Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 187

October 11, 2019: Domestic Terrorism: Cultural Representations

[October 8thmarks the 50thanniversary of the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage protests in Chicago. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Weathermen and other domestic terrorists—a fraught but important term, I know—leading up to a weekend post on 21st century events.]On three cultural texts that reflect three different visions of domestic terrorists (some SPOILERS in what follows).1)      The Dark Knight Rises (2012): The villains in many action films (or at least their sinister plans) could be described as domestic terrorists, but that’s never been more accurate than it is for Tom Hardy’s Bane in the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Bane doesn’t just start his culminating attacks on Gotham City with a series of domestic terrorist bombings; he also weds those attacks to an anarchist philosophythat makes clear that he sees himself as a terrorist in the most overtly political senses of the term. While Hardy’s talents, combined with the usual depiction of Gotham as a deeply troubled place in need of serious reform, make his perspective (if not his famously muffled voice) at least somewhat understandable, he is still clearly a villain—and, we eventually learn, one whose domestic terrorist acts are actually undertaken for the benefit of a greater villain who cares nothing for his philosophies. This is what we might call the 21st century comic book film vision of domestic terrorism: somewhat thoughtful and purposeful, but ultimately villainous and in need of heroic opposition.2)      Fight Club (1999): David Fincher’s film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novelfeatures many twists and turns (most of which I’ll try not to spoil here for the few who don’t yet know them), but its culmination is an elaborate, highly orchestrated act of interconnected, domestic terrorist bombings against the city in which its characters reside. Like everything else in the film, and doubly so given the stunning revelations about those protagonists that have immediately preceded it, that set piece is ambiguous in tone—but in my reading, there’s no question that we are meant to watch and appreciate the bombings more as a beautiful crescendo (as our hero and heroine do) than as a disturbing or villainous act of destruction and mass murder. At the end of the day, Fight Club is the story of a boring, constrained everyman in desperate need of shaking free from those shackles—and those bombings, like the character of Tyler Durden who orchestrates them, represent the potent culmination of his successful escape. That’s a heroic, or at the very least an entirely sympathetic, vision of domestic terrorism.3)      American Pastoral (1997): As I hope this week’s series has made clear, somewhere in the shades of gray between villainous and heroic lie most of the acts of domestic terrorism in our nation’s history: sometimes more toward the villainous side (such as Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing), sometimes a bit more toward the heroic (as with the environmental terrorists I highlighted yesterday), but always part of the fraught and contingent realities of political, social, individual, and cultural contexts. As I trace in that hyperlinked blog post above, few literary works engage those complex contexts with more depth and power than Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, a novel with a Weather Underground-like domestic terrorist bombing at the center of its multi-layered narration, structure, chronology, plot, family, and depiction of 20th century American history. As I wrote in this post, I agree with the critiques of Roth around themes of gender (among others); but at his best, he’s one of our greats, and American Pastoral is his best novel and one of our best cultural representations of domestic terrorism.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories of domestic terrorism you’d highlight?

October 10, 2019: Domestic Terrorism: Edward Abbey and Environmental Terrorism

[October 8thmarks the 50thanniversary of the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage protests in Chicago. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Weathermen and other domestic terrorists—a fraught but important term, I know—leading up to a weekend post on 21st century events.]On three distinct and even contrasting ways to contribute to environmental activism.Edward Abbey is perhaps best known for his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which depicts a group of heroic anarchists and environmental terrorists using every means at their disposal (including, if not especially, criminal ones) to fight for the environment against corporate and governmental forces. Abbey’s book directly inspired the eco-terrorist (or eco-revolutionary, depending on who you ask) organization Earth First!, which was founded in 1980 and the members of which frequently referred to (and still to this day call) their acts of eco-sabotage as “monkeywrenching.” While Abbey did not become an official member of Earth First!, he did both write for them and take direct action with them on occasion, and thus seems to have been more than fine with his fictional ideas being turned into radical activism in this way. As with other radical leftist groups such as the Weathermen, it’s important to try to maintain a sense of the line between inspiring activism and destructive terrorism; but it’s also important not to let any one perspective, and certainly not a corporate or authoritative one, be the sole arbiter of that spectrum. And to read Abbey’s book is to recognize the complexity of such issues when it comes to environmental extremism.Abbey published more than twenty books in his three-plus decade long writing career, however, and thus engaged with environmental issues in far more varied ways than that one most famous novel would indicate. For example, his first non-fiction book, 1968’s Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, presents a far more individual and reflective form of environmental advocacy and activism. An autobiographical account of Abbey’s time spent living alone in Southeastern Utah’s spectacular Arches National Park (he lived there from 1956-1957 as a backcountry park ranger), Desert Solitaire is in many ways a 20th century Walden, equal parts memoir and personal reflection, environmental and scientific journal, and social and philosophical commentary. As did Thoreau, Abbey offers his personal experiences and perspective as a model for his readers and all of us, suggesting the intense and important value of this kind of isolated immersion in the natural world. At the height of 1960s social and political debates, such a book and project might seem like a retreat or at least a separation from those shared concerns, but I believe Desert Solitaire is better seen as a complement to them, an argument for how and why environmental activism should be part of that broader spectrum of social change (if a form that perhaps does at times require more individual and, yes, solitary pursuits).As that year in Arches National Park reflects, Abbey also worked for a number of years, particularly in the early part of his writing career, as a park ranger. He did so not only there but at many other parks and sites in the late 1950s and 1960s: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument(in Arizona near the Mexican border); the Evergladesin Florida; and Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California among others. These efforts partly embodied Desert Solitaire’s ethos of individuals immersing themselves in natural worlds, of the advice Abbey gave in a September 1976 speech to environmental activists: “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here.” But I would argue that working as a park ranger also represents a contribution to communal experiences of nature and the environment as well as a form of fighting for the land that differs from eco-terrorism. That is, I think Abbey’s service as a ranger represents a third form of environmental activism, one that recognizes that we’re all in it together and seeks to defend the environment in more positive ways. There’s a place for all these forms in our conversations and efforts, but as a devotee of our National Park system, I’m especially inspired by this third form.Last domestic terrorists tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories of domestic terrorism you’d highlight?

October 9, 2019: Domestic Terrorism: McVeigh and Militias

[October 8thmarks the 50thanniversary of the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage protests in Chicago. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Weathermen and other domestic terrorists—a fraught but important term, I know—leading up to a weekend post on 21st century events.]On how to see the Oklahoma City domestic terrorist as a lone wolf, and why not to.In many ways, Timothy McVeigh’s story and identity would seem to echo those of many other “lone wolf” killers and domestic terrorists. Like Lee Harvey Oswald and others, McVeigh was a military veteran who came unhinged and turned elements of that martial training (and a lifelong obsession with weapons and war) to an act of domestic terror. And like so many of our current crop of mass shooters, McVeigh was a youthful loner with a passion for computers (in his case, specifically for computer programming and hacking) who would eventually find an outlet and encouragement in technological and virtual spaces for his radical perspectives and ideas. Seeing McVeigh as a lone wolf not only seems to fit those and other aspects of his profile, but also in a broader sense helps us see any public shooting (from the assassination of a specific individual to a mass shooting of random people) as at least potentially an act of domestic terrorism. It also reminds us of one of war’s most destructive effects, the further radicalization and destabilization of individuals like McVeigh (who bragged in a documentary about decapitating an Iraqi soldier during the Gulf War).But there are significant, telling problems with thinking about McVeigh as a lone wolf, or really as an individual actor in any meaningful sense. I don’t just mean the danger of our forgetting how much he was inspired by a prior incident, the 1993 standoff in Waco (TX) between Branch Davidian cult members and federal authorities; although McVeigh did see his domestic terrorist bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City so fully as a response to those earlier histories (which he had partially witnessed, as he traveled to Waco in support of the cult members) that he committed his horrific crime on the two-year anniversary of the Waco standoff’s April 19th concluding events. That’s all true and important to remember, but it’s still fair to say that an individual shooter or terrorist can be inspired by prior events (indeed, almost inevitably is in one way or another) and still ultimately act as individually, as what we might call a “lone wolf.” Nor is McVeigh working with co-conspirators (Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, both convicted for their roles in planning the bombing) sufficient, as shooters like the Columbine high schoolers can work together and still act as “lone wolves.”No, I’m thinking instead about the ways that both McVeigh’s perspective and his terrorism paralleled and were linked to broader, hugely influential trends throughout the 1990s. As part of a conspiracy theories series a few years back, I wrote this post on the 90s fears of “black helicopters,” and how those conspiratorial narratives of international threats and takeovers foreshadowed many aspects of our current moment and society. I think it’s fair to say that those legacies have become even clearer in the four years since that series, and indeed that in many ways Donald Trump is (if he’s any kind of leader) the Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief. The driving force behind those 90s conspiracy theories was the rise of right-wing “militias,” groups of well-armed, white supremacist fanatics who saw themselves as “Patriots”(their most consistent self-identification) already and perhaps always at war with enemies both federal and global. From what I’ve seen, McVeigh did not belong to any of those militias, and I’m not trying to imply any direct association. But the fundamental fact is that his narratives of the U.S. government as an enemy to be opposed with military weapons and tactics (he later admitted that sniper-style shootings would have been even more ideal than a bombing) jibed quite closely with militia perspectives—and with those of mass shooters and domestic terrorists in 2019 as well.Next domestic terrorists tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories of domestic terrorism you’d highlight?

October 8, 2019: Domestic Terrorism: The Weathermen

[October 8thmarks the 50thanniversary of the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage protests in Chicago. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Weathermen and other domestic terrorists—a fraught but important term, I know—leading up to a weekend post on 21st century events.]On the difficulty, and the importance, of writing about domestic terrorists with whom we agree.I apologize for getting into serious inside baseball territory with the opening of this post, but I think it helps me introduce the central point I want to consider here. I’ve been writing this daily blog for nearly nine years now, and for much of that time I’ve been scheduling posts (and then weekly series when I shifted to that format) quite a while in advance. But I’m drafting this post only one week out, on Tuesday October 1st, which I believe is the closest I’ve gotten to running out of scheduled posts in at least the last six years. And the reason isn’t just that I’ve been enjoying a sabbatical full of lots of time with my sons and the first book talks of a schedule full of them, although both those things are true and very nice indeed (I’ll have more to say about those ongoing talks in next week’s series). Nor is it that the absolutely insane news of the last couple weeks has distracted me and made it difficult to write, although that is unquestionably true and not nearly so nice (if long overdue and entirely warranted, as my recent blog post on threats to the Constitution made clear).No, my delay in working on this post (it was at least three weeks between scheduling yesterday’s and finally starting to write today’s, to add one additional, telling inside blogging detail into the mix) has a lot to do with a fraught pair of interconnected facts: my perspective closely aligns with many of the positions held and advocated by the leftists who formed the Weather Underground; and yet it’s impossible to describe many of that group’s activities as anything other than domestic terrorism. That’s true of a good deal of what transpired in the course of the four days of 1969 protests, although those acts of vandalism and destruction could possibly be seen as aftereffects (or at least side effects) of the 1969 activities, rather than central elements of them. But as the Weathermen continued to develop as an organization over the subsequent eight years, they turned their attention more and more fully to overt acts of domestic terrorism, such as the May 1970 bombing of the National Guard Association building in Washington, DC, the June 1970 bombing of the New York City police headquarters, and the March 1971 bombing of the US Capitol building, among many other attacks. One can argue that many of their bombings were designed to avoid injuring people, but they often did so nonetheless, and in any case bombings of domestic targets are acts of domestic terrorism, full stop.I don’t have any difficulty naming them as such, but in writing about the Weather Underground I do find myself in a somewhat similar predicament to the one I addressed in this post on Nat Turner’s slave revolt: the need to critique an act of domestic terrorism while recognizing that it served a cause with which I agree. I don’t mean in any way to critique histories like those of the Vietnam War and the military industrial complex and the Nixon Administration (all targets of the Weather Underground’s political protests and violence) with those of slavery; even the horrific Kent State shootings, which prompted the May 1970 National Guard building bombing, shouldn’t be equated to the horrors of slavery. But nevertheless, just as Turner and his fellow rebels committed their acts of violent terrorism in opposition to systemic wrongs and abuses, so too did the Weathermen oppose many systems and histories that I likewise would critique and hope to dismantle. Which means I have to condemn their acts of domestic terrorism (which I do) while at the same time recognizing the legitimacy of their perspective, a difficult balance which, among other things, can lead to some serious writer’s block.Next domestic terrorists tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories of domestic terrorism you’d highlight?

October 7, 2019: Domestic Terrorism: The KKK

[October 8thmarks the 50thanniversary of the Weather Underground’s Days of Rage protests in Chicago. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Weathermen and other domestic terrorists—a fraught but important term, I know—leading up to a weekend post on 21st century events.]On two under-remembered stages to the early histories of our oldest domestic terrorist organization.
I could probably focus the first paragraph of every post here on the books, articles, and work of other scholars that have informed my own thinking about that particular subject. I generally try at least to highlight them through hyperlinks, but sometimes I know the scholars in question themselves as well as their work, and know that they are equally awesome. In that case, and especially when they are women (whose work, as has been illustrated too often in recent months, is often particularly under-cited), I will try to dedicate some blog space to sharing those scholarly texts. So: if you want to learn about the Ku Klux Klan’s Reconstruction origins, check out Elaine Frantz Parsons’s Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction (2015); and if you want to follow the Klan’s evolution into the early 20th century, check out Kelly J. Baker’s Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (2011). Both those books expand greatly and in more far depth and analytical nuance on the histories and ideas about which I’ll write briefly in this post; for those in my last paragraph in particular, I also greatly look forward to Cynthia Lynn Lyerly’s forthcoming Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Apostle of Hate.
One of the histories that Parsons’s book helps us remember is just how contested and controversial the Klan was in its early years. As Parsons traced in this 2014 We’re History post (which was a partial excerpt from and certainly foreshadowed her book), in the late 1860s and early 1870s the Grant Administration and federal government conducted a series of investigations into the Klan, leading to famous Congressional hearings among many other political and legal responses. I can’t agree (and I don’t think Parsons would either, per the end of that We’re History piece) with Grant biographer Ron Chernow, however, when he writes that Grant and these federal inquiries helped destroy the Reconstruction-era Klan; as Parson notes, even those Klan members convicted of crimes as a result of these new laws were generally pardoned by Grant after the 1872 election. So better remembering these Reconstruction debates not only helps us recognize the conflicts over the Klan, but also offers a frustrating glimpse into how that domestic terrorist organization and its violent activities were normalized, even (perhaps especially) in precisely the same moments when it was being treated as the criminal enterprise it always was (and remains to this day).
As I argued in my own We’re History piece on the subject, and as Baker’s book details and (I’m quite sure) Lyerly’s book will as well, popular culture comprised one central vehicle through which that normalization of the Klan took place. One of the first such cultural normalizations was created as a direct response to the Congressional hearings themselves: Mississippi lawyer and white supremacist epic poem Redpath, or, the Ku Klux Tribunal (1877), which depicts a fictional Northern political aide who journeys to the South to investigate the Klan and ends up converting to its cause based on what he finds there. Texts like Lynch’s poem helped create the conditions in which Thomas Dixon’s Klan trilogycould become bestselling “historical” novels, in which the film adaptation of those novels The Birth of a Nation could become one of the most influential American movies of all time, and in which Gone with the Wind (written by a woman, Margaret Mitchell, who would respond to Dixon’s praise of the novel by telling him that she was “practically raised on” his books) remains one of the most successful American novels. All those texts, most released during the years (1872-1915) when the KKK was officially not active, remind us that even a domestic terrorist mainstay like the Klan is not a given, that its arc and influence were constructed over time, and can, crucially, be engaged, challenged, and destroyed in own our era.Next domestic terrorists tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other histories of domestic terrorism you’d highlight?

October 5-6, 2019: Crowd-sourced Recent Reads

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so this week I’ve shared a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Leading up to this crowd-sourced post drawn from the responses and recent reads of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]Responding to Monday’s post, Carol Lorangerwrites, “Loved The Overstory too, in a sad/happy/sad way.” She adds, “I am in the midst of American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals on the Great Plains , by Dan Flores (University Press of Kansas, 2016). Oh the murder we have done!”Responding to Tuesday’s post, Sarah Robbins writes, “Agreed: Nickel Boys is a SUPER book.”Responding to Wednesday’s post, Donna Campbellshares, “My students have two optional ‘book expert’ reads for sharing in a group at the end of the semester, and There There is one of them. ( Educated is the other.) I'm eager to see what they say about it.”Other recent reads:Matthew Teutsch writes, “I’ve been reading Etaf Rum’s A Woman is No Man , which pairs well with Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel . Also been reading Dessa’s My Own Devices .” Jeff Renye highlights “ The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. Not exactly a successor to the work of Judith Walkowitz in City of Dreadful Delight , but an important contribution to counter the ongoing mythicizing of the Whitechapel crimes.”John Buass notes, “(To my embarrassment, given my interests, I'm reading for the first time) Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera .Dana Gavin is reading Ruth Oldenziel’s Making Technology Masculine . Lara Schwartz suggests the recent Ibram X. Kendi article, “Pass an Anti-Racist Constitutional Amendment.” Vanessa Holloway is “reading (again) A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.’s Shades of Freedom .”Emily Lauer writes, “I just finished My Real Children by Jo Walton! It’s alternate history.”Meg Bollmanwrites, “Reading Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Chilling.”Andrew DaSilva highlights, “ Markings by Dag Hammarskjold, The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, and The Mohawk Saint by/edited by Allan Greer. As for articles in magazines and such, this one stood out the most among the many.”Philip Opere shares “ The Dark Forest : Book 2 of the Three Body Problem series. Really amazing read.”Kent Rosenwald writes, “ Atticus by Ron Hansen. I picked up a copy at a library sale, and though I had read it before, a second read just floored me!” He also highlights Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick.Patricia Ringle Vandever shares Country Dark by Chris Offutt and Milkman by Anna Burns.Nicole Sterbinksy highlights “ Pumpkinheads , a graphic novel by Rainbow Rowell and illustration by Faith Erin Hicks. Cute YA graphic novel that hits all those buttons about a festive fall season.”Troy Zaherwrites, “This book is a year old so I don’t know if it counts [ED: It does!] but Circe by Madeline Miller.”Courtney Gustafson writes, “Just finished Anne Boyer’s The Undying and about to start the new Leslie Jamison book!”Nancy Caronia shares, “ The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames. A sprawling epic Bildungsroman that takes us from Calabria to Connecticut. The Italian American novel I’ve been waiting for!”Tim McCaffrey Tweets, “I’ve been reading some Nathaniel Philbrick histories—Last Stand, Mayflower, and In the Heart of the Sea.Dr. Thando NjovaneTweets, “I'm reading Murakami's Wind and Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness . Only just started both because teaching is hectic this quarter.” She adds, “I like recommendations! Sana Goyal often posts some as well.”And Kate Tweets out her recent reads Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity and Frank Langfitt’s The Shanghai Free Taxi . For the overall reading list she adds: A Gentleman in Moscow, News of the World, Devil in the White City, Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Children of Willenden Lane, The Snow Child, The Hare with Amber Eyes, The Nightingale, All the Light We Cannot See, People of the Book, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Jewel in the Crown, Our Souls at Night, Dreams of Joy, The Fortunate Ones, The Orphan Master’s Son, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Underground Railroad, The Lady in Gold, Train in Winter, and My Name is Lucy Barton.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts on any of these books? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 4, 2019: Recent Reads: The Sweetest Fruits

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]Not gonna lie, I only recently got my hands on Monique Truong’s new novel, The Sweetest Fruits , and am only a few pages into it as of this writing. But c’mon, a multi-vocal, multi-perspectival historical novel based on the amazing life and compelling writings of the great, under-remembered late 19th century Greek Irish American (and eventually Japanese) writer Lafcadio Hearn? Sign. Me. Up! And that’s enough from me—go read these books, and then (or first) tell me what you’re reading these days!Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 3, 2019: Recent Reads: Heaven, My Home

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]I’ve written a great deal in this space about the wonderful Attica Locke, one of my favorite mystery and thriller writers and a voice that thoroughly transcends any stereotypical limitations to those genres. Any new book from Locke is likely to find its way into a series like this, but even with those high expectations I was blown away by her newest, Heaven, My Home (2019). A sequel to 2017’s Bluebird, Bluebird and another chapter in the saga of Texas Ranger Darren Matthews but, as usual with Locke, also so much more than those details would indicate, Heaven is one of those rare novels that both keeps you reading with its plot and characters yet demands that you re-read for its layer themes and histories. When you add in Locke’s work on the TV shows Empire (which she also co-created) and When They See Us (for which she wrote one of the four episodes), I don’t think there’s a more interesting and influential artist working in 2019 America. But don’t take my word for it—read this book, and all of Locke’s if you haven’t already!Last recent read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 2, 2019: Recent Reads: There There

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]I’m a critical optimist, and my list of favorite books tends to reflect that perspective—indeed, many of my favorite American novels found their way into my fourth book, with its focus on “hard-won hope” as a model for critical patriotism. But no preference and no perspective should go unexamined or unchallenged, and so I also enjoy the occasional opportunity to read a book that is decidedly and consistently pessimistic. Well, “enjoy” probably isn’t the right word there—but I greatly value such texts and perspectives, even (perhaps especially) in an era where it’s all too easy to give in to despair. Tommy Orange’s There There (2018) is one of the best such pessimistic books I’ve read in a long while, a bracing depiction of contemporary Native American identities and communities that (without spoiling anything) does not offer any easy answers, or indeed any answers at all, for the problems and challenges facing them. I’m tempted to say that writing such a book is itself an optimistic gesture, and thus that reading it can be as well—but I’m not sure that would be in the spirit of Orange’s book, so much as my own perspective. So I’ll just say that I’m very glad I read this book, and everyone should do so.Next recent read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?

October 1, 2019: Recent Reads: The Nickel Boys

[Busy with a bunch of book talks at the moment—on which more in a few weeks—so a series of brief posts highlighting great new books I’ve read this year. Add your own recent reads, whether new books or otherwise, for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]Colson Whitehead has long been a favorite contemporary author of mine, and his The Underground Railroad remains one of the best and most unique historical novels I’ve ever read (and it taught very well too). To a degree his follow-up, The Nickel Boys (2019), is a more conventional novel than Underground, perhaps because the constantly genre-shifting Whitehead has settled this time on a more traditional genre (a bildungsroman, set at a boarding school no less). But conventional doesn’t necessarily mean less compelling (indeed, conventions endure in part because they continue to compel us), and Nickel is one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in years. So much so, in fact, that in many cases I had to stop between chapters, so potently were Whitehead’s words and images, characters and settings, events and reflections affecting me. This isn’t a book I’d feature on my annual Beach Reads list—but it’s also not a book any American can afford to miss.Next recent read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other recent reads you’d share?