds's previous book, Beneath the American Renaissance (CH, Sep'88), Walt Whitman's America is an inspired synthesis of biographical and historical data, a truly Whitman size contribution to the study of American literature, and an indispensable acquisition for libraries at all levels. D. D. Kummings; University of Wisconsin--Parkside
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Just what the world needs most: another prolix lit bio capitalizing on the publishing industry's search for the big catch--that combination of prestige and bucks so hard to find in, say, a novel. All right, so here we go again: big name subject, big production, big publisher; the same elephantine qualities that were behind the rise and fall of the TV miniseries. And yet the subject itself is interesting, for Whitman's ambition outstripped even his considerable ability, as Reynolds' somewhat defensive narrative makes clear. Certainly Whitman's subtle transformation from outspoken prophet of the common man to manipulator of his own self-created myth teases out the critic-psychologist in all of us. Fascinating, too, is the way that Whitman, who wanted to be America, serves as a window to so many levels of society in his time. Reynolds' treatment of this interesting matter is gentle and sometimes flaccid, but his knowledge of the era, especially at the level of that fascinating trivia that historians once used to overlook, is incredible. In short, a welcome if minor biography, too big by half, but fair-minded and balanced. --Stuart Whitwell
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), raised by a blunt, taciturn father who failed as a housebuilder and by a penny-pinching, barely literate mother, identified with working-class culture as he pursued a job-hopping, insecure career as printer, schoolteacher and journalist. A New Yorker, he projected his inner demons into gory, sensationalistic fiction, then turned to bitter political invective and slashing political verse before blossoming as the democratic populist bard of Leaves of Grass. In an engrossing biographical study that roots Whitman firmly in his time and makes him more relvant to ours, Reynolds (Beneath the American Renaissance) investigates and celebrates a poet of rapidly urbanizing America, of women's equality, of sexual energy and of a ``physical spirituality'' that yoked the mundane and the mystical. Reynolds balances the familiar image of the visionary optimist against the disillusioned social critic who became increasingly pessimistic about an American society rife with corruption, class division and spiritual emptiness. Illustrated. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club selections. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Whitman, the Good Gray Poet, was born into a time when slavery and the new market economy had just begun to transform the nation. Reynolds (Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville, LJ 4/15/88) endeavors to be "historically correct rather than politically correct" in examining this period and its players, and he succeeds. Weaving together primary and secondary historical sources, he reveals the diverse influences on the poet of politics, society, literary and cultural trends, science, and religion. Whitman's complex views on race and slavery, his "omnisexuality," and his conflict between conservatism and radicalism, for example, are better understood in this complete context. Whether as journalist, sensationalist, fiction writer, or poet, Whitman comes across as "a writer for all times," focusing on the pulse of the nation and socially significant causes that span centuries: prison reform, women's rights, democracy, and individualism. A highly readable, well-researched cultural history of the period. [BOMC selection.]Cathy Sabol, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This absorbing portrait of America's greatest poetic personality contains multitudes, all right. It opens onto a vast panorama of the United States in the 19th century, redefining the horizons of literary biography in the process. Reynolds (American Literature and American Studies/Graduate School of the City Univ. of New York; Beneath the American Renaissance, 1988) completes the project begun by Whitman, who sought to transform himself into the representative man of his America. In a manner that will intrigue as well as inform the general reader, Reynolds maps out historical settings from the Era of Good Feelings, which collapsed in the panic of 1819, the year of Whitman's birth, through to the Gilded Age, in which Whitman's life came to a close. A superb scholarly resource, this study also features a compelling narrative. Reynolds traces the roots of Whitman's appreciation for nature to his rural Long Island upbringing, while exploring his love for city life in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In fashioning a popular aesthetic that he hoped would unify his nation, Whitman adapted innovations from across the arts into a response to the political crises of the preCivil War era. Reynolds treats Whitman's legendarily multifarious sexuality at length, linking the poet's actions, thought, and works to the important controversies of his time over masturbation and free love. He shows how, in life as well as in art, Whitman contradicted himself: as an adept of various religious systems, as a champion of Lincoln and emancipation who all the same harbored deeply racist beliefs. Finally, Reynolds highlights Whitman as a literary celebrity who strategized to sell himself and his inner life for higher ends. On one level, it is disappointing that Reynolds seldom offers close readings that might underline the powerful effect of his works. On another level, however, the work of art on display here is Whitman himself, whose brilliance Reynolds illuminates fully. Perhaps then, this may be exemplary scholarship not just for our time, but for all times. (Book-of-the-Month Club/History Book Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections)
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