The Hemingway Review

Ross Tangedal's well-researched monograph The Preface: American Authorship in the Twentieth Century contributes importantly to the series New Directions in Book History. Applying principles of Gerard Genette's Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1987), Tangedal analyzes prefaces written by major American authors from Willa Cather to Toni Morrison, noting their differing intentions from guiding readers to understand their texts, defending them from critics, revealing their writing processes, or selling their texts. In Chapter 1, "Introduction: An Influence on the Public," Tangedal emphasizes that prefaces for readers and scholars "frame the central text … prior to reading" (2). The preface, therefore, is not simply an introduction, something to skip or skim, but an important key to everything that follows. Tangedal notes that "the twentieth century saw prefaces take on a new significance to the professional writer" (4), creating tension between the literary endeavor and the demands of the marketplace.

Recognizing the difficulty of generalizing about prefaces, Tangedal focuses his analysis on several common purposes, the first of which is the "delayed preface," written for later editions or reprints. Tangedal's Chapter 2, "A Proper Reading: Willa Cather's Introductions to My Antonia," compares Cather's original preface to My Antonia (1918) with the 1926 edition preface. Cather's original preface seeks to explain the complicated, multiple point of view she creates with Jim Burden's narrative as if it were delivered in manuscript to the [End Page 110] author Willa Cather. By 1926, Cather does not need to explain, but can comment more extensively on the role of Jim Burden and the role of a third party narrator. Tangedal alerts us to be aware that "when writers choose to preface their experience with new material after time has passed, the result forever alters the text that follows "(26). Implied here is that to determine an author's purpose, readers should first look to the original text with its initial preface.

Ring Lardner's reluctance to change his satiric stance is the focus of Chapter 3, "Stepping In or Turning Back: Ring Lardner and Authorial Resistance." Lardner was pressured to please his editor, Maxwell Perkins, and other critics who wanted him to be a serious writer and become the next Mark Twain. In How to Write Short Stories (with Samples) (1924), Tangedal says that Lardner actually has it both ways: he does give good writing advice to his readers while maintaining his satirical send up of pompous critics by using the point of view of one Sarah E. Spooldripper, his "maid." As Tangedal concludes, "Ring Lardner resisted the serious literary life by remaining just out of it" (85).

Tangedal's Chapter 4,"Inhibiting Signposts: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Authorial Anxiety," segues perfectly from Ring Lardner's resistance to critics to F. Scott Fitzgerald's desperation to be viewed as a serious writer. Disappointed in the reactions of the public and some critics of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald tells Maxwell Perkins that his novel is "a consciously artistic achievement" (92). However, as Gerard Genette warns, if an audience is used to an author's style and persona, it is not easy to change, as the public reaction to Gatsby bears out. Tangedal examines several of Fitzgerald's prefaces, beginning with the flippant This Side of Paradise (1920) to those of the 1930s, which "amplify the anxiety of a writer at odds with himself, his artistic choices, and eventually, his own talent" (93). The preface to The Modern Library edition of The Great Gatsby is a case in point in which Fitzgerald emphasizes the misunderstanding of critics and the author's plaintive desire to be judged on his intentions.

Readers of The Hemingway Review are no doubt familiar with Hemingway's disdain for literary critics, and in his Chapter 5, "The Will to Control: Ernest Hemingway and the Action of Writing," Tangedal makes sure readers get the point by citing the author's vivid dichotomy between critics "alive as stuffed birds...