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Rating: 
Summary: Terrible...F-
Review: As a student who is forced to read this book, I must say that it is one of the most dense and boring compilations of literature I have ever read. All of these writings are so dull and pointless that they just make me want to rip up this junk. But then again I want to re-sell this at the end of the semester to get some kind of money back. I can buy like 6 CDs or 3/4 DVDs for the amount of money i had to waste to support the Norton series. I now associate having to read any kind of Norton book with hell.
Rating: 
Summary: "Canon" balls
Review: Except for the silliness of Avishai Mallinger, I can sympathize with the view points of all the reviews of the anthology. I am using the 1820-1865 vol in a class right now and must say, I find the selections over-all quite varied and enjoyable. I do fear that in our pluralistic society, the American Literary Canon is being distorted to fit material that is only included due to the minority status of it's author, or the political correctness of its subject matter. An example, I think, is the inclusion of the rather churlish William Apess.
I have always been dismayed by the American pedagogy's fetish for slavery, and that preoccupation is well exemplified here. I must ask if the inclusion of both Harriet Beecher Stowe AND Harriet Jacobs was strictly necessary, and I find it unnecessary to sound the beautiful deeps of Thoreau to bring up his opinion of the same institution. And not only his, but Longfellow's as well. And not only his, but Emerson's as well. In my own class, "Nature" was dismissed with a cursory glance, while "Last of the Anti-slavery Lectures" became a paper topic.
However, if the Canon were not revised, I might not have been treated to the wonderful Margaret Fuller or the fascinating Enlightenment piece of the first of the Cherokee Memorials. It is only by reading and testing such material that we can determine if it is truly worthy of being canonized. Anthology revision, in it's successes and failures is a part of that process.
Rating: 
Summary: A Revisionist's Anthology
Review: I looked over the Norton Sixth Edition the other day...Approximately a decade has passed since I used the Fourth Edition Norton Anthology during my undergraduate studies. At that time I sensed that there were two types of English professor: the traditionalist, who was committed to teaching the traditionally accepted great American writers; and, the revisionist, whose mission was to infuse female and minority writers at whatever cost. It seemed to me that the revisionist had been behind the Fourth Edition, given that there were many apparent changes to the American literary canon for what I believed to be for the purposes of political correctness and social change. My suspicions were later confirmed when a visiting Berkley professor, my American Lit professor's friend, admitted that this in fact was not only the goal but "a great responsiblility". Of course, there is nothing wrong in introducing new writers, who during the preceding decades, because of there gender, race or ethnic background, had been overlooked and not read or studied. However, because there is finite number of pages in a given work, when a new writer is introduced it is at the expense of the older, traditional writer who ends up giving away his pages. In fact, in that course, entitled American Literature, which was a required course for all English Lit majors, we did not read any Twain, no Fennimore Cooper, and no Poe. Instead we were assigned Native American chants, slave writings, and various female authors. Just to reiterate, there is nothing wrong with studying Native American chants, slave writings, and female writers, but we must ask ourselves is it worth pushing some of the traditionally accepted fathers of American literature aside? Since then I have looked over the Fifth and now Sixth editions and have seen the revisionist's grip tighten. It seems that with every edition there are more decisions made based on politics rather than merit. The canon is being revised and the good folks at Norton believe that it is their duty to do so. Nevertheless, although it is clear that I am not a disciple of the revisionist, I nevertheless recommend the Norton Anthologies because although they contain plenty of mediocre works, they are nevertheless interwoven among the works of American masters, and it is difficult not to see who is who, regardless of what Professor Stillahippy says.
Rating:
Summary: More Mathers Please
Review: Is this all the Mathers you get? What about Jerry and Marshall. And we all know that early American lit is more boring than the late stuff. This anthology would really benefit from some Chuck Palaniak. My favorite novel included is Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to go without church for all that time. She really had strength. NOTE ON THE TEXT: If you really love American Lit, you'll find the puritan stuff much more engaging than the 19th Century. I keep a copy of Volume A by my bedside.
Rating:
Summary: More Mathers Please
Review: Is this all the Mathers you get? What about Jerry and Marshall. And we all know that early American lit is more boring than the late stuff. This anthology would really benefit from some Chuck Palaniak. My favorite novel included is Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to go without church for all that time. She really had strength. NOTE ON THE TEXT: If you really love American Lit, you'll find the puritan stuff much more engaging than the 19th Century. I keep a copy of Volume A by my bedside.
Rating: 
Summary: as Norton understands, all authors endure revisionism
Review: the reviewer from los angeles is evaluating what he calls a university trend, not these marvelous and comprehensive anthologies. moreover, of the three authors to whom he accords canonical status, cooper (whom twain absolutely reviled) and poe both remain controversial. a teacher of literature myself, i find cooper remarkably unimaginative and intolerably inefficient. His Rivenoak speaks that condescending white-guy version of "plain-ole-injun-talk", praising Natty Bumpo's decency 8 or 10 times in a single numb paragraph. we read cooper because of his influence, not his raw merits. further, cooper, like the astounding melville, was a 1930's revisionist canon re-admission; in fact, joseph conrad was asked to write an introduction to a melville volume and refused, writing back that he saw nothing of value in his writing. meanwhile, countless novels that (in their day) sold many, many times more than any of these folks are simply not read any more. so we've completely revised the canon that way too, judging as disposable most of the literature that real american readers of former times couldn't get enough of. who were the successful authors? hawthorne called them "that damn tribe of scribbling women," which accounts--in the words of a canon fixture himself (and one i utterly venerate)--for what we now ignorantly call "gender studies," and the concommitant revision of antholgies. as for native amnerican authors, we can at least say that cooper would be nowhere without them, and having read them on their own merits we can say much more, and with deep appreciation. at any rate, norton is expanding their antholgies in size as they add these "other" writers, so that their additions do not come at the expense of the conservative canon. norton offers us the familiar and the recovered side-by side, so we needn't get anxious. their anthology is a thoroughgoing record and celebration of the complete american literary tradition, as it was advanced and read by living americans.
Rating:
Summary: Not revisionism, breadth
Review: The reviewer who complains about the great authors being excluded in favour of the mediocre is missing the point. For me, to study American literature is not just to study the great works. Instead, it's to study American literature. That includes slave songs, native American chants, and anything else that was produced with a commitment to art and expression rather than simple commerce. We can't, of course, read everything but have to limit ourselves to reading representitive samples. And those representitive samples will include the great works which should, rightly, dominate. But to exclude the rest of the American works that those great works grew out of is to give, I think, a perverse view of what "American literature" means. Do you read only the flowers or view the field as a whole and see the flowers as they fit into the ecology? Is it a study of American literature or a study of selected great works? Lately, the Norton anthologies have been moving towards the broader view. It may not be what you want to do but to disparage it as unworthy is wrong.
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