Facing Facts: Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920

An excellent read. I picked up this work with some trepidation as the project seems too big to realize in one volume by one author. Shi set out to write a history of realism, showing how and why American thinkers, artists, and writers, abandoned the European romanticism of the early nineteenth century for the fact-based and often wort-revealing approach of the early twentieth century - and he does it. The reader will gain a workable understanding of transcendentalism and the Antebellum worldview as well as the need for facts in the aftermath of the great disillusionment accompanying the bloodletting of the Civil War. She will also delight in the plot summaries and analysis showing literature as an evolved art (as opposed to the work of isolated geniuses). If not a student, the reader who has enjoyed Dreiser or James will see them in relation. And the reader will be exposed to the visual arts and the viewer of the visual to the literate. Among the unveilings in Shi's book, the artistic revolutions that are often thought to be without history - e.g. the avant-garde movements - can now be seen in a context that makes their emergence logical (if still surprising). I was particularly interested in the role of the urban environment in the shaping of realism. Dreiser, Norris, Crane, and others were compelled by the emerging urbanization in America to make sense of it in art. This, it seems to me, is a strong theme in Shi's work. The artists sought to makes sense of the world they lived in and as that world changed so abruptly after the Civil War, their approach to art did as well. An accompanying tension to this effort to depict the world of "man" was the effort to define gender. Shi clearly demonstrates how gendering and the effort to control the world (or its appearance in art) goes hand in hand with the effort to define masculinity (and it turns out to be related to people's prudishness over viewing the naked body - male and female). What you won't find, and what I had hoped for, is an integration of the discussion about realism's emergence with scientific exploration and imperialism (the latter, however, is alluded to). But then, Shi never promised to tie in those topics.

The author leads the reader from the birth of realism in the US in art, literature, history, etc. Although some of his points seem obvious once you read them, they are simply not matters that are taught in standard art history or other classes. I thought that this was truly a brilliant book. I shared many parts with my partner, etc.