Facing Facts

Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920

David E. Shi

"A true poem," Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1852, "is the daily newspaper"--and American culture was never the same again. Like a blast of cold air in a stuffy drawing room, Whitman's campaign to give artistic representation to gritty realities shocked the genteel artistic elite of the 1850s; but the brassy poet's efforts helped generate a revolution in American thought and the arts. Four decades later, Willa Cather could declare that the "public demands realism, and they will have it."
In Facing Facts, David Shi provides the most comprehensive history to date of the rise of realism in American culture. He vividly captures the character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement--ranging from Winslow Homer to the rise of the Ash Can school, from Horatio Greennough to Louis Sullivan, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. He begins with a survey of the idealistic sensibility that preveiled during the antebellum years and proceeds through the nineteenth century, tracing the rise of realism in each major area of arts and letters. Along the way, he combines an astute analysis of the movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners.
Nuanced, detailed, and comprehensive, Facing Facts provides the definitive account of the realist phenomenon, revealing why it played so great a role in American cultural history, and why it retains its perennial fascination.

Facing Facts

Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920

David E. Shi

Description

"A true poem," Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1852, "is the daily newspaper"--and American culture was never the same again. Like a blast of cold air in a stuffy drawing room, Whitman's campaign to give artistic representation to gritty reality shocked the genteel artistic elite of the 1850s; but the brassy poet's efforts helped generate a revolution in American life and thought. Four decades later, Willa Cather could declare that the "public demands realism, and they will have it."
In Facing Facts, David Shi provides the most comprehensive history to date of the rise of realism in American culture. He vividly captures the character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement--ranging from Winslow Homer to the rise of the Ash Can school, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. He begins with a look at the idealist atmosphere of the antebellum years, when otherworldly themes were considered the only fit subject for art (Hawthorne wrote that "the grosser life is a dream, and the spiritual life is a reality"). Whitman's assault on these standards coincided with sweeping changes in American society: the bloody Civil War, the aggressive advance of a modern scientific spirit, the popularity of photography, the expansion of cities, capitalism, and the middle class--all worked to shake the foundations of genteel idealism and sentimental romanticism. Both artists and the public developed an ever-expanding appetite for hard facts, and for art that accurately depicted them. As Shi proceeds through the nineteenth century, he traces the realist revolution in each major area of arts and letters, combining an astute analysis of the movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners. Here we see Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., shaken to stern realism by the horrors of the Civil War; the influence of Walt Whitman on painter Thomas Eakins and architect Louis Sullivan, a leader of the Chicago school; the local-color verisimilitude of Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Orne Jewett; and the impact of urban squalor on intrepid young writers such as Stephen Crane. In the process of surveying nineteenth-century cultural history, Shi provides fascinating insights into the specific concerns of the realist movement--in particular, the nation's growing obsession with gender roles. Realism, he writes, was in many respects an effort to revive masculine virtues in the face of declining virility.
During the twentieth century, a new modernist sensibility challenged the now-orthodox tenets of realism: "Is it not time," one critic asked, "that we renounce the heresy that it is the function of art to record a fact?" Shi examines why so many Americans answered yes to this question, under influences ranging from psychoanalysis to the First World War. Nuanced, detailed, and comprehensive, Facing Facts provides the definitive account of the realist phenomenon, revealing why it played so great a role in American cultural history, and why it retains its perennial fascination.

Facing Facts

Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920

David E. Shi

Author Information

David Shi is President of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the author of The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture and America: A Narrative History.

Facing Facts

Realism in American Thought and Culture, 1850-1920

David E. Shi

Reviews and Awards

"[A] readable analysis of realism in American culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."--Journal of Aesthetic Education

"A fascinating study....Expertly blending historical analysis with artistic and literary criticism, Shi provides an important new understanding of how historical events influenced 'style' during a critical period of American life. FACING FACTS contains much that is valuable for the specialist and general reader alike."--Magill Book Reviews

"Shi's book undoubtedly will become the standard survey for students and general readers. In accessible prose, it provides a wealth of information."--American Historical Review

"Shi manages to write broad sweeping social cultural history, creating the first compehensive survey of realistic trends in the latter half of the 19th century....This work is important for redressing large aspects of the romantic realism debates. Recommended for its large sweeping grasp of social and political ideals."--The Reader's Review

"A rich, brilliantly written discussion of the ideas, evolution and exposition of varieties of realism in American culture from slightly before the Civil War to the end of World War I....Shi's hand is so sure and his insights are so interesting that it transforms one's reading into a fresh encounter. I have been constantly intrigued by the twists and turns of his argument, by the juxtapositions and comparisons he makes, and by the way he weaves insights from one arena of culture into explorations of another. In this fashion, literary and art works, architecture, science, philosophy, and so forth are seen as text at one point and context at another. The result is a truly rich and fascinating exposition....I cannot name another historian of American culture whose prose is more forceful or inviting."--James Gilbert, author of Work Without Salvation and A Cycle of Outrage

"An enviable combination of clarity and subtlety....I have frankly, up to now, not come across a truly clear and persuasive description of realism and exactly how it related to idealism, naturalism, and modernism in American art and literature. Shi's book performs that service. Because it covers such a long time span, deals with the most central cultural events, includes such a wide range of creative people, and is so unambiguously and engagingly written, it is bound to have a broad and lasting impact."--Walter Nugent, author of Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations and Structures of American Social History

"An outstanding survey of Realism in American culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book analyzes the Realistic mentality in literature, painting, architecture and other cultural endeavors. It reveals a dynamic idea of Realism that both depicted and analyzed the realities of daily living. Realism left an enduring legacy, and is still functioning. This book is a welcome addition to the historical analysis of modern American culture."--H. Wayne Morgan, author of America's Road to Empire

"Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Shi's timely reminder of this pragmatist faith in the transforming power of representation is how alien it feels in our own day; when relations between distinct groups within American society are weakening, and when the hope of changing the world by reimagining it is diminishing. One closes Mr. Shi's book with a sense of gratitude for writers who once tried to restore and sustain these relations and that hope."--The New York Times Book Review

"A history of the shift of the American mind from romanticism to realism from just before the Civil War to the end of World War I."--The New York Times Book Review

"Shi's brisk and, at times, dizzying survey of the arts focusses on the American taste for realism."--The New Yorker (Recommended Reading)