Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 248

September 30-October 1, 2017: September 2017 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]September 4: Fall 2017 Previews: Mark Twain!: A Fall semester series starts with two goals for a Special Author course I’m very excited to be teaching.September 5: Fall 2017 Previews: America in the Gilded Age—and Today: The series continues with what three under-read Gilded Age literary texts can help us analyze in 2017.September 6: Fall 2017 Previews: First-year Writing I: Two of the many vital skills that FYW courses teach, as the series rolls on.September 7: Fall 2017 Previews: Literary Conversations at BOLLI: Two literary pairings for which I’m particulary excited in a new adult learning class.September 8: Fall 2017 Previews: Contemporary Short Stories for ALFA—Your Input Needed!: I could still use your input as I finalize the short stories for my next Fitchburg adult learning class!September 9-10: Fall 2017 Previews: Conferences and Communities: The series concludes with two fall events I’m looking forward to—and room for you to share some more!September 11: Pledge Posts: Myths and Realities: A series on the Pledge of Allegiance’s 125th anniversary starts with fundamental inaccuracies about the emblematic text.September 12: Pledge Posts: Protesting the Pledge: The series continues with two contexts for my older son’s inspiring act of civil disobedience.September 13: Pledge Posts: The Bellamy Boys: How biographical and familial contexts can change our sense of the Pledge, as the series continues.September 14: Pledge Posts: 1890s America: How three 1890s contexts help us think about the Pledge.September 15: Pledge Posts: The 1950s Addition: The series concludes with three contexts for the 1950s addition of “under God” to the Pledge.September 16-17: The Worst and Best of Allegiance: A special follow-up post on what allegiance too often means, and what it might mean instead.September 18: Legends of the Fall: Young Adult Lit: A series on autumn and falls from innocence starts with two iconic YA novels.September 19: Legends of the Fall: American Pastoral: The series continues with the louder and quieter moments of lost innocence in Philip Roth’s great novel.September 20: Legends of the Fall: The Body and Stand By Me: The different stories of youthful innocence lost in a novella and film adaptation, as the series rolls on.September 21: Legends of the Fall: Presumed Innocent: The multiple layers of revelations built into Scott Turow’s novel and the best mystery fiction.September 22: Legends of the Fall: “American Pie”: The series concludes with the straightforward and more subtle sides to the beloved ballad of lost innocence.September 23-24: Crowd-sourced Legends of the Fall: The responses and nominations of fellow FallStudiers constitute another great crowd-sourced post!September 25: Little Rock and Race: On the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, three layers to how that city remembers those histories of race and community.September 26: Early Civil Rights Histories: Thurgood Marshall: A series on early Civil Rights histories starts with three legal victories won by a young Thurgood Marshall.September 27: Early Civil Rights Histories: Brown v. Board of Education: The series continues with the forgotten figures at the heart of the crucial Civil Rights case.September 28: Early Civil Rights Histories: Women and the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Danielle McGuire’s wonderful piece on the women behind Montgomery, as the series rolls on.September 29: Early Civil Rights Histories: The Little Rock Nine: The series concludes with three ways to remember the courageous, pioneering high schoolers.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

September 29, 2017: Early Civil Rights Histories: The Little Rock Nine

[September 25th marks the 60thanniversary of the Little Rock Nine integrating the city’s all-white Central High School. So this week, after a special post on Little Rock and race, I’ll focus on a few other early Civil Rights moments, histories, and figures.]On three ways to remember the couragerous, groundbreaking high schoolers.1)      Their Words: Not at all coincidentally, many of the Little Rock Nine went on to pursue careers in education and journalism, and a few have written extensively about their experiences in and after Central High in the late 1950s. Journalist Melba Pattillo Beals has written two memoirs, Warriors Don’t Cry (1994), which focuses most directly on in the integration efforts, and a sequel about her later life, White is a State of Mind (1999). Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest of the nine at 14 when the integration efforts began, worked with author Lisa Frazier Page on her own memoir, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School (2009). And teacher and consultant Terrence Roberts wrote and published two books of his own, Lessons from Little Rock (2009) and Simple, Not Easy: Reflections on Community, Social Responsibility, and Tolerance (2010). Taken together, these works introduce us to the individual identities and perspectives of these young activists, as well as to the shared experiences and issues that unite them and demand our engagement.2)      Documentaries: By far the most famous film about the students is Nine from Little Rock (1964), filmmaker Charles Guggenheim’s Academy Award winning documentary short that was narrated by one of the students, Jefferson Thomas (to date the only one who has passed away, so it’s particularly important to have this record of his voice and perspective). But complementing that documentary’s social and historical overview nicely is Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minnijean Brown Trickey (2002), which focuses closely on the life and identity of one of the nine students. After Little Rock Brown Trickey went on to a career in social work, taking part in First Nations activism in Ottawa (where she received her Master’s from Carleton University) and serving as President Clinton’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for diversity. Taken together, these two films help us understand both the specifics of 1957 Little Rock and the long lives and arcs of each of these nine Americans, a combination that’s vital if we’re to remember the Little Rock Nine.3)      Contemporary Echoes: As I hope this blog demonstrates day in and day out, however, historical and collective memories are also about echoes and connections in the present. One contemporary way to remember the Little Rock Nine would be to compare them to #BlackLivesMatter, a social movement for African American rights and equality likewise begun by young people but centered not in education or a local community but on social media and the internet. But offering an even more overt parallel and echo of the Little Rock Nine, to my mind, are the students at Arizona’s Cholla High School who in 2012 began a series of protests and activisms in support of their Mexican American Studies program (which has been and remains under assault from state laws and lawmakers). If and when we hear critiques of “millenials” or other 21st century young people as self-centered or disinterested, the implicit or explicit contrast is generally with more communally engaged prior generations. Yet despite generational shifts and differences, there’s a strong through-line between the Little Rock Nine and these 21stcentury youthful activists, and remembering the former can likewise help us appreciate and celebrate the latter.September Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights histories or figures you’d highlight?

September 28, 2017: Early Civil Rights Histories: Women and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

[September 25th marks the 60thanniversary of the Little Rock Nine integrating the city’s all-white Central High School. So this week, after a special post on Little Rock and race, I’ll focus on a few other early Civil Rights moments, histories, and figures.]I could try to write a post of my own on the incredible, vital, complex, inspiring, and still far too unremembered histories of women’s anti-rape and –racism activism that led directly to Rosa Parks and the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery. But I couldn’t possibly do a better job than historian Danielle McGuiredid in this piece for We’re History. So I’ll leave this post there, and implore you to read McGuire’s piece on that amazing set of early Civil Rights and women’s rights histories.Last Civil Rights post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights histories or figures you’d highlight?

September 27, 2017: Early Civil Rights Histories: Brown v. Board of Education

[September 25th marks the 60thanniversary of the Little Rock Nine integrating the city’s all-white Central High School. So this week, after a special post on Little Rock and race, I’ll focus on a few other early Civil Rights moments, histories, and figures.]On the forgotten figures at the heart of the crucial Civil Rights victory.I don’t think I would get much argument if I called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) the most famous Supreme Court decisionto advance social justice and equality (ie, as contrasted with equally famous high court decisions such as Dred Scott , Plessy v. Ferguson , or Citizens United that upheld or amplified inequalities instead). With yesterday’s blog subject and NAACP Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall successfully arguing the case for the plaintiffs, a group of African American parents constituted out of the plaintiffs from five parallel lower court cases including Brown, Chief Justice Earl Warren and the Supreme Court returned a unanimous, landmark decision that overturned the concept of “separate but equal” in the nation’s public education system, set in motion the long, slow, painful, crucial process of desegregation, and is generally considered the first key moment and victory in the modern Civil Rights Movement.So Brown is already very well known, and justifiably so. But I would nonetheless argue that its plaintiffs, and most especially the 13 Topeka parents who filed the initial 1951 class action lawsuit against that city’s Board of Education on behalf of their 20 children, remain almost entirely unremembered and unknown. Like Rosa Parks and many other seemingly individual Civil Rights activists, these parents took action as part of a coordinated campaign: the Topeka chapter of the NAACP decided in the fall of 1950 to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine in the city’s schools, and the group of parents were recruited and selected by local NAACP leaders including chapter president McKinley Burnett, secretary Lucinda Todd (who also became one of the plaintiffs), and lawyers Charles Scott, John Scott, and Charles Bledsoe. Yet that broader context does not in any way invalidate the unique and interesting identities and stories of each of those thirteen Topeka parents, such as lead plaintiff Oliver Brown (a welder, assistant pastor, and the only male plaintiff, fighting for his third-grade daughter Linda) or Lena Carper (a clinical child care worker at a children’s hospital, fighting for her daughter Katherine), to name only two. While it might be more difficult to remember a moment through 13 brave individuals (as opposed to through one like Rosa Parks), each and every one of them deserves a place in our collective memories of Brown and the Civil Rights Movement.Moreover, better remembering the Brownplaintiffs would help us remember the vital historical lesson for which I argued in this piece for the Washington Post’s Made by History blog. As I argued there, many (if not most) of our most significant legal and social advances and victories have originated with courageous and dedicated individuals, relatively “ordinary” Americans (ie, not presidents or other already-prominent public figures) pursuing justice and equality for their own lives and families. To be sure, they have had to ally with powerful friends and organizations to achieve that success, just as the Topeka families worked with the NAACP at both the local and national level. And of course the powers that be (such as the Supreme Court) have not always come down on the side of these activists for justice. But often they have, and in any case these inspiring individuals and families represent a crucial and far too easily overlooked thread in our collective history and story. Just one more reason to better remember the 13 parents who set in motion Brown v. Board of Education.Next Civil Rights post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights histories or figures you’d highlight?

September 26, 2017: Early Civil Rights Histories: Thurgood Marshall

[September 25th marks the 60thanniversary of the Little Rock Nine integrating the city’s all-white Central High School. So this week, after a special post on Little Rock and race, I’ll focus on a few other early Civil Rights moments, histories, and figures.]On three important early cases won by the pioneering NAACP lawyer (and subject of a forthcoming biopic starring Chadwick Boseman and focused on this early period in his life):1)      Murray v. Pearson (1935): Nearly 20 years before his contributions to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision (on which more tomorrow), Marshall was the lead attorney for Donald Gaines Murray, an African American student who had been denied admission to the University of Maryland School of Law because of his race. Murray’s suit against the school and its president Raymond Pearson was initiated by Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest black fraternity and one to which both Murray and Marshall belonged, and the 27 year old Marshall, just two years removed from his own law school graduation (from Howard University School of Law) and not yet working full-time for the NAACP, took on and won this historic case (alongside his mentor, Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston). Marshall’s argument that “what’s at stake here is more than the rights of my client. It’s the moral commitment stated in our country’s creed” would prove a guiding principle for many subsequent Civil Rights litigations and activisms.2)      Chambers v. Florida (1940): Marshall joined the NAACP’s national staff in 1936, and four years later (still only 32) he argued and won his first Supreme Court case for them. Four African American men had been convicted of murdering an elderly white man in Florida’s Broward County, and the convictions (like many in the era) had been obtained using statements produced by questionable law enforcement tactics (such as holding the men without access to a lawyer for a week, isolating them from one another and questioning them at random and in front of large groups of officers and community members, and not informing them of their right to remain silent). While the unanimous Supreme Court decision in the men’s favor was thus partly an early Civil Rights victory (as famous cases like that of the Scottsboro Boys demonstrate, such practices were particularly and consistently used with accused people of color), it was also a broader victory for civil liberties, and an important and influential predecessor of the court’s landmark decision for the rights of the accused in Miranda v. Arizona (1966).3)      Shelley v. Kraemer (1948): Those and other early cases helped move Marshall, the NAACP, and the nation toward Brown and the Civil Rights Movement, but it was in the post-war era that those efforts truly began to ramp up. One of the first Supreme Court victories in that post-war period was in Shelley v. Kraemer, in which two different African American families (the Shelleys of St. Louis and the McGhees of Detroit, who were Marshall’s specific clients in this joint action) challenged racial covenantsthrough which neighborhood associations (all over the nation) sought to keep them from buying homes. Although the Court did not yet rule that such covenants themselves were unconstitutional (that would take the kinds of anti-discrimination protections won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968), its decision that the state could not in any way help enforce such racial covenants was a key stepping stone toward those future protections. One more striking victory for one of the nation’s most influential legal legends.Next Civil Rights post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other Civil Rights histories or figures you’d highlight?

September 25, 2017: Little Rock and Race

[September 25th marks the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine integrating the city’s all-white Central High School. So this week, after a special post on Little Rock and race, I’ll focus on a few other early Civil Rights moments, histories, and figures.]Three layers to how the city remembers race, and the fragile significance of the third.1)      Central High School: The story of Little Rock and race is of course inextricably tied to Central High School, and I’m very happy to say that those histories and stories are very well captured in the city. That happens at the National Historic Site, which features a wonderful short film on the voices and lives of the Little Rock Nine, and many other compelling exhibits about those histories. But it also happens at the high school itself, which remains open and which features the amazing student endeavor that is The Memory Project. When I attended the Southern Historical Association conference in the city a couple years back, I had the chance to attend a Saturday special event at Central High on the Memory Project, and came away deeply impressed and inspired by how these students, like these sites, are carrying forward the histories and meanings of civil rights.2)      Mosaic Templars Cultural Center: Public memory also has to evolve as our communities do, and this museum of African American history, which opened within the last decade in a reconstructed version of the Mosaic Templars of America national headquarters (which was tragically lost in a 2005 fire), exemplifies such evolution. Alongside exhibits on local and regional artists, figures, and histories (such as the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame), the museum is also becoming more and more prominent on the national stage, as reflected by its forthcoming role as one of the few American spaces to feature the Kinsey Collection II exhibition. I had the chance to meet and chat at length with museum staff member Maggie Speck-Kern at the conference, and can testify that this up and coming Little Rock site is in very good hands.3)      Historic Homes: History isn’t and can’t be captured solely in historic sites and museums, however, and the neighborhood around Central High School is full of historic homes and buildings that represent more than a century of Little Rock and African American history. These historic buildings not only offer a vital, intimate complement to more official and formal sites of public memory, but continue to serve the city’s families, businesses, and communities. Yet as is the case in so many less wealthy neighborhoods around the nation, these homes are in significant danger of being demolished, and both their histories and current roles endangered. Such destruction represents both a cultural and a contemporary crisis well worth our attention as we work to remember and preserve African American history and community in Little Rock.Next Civil Rights post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other ways we can remember race and Civil Rights?

September 23-24, 2017: Crowd-sourced Legends of the Fall

[As the leaf-peeping begins in earnest (seriously, that’s a thing we do here in New England), this week’s series has focused on some iconic American images of the loss of innocence that we so often associate with autumn. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and nominations of fellow FallStudiers—add your autumnal reflections in comments, please!]Responding to Monday’s post on YA lit, blog commenter JaimeLynn88 writes, “I would put A Summer to Die in this category, although the death at its core is from cancer, not violence. The loss of innocence is partly at the distressing notions that kids die and grown-ups can't fix things, but also Meg's realization that she needs to own and make peace with her resentment of her formerly-perfect, popular sister before it's too late. It's sad and scary and responsible for my gut-deep belief that all nosebleeds are harbingers of leukemia.”

Anna Consalvo nominates another work by Robert Cormier, We All Fall Down . And Anna adds, "An oldie but goodie song, Tom Rush's 'Urge for Going.'"Responding to Wednesday’s post on “The Body” and Stand By Me, Tim McCaffrey writes, “This is a very interesting contrast between the two pieces, and I think each piece works well in its own way. One interesting thing about Stephen King is that he often writes (wrote) about the fears that are often ignored in works about childhood (a recent example that comes to mind after seeing ITis the amount of courage it takes for a child to walk down into a basement alone).”Other Fall nominees:Jeff Renye goes with John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” and Andrea Grenadier agrees, “Oh, definitely! Loved the film with Burt Lancaster!” Jeff adds, "As for song, here's a good autumnal/Tolkien crossover."Andrea also writes, “Fall! The magic word! Taking a page from my American Studies hero R.W.B. Lewis, I would say all American literature features loss of innocence, a fall from grace, and sometimes, redemption. So one of my favorite Melville stories, "Billy Budd" does exactly that.” Paige Wallace highlights Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees .Katharine Covino-Poutasse agrees with my Monday nominee of “A Separate Peace, on so many levels.”Padmini Sukumaran notes, “Obviously Paradise Lost by John Milton.”Tamara “Flash” Verhyen writes, “I think fall I think Halloween and so Poe is my go-to this time of year. Also Palahniuk's Haunted is really great. It's like all his books where you don't really know the full story but this one gives you different perspectives and the concept is an homage to Shelley, Byron, and Clairmont getting together to write.”Shayne Simahk nominates, “Two very different works about falls from innocence... I really enjoy the poem “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins. And though perhaps not scholarly but at least timely, Stephen King's IT, which I actually forced myself to plow through years ago.”Diego Ubiera goes with La Chute (The Fall) by Camus.Paul Colemanhighlights “ Something Wicked This Way Comes , the OG IT.”Andrew DaSilva writes, “ The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor; it's fitting cause the wall fell in the fall if ya like the play on words there.”And AnneMarie Donahue notes, “I might be a weirdo on this one but Half Hanged Mary always reminds me of fall. And a fall from grace... and a very fortunate fall for Mary. I mean, sort of.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Any other Fall texts or reflections you’d share?

September 22, 2017: Legends of the Fall: “American Pie”

[As the leaf-peeping begins in earnest (seriously, that’s a thing we do here in New England), a series on some iconic American images of the loss of innocence that we so often associate with autumn. Add your thoughts on falls, seasonal or symbolic, for a crowd-sourced post sure to be as popular as pumpkin spice (if such a thing is possible)!]On the straightforward and more subtle sides to a beloved ballad about individual and cultural losses of innocence.Like I imagine many teenage boys in the four decades since its release, I memorized the lyrics to Don McLean’s “American Pie” (1971) during my high school years. Partly that had to do with one very particular moment in the song, and just how much every teenage boy can associate with watching that certain someone dance with a certain someone else in the gym and “know[ing] that you’re in love with him”—and how much we thus all felt at times like “a lonely teenage bronckin’ buck.” But partly it seems to me that McLean’s song captures and allegorizes a more general part of teenage life, the life and death significance that we place on music, relationships, friendships, social status, all those potentially fleeting things we care about and worry about and love and hate with such force.As this piece on McLean’s official website indicates, McLean intended the song as a tribute both to his own turbulent teenage years and to the even more turbulent American moment with which they coincided—a moment that began (for McLean and in the song) with the February 1959 death of Buddy Holly (among other popular artists) in a plane crash and would conclude a decade or so later with American society and culture in one of our most fractured states. His song thus became an anthem for two seemingly unrelated but often conjoined narratives: “The Day the Music Died,” the story of one of the most tragic days in American cultural history; and the decade-long loss of innocence that is often associated with the 1960s and all the decade’s tragedies and fissions. These aspects of McLean’s song are contained in every section: the February 1959-set introduction, the increasingly allegorical verses, and the far more straightforward chorus.But there’s another, and to my mind far more ambiguous, side to that chorus and to McLean’s song. The question, to boil it down, is this: why do the chorus and song focus so fully on Buddy Holly, rather than (for example) on his fallen peer Ritchie Valens? Holly is generally cited as far more influential in rock and roll history, but at the time of the crash he had only been prominent for a year and a half (since his first single, “That’ll be the Day” [1957]); Valens, while five years younger, was on a very similar trajectory, having recorded his first few hits in the year before the crash. Moreover, while Holly’s sound paralleled that of contemporaries such as Bill Haley, Valens’ Latino American additions distinguished him from his rock and roll peers. So it’s difficult not to think that an Anglo-centric vision of America has something to do with McLean’s association of “Miss American Pie” and “good old boys” with Holly rather than Valens—an association that, aided no doubt by McLean’s song (if complicated a bit by the hit film La Bamba [1987]), American narratives too often continue to make.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: images of fall, or The Fall, that you’d share for the weekend post?

September 21, 2017: Legends of the Fall: Presumed Innocent

[As the leaf-peeping begins in earnest (seriously, that’s a thing we do here in New England), a series on some iconic American images of the loss of innocence that we so often associate with autumn. Add your thoughts on falls, seasonal or symbolic, for a crowd-sourced post sure to be as popular as pumpkin spice (if such a thing is possible)!]On the multiple layers of revelations built into the best mystery fiction (major SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t read Scott Turow’s novel or seen the Harrison Ford film, and might at some point).I’ve blogged frequently enough about mystery fiction (and films) to illustrate just how seriously I take the genre as art well worth our analytical time. There are lots of reasons why, but a prominent one would have to be just how much the genre, by its very nature, can teach us about society. That is, the detective’s job, or at least a necessary corollary to his or her job, is to learn about the world around him or her, whether specific (as in Agatha Christie’s town of St. Mary Mead or Ross MacDonald’s California) or broad (as in the mysteries of human nature with which Sherlock Holmes seems so frequently to grapple). And while it’s not impossible for those deductive revelations to include inspiring lessons (about love or courage in the face of threats, for example), the genre’s nature likewise means that most of the time the lessons entail literal falls from innocence, recognitions of the guilt not only in those who commit crimes but (much of the time) in the world as a whole.I know of few mystery novels that better exemplify those multi-layered, sobering revelations about the world than Scott Turow’s legal thriller Presumed Innocent (1987). Turow’s first-person narrator, prosecutor Rusty Sabich, stands accused of killing the woman with whom he was having an extra-marital affair; the evidence against Rusty is overwhelming, and although he is eventually acquitted, the cause is simply another level of guilt: Rusty and his lawyer discover that the case’s judge has been taking bribes, and use the information as leverage to force an acquittal. Moreover, virtually every other character in the novel is guilty of something significant as well; the cop who first investigates the case, for example, is a longtime friend of Rusty’s and illegally disposes of evidence in an (unsuccessful) attempt to shield Rusty from suspicion. Rusty’s story and world are so choked with guilt, so driven by it from start to finish, in fact, that the title begins to feel less like a legal concept and more like a sardonic social commentary.Moreover (double SPOILER ALERT for this paragraph!), the novel’s final revelation adds two intimate and even more compelling falls from innocence to the mix. In the closing pages, Rusty discovers evidence that makes clear that the murderer was his wife, who had uncovered the affair, confronted and killed the mistress, and then tried to frame Rusty for the crime instead (going so far as to plant his semen at the scene of the crime). Even on its own terms, this fall from innocence, connected as it is to the woman with whom he has spent his life and has a family, is the novel’s most shocking and damning. But Rusty chooses not to turn his wife in, and the reason is his recognition of the story’s fundamental layer of guilt, its original sin, the fall from innocence that started it all: his affair. Which is to say, the book’s ultimate revelation is that its first-person narrator, its voice and perspective, and (as in almost any first-person book) its most intimate connection to its audience, is the most guilty party of all.Last fall tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Images of fall, or The Fall, you’d share?

September 20, 2017: Legends of the Fall: The Body and Stand By Me

[As the leaf-peeping begins in earnest (seriously, that’s a thing we do here in New England), a series on some iconic American images of the loss of innocence that we so often associate with autumn. Add your thoughts on falls, seasonal or symbolic, for a crowd-sourced post sure to be as popular as pumpkin spice (if such a thing is possible)!]On the novella that’s explicitly about the “fall from innocence,” and the film adaptation that’s less so.In 1982, frustrated by his inability to publish works that weren’t part of the horror genre in which he had risen to fame, Steven King decided to release four such novellas as one collection, Different Seasons , with each novella linked to one of the four seasons. The most famous, thanks to its cult classic film adaptation, is almost certainly the collection’s first piece, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (seasonal subtitle: Hope Springs Eternal). But nearly as well-known, thanks in large measure to its own popular film adaptation Stand By Me (1986), is the collection’s third piece, The Body (seasonal subtitle: Fall from Innocence). (The collection’s summer novella, Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption , has also been made into a recent film, and is, in its portrayal of a teenage boy corrupted by a former Nazi war criminal, a candidate for this week’s series in its own right.)On the surface, The Body and Stand By Me are almost identical: in each forty-something novelist Gordie Lachance narrates the story of a teenage adventure with his three best friends, a trip that the four boys take after hearing about a dead body out in the woods near their hometown. Moreover, each ends with (among other things) Gordie informing the audience that his best best friend, Chris Chambers, worked his way out of a poor and violent upbringing to reach college and law school, only to die in a random and tragic stabbing, a detail that certainly symbolizes the loss of childhood innocence as the protagonists move into the often brutal and cold adult world. Yet the change in title from the novella to the film illustrates a broader thematic shift: Rob Reiner’s movie is far more centrally concerned with the camaraderie and joys of teenage friendship (its last line is “I never had any friends like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”, which appears in the middle of King’s book and is thus emphasized far more in the film); while King’s novella depicts the world’s brutalities much more consistently, including a savage beating that all four boys receive at the hands of an older brother and his friends.Which is to say, at the risk of oversimplifying the two works, Reiner’s film is ultimately pretty nostalgic about the world of childhood, while King’s novella complicates and to my mind ultimately rejects that kind of nostalgia. Concurrently, the two could be read as depicting the loss of innocence in very different ways: Reiner’s film portraying it as a moment of genuine shift, from one kind of life and world to another; and King’s as more of a realization about the darkness of the world we have always inhabited, even as young people. I think there’s a place in our narratives and images for both stories, and that they complement each other nicely; but I also think that King’s story is a bit truer to the world of young adulthood, which while certainly free of various adult responsibilities and pressures can still be (as the Knowles and Cormier books from Monday’s post illustrate) as fraught and perilous as the darkest realities of adult life.Next fall tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Images of fall, or The Fall, you’d share?