The unwritten war;: American writers and the Civil War

by Daniel Aaron

In The Unwritten War, Daniel Aaron examines the literary output of American writersâ major and minorâ who treated the Civil War in their works. He seeks to understand why this devastating and defining military conflict has failed to produce more literature of a notably high and lasting order, why there is still no "masterpiece" of Civil War fiction. In his portraits and analyses of 19th- and some 20th-century writers, Aaron distinguishes between those who dealt with the war only marginallyâ Henry Adams, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain-and those few who sounded the war's tragic importâ Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and William Faulkner. He explores the extent to which the war changed the direction of American literature and how deeply it entered the consciousness of American writers. Aaron also considers how writers, especially those from the South, discerned the war's moral and historical implications. The Unwritten War was originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1973. The New Republic declared, [This book's] major contribution will no doubt be to American literary history. In this respect it resembles Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore and is certain to become an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to explore the letters, diaries, journals, essays, novels, short stories, poems-but apparently no plays-which constitute Civil War literature. The mass of material is presented in a systematic, luminous, and useful way.
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Genres: American, American Civil War, Civil War, History

385 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

The son of Jewish immigrants, Daniel Aaron was an American writer and academic who helped found the Library of America. Aaron earned a BA from the University of Michigan, and in 1937 earned the first Ph.D. in "American Civilization" from Harvard University. Aaron taught at Smith College and at Harvard from 1971 until his retirement in 1983.

Reviews

[NDH · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I find this book’s title more of an eye-catching, a marketing, device, rather than a statement about or description of the literature it purports to review—which is another way of saying that the title primarily draws attention to the author’s pretentiousness…always such a clever boy that Daniel Aaron…I found the book to be an excellent ‘one-stop shopping’ source of suggestions for future reading. As a single-volume collection of short overviews of many of the ‘civil war era writers you should know’, this is an excellent book. I suspect it may have been created out of lecture materials for some sparsely attended upper-level literature course at Harvard or Smith in the 1950s or 60s. My only criticism might be that as something of a ‘focused’ survey course, the individual authors are sometimes not treated as thoroughly as I’d like. For example, Ambrose Bierce was clearly one-of-a-kind; I would like to know how was he received by the reading public and by the critics at the time of publication.
One interesting feature of the book (published in 1973) is the author’s review of and praise for Edmund Wilson’s 1962 “Patriotic Gore” which looks at most of the same authors. My own impression, which struck me even before I came to Aaron’s review of Wilson, was that this book (Aaron’s) is the better of the two. I had to laugh when I encountered DA’s (unfootnoted) comment (p 329) that EW’s book “has been criticized for its dubious analogies, factual errors, and willful pontifications.” My feelings exactly…(EW had died in 1972. Was DA himself one of the sources of that criticism?)

A not-exhaustive listing of the authors reviewed by DA would include:
1. William Gilmore Simms, George Templeton Strong, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. The Philosophers: Hawthorne, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville
3. The Malingerers: Henry Adams, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain
4. Drawing-Room Warriors and Combatants: John W. Deforest, Ambrose Bierce, Albion Tourgee (plus a few others)
5. Stephen Crane and Harold Frederic
6. Other: Timrod, Cooke, Taylor, Strothers, Mary Chesnut, Sidney Lanier, GW Cable
7. 20th Century: the Fugitives/Agrarians including Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren, and, finally, Faulkner.

So, as you can see, a tremendous amount of material for future reading or re-reading.

But, finally, why such a pretentious title? DA’s contention seems to be that no one has written the civil war’s Great American Novel (a term that seems to have been coined by John W Deforest), or epic poem, or whatever.
So what? says I.

Frankly, literary criticism seems often to deteriorate into something akin to a sandbox full of precocious children whining about whose sand pile is better than the others’. Esoteric and increasingly meaningless language seems to be the currency of the sandbox realm, degenerating into gibberish and psychobabble the closer one gets to modernity. “Patriotic Gore”. “The Unwritten War”. Wow. That is soooo deep. And it sells!
“Yertle the Turtle” comes to mind. Dr. Seuss and Dr. Kissinger understood the pettiness of academic vanity.

Regardless, this book has value. Ignore the title.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As his book's title indicates, Daniel Aaron in The Unwritten War sets forth his belief that the truly great literary work of the American Civil War has not been written and is not likely to be written. Looking at the lives and writings of major American authors who were alive during the Civil War, and of some who lived and wrote after the war, Aaron provides thoughtful reflections on the Civil War-related writings of a number of canonical figures of American literature -- Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Penn Warren, and William Faulkner among them -- and sets forth his feelings regarding what might have kept each from writing the definitive work of Civil War literature. Aaron also comments on the writings of lesser-known authors more likely to be known only to fairly serious students of the history of the period -- for example, writers like George Templeton Strong, Henry Adams, William Dean Howells, John W. DeForest, Albion Tourgee, Sidney Lanier, Allen Tate, Mary Chesnut, and George Washington Cable. The chief omission to my mind is the lack of treatment of work by African-American writers. Where are the Civil War-related writings of Frederick Douglass, for example, or of Charles W. Chesnutt? Overall, however, The Unwritten War is a thoughtful, well-written survey that should appeal to students of the Civil War era.

[Lloyd Fassett]

5/4/16 found it through a NYT obit about the author. It sounds fascinating because it's about what didn't happen.