Jay Parini's knowledgeable analysis of key texts that have formed Americans' ideas about themselves and their nation, "Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America," would make an excellent starting point for a college course.
The author makes clear that his choice of books is representative and not necessarily definitive: They are meant to be "nodal points, places where vast areas of thought and feeling gathered and dispersed," and within each chapter he brings up related works.
It's an effective, economical way to survey American history and culture. You can practically hear Parini, a well-regarded poet, novelist ("The Last Station") and nonfiction writer ("The Art of Teaching"), laying out his themes to a roomful of undergraduates at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he is a professor.
The opening chapters, in fact, sound a bit too much like academic lectures as they smoothly recapitulate received wisdom about four famous early American works. Parini lucidly identifies the elements that make "Of Plymouth Plantation" by William Bradford "a founding myth" of the nation, including the Pilgrims' belief that they were guided by God and their fraught relations with the Indians.
He capably summarizes "The Federalist Papers," drawing the first of many contemporary parallels by noting the effort to "create a balance between liberty and stability (or 'safety') -- always a delicate combination."
He accurately depicts "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" as a seminal text of the American mantra of self-creation and class mobility, and "The Journals of Lewis and Clark" as "part of every American's imaginary landscape."
This first part is informative, unarguable -- and a trifle dull. Things pick up some with "Walden." It's mildly amusing that "if Benjamin Franklin was our Founding Yuppie, as David Brooks once quipped, then Thoreau is our Founding Hippie."
Parini does better by "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." He honors Mark Twain's groundbreaking use of distinctively American language but doesn't denigrate Harriet Beecher Stowe's more traditional prose.
He restores "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to its stature as a fine example of Victorian fiction whose sentimentality and moral fervor are essential aspects of its power, while paying tribute to "Huckleberry Finn's" more challenging and sardonic portrait of freedom's pitfalls.
