The Last American

John Ames MitchellProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
56K words
Chapters
6

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Political AllegoryComplex HumanitySocial CritiqueReflection on American DreamWestern ThoughtSatirical StyleSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Last American by John Ames MitchellAuthor: Mitchell, John Ames, 1845-1918,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2005

Editor's review

This novel is a late-career work by John Ames Mitchell, bearing a distinct turn-of-the-century cast of American social imagination. Mitchell was the founder and illustrator of Life magazine, and his prose often carries the exaggerated strokes of satirical caricature; this novel is no exception: it looks back on American civilization from a future vantage point, holding social customs, political habits and national character up to a distorting mirror. As a public-domain ebook, its chief value lies not in tight plotting but in offering a sample of how American intellectuals a century ago viewed their own civilization. For readers studying American intellectual history, early science-fictional social allegory, or Gilded Age satire, it is a light but amusing piece of corroborating material. Readers should note its historical limitations: certain assumptions about race, gender and civilization will strike today's readers as alien or even jarring, and that is precisely the entry point for understanding the era. It is better suited as supplementary reading for research or literary-historical interest than as entertainment for those seeking strong plot.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a background introduction to John Ames Mitchell and Life magazine before starting the text; the satirical method is easier to catch.
  2. Read it as a social allegory rather than a realistic novel, and pay attention to the author's imagined institutions and customs of a future America.
  3. Mark unfamiliar allusions or historical names as you go and look them up together afterwards, so as not to break the reading rhythm.
  4. Read it alongside American utopian and dystopian novels of the same period to observe how different authors imagined the course of civilization.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6

FAQ

Is this book science fiction? It is closer to a social allegory or a future-perspective satire than to modern science fiction centered on technological speculation. The book looks back on American civilization from a future vantage point, with the emphasis on exaggerated portrayals of social customs and national character; science-fictional elements serve only as a narrative frame.
How difficult is the English? Is it suitable for language learning? The text was published in the early twentieth century, and its sentence patterns and vocabulary carry the written-language features of that era, with many long sentences and satirical expressions. Readers with some foundation in English can use it as extensive reading material, but it is not suitable as a beginner's text; where unfamiliar expressions occur, understanding them from context is recommended.
Why do some statements in the book feel uncomfortable to read today? This stems from the work's historical background. American literature a century ago generally carried the racial, gender and civilizational-hierarchy assumptions of its time, and these contents now look clearly outdated or even offensive. They can be read as historical material for understanding period attitudes, without one having to endorse their stance.
Is there a Chinese translation of this book? Available information shows only that it is an English public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg; no Chinese translation is mentioned. Readers who wish to read it in Chinese will need to find other editions themselves or use translation tools for assistance.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

John Ames Mitchell Author · American · 1845–1918

John Ames Mitchell (1845–1918) was an American publisher, architect, artist, and novelist. In 1883 he co-founded Life magazine with Andrew Miller and served as its editor, a publication that later earned a place in the history of American humor and illustration. As a writer, he is best known for his satirical novel The Last American; the library holds this work along with its Esperanto translation La lasta Usonano, as well as The Pines of Lory and Drowsy, five titles in total. His fiction often uses absurd imagination and satire to comment on society and reality, showing a clear strand of fantasy and critique. He also helped found the Fresh Air Fund. Public information on the details of his life is limited.