| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. By Hilton Obenzinger. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. xxii, 316 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-691-00728-4. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-691-00973-2.)

The first issue that a historian encountering this work has to raise is that of genre. Hilton Obenzinger is clearly a literary critic by training, but he is dealing with literature in the context of political, religious, and intellectual history. He eventually goes on to execute that task in an original and provocative way, but not before scattering verbal and methodological land mines that may cause historians to slam the book's covers shut in desperation. What is one to make of "narrativized experiences," "syntagmatic coherence," and "intertextuality," all of which occur within the first two pages of the second chapter? Dorothy Parker's immortal line suggests itself: "Gentle reader fwow up." . . .

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