Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 16

April 17, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Track & Field Fighters

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

In honorof a track career which has faced way more than its share of setbacks (from allof which Kyle has bounced back and then some), quick hits on five moments whentrack & field stars fought the good fight.

1)     Jim Thorpe: Being aNative American athlete brought up on a reservation who became known as the greatestAmerican athlete of the 20th century would be more than enoughto earn Jim Thorpe a spot on this list, as would his genuine successes at morethan a few distinct sports. But for a post on track & field fielders, I’ll highlightthe story—hard to confirm, but I’m very willing to believe it—that thereason Thorpe is wearing two different shoes in picturesfrom the 1912 Olympics is that his were stolen and so he found two mismatchedones in the trash and wore them when he set hugelylongstanding records in the decathlon.

2)     BabeDidrikson Zaharias: I wrote about Zaharias’s Olympic track & fieldachievements at the 1932 Games(when she was known as Babe Didrikson), among many other inspiring layers toher sports successes, in that hyperlinked post. Her fight was against the kindof sexism that led sportswriter Joe Williamsto write, as I noted in that post, that “it would be much better if she andher ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up, and waited for the phone toring.” Don’t hold your breath, Joe.

3)     JesseOwens: I don’t know that I can detail Owens’s track & field fights,triumphs, and tragedies any more clearly than I did in that hyperlinked SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column. Check it out and c’mon back!

4)     MexicoCity: Like many other commentators have over the last decade, in thathyperlinked post I linked Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s 1968Black Power protest to Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 anthem protests. But while Istand by that comparison, it’s important that we not minimize how much moredanger Smith and Carlos were putting themselves in—Kaepernick has faced countlessconsequences for his courageous stand, but in 1968 (as throughout the decade) AfricanAmerican leaders were being murdered left and right by white supremacistdomestic terrorists. There are few braver protests in our history.

5)     Caster Semenya: Semenya’sstory is far more multilayered than I can do justice to in this brief space, butthe simple and crucial fact is this: due to aspects of her specific human body,ones that are no different from MichaelPhelps’s extra-long wingspan or any number of other quirks possessed bygreat athletes, Semenya has been targeted time and again by both transphobichate and official sanctions. That she has consistently fought back andcontinued to compete and to do so at the highest level makes her a fighter anytrack & field athlete, and any human for that matter, should be inspiredby.

Lastcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 16, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Musical Crossovers

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is abig fan of Kane Brown (whom heand his brother are seeing in concert soon!), and also has a personal playlistthat moves smoothly between hard-core rap, hip hop, and country, so I wanted todedicate this post to highlighting a handful of examples of historic musicalcrossovers:

1)     PoperaPerformances: Perhaps the most striking crossover genre is popera, a formthat combines one of the oldest enduring forms of musical performance with oneof its most overtly contemporary. That hyperlinked last.fm page highlights manyof the individual artists who have embodied this combinatory cultural medium, butI would also note that many popera performances feature duetsbetween artists in each respective genre. Either way, popera representswhat’s possible when genres truly crossover.

2)     Anthrax and Rap: At avery, very different place on the crossover spectrum is Anthrax, a heavy metalband who had been profoundly influenced by rap & hip hop, incorporated thosegenres into their own music, and then produced pioneering collaborations suchas theirsong with rap legends PublicEnemy. Much is (rightly) made of Aerosmithand Run-DMC’s collab, but that a remix of an exiting song, while Anthrax’smultilayered crossovers and collabs were original and to my mind even more groundbreaking.

3)     Jones Jazzes Up Pop: These next two are just individualartists whose music crosses generic boundaries. Jazz and pop have been crossingover since at least LouisArmstrong (and we could say since ScottJoplin himself), but in the 21st century no artist embodies thatcrossover combination better than NorahJones. Through nine studio albums and a great deal more, Jones have broughtthe worlds and audiences of jazz and pop together in groundbreaking ways, creatingprofoundly American music in the process.

4)     LilNas Xplodes: It’s not a hierarchy nor a competition, but I’d say that acrossover between hip hop and country is even more profoundly American (or atleast more rare), though. We’ve seen a variety of such crossover artists aswell as songs in recent years, with Kane Brown himself high on the list. But nohip hop-country crossover artist and song achievedmore success, nor as I wrote in the hyperlinked post at the start of thisentry generated more controversy, than did Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road.” Andhonestly, if he’s making whiteracists mad, he’s doing exactly what crossovers should do.

5)     Parton Rocks Out: This is a simpler one—I justreally love that country (and American, and universal) legendDolly Parton recently releasedan album of rock and roll originals and covers, and by all counts it isphenomenal. Not sure it’ll end up on Kyle’s playlist, but it’s definitely onmine!

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Threesignificant stages in the evolution of the nation’s preeminent civil rightsorganization (and one with which my blossoming future lawyer and/or activist ofa younger son has connected in multiple ways over the last few years):

1)     1910s and 20s Origins: The ACLU evolved out ofanother organization, the NationalCivil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), which was foundedduring World War I (or the Great War, as it was then known) to defendanti-war speech and conscientious objectors among other causes. The officialco-founders were CrystalEastman and RogerNash Baldwin, but originalmembers also included such luminaries as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, FelixFrankfurter, and the dissenting anti-war Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. ItsWWI activisms certainly put the NLCB (which Baldwin renamed the ACLU in 1920when he became its sole director) on the map, but it was its central role in theScopes Trial (about which I blogged a few weeks ago) which truly launchedthe organization into national prominence.

2)     Japanese incarceration: I wrote at length in mybook We the People about the role that Baldwin and the ACLU playedin the earlyopposition to the Japanese incarceration policy, leading up to their keyrole in all of the major court cases opposing that policy, from the unsuccessfulbut influential Korematsuv. United States to the successful and even more influential Ex parteEndo. While in hindsight it might be easy to see those efforts as right(although thesedays I’m not at all sure that’d be a shared perspective), it’s important tonote that Japanese incarceration was quite popular in its era, supported by asignificant majority of Americans, and indeed seen by many as part of the wareffort, making opposition to it potentially treasonous as well as unpopular.But the ACLU pursued that opposition nonetheless, to my mind one of the mostcourageous organizational actions of the 20th century.

3)     Loving v. Virginia: A coupledecades later, the ACLU took another unpopular and courageous stand, if perhapsone that also reflected a changing society that was coming around to theorganization’s civil liberties and rights emphases. When young Black woman Mildred Jeter Lovingwrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for help staying together with herwhite husband Richard Loving despite Virginia’s laws prohibiting theirmarriage, Kennedy referred the couple tothe ACLU, who represented them in their landmarkSupreme Court case. Given that I grew up in Virginia and that my sons arethe product of an interracial marriage, it’s fair to say that this itemrepresents a truly multilayered context for Kyle!

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 14, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Younger Siblings

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is ayounger sibling to a very impressive olderbrother, a situation which it seems to me often leads the younger siblingto carve out their own identity and future very fully (and certainly has forKyle). Here are a few prior posts where I highlighted such badass sibling duosand dynamics:

1)     Henryand William James

2)     Serenaand Venus Williams

3)     Angelinaand Sarah Grimké

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 12-13, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have myproblems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential andimportant novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. Sothis week I’ve highlighted a handful of them, leading up to this weekend postfeaturing fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

Four greatpublic scholarly takes on Fitzgerald’s novel, and a request for more!

1)     MatthewTeutsch: My friend and online collaborator Matthew has written aboutFitzgerald’s novel multiple times, but I particularly enjoyed the chance toread this multi-part account (part two is linked at the bottom) of hisexcellent Fulbright lecture on the book (and not because he engages sothoughtfully with my own takes, although I sure do appreciate that).

2)     StephaniePowell Watts: In that lecture Matthew also engages with Watts’s take on thebook in this LitHub piece, which remains one of the single most thoughtful intersectionsof autobiography and analysis I’ve ever encountered. A must-read!

3)     WesleyMorris: Morris’s intro to the 2021 Modern Library edition of the novel,reprinted by The Paris Review at that hyperlink, is also a must-read(honestly all four of these pieces are for anyone who wants to engage withFitzgerald’s novel beyond its own stunning prose). I particularly like that hedoesn’t take for granted our reading of the book—yes, it’s often assigned byteachers, including me, but we should still think long and hard about why weread it, as Morris models so thoughtfully here.

4)     Jillian Cantor: I triedto engage with Daisy Buchanan a lot and Myrtle Wilson a bit in my earlier poststhis week, but there’s still much more to say about women in Fitzgerald’snovel, and Cantor’s LitHub piece says a great deal very powerfully.

5)     Add your suggestions (including your own work)here!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts, yours or others’?

April 11, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Novelist-Narrators

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I havemy problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and importantnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’llhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellowGatsbyStudiers!]

As I hopethis week’s series has reflected, there are a lot of layers to Fitzgerald’s noveland its AmericanStudies contexts, a lot of reasons why it has endured as fullyas it has for the 100 years since its publication. But high on the list has tobe his complex and crucial use of a novelist-narrator, a storytelling voice whois a character in the story but also and perhaps especially a novelist craftingthe text that we’re reading. That’s a device that many of our most interestingnovels have used, and used specifically to consider the American Dream, as Iargued in this2011 American Literary Realism article. It’s available in full atthat link, so in lieu of a final post in this series I’d ask you to check outthat article if you’re interested, and let me know any thoughts if you doplease!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 10, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s American Dreams

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I havemy problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and importantnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’llhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellowGatsbyStudiers!]

On two contrastingbut also interconnected ways to analyze the novel’s title character and themes.

On the actualcentennial of Gatsby’s publication, I have to start by noting thatapparently, at the very last minute (and thus too far into the publishingprocess), Fitzgerald tried to get the book’s title changed to Underthe Red, White, and Blue. That hyperlinked piece features info about arecent public scholarly book, Greil Marcus’s Underthe Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby (2021), which takesFitzgerald’s alternate title as a starting point for thinking about the book’s,it’s era’s, and our own engagements with key American themes. Since I’m goingto do the same here (having so far read only excerpts of Marcus’s book,although I hope to check the whole thing out soon as it looks great), I wantedto shout-out Marcus’s work as well as Fitzgerald’s original title, beforeoffering my own considerations of Gatsby’sAmerican Dream (which is also, as that hyperlinked record label pagereflects, the name of an indie rock band, reflecting just how ubiquitous this associationhas been).

On the onehand, Gatsby’s American Dream seems at best profoundly ironic, and at worstentirely fake and false. After all, the centerpiece of his dreams is Daisy Buchanan,a character who is not only married to someone else, and an awful someone atthat (the exemplary American whitesupremacist Tom Buchanan), but whose most defining action in the novel isthe accidental murder of another character (the tragic Myrtle Wilson, whom Imentioned in last week’s final post as a perspective we need to consider morefully and then am not really considering more fully this week—my bad, Myrtle!)from which she literally and figuratively flees, leaving her supposed love totake the fall. At thenovel’s conclusion, its narrator Nick says of Daisy and Tom that “They werecareless people…they shamed up things and creatures and then retreated backinto their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept themtogether, and let other people clean up the mess they had made,” and if we evensomewhat agree with Nick, we have to recognize that Gatsby’s dreams and his titulargreatness alike are built on a very shaky foundation.

But on theother hand, I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Daisy herself can be read asa far more nuanced and sympathetic character than Nick’s vision of her suggests(Tom definitely can’t, but he can within this alternative frame be read asabusive toward Daisy, just as he physically abuses Myrtle in theirone scene together in the novel), as both flawed and full of potential in waysthat in this reading would parallel Gatsby and help explain their mutual attraction.But Gatsby’s dreams are also not limited to Daisy, especially as the readerlearns more about Gatsby (or James Gatz, as he was born) in his childhood andyouthful identity, experiences, perspectives, and arc. That young man’s goalsof moving beyond the horizons of his parents and his hometown, of remakinghimself, of pursuing his own future rather than being defined by what had comebefore, are, as the novel’s iconicfinal lines illustrate, very much the story of America as well, from itsfounding (whenever and however we locate that moment) on down. The fact that hedoesn’t quite succeed, or rather that the past remains with him as he movesinto that future, could be read as a failure or as ironic or etc.—but it couldalso be read as deeply human, as the intersection of the worst and best thatdefines us all, individuals and nations alike.

LastGatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 9, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Foshay Tower

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I havemy problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and importantnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’llhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellowGatsbyStudiers!]

[NB. Ioriginally wrote this post for an August 2013 series on things I had recentlylearned, but both that spirit and the specifics remain entirely relevant herein April 2025!]

On the building and enterpreneur that bring an American icon to life.

The Midwest in general, and Minnesota in particular, occupy importantplaces in Jay Gatsby’s story. F. Scott Fitzgerald himself had been born inSaint Paul, Minnesota, the state’scapital and the twin city to Minneapolis; while Fitzgerald gives Gatsby anunspecified North Dakota birthplace, he has him attend college (briefly) atMinnesota’s St. Olaf College. And while Gatsby spends the rest of his tragically short life running away from those Midwestern origin points, Nick Carraway argues inthe book’s concluding moments that the story has been a profoundly Western (by which, given the locations to which he’s referring, he means what wewould call Midwestern) one.

I’ve recently learned about a Minneapolis history that reverses Gatsby’s geographictrajectory but seems in many ways to mirror his identity. Wilbur Foshay, born in upstate NewYork, moved to Minneapolis in the 1920s to pursue his dreams of wealth andsuccess, and like Gatsby he embodied those dreams in a spectacular, garishedifice. For Foshay that building was not a mansion but a skyscraper, Foshay Tower; modeled after the Washington Monument, an early encounter with whichFoshay credited with inspiring his dreams, the Tower was completed in 1929, ata dedication ceremony that included a march written for the occasion and conducted by John Philip Sousa. And Foshay’s dreams crashed as suddenly and nearly asdramatically as Gatsby’s: first with the Great Depression, which began onlymonths after the dedication and left the Tower unoccupied; and then with a famous trial in which Foshay was convicted of mail fraud (for running apyramid scheme) and sentenced to 15years in prison.

Foshay’s story doesn’t end there—President Roosevelt granted him a partialpardon, commuting 10 years off the sentence—and I’m interested to learn moreabout what seems to me just as iconic a story of the 1920s and the AmericanDream as Fitzgerald’s novel. America is full of such complex and compellingidentities and stories—enough to spend a career AmericanStudying them!

NextGatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 8, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I havemy problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and importantnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’llhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellowGatsbyStudiers!]

On threephone calls that illustrate the classic novel’s thoughtful portrayal of Moderntechnologies.

When youteach a book as often as I have F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925),you start to focus on different layers each time. Along with the dialogues withother authors/works like Nella Larsen’s Passingthat I talk about in that hyperlinked post, in my last couple times readingand teaching the novel I’ve thought a lot about just how many early 20thcentury technologies play central roles in its story. That’s especially true ofautomobiles, of course; not only in the book’s climactic events (which I won’tspoil here for the few people who managed not to read Fitzgerald’s novel inhigh school), but in the central presence (geographically as well assymbolically) of Wilson’sgas station and auto repair shop. It’s true of Hollywood film, both inpresences at Gatsby’s parties (andFitzgerald’s career) and in the novel’s underlying themes ofsurface and depth, illusion and reality. But it’s also certainly true of thestill relativelynew technology, particularly when it comes to the idea of every household havingone, that was the telephone.

As we meetthe novel’s main characters in the opening few chapters, Fitzgerald uses acouple key phone calls to present mysterious and ambiguous sides to them. InChapter 1, as Nick Carraway visits the beautiful home of his cousin Daisy andher husband Tom for a dinner party, Tom gets a mysterious phone call; Daisysuspects that it’s his mistress on the other end, but of course can’t know forcertain to whom he’s speaking. In Chapter 3, as Nick attends one of the lavishparties at his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s mansion, Gatsby gets a mysterious call;other partygoers suggest that it’s a criminal business partner of Gatsby’s onthe other end, but of course no one knows for certain to whom he’s speaking.These calls reveal both men as defined by secrets, dynamics that preciselybecause of their ambiguity are a source of intense speculation by those aroundthem. And those secrets can only be maintained in these scenes because of thetechnology of the phone, without which their conversants would have to visit inperson (or write a letter, which of course would be far less immediate).

[SeriousSPOILERS in this paragraph.] At the end of the novel, after all theaforementioned climactic events have unfolded, Nick has his own, quitedifferent phone call. He is trying to organize a funeral for Gatsby (or maybeJames Gatz, since his father who knows him by that name is one of the few whoattends that tragic event), and manages to speak with Gatsby’s elusive businesspartner Meyer Wolfshiem on the phone. In one of the novel’s onlymoments where a character says directly what he’s feeling and thinking, shareswhat seems at least to be the unvarnished truth (even when Gatsby and Nick havetheir heart-to-hearts, it’s always an open question whether Gatsby is tellingthe truth), Wolfshiem confesses to Nick that he can’t possibly be seen at thefuneral, that it would be far too destructive for his reputation andrelationships. This is the side of the telephone that allows us to be morehonest, more ourselves, in its conversations than we might manage to be if hadto face someone and something in the flesh. Just another layer to howFitzgerald’s novel reflects the technologies and contexts of its rapidlyevolving Modernist world.

NextGatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 7, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s Pool

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I havemy problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and importantnovels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’llhighlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellowGatsbyStudiers!]

On the tragic dip that’s as difficult to pin down as the man taking it.

Jay Gatsby spends his final moments relaxing in his home’s luxurious swimming pool. As NickCarraway is about to leave his neighbor for what turns out to be the last time,Gatsby’s gardener arrives to drain the pool; fall is arriving and the gardeneris worried that “leaves’ll start falling pretty soon and then there’s alwaystrouble with the pipes.” But Gatsby asks him to hold off for one more day,noting to Nick, “you know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer.” Andso it is during Gatsby’s first and only dip in his own swimming pool, lying on“a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer,” that thegrieving George Wilson arrives, an “ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward himthrough the amorphous trees.” Wilson is armed and crazed, seeking vengeance forthe tragic death of his wife Myrtle, and kills both Gatsby and himself.

It’s a striking and evocative image and moment, as so many of Fitzgerald’sare. And like so many others in the novel, it seems clearly symbolic—but ofwhat, exactly? The imminent shift in seasons feels significant—Gatsby is a novel of summer, and herethe season has ended but Gatsby is not willing to let it go, not least becausehe has not yet had a chance to enjoy it. Or perhaps the pool is simply amicrocosm of Gatsby’s palatial home—the height of luxury and excess, of the Roaring 20s and theirdecadent atmosphere, but offering those thrills less for its actual owner (whobarely makes use of it as anything other than a host for visitors) and more forall those guests who come to bathe in its excesses. Or maybe it’s just thefinal irony in a novel full of them—Gatsby finally takes a moment to relax, forwhat feels like the first time in years, and looks what it gets him.

All of those interpretations hold water (sorry), but I would also note a historicalcontext that it’s easy for us 21st century readers to forget: likeso many of the novel’s crucial social and technological features (cars, Hollywoodfilms, recorded music), an in-ground swimming pool in the early 1920srepresented a striking innovation. The first such pools in America had been openfor less than two decades, and were generally public or communal spaces; it wasnot until more than two decades later, after World War II, that they wouldbecome part of the typical imagery of the ideal American home. So as with every aspect of Gatsby’s success, here toohe would seem to have been ahead of the curve, helping to embody the American Dream—as well as its dark andviolent undersides—as it would continue to develop for the rest of the AmericanCentury, and into our own.

NextGatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?