George Monteiro
Brown University

Excertos do Prefácio a Histórias da Literatura Americana

"One of the most salutary aspects of this appealing book is its author's direct, never obfuscated, delineation of his own scholarly and pedagogical genealogy. His excellent ideas have identifiable sources and he glories in identifying them. This honesty, contrary to what some others might think, serves to mark the ways in which this book makes its original and energizing contribution to an understanding of what he considers to be a very important subject indeed-one that appears to be of great interest to readers everywhere, not the least of them-late editors of posh journals notwithstanding-being informed Portuguese readers. Unavoidably, he provides us with a canon-or, to sidestep the potent for argument, with a discussion of U.S. writers who continue to fire up his imagination, specifically those writers who embody the myths and beliefs that have given shape to the national character. Of course, he excludes many names one might have expected in a book as wonderfully ambitious as this one, but that does not really matter. For what we get in return is the beauty of Mário Avelar's own informed myth about the U.S. and its most significant mythologies, and we get that beauty hot. Fully aware that his view of the U.S. is insistently personal (even, here and there, idiosyncratic), he opts for deeper analyses rather than all-inclusive coverage. The sweep he does achieve comes not through names named or titles given or dates established but the pursuit of the living ideas that enable him to organize his deeply felt response to all matters pertaining to U.S. literature and culture. Some of the names this book does cover are the ones we might expect-Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner. Others are less obviously canonical-Margaret Fuller, Hart Crane, W. H. Auden, and Jack Kerouac. Still others range from the unusual and surprising in a book of this nature-Leslie Marmon Silko, Mark Doty, and David Lehman-to the unknown-Karl Kirchwey. If one can ask of the critic that he give us an informed understanding of his subject, one must nevertheless grant him his personal point of view-even as that critic does to any writer he admires and respects. As another U.S. writer-Stephen Crane-once put it, 'I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes and he is not at all responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to my honesty is my supreme ambition.' Amen. For the writer and the critic alike.
Make no mistake. Mário Avelar's odyssey through U.S. literature and culture is a book that matters."