Advertising Whitman: “Who is it, praising himself as if others were not fit to do it”?
by Julie Anne Phillipps
May 2001
In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman sought the creation of a singular
American identity with himself as the perfect representative
image. Esther Shepard claims in her essay, “Walt
Whitman
Pose,” that this singular image is one of a base
dissembler. Mrs. Shepard thoroughly denounces Whitman for
deceitfully assuming (from George Sand’s “La
Comtesse de
Rudostadt”) the literary persona of “a vagabond
poet,
dressed in laborer’s garb, who goes into a trance and
composes
what is the most significant poem that can be conceived”
(Allen
72-3). Mrs. Shepard’s accusation appears tame
against the
public denouncement of Walt Whitman by his life-long friend William
Swinton for secretly writing and publishing his own reviews for Leaves
of Grass. However, William Swinton did not accidentally
discover
that Whitman wrote his own critical reviews; Whitman provided Swinton
with copies of the reviews and claimed the authorship.
However,
this paper will not address the ethical concerns of Whitman’s
self-promotion. The purpose of this paper is to reveal
through an
analysis of Walt Whitman’s first self-review that he drew
heavily
on several elements of contemporary advertising strategies.
Whitman’s first self-review reflects an advertising strategy and sound advice such as Whitman received from Henry Clapp, founder of the literary journal, The Saturday Press. Whitman, in his later years in Camden, told his biographer Horace Traubel that, “Henry was right: better to have people stirred up against you if they can’t be stirred for you -- better than not to stir them at all” (LeMaster 129). Whitman’s self-promoting reviews do not detract from his literary legacy and are, perhaps, only part of what he proclaims in, “Song of Myself”
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me
The above passage taken from the review demonstrates the free-verse style Whitman develops in Leaves of Grass that defies all the old theories of poetry. It follows that his self-reviews will defy the American literary elite by using a celebrity endorsement and favorable self-reviews to create a market for Walt Whitman, an American Bard. The self-review reflects the interests of nineteenth century popular culture and coincides with contemporary advertising styles.
P.T. Barnum, the creator of “The Greatest Show on Earth!” is the most well-known and influential advertiser of Whitman’s era. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City (Twitchell 19) was a popular attraction for residents and tourists. The Museum was the kind of popular haunt Whitman would have explored as avidly as he did New York City’s Crystal Palace where, “he returned so often that officials assigned detectives to shadow the tall and roughly garbed man” (Burrows 707). Barnum’s Museum popularity equaled the Crystal Palace’s, though no historical record exists that Whitman was tailed by security when he visited the museum. However, history erroneously remembers P.T. Barnum for the following quip, which he never made, “there is a sucker born every minute” (Twitchell 17) and this odd history serves as a lasting proof, albeit distorted, of his aggressive advertising style. As the grandfather of modern advertising, Barnum successfully exploited new photographic arts, print media, celebrity endorsements, and skillfully created demand where none previously existed (Twitchell 19). His innovative terminology saturates the American language with terms including ‘Jumbo,’ derived from an Elephant of the same name that Barnum exhibited. Jumbo represents one example of Barnum’s penchant for using superlative terms to promise extraordinary exhibits. Exhibits that brought customers in by the hundreds of thousands to events created from nothing but these impertinent promises. Barnum adept skill at manipulating his audience’s emotions to create a sensation illustrates how his advertising strategy successfully kept his audiences coming back for decades.
Whitman employs similar advertising tactics in his first self-review to sell Leaves of Grass to a new American reading public. During his career as a journalist, and as a newspaper editor, Whitman wrote primarily for a New York City audience drenched in the sensationalism of popular culture. Through journalism, he developed a keen sense of persuasion and an interest in several facets of popular culture, including spiritualism and politics. Whitman’s first self-review, “Walt Whitman and His Poems” appearing in the “United States Review” on September 5, 1855, reflects these interests as it persuasively sells Leaves of Grass. The first part of Whitman’s advertising strategy involved the exploitation of a celebrity endorsement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Walt Whitman in July of 1855 (after receiving a gift copy of Leaves of Grass) praising Whitman’s poems and congratulating his success “at the beginning of a great career” (Norton 732). Whitman without obtaining or asking for Emerson’s permission Whitman published the letter in The New York Daily Times; he also pasted clippings from the letter into gift copies of Leaves of Grass, and printed the full text of the letter in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. Later, Whitman uses Emerson’s endorsement, along with a number of critical responses to the first and second edition including his three self-reviews, as part of a promotional package for the third edition of Leaves of Grass. In this light, his self-review offers an extraordinary presentation of nineteenth century commercial advertising. The first self-review, exemplifies Whitman’s manipulation of anti-European sentiments, national pride, and a mixture of evangelical fervor and spiritualism to create a demand for Walt Whitman, the new American Bard. Whitman’s stance in the self-review claims only an American poet can express the vigor and complexity of his new American democracy.
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