All this may sound intolerably abstract; it probably does. It is, however, a way
for me to tease out, and to underscore, what I see as three fundamental points:
points that are never really foregrounded or argued out in this history but are
nevertheless there, feeding into and informing everything I try to say and provid-
ing me with something like a structure, a narrative pattern. First, social stability is
an illusion, the preserve of pastoral dream and utopian vision – and, for that
matter, of that idea of the writing into life of a New Eden that has tended to
monopolize readings of American literature. At some moments, the pace of change
may accelerate but change is the one constant, guaranteeing the plural character of
any culture. Second, American culture and writing are surely only properly under-
stood in these terms, as multiple and layered, composed of many different groups
all trying to make sense of their lives and changes – and, in the process, construct
their own imaginative community. And third, if anyone at all is likely to help us
understand the exact forms that change has taken in America, the plurality of its
cultures and the conflicting forces at work there, it is writers precisely because of
the chance their writing gives them to live both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of history. Writers
can help more than most to disclose to us the continuing acts of imagination that
constitute the making of a nation.
There are other more personal debts, among them to the many students and
colleagues who have helped me to what little I have learned about American literat-
ure over the past thirty years. I would like to thank all those I have met and
communicated with in the British Association for American Studies, particularly
during my stints as Associate Editor and then Editor of the Journal of American
Studies, and my fellow scholars in the European Association for American Studies
and the Southern Studies Forum. Friends at the British Academy, particularly
Andrew Hook, Jon Stallworthy and Wynn Thomas, are to be thanked, for the
advice and support they have given. So are colleagues at other universities in the
United Kingdom, notably Susan Castillo, Kate Fullbrook, Mick Gidley, Judie
Newman and Helen Taylor, at other universities in other parts of Europe, espe-
cially Jan Nordby Gretlund, Lothar Honnighausen and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz,
in Asia, particularly Bob Lee, and in the United States, where I owe a special debt
of gratitude to Saki Bercovitch, George Dekker and Marjorie Perloff. At the Uni-
versity of Essex, I have especially to thank my friend and colleague of over thirty
years Herbie Butterfield, John Gillies and Peter Hulme, and my doctoral students,
with particular thanks to one former doctoral student, Owen Robinson, who has
now become a colleague. I would like to thank Brigitte Lee, too, for being such a
meticulous, thoughtful and creative copy-editor. Acknowledgements should also be
made to the University of Essex, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities
Research Board for making some limited support available, and to the several
universities and conferences that enabled me to try out my ideas – often persuading
me to change them. More personally, I want to thank Andrew McNeillie at Blackwell,
the best, most supportive and inspiring of editors and a good friend. On a more
personal note still, my greatest debt is, as always, to my family. My older daughter,
Catharine, now herself an academic in the United States, I want to thank here for