SOURCE: "Horatio Alger and American Modernism: The One-Dimensional Social Formula," in American Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 20-July 11, 1976, pp. 11–27.

In the following essay, Lhamon places Alger as a central influence in defining American mores and developmental ideals, especially in regard to the relationship of the individual to society.

Imamu Amiri Baraka's story, "The Death of Horatio Alger," is an important overlooked benchmark in the history of American literature because it so consciously marks the end of America's one-dimensional culture.¹ Baraka says even "Poets climb, briefly, off their motorcycles, to find out who owns their words. We are named by all the things we will never understand [and] all the pimps of reason who've ever conquered us." He speaks of the white, majority culture as a "complete and conscious phenomenon." And when Horatio Alger died for him, Baraka experienced his "first leap over the barrier." That is, he began to...