Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 278

October 7, 2016: AmericanStudying The Americans: Immigrant Generations

[Earlier this year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans , the FX drama about two KGB agents (the great Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects. Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and questions!][FYI: SPOILERS for the show’s most recent couple seasons in this post’s premise and specifics!]On how a recent plot twist can help us analyze a still-vital American issue.Scholars who study, analyze, and teach about immigration have long considered the question of distinct generational experiences of movement and place, cultures and societies, assimilation and resistance, and other related issues to be one of central importance. To note one longstanding and influential example: in 1938, pioneering immigration historian Marcus Lee Hansen published his essay “The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant,” in which he developed what came to be known as Hansen’s Law—that while 2nd-generation immigrants tend to move away from their family’s old culture and toward that of their new setting, members of the third generation often display a greater interest in and pull toward that prior culture and heritage. While scholars have taken such analyses in many different directions over the subsequent eighty years (including doing away with the overt preference for assimilation that Hansen’s term “problem” indicates), this question of generational experience and perspective has remained a key one for those studying and analyzing issues of immigration and identity (individual, familial, and communal). Whether we see Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are immigrants or not (and I’ve made the case in other posts in this series that we can and should see them that way), the fact that their prior culture and heritage had been kept secret even from those Americans closest to them (such as their two children) would seem to render these generational questions irrelevant for any characters other than the couple themselves. Yet in the third and (especially) fourth seasons, the show’s writers have found a clever way to bring those questions into play: by gradually introducing the possibility and then the reality of the Jennings’ teenage daughter Paige (played wonderfully by Holly Taylor) finding out about their secret identities and Russian heritage, and then by using that new knowledge and perspective to drive a new and ongoing (as of the end of season four—the penultimate season five will premiere in spring 2017) plot thread of Elizabeth and Philip’s debate over whether and how to recruit Paige to join their spying on behalf of the Soviet Union (and thus against the United States that has comprised her homeland and heritage since birth).Just as the Jennings’ particular version of “immigration” differs widely from that of most immigrant Americans, this question of Paige’s potential allegiance is clearly distinct from other such debates for the children and descendents of immigrants. Or is it? Far too often, immigrant Americans and their descendents have had to face accusations of (at best) divided loyalties that position them quite directly as potential “spies” or agents for a foreign nation (see: World War I, World War II, contemporary debates about Muslim Americans…). One answer to such narratives, and a good one, is to note the vital roles immigrant Americans have instead played in protecting and defending America throughout these periods and every other one. But to my mind an even better answer is to note how many Americans—really all of us, since Native Americans face their own parallel version of these multiple allegiances—have dealt and continue to deal with heritages that encompass distinct cultures and nations, including but not at all limited to that of the United States. In this way, as in so many others, The Americans offers a unique and compelling lens on central American ideas and issues.Guest Post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?

October 6, 2016: AmericanStudying The Americans: Afghanistan

[Earlier this year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans , the FX drama about two KGB agents (the great Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects. Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and questions!]How four kinds of cultural texts can help us understand the impossibly complicated, vital 20thand 21st century histories of the US and/in Afghanistan.1)      80s Action Films: As I highlighted at length in that post, both James Bond and John Rambo found themselves in one of their respective 1980s exploits fighting alongside the Mujahideen (and against the Russians) in Afghanistan. Besides inducing squirms in American audiences when we realize that Bin Laden and company might as well as have been the friendly and brave Afghan allies with whom Bond and Rambo serve, those elements of these films help remind us of both the shifting realities of war and, most importantly, of our undeniable presence and influence in even the communities and histories that feel most opposed to our own national ones. 2)      The Americans : In many ways the Afghanistan plotline in the show, which took center stage in season 3, offers precisely the opposite lesson: a reminder of what both the war and the US/Mujahideen relationship looked like from the Soviet perspective. When we meet a particular Mujahideen leader whom Elizabeth and Philip Jennings turn to their own advantage, he’s a violent extremist, one perfectly willing to turn on his “allies” if he believes they’re not as pure as he. Yet the show’s depiction of the war isn’t just about this alternative narrative of the Afghan resistance—we also learn (SPOILERS) that Philip has a son serving in the Soviet military there, giving the war a very different, human link to this American character and family.3)      The Siege : I said most of what I want to say about Ed Zwick’s uncannily prescient 1998 film in that post. Here I’ll just reiterate that by making the film’s terrorist villains an Afghani group who had been trained, funded, and then abandoned by Annette Bening’s CIA agent (and the agency as a whole)—yet a group who remain explicitly villainous—Zwick and company succeed at complicating and enriching the conversation about Islamic terrorism and the Afghan histories to which it connects far more fully than do most depictions in American media (or politics).4)      Afghan American authors: No conversation about the US and Afghanistan would be anywhere near complete without engagement with how Afghan American authors and artists represent those histories and issues. One such author, Khaled Hosseini, has become of the most popular and prominent 21st century novelists, which is of course a good thing but also could be a limiting one if he became the solo representative of a broad and diverse community of figures and voices. So the more we can also read Tamim Ansary’s West of Kabul, East of New York, and Qais Akbar Omar’s A Fort Of Nine Towers, and all the writers collected in the anthology One Story, Thirty Stories , among many others, the more we can make sure this conversation is as multi-vocal as it needs to be.Last AmericansStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?

October 5, 2016: AmericanStudying The Americans: Stealth

[Earlier this year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans , the FX drama about two KGB agents (the great Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects. Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and questions!]On the historical limitations and imaginative possibilities of a secretive technology.Russian spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings have pursued missions relating to a number of 1980s political and international issues in the course of the show’s (to date) four seasons, including Nicaraguan Contras and (tomorrow’s topic) the war in Afghanistan. But perhaps the most recurring and consistent mission has been their investigation into and attempt to both derail and steal the US military’s development of stealth technology. That artistic choice makes a lot of sense, as stealth is a perfect metaphor for the show’s vision of secret spies—not only because the technology was literally intended to produce invisible instruments of surveillance and warfare, but also because (as Elizabeth and Philip’s missions and contacts reveal again and again) the quest to develop that technology took place in a clandestine, shadowy world that it might be difficult for our internet age to imagine but that comprises a significant percentage of the show’s plotlines and situations. If the name hadn’t already been taken by a much less interesting action film (on which more in a moment), Stealth could have been a less evocative but still accurate back-up name for The Americans as well.There’s one more level to the resonances between the TV show and those technological histories, though: stealth technology appeared to be one thing (a vital new weapon toward which the superpowers were racing in a new arms race; a narrative that, as that hyperlinked article illustrates, continues to exist) and turned out to be something very different (a hugely expensive and largely failed—or at least only partially successful—experiment). The US spent billions of dollars in the course of the 1980s (and before) to develop a stealth jet, and yet as this list reflects more such projects were cancelled then were ever brought to fruition. Moreover, even those fighters that were completed have still been found (as the article hyperlinked above under “largely failed…” indicates) to be visible to radar, the opposite of which is of course the entire purpose of developing a new stealth vehicle. The military has used stealth bombers successfully in some military campaigns, most notably the 1989 conflict with Panama and its dictator Manuel Noriega. Yet to say that the technology did not turn out to be the game-changing weapon (in or after the Cold War) about which the spies in The Americans are so worried would be to understate the case.The show isn’t a documentary, though, and it’s also far from the only cultural text to appreciate and utilize the imaginative possibilities of stealth technology. There’s the aforementioned action film, for example, which links stealth to fears over artificial intelligence to pose the question of what would happen if an “inhuman and invincible” stealth bomber started thinking and acting for itself. There’s John Woo’s first Hollywood movie Broken Arrow, in which terrorists led by John Travolta take advantage of stealth technology to help them steal nuclear weapons from the US military (until Christian Slater and a national park ranger foil their plan, natch). And, to take things a bit further afield (literally and figuratively), there’s the recurring science fiction trope (and semi-scientific technology) of “cloaking devices,” stealth technologies for spaceships that have played significant roles in Star Trek, Star Wars, and a number of other fictional universes and futures. Judging by these and other cultural texts, we both fears and are attracted to the possibilities offered by stealth technology, and by the ability to move through the world—even in our most powerful vehicles—unseen.Next AmericansStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?

October 4, 2016: AmericanStudying The Americans: Spies like Us

[Earlier this year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans , the FX drama about two KGB agents (the great Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects. Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and questions!]On what we don’t know about two high-profile spying controversies—and why it doesn’t matter.While the protagonists of The Americans were born in Russia, many of the Soviet spies with whom they work in the course of the show are native-born Americans who have been “turned” and are now spying on behalf of the USSR. 20th century history offers a number of prominent examples of such spies, but in most cases the evidence remains murky at best, and thus produces more questions than answers about these cases and what we make of them. Few examples better illustrate the stakes of such historical interpretations and analyses than the cases of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. At one extreme—but, to be clear, an extreme that could be argued within the bounds of serious historical inquiry—each case could be seen as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism, as evidence that communist spies and sympathizers were indeed operating within the U.S. government and society. At the other, equally arguable extreme, these three Americans embody the worst of that era, and particularly its persecution and destruction of innocent lives in service of paranoia, fear, and the creation at all costs of the “us vs. them” mentality about which I wrote in Monday’s post.Perhaps in time sufficient evidence will be unearthed or released that historians will be able to come to more conclusive perspectives on one or both of these prominent cases—although so far key details have not only remained secret but also have been legally reinforced in that state. To date, at least as far as this AmericanStudier understands it (and as I analyzed from a different angle in this post), the available evidence seems to implicate Julius Rosenberg as a Soviet spy, to cast serious doubt on the guilt of his wife Ethel, and to remain entirely inconclusive when it comes to Alger Hiss. Yet while the guilt and innocence of these individuals are no small matters—not least because the Rosenbergs were executed for their alleged crimes, while Hiss lived the remaining forty-five years of his life under the cloud of suspicion as well—it’s also possible, and important, to analyze the cases in other contexts regardless of such ambiguities, to consider what these histories and lives can reveal even if their deepest secrets might never see the light of day.To my mind, one clear and important way to consider all three accused spies is to recognize the range of American identities and experiences to which they connect: Julius for example as the son of Jewish immigrants who settled in New York’s East Side neighborhoods; Ethel for another example as a New York New Womanwho initially pursued a career as an actress and singer before moving into those iconic mid-20th century roles of wife, mother, and homemaker; Hiss for a third example as the product of a declining Maryland family, surrounded by tragedies including his father’s and sister’s suicides, who worked his way to Harvard and a prestigious career in law and politics. Which is to say, whether they spied or not, whether they were traitors or victims, these are American stories and histories and identities, lives and worlds no less (and no more) a part of our national narratives than those of Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and their other accusers and adversaries—or, The Americans would argue and I would agree, than the American stories of spies like Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. Whatever the truth, the simple fact is that there’s no us vs. them—it’s all us.Next AmericansStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?

October 3, 2016: AmericanStudying The Americans: “Illegals”

[Earlier this year, I belatedly but excitedly got into The Americans , the FX drama about two KGB agents (the great Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys) living in deep cover as a married couple in Reagan’s 1980s America. It’s a wonderful and very AmericanStudies show, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy five issues and themes to which the show connects. Leading up to my latest Guest Post on another set of pop culture texts and questions!]On what’s deeply compelling, and what’s accidentally troubling, about the show’s central premise.When I first heard about the concept behind The Americans—that the KGB had spies whom the US Department of Justice knew as “illegals,” people who came to the US from Russia when they were very young and stayed here for decades (ostensibly the rest of their lives), working, raising families, and living in every way as part of American society while still spying for the USSR—I was sure it was invented by the . But nothing could be further from the truth. Weisberg is a former CIA case officer who used his knowledge of very real such spy programs—about which a great deal has been declassified and revealed in the last couple decades, and indeed some of which have continued after the fall of the Soviet Union and were only discovered and stopped by the FBI in the last few years—to craft his fictional version. The Americans is historical fiction in the deepest sense, the kind that adheres quite closely to known historical realities and details while of course developing entirely fictional characters within that frame and world.And what an evocative topic for historical fiction the “illegals” program is. Not just because it explodes the easy “us vs. them,” “evil empire” narratives (that famous 1983 Reagan speech is featured in a powerful moment during the show’s Season 3; SPOILERS in that video review) of the US and the USSR, focusing on people whose experiences inextricably and genuinely linked them to both nations while still locating them very fully within the Cold War between the two countries—although that’s a very powerful and still meaningful effect to be sure. But also because as the show’s primary such “illegals,” Russell’s and Rhys’s characters (Elizabeth and Philip Jennings) deal with questions of identity and community, work and family, culture and citizenship, allegiance and responsibility, that resonate deeply with a number of historical and cultural issues, from the immigrant experience to stereotypes and realities of American society to women in the workforce to contrasting parenting styles (among many others). The show is never not a spy thriller and a very effective one, but it’s also a great deal more, and that’s due in large part to this very unique historical identity and role and all that it opens up. Yet as an AmericanStudier, and one more and more concerned with public scholarly connections to our contemporary moment and society, I have to admit that every time I hear the show’s FBI agents—led by the great Noah Emmerich as Stan Beeman—refer to their hunt for “illegals,” I cringe. I fully believe that the term is historically accurate, but of course the show is being created in the 21stcentury, and in our current moment there’s another American community to whom we collectively refer far too often with the term “illegals” (turning an adjective referring to laws into a highly prejudicial noun). I don’t believe that Weisberg and company intended this echo, and I’m not necessarily suggesting that they should abandon historical accuracy because of an accidental problem with language. But it’s worth noting that historical fiction is never simply about the history being depicted, but rather also a product and reflection of the moment and world of its creation, not least because it’s in that momen and world that audiences will engage with and be affected by the works. Just one more complex idea with which The Americans helps us grapple.Next AmericansStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other AmericanStudies shows you’d highlight?

October 1-2, 2016: September 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]September 5: The Radical Origins of Labor Day: A Labor Day series kicks off with a link to my Talking Points Memo piece on the holiday’s forgotten origins.September 6: Cultural Work: Melville’s “Paradise” and the Lowell Offering: The series continues with two distinct but complementary ways to give literary voice to working women. September 7: Cultural Work: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ “Tenth of January”: The short story that combines local color and sentimental fiction and builds to so much more, as the series rolls on.September 8: Cultural Work: John Sayles’ Matewan: When subtlety isn’t necessary in portraying oppression and activism—but why it still helps.September 9: Cultural Work: Miner Texts: The series concludes with three different types of cultural representations of mining communities.September 10-11: Labor Day Links: A special weekend post highlighting a handful of scholarly pieces to keep the Labor Day studying going.September 12: MusicalStudying: The Black Crook: A series inspired by the Crook’s 150th anniversary starts with the histories and legacies of that first stage musical.September 13: MusicalStudying: Rodgers and Hammerstein and History: The series continues with historical stereotypes and revisions in three of the duo’s most famous musicals.September 14: MusicalStudying: West Side Story: The musical’s surprising history, and its limits and strengths as a cultural text, as the series rolls on.September 15: MusicalStudying: Angels in America and Rent: The play and musical that together helped change our national conversations on AIDS.September 16: MusicalStudying: Allegiance and Hamilton: The series concludes with what links and differentiates two important recent musicals.September 17-18: Crowd-sourced MusicalStudying: My latest crowd-sourced post, featuring the analyses of fellow MusicalStudiers—add yours in comments!September 19: Rhode Island Histories: Roger Williams: A Little Rhody series starts with two inspiring layers and one frustrating one to the colony’s founder.September 20: Rhode Island Histories: Beavertail Lighthouse: The series continues with three telling moments in the history of America’s third oldest lighthouse.September 21: Rhode Island Histories: The Name: Two debates over the state’s name, and why we should better remember it in any case, as the series rolls on.September 22: Rhode Island Histories: Political Corruption: Three figures who embody the small state’s outsized history of political corruption.September 23: Rhode Island Histories: Providence Sites: A few beautiful and compelling cultural and historic sites from the state’s capitol.September 24-25: Rhode Island Colleagues: The series concludes with five wonderful Rhode Island scholars I’m proud to call AmericanStudying colleagues!September 26: Legends of the Fall: Young Adult Lit: An autumn series on falls from innocence starts with two iconic YA novels that fractured their characters’ and my innocence.      September 27: Legends of the Fall: American Pastoral: The series continues with the louder and quieter moments of fallen innocence in the recent classic novel.September 28: Legends of the Fall: The Body and Stand By Me: Cynical and nostalgic narratives of childhood innocence lost, as the series rolls on.September 29: Legends of the Fall: Presumed Innocent: Scott Turow’s novel and the multiple layers of fallen innocence built into the best mystery stories.September 30: Legends of the Fall: American Pie: The series concludes with the straightforward and more subtle sides to a beloved ballad about lost innocence.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 30, 2016: 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, in comments!]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.September Recap this weekend,BenPS. One more time: images of fall, or The Fall, that you’d share?

September 29, 2016: 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, in comments!]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 28, 2016: 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, in comments!]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?

September 27, 2016: Legends of the Fall: American Pastoral

[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, in comments!]On a novel with over-the-top moments that practically scream “loss of innocence,” and the quieter scene that much more potently captures it.To follow up the main idea from yesterday’s post, I experienced a very different kind of teenage literary loss of innocence when I decided to read Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) for pleasure in early high school (what can I say, I was a nerd and the son of an English professor to boot). I can still quite distinctly remember arriving at Chapter 2, “Whacking Off,” and encountering for the first time just exactly how far Roth is willing to go—how obscene, how graphic, how flagrantly over-the-top. For reasons not quite known to me, in my second semester at Fitchburg State I chose to put Portnoy on the syllabus of a junior-level seminar on “Major American Authors of the 20thCentury,” and got to see 25 undergrads—24 women, by chance—having their own such encounters with Roth, the novel, and that chapter in particular. Let’s just say it wasn’t just me.Roth’s late masterpiece American Pastoral (1997) is a far more realistic and restrained work than Portnoy, but nonetheless Roth includes a couple of distinctly Roth-ian over-the-top scenes, both symbolizing quite overtly his novel’s overall themes of the loss of innocence that accompanied the late 60s and early 70s in American culture and society. In the first, the novel’s now middle-aged protagonist, Swede Levov, meets with a seemingly innocent young women to try to learn the whereabouts of his missing daughter Merry; the woman turns out instead to be a brazen and cynical 60s radical, and she meets the Swede naked, graphically exposing and probing herself in front of him (while daring him to, in essence, rape her). In the second, the tour-de-force set piece with which Roth concludes the novel, a family dinner full of shocking revelations and betrayals is set against the backdrop of the televised Watergate hearings, and culminates with a crazy drunken woman stabbing an elderly man in the head with her fork.These scenes are as surprising and shocking as intended, and I suppose in that way they make Roth’s point. But if he intends the theme of the loss of innocence to be tragic as well as disturbing and comic (which those two scenes are, respectively), then I would point a far quieter and to my mind far more potent scene. In it, the Swede finally finds Merry and sees her again, for the only time between her teenage disappearance (after she bombs a local post office in political protest and kills an innocent bystander) and his own later death. He asks a few questions, but mostly what he does is listen (to her stories of all the horrors she has experienced in the years since the bombing) and observe (her literally fading life as a converted Jainist, one for whom any contact with the world is destructive and so self-deprivation and -starvation comprises the only meaningful future). As a parent, I can imagine nothing more shattering hearing and seeing such things from one of my children—and in the Swede’s quiet horror and sadness, Roth captures a far more powerful and chilling loss of innocence.Next fall tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Images of fall, or The Fall, you’d share?