Misconceptions On 20th Century American Liturature

In the article, Pietism and the American Character, William McLouglin begins to wrap up his sweeping piece that generalizes American culture and society as a whole (as of 1965, when the article was published) by commenting on how even modern American literature conforms to his thesis on American pietism.

Some of the examples like Faulkner and Melville's works seem to fit with the religiosity McLouglin speaks of. Others like Salinger, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway (who is conveniently left out) fall flat to me. In order to make the former two examples work, William has to go so far and become so vague that he simply says that their "quest for perfection is bound to fail because it is based on false premises, nevertheless write on in search of it." Frankly, this sentence to me says very little about the authors at all. Does any author really think their book is perfect? Hemingway was the king of revision and even said in an interview, "I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms 39 times before I was satisfied." Does this show he's dedicated to his craft? Of course it does; writing was his job and he clearly took it seriously. Does this mean he was in a "quest for perfection" guided by the ideals of American pietism? Not at all. He is quoted as saying "until I was satisfied," which is worlds away from "before it was perfect."

Then WIlliam quotes Lewis who comments on the heroes of contemporary American fiction, stating that they "share in their common aloneness...each of them struggles tirelessly, sometimes unwittingly and often absurdly, to realize the full potentialities of the classic figures which each represents: the Emersonian figure, 'the simple genuine self against the whole world."
I personally don't explicitly disagree with this statement by Lewis, but I definitely disagree with where William takes he. The author of the article continues on to relate these "classic Emersonian figures" to the "classic pietistic figure of the Christian man."
Let's quickly review the characters that could fall into the category McLoughlin is trying to call the "classic pietistic figure[s] of the Christian man:"
Nick Carraway
Frederic Henry
Holden Caulfield
and so forth...

Also, this talk of absurd, tiresome struggle sounds quite a bit like Camus' brand of Absurdism, as exemplified in both The Plague and The Stranger. By making the qualifications to support his argument so incredibly broad, William McLoughlin has really just described a lot of literature, both American and foreign.
I realize that I wasn't around in the year 1965 so I may have some delusions about what the state of America was like at that time, but there are some things I do know for a fact.
In the year 1965:

Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Camus' The Stranger and The Plague, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby had all been published.
Camus, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway had all died prior to this article's publication.
The Grateful Dead was in it's first year of existence.
Andy Warhol was extremely active in the art world.  (Conveniently left unmentioned in the section on art)
Andy Warhol is undoubtably a quintessential, iconic American artist, who completely goes against the idea of American pietism.

What I'm trying to get at here, is that while for part of the population this American pietism is viewed as the essence of being an American, there was at the time this article was written, already a strong counter culture that would strongly disagree with this. This includes some authors William tried to use it make his argument, as well as ones he just ignores completely.

...and don't even get me started on McLoughlin's use of the term "conspicuous consumption," which was borrowed from American economist Thorstein Veblen...

Also, here's a modern adaptation of the "American Dream:"

http://greatgatsbygame.com/