Subtitle: "A Critical Survey of His Stories and Fables."
This work undertakes a critical scrutiny of the realistic fiction written by George Ade (1866-1944) and thereby assesses his contribution to American literature. Mr. Staub concludes that Ade's literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humorist of American character during an important era in American history: the first large wave of migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where Ade produced all of his best fiction. Ade, who flourished at the turn of the century, was a practicing realist during the Age of Howells and a local colorist of Chicago and the Midwest. His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners, and, by extension, a comedy of American manners. This comedy is enriched by Ade's distinctive comedic use of the American language. Throughout his fiction Ade dealt consistently with the "little man," the commonplace, undistinguished, average American of lower social station. This constitutes a significant literary reflection of American democracy in process, and it places Ade as one of the foremost humorists of American democracy. In his unique Fables in Slang, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire which is notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concerete, specific evidence with which he indicts the object of his satire--always a type. The moral of each fable is practically always implicit. As a moralist who does not overtly moralize, who is all too aware of the ironies of the modern world, George Ade can readily be construed as our first modern American humorist. In the values implicit in his fables, Ade manifests an ambivalence between the traditional rural virtues in which he was raised and, by contrast, the craftiness he saw all around him in Chicago. The United States, as it underwent the travail of a gigantic population shift and transfer from an agricultural to an industrial economy, suffered the even more agonizing process of a shift of values toward philistinism, greed, and dishonesty. Ade's most general theme is to record, as on moving picture film the pragmatic efforts of the little man to get along in such a world. Ade propounds a golden mean--satirizing both hidebound adherence to obsolete standards and too-easy adjustment to new standards. It is often an ambiguous, ambivalent, pragmatic reaction to the rapidly changing scene, but it is an invaluable literary reflection of a contemporaneous national split personality.