Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Surface and Depth: The Quest for Legibility in American Culture is a fresh attempt to revitalize an interpretive overview. Focusing on the distinctly American zeal for knowing or making legible, it seeks to recuperate a central tradition while simultaneously recognizing how much that tradition has occluded." "Combining historical reconceptualization with readings of many of the classics of American literature, Michael Gilmore traces - from the time of the first white settlement and subsequent founding of the United States - the presence of a hitherto unappreciated inheritance. American culture has from the start been consumed with the imperatives of knowledge and accessibility, an insatiable appetite to explore the surface and depths and give them tangible form."--Jacket.

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