What is 'American' about American literature?

In his essay "Paleface and Redskin" (The Kenyon Review, 1939), the 20th century literary critic Philip Rahv went a long way to defining what is uniquely "American" in American literature. Rahv posited that American letters has produced two "polar types" of writers. On one hand, there is the "paleface," writers such as Henry James with his "drawing-room fictions" and Herman Melville, who was, in his "tragic loneliness," acutely interested in what William Faulkner would later call "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." On the other hand were the "redskins," writers such as Walt Whitman, with his "open air poems," and Mark Twain, who tended to revel in adventures and new experiences rather than contemplate life from afar with "a refined estrangement from reality." Moreover, Rahv argued that the redskin was more of a "lowbrow," uneducated (whether he was or not) and intensely aware of emotions and spontaneity rather than "personal culture." The redskin might choose to write a description of a war or some masculine endeavor. The paleface was "highbrow," concerned more with the intellectual. He might write something which attempts to get at the meaning of religion or man's refinement of his spirit.

Throughout American history it is possible to divide American writers into these two categories. Early in America's history writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, with his wilderness adventures and pitched battles, and Washington Irving, with his tales of the common man, might be labeled redskins, while William Cullen Bryant, especially in his reveries on nature, and Jonathan Edwards, in his pontifications on religion, are definitely palefaces. In the 20th century it could be said that a writer like F. Scott Fitzgerald was a paleface because of his concentration on mostly "polite" society and the doings of the rich and influential. In contrast, John Steinbeck was a redskin with his stories about "Okies," "bindle-stiffs," prostitutes and the seedier elements of American society. Some writers, however, might defy these labels. Henry David Thoreau could be at least partly redskin in his descriptions of everyday life on Walden Pond, but it is probably more comfortable with the palefaces because of his tendencies to look at life as a contemplative endeavor.

In the 21st century it could at least be somewhat argued that this dichotomy remains in American literature. Novels such as The Road or No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy represent the redskin in their adventure and willingness to present the grittier side of American life. In the paleface category might be writers such as Dan Brown who has created a series of books which seem to concentrate on the spiritual aspects of the world. In any case, the paleface/redskin labels are still relevant in American culture.