Alger, Horatio Jr. - W. T. Lhamon, Jr. (essay date 1976)
W. T. Lhamon, Jr. (essay date 1976)
SOURCE: "Horatio Alger and American Modernism: The One-Dimensional Social Formula," in American Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 20-July 11, 1976, pp. 11–27.
[In the following essay, Lhamon places Alger as a central influence in defining American mores and developmental ideals, especially in regard to the relationship of the individual to society.]
Imamu Amiri Baraka's story, "The Death of Horatio Alger," is an important overlooked benchmark in the history of American literature because it so consciously marks the end of America's one-dimensional culture.1 Baraka says even "Poets climb, briefly, off their motorcycles, to find out who owns their words. We are named by all the things we will never understand [and] all the pimps of reason who've ever conquered us." He speaks of the white, majority culture as a "complete and conscious phenomenon." And when Horatio Alger died for him, Baraka...
[The entire page is 8741 words long]
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