Home > Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution Summary & Study Guide

Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

E. L. Doctorow’s prominence as an American novelist of the very highest rank has been earned by such works as THE BOOK OF DANIEL (1971), RAGTIME (1975), BILLY BATHGATE (1989) and most recently, THE WATERWORKS (1994)—all books in which an important political dimension was illuminated by the writer’s stylistic inventions and imaginative uses of language. It is not surprising, then, that Doctorow would also be confronting some of the most significant issues of his time in essays which he wrote during the period that his reputation was developing.

At the center of his collection JACK LONDON, HEMINGWAY, AND THE CONSTITUTION is an essay “A Citizen Reads the Constitution,” which Doctorow delivered as an address at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia in 1986. Here, with no hesitation, he proclaims his belief that the American Constitution “presents itself as the sacred text of secular humanism,” and carefully builds a powerful argument for his contention that the “newly self-determined America” was a “republic of hard work, in contrast to the European domains of privilege and title.” Skillfully weaving the fruits of extensive historical research with his vivid depictions of the debates and discussions held among the framers of the document and the citizens of the republic, Doctorow presents a vivid, intellectually inspiring account of the manner in which the great questions of that time (and modern times) were addressed in a form that still offers guidance and wisdom two centuries later.

From this perspective, Doctorow turns his attention to writers he admires—Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell—to show, like a superb teacher who has a feeling for the writer’s craft and a sympathetic but not uncritical interest in his ideology, how each one of these passionately committed men brought their own life’s experiences and social visions to their writing. London, Dreiser, and Hemingway (whose stature in American letters has declined in recent years) are reanimated in their life and work by the kind of critical appreciation that has been overshadowed of late by academic practitioners of arcane critical theories and narrow political agendas. Doctorow’s own progressive political position, as enumerated in his devastating castigation of the Reagan and Bush presidencies, places his comments on essentially conservative American writers in a uniquely revealing light.

Essays on American popular music as an archetype of the soul, on the spirit of nineteenth century New York, and, especially, on his friendship with the poet James Wright when they were students at Kenyon College are examples of Doctorow’s very engaging intelligence, which expresses itself in clear, evocative and often poetic language. In his reminiscences concerning Wright, Doctorow’s deepest feelings emerge as a moving complement to the keenness of mind which has made these essays so rewarding to read.