SOURCE: “Ross Lockridge, Raintree County, and the Epic of Irony,” in MidAmerica II, Vol. 2, 1975, pp. 35-46.

In the following essay, Nemanic discusses the shocking initial success and ultimate failure of Raintree County.

William Carlos Williams may be the only important writer of our time who persisted in believing that an American epic might still be written. His own Paterson, an “answer to Greek and Latin with the bare hands,” was not to be that work. Williams knew it; indeed, he visualized his efforts as a necessary preliminary, “a gathering up” of raw materials into a foundation on which later poets might build epic structures.

The successful dramatization of American experience would result not from sophisticated commentaries on the nature of the American and his institutions. It would follow from the direct knowledge of objects, a simple apprehension of and generous acceptance of the “beautiful thing.” “No ideas but...