In the American Grain

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In the American Grain | The Deceptive Ground of History: The Sources of William Carlos Williams’ In the American Grain

In the American Grain makes history not a matter of events, but a matter of language—or rather, of languages as itself an event. The underlying premise of Williams’ book is that a history of America must be, in part, a history of language in America, a study of the tropes and verbal configurations which have historically defined the place. ‘‘Studies,’’ in fact, is exactly what Williams terms In the American Grain in the epigraph to his book. Stating that he had not only read ‘‘letters,’’ ‘‘journals,’’ and ‘‘reports of happenings,’’...

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