In 1920 the
literary critic and satirist HL Mencken wrote in the newspaper the
Nation that Chicago was the "Literary Capital of
the United States". Given its location, deep in the Mid-West far
from the two major hubs of the East and the West Coast, it might seem
like a surprising claim.
And yet,
being one of the first and most successful industrialized city in the
country gave its authors plenty of material to feed their
imagination. They had to face the challenge of how to depict the
disorienting new urban reality and the capitalist model of society
which resulted from it.
Chicago's literature didn't rise
until the late 19th century and the explosion of industrialization.
This literary awakening has been called the "Chicago Literary
Renaissance". It contributed to shape the development of
American literature.
Between the
Great Fire of 1871 and the mid-twentieth century, there were at least
three surges of Chicago writing. The first wave, at the turn of the
century, was denominated as Midland realism featuring writers such
as Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair and Carl Sandburg.
Midland
realism was about the awakening of a literary consciousness thanks to
the confrontation with an increasingly
industrialised Midwest. At the turn of the century young Chicago had
become a hub of commodities trading, a key financial center for
agricultural markets, the center of the meat-packing industry and one
of the most important railroad hub. The American society was at stake
with a brutal corrupted form of capitalism where big businesses
controled the whole society at the expense of the political forces.
The working classes felt abandoned and betrayed by the ruling class
and felt lost in this ever-changing world.
Theodore
Dreiser in Sister
Carrie
(1900) deals with the
subject of the American Dream and women showing how
consumer society turns people into commodities or objects and even
shape women's sexual desire. Upton Sinclair in The
Jungle
(1906) portrays the socio-economic realities of working class life
showing the job insecurity, the tragedy of the lack of social
welfare, the role of alcohol as a means of oppression and more. His
exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the
American meatpacking industry led directly to the first regulation of
the meat industry in 1904.
But it is
surprising to see that not all writers dealt with this theme in the
same way. Dreiser and Sinclair chose to attack the system and show
its discrepencies, as their European counterparts of that period (as
for example the French Social Realists represented by Zola or
Balzac). Some authors like Carl
Sandburg were on the
contrary fascinated by the rise of this new industrialized world. His
poem "Chicago"
casts a new light on
the
majesty of one of the United States's first great cities. He affirms
that Chicago is a vibrant city which is growing into something
healthy and mature. And most of all, he is the first to praise
Chicago's aesthetic quality, finding beauty in the majesty of the
skyscrapers.
By
doing so, Carl Sandburg gives a new energy and ideology to the
American landscape. He is indeed one of the first to accept and
reivindicate America's urban identity and break away from America's
pastoral ideal. This also a way to found an American version of
social realism, distinct from the European model.
"Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked,
sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player
with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."
This love
declaration for Chicago is a founding element of the American identity. It introduces the paradoxical love of the Americans for their citites while they reinvidacate to be the country of the wilderness and the country side.
It looks like HL Mencken was right after all !
And a good reading week to all of you :)
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