AMERICAN LIT STUDIES LEVANDER

American Literature in Transnational Perspective 283
Still, Howells and Mart í were in the minority in their focus on social justice issues
in the novel.
Mark Twain may have helped model for Mart í , then, ways in which a writer could
reject effete, mannered, excessively ornamental European models and create natural,
bold, original art out of American materials – materials mined from American quarries;
he also may have modeled a way to create art “ fueled by indignation ” and powered
by a well - honed sense of social justice. Is it not intriguing that a Mart í who would
entitle his most widely reprinted essay “ Nuestra Am é rica , ” or “ Our America, ” referred
to the author of Connecticut Yankee with affection, one year earlier, as “ Nuestro Mark
Twain , ” or “ Our Mark Twain ” ( “ Escenas ” 38:186, Editorial Tr ó pico, in Fishkin, Mark
Twain 48)? The leading Cuban public intellectual of the generation after Mart í similarly
would lay claim to Twain as a kinsman from a continental standpoint. Jes ú s
Castellanos wrote in 1910 that there is only “ one in all the continent who can
call himself truly American, ” and that one is Mark Twain. “ No one else has
pre sented such astonishing discoveries of expression, feeling, ideas, language, ”
Castellanos wrote (116).
We can probably credit Twain with having helped hone Mart í ’ s aesthetic sense
of what kind of new - world language was needed to tell new - world stories – a vernacular
modernism , if you will, that aspired in theory, if not always in practice, to
eschew the belabored, ornamental “ gilded ” literary conventions with Old World
pedigrees in favor of a more rough - hewn and natural prose style. Twain also seems
to have modeled for Mart í how a writer could prompt readers to think about social
justice in fresh ways. Both of these areas would inform Mart í ‘ s own writing in the
years that followed. Both would also prove to be central for other non-U.S. writers
who read Twain. Indeed, the two areas that were particularly salient for Mart í
were key to other writers around the world, as well – in some cases decades before
they came to fi gure prominently in the thinking of writers and critics writing in
English.
In 1884, the same year that Jos é Mart í lauded Twain for being a miner and not a
gilder, for rejecting the densely ornamental “ gilded ” writing models of Europe in
favor of a more natural mode better suited to the United States, a young Parisian,
Henry Gauthier - Villars, made virtually the identical point in his book entitled simply
Mark Twain – the fi rst book published on Mark Twain anywhere. Only Gauthier -
Villars was writing not as a fellow “ American ” in the continental sense, as Mart í was,
but as a young Frenchman who saw Twain as modeling what I ’ ve called a “ vernacular
modernism ” that Gauthier - Villars wanted to graft onto French literature. Gauthier -
Villars had little use for what he called the “ refi ned stylists ” currently in fashion in
France who “ compose a sentence with the minute labor of a mosaicist, ” with results
that are “ tangled - up ” and “ precious, ” writers who feel obliged to disdain the “ gaiety,
spontaneity, ” and “ literary good health ” so abundant in the work of Mark Twain (94;
Fishkin, Mark Twain 56). With wonderful é lan, Gauthier - Villars held up Twain as a
standard to displace the dull “ refi ned stylists ” currently in vogue, urging his countrymen
to look to “ young America and its completely new literature [since] the authors