American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York Review Books Classics)

Stepping out of the darkness, the American emerges upon the stage of history as a new character, as puzzling to himself as to others. American Humor, Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character," singles out the archetypal figures of the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel to illuminate the fundamental role of popular culture in fashioning a distinctive American sensibility. A memorable performance in its own right, American Humor crackles with the jibes and jokes of generations while presenting a striking picture of a vagabond nation in perpetual self-pursuit. Davy Crockett and Henry James, Jim Crow and Emily Dickinson rub shoulders in a work that inspired such later critics as Pauline Kael and Lester Bangs and which still has much to say about the America of Bob Dylan and Thomas Pynchon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

It was in 1931 that historian, anthropologist, and critic Rourke (1885-1941) published what would become her most popular work and a classic ever since. It is a kind of manifesto about what America was, where it would be found, and what it was made of, says Greil Marcus (Lipstick Traces) in his introduction to the new edition.
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Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character" examines such legendary figures as the Yankee, the backwoodsman, the minstrel singer, and the stroller to show how the popular comic imagination has contributed to America's changing self-awareness.

The NYRB Classics series is designedly and determinedly exploratory and eclectic, a mix of fiction and non-fiction from different eras and times and of various sorts. The series includes nineteenth century novels and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, tell-all memoirs and learned studies, established classics and cult favorites, literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. NYRB Classics are, to a large degree, discoveries, the kind of books that people typically run into outside of the classroom and then remember for life.

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