What is American literary realism?

At the outset, we should distinguish American literary realism from the notion of verisimilitude – the fictive illusion that the reader is vicariously entering a world elsewhere. This effect, which is common to fantasies, sentimental novels, Gothic tales, and historical romances as well as realist texts, requires that the characters, actions, and settings be imagined with a sufficient degree of plausibility so that the reader feels as though he or she were watching events unfold in the world and time of the tale. Reflecting on the different sorts of writing he read during his youth, Benjamin Franklin singles out the fictive illusion as the defining aspect of fictional narrative: “Honest John [Bunyan] was the first that I know of who mix'd narration and dialogue; a method of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were, brought into the company and present at the conversation” (17). That feeling of vicarious presence at the events being described is to fiction what malt is to beer and sugar to candy. It is the sine qua non of most fiction from Cervantes to the present. While the feature Franklin enjoyed can be found in the body of texts we think of as exemplifying realism, it does not define that mode of fiction, neither its particular formal nor its thematic qualities.