Often well educated in white schools and comfortable in white society, the first generation of Indian leaders to emerge on the national level included persons like Charles Eastman and Gertrude Bonnin. Yet despite their acceptance of assimilationist ideals, they also contributed a new ideal of their own: a Pan-Indian identity that emphasized the commonness of Indians of all tribes. They recognized things that Indians held in common, much more than previous tribal leaders had done. While they valued a "civilized" lifestyle, they also respected their native traditions enough to recognize the injustices of the federal colonial domination.
It is a heavy loss to American literature that Scott Fitzgerald died in his forties. Of that fact this volume which Edmund Wilson has edited is convincing proof. When Tender Is the Night was published a few years ago there was reason to doubt whether the fine talent which had first fully realized itself in The Great Gatsby eight years before would develop sufficiently to arrive at the greater achievements of which it was capable. Tender Is the Night was an ambitious book, but it was also a brilliant failure. Coming after so long a lapse in Fitzgerald's serious writing, the disappointment it brought to those who had felt in The Great Gatsby the hand of a major novelist was keen.
This is a free excerpt of 217 words. There are 1,277 words (approx.
4 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our The Last Tycoon: Critical Essay by J. Donald Adams Access Pass.
