Kirkus评论
From Cooper's The Pioneers (1823) to Mailer's Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), from 19th-century I3ndian-fighting (Kit Carson) to 20th-century big game hunting (Hemingway): a clear, cogent study of adventure as the imaginative link between ""the personal-identity concept of manhood"" and ""the political concept of nationalism."" As usual, Green isn't doing high-and-dry lit-crit: he wants readers to get a sympathetic view of an oft-despised (by liberals, feminists, etc.) hairy-chested genre--chiefly to sharpen their sense of white America's heritage of ""privilege and guilt."" Green surveys a dozen more or less predictable books: Nick of the Woods, The Oregon Trail, The Green Hills of Africa, etc. He does make room for Melville (Typee)--whose bias against the strenuous life, imperialism, and western civilization in general was atypical--and for ambivalent figures like Twain and Mailer. (Mailer's response to the WASP heroic code and the wilderness is characterized as ""parodic yet affirmative."") Green is not an Americanist, and his readings lack the historical depth and rich documentation of comparable works, such as Richard Slotkin's Regeneration Through Violence or even Richard Drinnon's more popular Facing West. But Green has an eye for the big picture: in his concluding pages, he links the cult of adventure to a much broader tradition--encompassing men as varied as Rousseau, Theodore Roosevelt, and Levi-Strauss--that ""sees the world in synchronous structures, splendid panoramas of triumph and ruin."" And he combines readable summaries of often unfamiliar material (like Washington Irving's A Tour on the Prairies) with a strong, consistent leftist message. A vigorous look at ""energizing myths"" that still fuel our culture. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.