Whatever Happened to Ernst Pawel, Anyway?

Edward J. Renehan Jr. put together an essay about American literature in 1957 for a book of essays exploring the nation's culture in that year. The anthology fell through, so the essay went online. Here's a sample:

"Although not averse to vagabonds of his own invention, Cheever disliked Kerouac's vagabond and, for that matter, Kerouac's novel. 'My first feelings about the Kerouac book were: that it was not good; that most of its accents or effects were derived from some of the other real explorers, like Saul [Bellow]; and that the apocalyptic imagery was not good enough--was never lighted by true talent, or deep feeling, vision.” Writing in the privacy of his journal, Cheever summed up Kerouac's plot as the story “of a man of thirty who lives with his hard-working mother, cooks supper for her when she gets home from the store, has a shabby affair with a poor Negress--who knows so little about herself that she is easy prey--wrestles, very suspiciously, with his pals, weeps in a train yard where his mother’s image appears to him, discovers that he is deceived, and writes a book.'"

It's fun to watch Renehan turn on a dime from The Great World and Timothy Colt to Atlas Shrugged, and the essay is an important reminder that there was more going on in American letters that year than the Beats. Plus the rest of his blog's pretty fun, too--if you like history, you might want to keep an eye out for his upcoming bio of Jay Gould.