Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 291

May 9, 2016: Semester Reflections: Yung Wing in Am Lit I

[This week marks the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ll offer some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your spring reflections and any other pedagogical or personal perspectives you’d share!]On a long overdue, vital first step.Ever since my first American Literature I syllabus, in the fall of my first year at Fitchburg State (2005-6), I’ve focused on the same central idea: complementing more familiar authors/texts and communities (what I call the Story of America) with less well-known and just as significant ones (other American Stories). While I’ve added or substracted individual authors and works over those eleven years, that core philosophy and structure for the course have remained constant, and I’ve been pretty happy with the results. (Not least because students have often been particularly drawn to and inspired by the unfamiliar authors and works, from Cabeza de Vaca to Annis Stockton and Judith Sargent Murray, William Apess to Fanny Fern.) But there’s been one noticeable problem across all those sections—my course’s version of early American diversity has featured almost entirely voices from the Native, African, and European American cultures and perspectives.There’s something to be said for extending beyond the Anglo/Puritan focused narratives of America’s origin points, of course. But as I wrote at length in my third book, even the more multicultural narrative of American history and identity has tended to elide the many other communities and cultures that have also been part of America throughout its history: from the Moroccan Muslims (Moors) in Revolutionary South Carolina to the Filippino villagers in 18th century Louisiana, the longstanding Mexican communities throughout the Southwest and West to the Chinese arrivals to turn of the 19th century Alta California, among others. And leaving those communities out of our collective memories doesn’t just make our histories less accurate—it also makes possible arguments that these cultures (Muslim Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans) represent late 20th and early 21st century shifts in American identity, an image of a changing America that can all too easily play into “Make America Great Again” style mythmaking and bigotry.The question I’ve faced, then, has been how to add these cultures—many of whom did not, as far as I know (and please correct my knowledge in comments!), produce written texts in their early periods—into my American Lit I syllabus. For this semester’s section, I decided to cheat slightly, and to include excerpts from Yung Wing’s autobiography My Life in China and America (1909, and thus well outside our class chronology although it begins with events from our last focal time period) as the course’s final reading. It couldn’t have gone better—the students really got into Yung’s portrayals of his arrival to the United States and his preparatory school and college days, as well as his evolving idea for the Chinese Educational Mission; and I was able to frame that specific discussion by presenting some of these precise ideas of expanding and deepening our understanding of American diversity and identity. Just one small step in that direction (and again, I welcome ideas for other authors and texts I might include to continue that work), but it felt like a really significant one nonetheless.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this idea or others you’d share?

May 7-8, 2016: Mother’s Day Special Post

[Change of plans—in honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to re-post this special post as a way of paying tribute to the wonderful mothers I’ve known, including my own Mom, my sons’ mother, and my fiancé among many others. Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there. You rock!]On a short story that helps us remember and celebrate one of society’s toughest and most vital roles.
I would be the first to admit that I am doing what is without a doubt my most important life’s work—as a dad to the two crazy and crazy cute young dudes pictured above—in near-ideal conditions. However you slice it, from past role models to present support from family and friends, economic security to good health, neighborhood and community to (at least when it comes to something like mixed-race identity) a very tolerant and open-minded historical era and time period, I can’t imagine there being more positive influences on my ability to be a good dad (don’t worry, I’m knocking on wood while typing all that). And still, it’s hard. It’s hard especially on two distinct and crucial levels: on its own terms, it’s hard to feel day in and day out like I’m doing everything I can do for and with them, to prepare them for the best and happiest and most successful futures and lives; and in a broader context, it’s hard much of the time to feel as if I’m balancing out parenting and my career in ways that are mutually productive. And I don’t think those things are even vaguely distinctive for me—quite the opposite, I think they’re indications of just how hard these questions are for everybody.
But of course the reality is that these questions are much, much harder for a great many Americans. If even one of those positive influences that I listed above is replaced with a negative one—if one doesn’t have much familial or social support, if one’s financial situation is unstable or disadvantaged or bleak, if health issues become prominent, if one’s community is dangerous or threatening, and so on—the difficulties increase exponentially. And if multiple or even most of the influences become negative, if in fact being a good parent becomes an effort to rise above (rather than, in my case, to live up to) all of what surrounds one—as, I believe, is the case for many of the impoverished families and parents with whom my Mom worked for many years in a Head Start-like program in Central Virginia(although she and that program are, just to be clear, one extremely positive influence in their worlds)—well, I can’t even imagine how difficult it becomes at that point. And yet, as if so often the case, a singular and singularly amazing work of American literature allows me to imagine, even in a small way, what it feels like to be in that situation, to try to parent well, or even perhaps just to parent at all, in the face of most every single factor and influence and aspect of one’s situation.
That work is “I Stand Here Ironing,” a short story by Tillie Olsen. Olsen spent the first half of her life living with these questions, as a working single mother who was trying both to be a good parent and to find time or space to hone her considerable talents as a creative and critical writer; when she finally achieved success, with the book of short stories Tell Me a Riddle (1961) that featured “Ironing,” she spent the second half of her life writing about (among many other things) precisely these questions, such as in the unique and important scholarly study Silences (1978) which traces the effects of work and parenthood on women writers in a variety of nations and time periods. Yet I don’t think she ever captured these themes more evocatively or perfectly than in “Ironing,” a brief story in which a mother imagines—while performing the titular act of housework—how she might describe her relationship to her oldest and most troubled daughter (named Emily) to a school official who has asked her to do so. Although the narrator is now in a more stable situation, the first years of her daughter’s life comprised her lowest point in every sense, and for much of the story she reflects with sadness and regret and pain on all that she was not able to offer and give to and be for her daughter during those years. But she comes at the end to a final vision of her now teenage daughter that is, while by no means idealistic or naïve, a recognition that Emily is becoming her own person, that she is strong and independent, and that she has the opportunity to carve out a life that, at the very least, can go far beyond where it began.
It’s a beautiful and powerful story, and a very complex one, not least because no parent can read it with the perspective of simply a literary critic or a distanced reader in any sense. It pushes us up against the most difficult aspects of this role, makes clear how much more difficult still they can be than most of us (fortunately) will ever know, and then finally reminds us of the absolutely unalterable and singular and crucial meanings of what is, again, the most important thing we’ll ever do. Word to your mother.Semester recap series starts Monday,BenPS. Other Moms you’d highlight? I’d love to hear about them!

May 6, 2016: Classical Music Icons: Florence Foster Jenkins

[On May 5th, 1891, Carnegie Hall—first known as Music Hall—opened in New York City. In the 125 years since, the hall has become synonymous with classical music in America. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five iconic figures from that tradition, leading to a special weekend tribute to some 21st century classical musicians and composers!]On what’s funny, and what’s much more serious, about a famous failure.Florence Foster Jenkins(1868-1944), late 19th century Gilded Age socialite turned early 20thcentury wannabe opera singer (with the only problem being her complete and total lack of talent for that very demanding role), is already one of American history’s most famous failures. She became well known enough in her own lifetime to perform at Carnegie Hall in October 1944, just a month before her death; the concert unfortunately received scathing reviews, as it marked the first and only time Jenkins performed before professional critics and they took full advantage of the opportunity. She has been the subject of at least four plays and many other pop culture responses in the decades since. And as of April 2016, she’s the subject of a newly released feature film (Florence Foster Jenkins) starring none other than Meryl Streep as Florence, a project that promises to make this tragicomic story into an even more famous example of failing upward in American history and society.There’s no doubt that Jenkins’ story reveals, humorously but also frustratingly, the ways in which privilege can create opportunity and even a form of success where they seem largely (if not entirely) undeserved. Yet as with any American story and life, hers also connect to other and more complex contexts, and illuminate other aspects of our history and culture in the process. For one thing, I would link her to the two Gilded Age women on whom I focused in this post, Alva and Alice Vanderbilt. It’s undoubtedly hard for most of us to feel a great deal of empathy for extremely wealthy women working to find a purpose to their lives beyond (or at least alongside) the kinds of social gatherings that the Vanderbilts and the Fosters hosted and frequented. But at the same time, one of my favorite and most inspirational American figures, Isabella Stewart Gardner, was precisely such a woman, and like Alva and Alice Vanderbilt she leveraged her fortune and privilege to achieve a great deal of communal good. If Jenkins did not quite manage the same, that doesn’t mean that her own attempts to find an individual place and purpose, separate from and perhaps more genuine than the sphere of her wealthy family, aren’t likewise worth our thoughtful attention and analysis.Jenkins and Gardner were also both prominent parts of another significant turn of the 20thcentury community: artists and their patrons. Jenkins founded New York City’s Verdi Club, which helped support and nurture American classical musicians and music in this foundational era. And she served for a time as the president of the American League of Pen Women(still going strong as the National League of American Pen Women, as that website illustrates), a recently created organization devoted to providing community and assistance for female authors and artists. The fact that Jenkins herself possessed so little artistic talent has, again, made her musical career a famous laughingstock. But in truth, her support—financial, organizational, personal, and otherwise—of music and musicians was far more influential and lasting than her individual career could have been in any case, even if she were a prodigious talent. The story of classical music in America isn’t just about the talents who created it, after all; it’s just as much about the figures and institutions that supported and strengthened and shared it. Jenkins played a prominent role in that process, and deserves to be remembered for that role and those efforts as well as for the famous failure that was her opera career.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other classical music greats you’d highlight?

May 5, 2016: Classical Music Icons: Yo-Yo Ma

[On May 5th, 1891, Carnegie Hall—first known as Music Hall—opened in New York City. In the 125 years since, the hall has become synonymous with classical music in America. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five iconic figures from that tradition, leading to a special weekend tribute to some 21st century classical musicians and composers!]Three very American moments (and even though he was born in Paris to Chinese immigrant parents, they moved to New York when he was 7, he’s lived in the US ever since, and I’m AmericanStudying him!) in the career of one of our greatest classical musicians.1)      A public and presidential performance: In November 1962, as a 7 year old child prodigy, Ma performed in a special concert for President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie, along with former President Dwight Eisenhower, opera star Marian Anderson, poet Robert Frost, and many other celebrities. And oh yeah, he was conducted in that performance by perhaps the greatest American conductor, Leonard Bernstein. The moment stands alongside Shirley Temple on those stairs as one of the most striking and impressive youthful artistic performances in American culture (and without any awkward minstrelsy to get in the way of our appreciation for it). But it also reflects the complex connection of celebrity to artistry that has for so long now dominated—or at least heavily influenced—our cultural conversations. Was Ma truly an American artistic talent before he performed on such a public and famous stage?2)      The Tonight Show: Or maybe even that performance wasn’t enough, and it was only two years later, when a now 9 year old Ma performed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in December 1964 (I can’t find a video of the performance, unfortunately), that he truly became an American musical star. Ma was introduced on the program by violinist Isaac Stern, himself an immigrant American (his Jewish family had immigrated from the Ukraine in 1921, when Stern was only 10 months old) and an advocate of Ma’s from his time in Paris on. I don’t mean to suggest that you’re not a real classical musician unless you’ve performed on a late night talk show—that’s obviously not the medium in which most American classical music gets performed or heard, nor a necessary barometer for its quality. But as with any artistic genre, those select few classical artists who can cross over to all branches of American media have reached a new plateau—and Ma did so before he was even in double digits.3)      The Committee of 100: I could of course fill this spot (and many subsequent blog posts) with other noteworthy performances and career highlights of Ma’s. But like so many late 20th century American artists, Ma has also worked to contribute to social and cultural conversations well beyond his chosen artistic field, and perhaps his most influential such effort was his prominent role in the 1990 founding of the Committee of 100. As that website notes, the committee is composed of “Extraordinary Chinese Americans” dedicated to two distinct but interconnected goals: “Ensuring Full Inclusion in America” and “Advancing US-China Relations.” As such, I would connect the Committee’s important late 20thand 21st century work to that of one of my favorite 19thcentury Americans, Yung Wing—but since Wing’s diplomatic and educational careers provided natural fits for his cross-cultural Chinese and Chinese-American efforts, I find it even more impressive that Yo-Yo Ma has extended so fully outside of his professional world in order to contribute as well to those cultural and national goals.Last icon tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other classical music greats you’d highlight?

May 4, 2016: Classical Music Icons: Maria Callas

[On May 5th, 1891, Carnegie Hall—first known as Music Hall—opened in New York City. In the 125 years since, the hall has become synonymous with classical music in America. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five iconic figures from that tradition, leading to a special weekend tribute to some 21st century classical musicians and composers!]On two telling dualities embodied by one of America’s most famous opera singers.1)      The old and new worlds: Maria Callas(1923-1977) was born in New York City to parents who had immigrated from Greece while her mother was pregnant, and after a turbulent childhood moved back to Greece with her mother when Maria was a teenager. She received her opera training in Greece and Italy, and would begin performing professionally throughout Europe during and after World War II. She supposedly was offered a contract with New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1945 but turned it down; her American debut launched the Lyric Opera in Chicago in 1954, and in 1956 she finally signed a contract with the Met, performing there for two years and then launching the rival American Opera Society in 1959. She then spent most of her final performing years in London, where she retired in 1965. So was she an American opera singer who spent most of her career in Europe, or a European opera singer who spent her early years in America and later returned there for a series of performances? Such questions illustrate the cultural duality of American opera.2)      Gendered and artistic expectations: In the early period of her career, Callas was, like many opera singers, rather heavy; by the mid-1950s, after dedicating herself to healthy eating and lifestyle, she had lost 80 pounds (some 40% of her overall weight). While of course good health is never a bad thing, Callas’ weight loss was clearly connected to external perceptions, and ones directly related to standards of female beauty: Met opera director Rudolf Bing called her “monstrously fat” in 1951; whereas after the weight loss Bing noted that she “looked as though she had been born to that slender and graceful figure,” while another critic described her as “possibly the most beautiful lady on the stage.” Yet ironically, some historians have attributed Callas’ weight loss to both changes in her voice and the increased strain on her vocal cords that hastened the end of her career; of a 1958 performance a critic wrote, “There were sounds fearfully uncontrolled, forced beyond the too-slim singer’s present capacity to support or sustain.” In any case, Callas dealt with idealized expectations and their effects on both sides of this duality.The latter duality is of course not unique to the United States, while the former can be applied to any immigrant or ethnic American communities; yet in many ways these two frames can be seen as parallel: as questions of definition and categorization, of how we see a performer (as part of certain cultures or as tied more to tradition, as embodying their gender or as linked to their medium and talent) and what those perceptions lead us to emphasize and respond to. Besides her unquestionable and unique talents, Maria Callas is noteworthy for just how fully she illustrates both of these complex dualities of perception and definition.Next icon tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other classical music greats you’d highlight?

May 3, 2016: Classical Music Icons: The Gershwins

[On May 5th, 1891, Carnegie Hall—first known as Music Hall—opened in New York City. In the 125 years since, the hall has become synonymous with classical music in America. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five iconic figures from that tradition, leading to a special weekend tribute to some 21st century classical musicians and composers!]On the lesser-known careers and works of the other two Gershwin siblings.If yesterday’s subject Aaron Copland has competition for the title of the most influential American classical composer, it’d have to be the talented brothers Ira (1896-1983) and George (1898-1937) Gershwin. Although each produced significant and enduring works on his own (with George’s Rhapsody in Blue [1924) a particular stand out), between 1924 and George’s untimely death in 1937 the brothers collaborated on almost all their projects. The results of this incredibly fruitful period include the greatest American opera (Porgy and Bess [1934], on the lyrics for which Ira collaborated with novelist DuBose Heyward) and many works that remain on the short list of most influential American songs (such as “I Got Rhythm” and “Someone to Watch over Me”). I’m not here to dispute the seminal importance of these two most famous Gershwin siblings—but it’s worth noting that their younger brother and sister were also a composer and dancer/performer (respectively), with careers that offer their own additions to our narratives of American classical and popular music.The second sentence in the Wikipedia page on Arthur Gershwin (1900-1981) nicely illustrates the challenging expectations faced by Ira and George’s younger brother: “Although he was a composer, he was not a professional musician, and made his living as a stockbroker.” In fact, as his New York Times obituary noted, Arthur retired from stockbroking in 1938 to try for a full-time composing career, and he did achieve a few significant 1940s successes before health forced his early retirement in the 50s. The most notable of these was the comic musical A Lady Says Yes (1945), which features sequences in both 1545 and 1945, wedding a contemporary wartime setting with imagined sequences in Renaissance Venice to consider romance, relationships, and gender roles in both worlds. It seems to me no coincidence that for his one produced musical Arthur strayed far afield, in both topic and form, from the popular hits his brothers had penned over the prior two decades. Indeed, while his brothers’ collaborative works are deeply ingrained in American settings and communities, Arthur’s musical focuses on an American officer abroad (in the war’s Pacific theater) who then imagines himself in an even more dramatically distant sphere. I doubt very much Arthur ever felt himself out of Ira and George’s shadow, but Lady certainly occupies its own territory.As you mght expect, that dynamic of expectations and shadows seems to have weighed even heavier on the trio’s sister, Frances Gershwin Godowsky (1906-1999). Frances was actually the first sibling to perform professionally, touring as a dancer with the children’s musical Daintyland when she was only 11 years old. But by the 1920s she was mostly utilizing her talents as a test singer and dancer for her brothers’ songs and musicals in production, and when she married family friend and future Kodachrome inventor Leopold Godowsky Jr. (himself a violinist and the sonof an acclaimed pianist) in 1930 her own musical career was relegated even further down on the list of priorities. In later years she took up painting and sculpture with a good deal of success (one more reflection of her own artistic talents), only returning to the world of music for the 1975 tribute album Frances Sings for George and Ira and performances thereafter. Yet in all those areas—dancing and singing, painting and sculpture—it’s perhaps most accurate to say that Frances, like Arthur, complemented the careers and genres of her more famous brothers, reflecting the genuine musical and artistic diversity of this supremely talented American family.Next icon tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other classical music greats you’d highlight?

May 2, 2016: Classical Music Icons: Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”

[On May 5th, 1891, Carnegie Hall—first known as Music Hall—opened in New York City. In the 125 years since, the hall has become synonymous with classical music in America. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five iconic figures from that tradition, leading to a special weekend tribute to some 21st century classical musicians and composers!]On the composer and work that helped bring classical to America, and vice versa.I’m no music historian, yet I would argue that many, indeed most, of the last century’s dominant genres of popular music originated in America: the blues, jazz, rock and roll, country, rap, hip hop, all would seem to have had distinctly American origins. By the same token, however, it’s inarguable that when it comes to one of the most longstanding world musical traditions, classical music (or orchestral music, to make clear that the tradition has continued into our contemporary moment just as much as those other genres), America’s historical role has been far more insignificant. For example, the 19th century saw such classical masters as Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Dvorák, and Mendelssohn, among many others; yet in America during roughly the same period, it’s fair to say (again, says the non-music-historian) that the only composer to achieve any sort of international prominence would be John Philip Sousa—and his marches were of course themselves not exactly classical symphonies.By the mid-20thcentury, many of the aforementioned popular genres had begun to emerge in earnest, and with them many significant American composers and musicians. Yet the same decades witnessed the rise of (to my mind) America’s greatest classical composer, one deeply indebted to contemporary American genres such as jazz yet also able to stand toe to toe with any international peer: Aaron Copland. Copland’s earliest (1920s) compositions reflected both sides to those influences, with more classical pieces such as “Symphony for Organ and Orchestra” (1924) complemented by jazz-inflected ones like “Music for the Theater”(1925). His more mature and famous compositions carried forward both trends, as evidenced by two pieces from 1942: the classical (“Fanfare for the Common Man”) and the American (“A Lincoln Portrait”). But perhaps no single piece, of Copland’s or of any other composer’s, better weds the classical to the American than “Appalachian Spring” (1944).Copland composed the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Appalachian Spring” for Martha Graham’s ballet of the same name, but of course the music has endured in our popular consciousness more fully than the ballet. There are various possible reasons for that persistence, but I would argue it’s most centrally due to just how successfully Copland balances American folk motifs (such as the traditional Shaker song “Simple Gifts” on which he apparently based one of his central melodies) with classical traditions. The truth, of course, is that every nation’s version of a “classical tradition” is due precisely to a combination of unique, local influences with overarching tropes and elements—as brought together and taken to another level by the kinds of musical masters I cited above. That isn’t to downplay the legacies of the world’s greatest composers, but to note, instead, how fully Copland stands among those greats, and how thoroughly he brought America with him into the classical conversation. An uncommon man, and piece, indeed.Next icon tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other classical music greats you’d highlight?

April 30-May 1, 2016: April 2016 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]April 4: Remembering Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Bureau: A Reconstruction series starts with a major reason why the organization failed, and two lasting legacies nonetheless.April 5: Remembering Reconstruction: African American Legislators: The series continues with three distinct, inspiring stories from the period’s thousands of African American elected officials.April 6: Remembering Reconstruction: Massacres: Three horrific and historically telling Reconstruction-era massacres, as the series rolls on.April 7: Remembering Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson: Three telling stages in the life and career of one of our worst presidents.April 8: Remembering Reconstruction: Du Bois’s Vital Revisionism: The series concludes with the book that revised Reconstruction historiography, redefined a profession, and went even further.April 9-10: Remembering Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Act of 1866: On its 150thanniversary, why we don’t remember a controversial law, and a couple reasons why we should.April 11: American Outlaws: Pecos Bill and Joaquin Murrieta: An OutlawStudying series starts with two competing yet complementary frontier folk heroes.April 12: American Outlaws: Billy the Kid: The series continues with two telling layers to the famous outlaw’s mythos, and the context they both tend to miss.April 13: American Outlaws: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Beautifying ugly men and deeds and why we should resist it, as the series rolls on.April 14: American Outlaws: Bonnie and Clyde: How photos and images can reflect and shape but also distort our histories.April 15: American Outlaws: The Mafia: The series concludes with three telling stages in the evolution of our pop culture obsession with the mob.April 16-17: Tolkien Takeaways: In honor of my younger son’s birthday, a special post on three AmericanStudies takeaways from one of our current obsessions, The Lord of the Rings.April 18: Patriot’s Day Special Post: My annual Patriot’s Day post on the easier and harder forms of patriotism—and why we should try for the latter.April 19: 21st Century Patriots: Alicia Garza: A series on contemporary patriots starts with what’s new, traditional, and perhaps most important about the hashtag activist.April 20: 21st Century Patriots: Deepa Iyer: The series continues with the scholar and wonderful new book that deserve to reference one of the greatest American poems.April 21: 21st Century Patriots: Santana Young Man Afraid of His Horses: A young tribal emissary who embodies 21st century communal activism, as the series rolls on.April 22: 21st Century Patriots: Online Public Scholarship: The series concludes with four places where you can find online public scholarship that embodies my vision of critical patriotism.April 23-24: Crowd-sourced Patriots: My latest crowd-sourced post, in which fellow AmericanStudiers share their nominees for 21st century (and a couple 19th century) patriots!April 25: Short Story Cycles: Love Medicine: A series on short story cycles starts with two roles of the framing story of Louise Erdrich’s devastating, beautiful cycle.April 26: Short Story Cycles: The Joy Luck Club: The series continues with two easily overlooked histories at the heart of Amy Tan’s bestselling cycle.April 27: Short Story Cycles: The House on Mango Street: Two childhood experiences that Sandra Cisneros’ cycle gets perfectly right, as the series continues.April 28: Short Story Cycles: The Things They Carried: The value of reading the individual stories in Tim O’Brien’s cycle on their own terms, and the necessity of not stopping there.April 29: Short Story Cycles: 19th Century Trailblazers: The series concludes with two distinct models for the genre from a century before its rise to prominence.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to write? Lemme know!

April 29, 2016: Short Story Cycles: 19th Century Trailblazers

[This semester, as part of my Ethnic American Lit course, I’ve taught all or part of three short story cycles: Love Medicine, The Joy Luck Club, and The House on Mango Street. So this week I wanted to AmericanStudy those three works, as well as a few other examples of this complex literary genre.]On two distinct models for the genre from a century prior to its rise to prominence.Short story cycles became a prominent part of the American literary lansdscape in the postmodern period of the late 20th century, as the 1980s and 90s publication dates of the subjects of the week’s other posts illustrate. Shifting chronologies and structures, multiple narrators and perspectives, challenging demands placed on readers who are required to assemble fragmentary and even contradictory collections of texts—the genre embodies many of the most central elements of postmodern fiction, as well as the kinds of philosophies and identities associated with the postmodern period more broadly. Yet as I have argued elsewhere, in an article on another postmodern literary device (the novelist-narrator), there’s also significant value in crossing period boundaries and considering literary forms as they have existed in multiple moments. And in this case, two late 19thcentury short story cycles have a great deal to offer as models of the genre.In Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), the unnamed narrator travels to Dunnet Landing, a small, isolated fishing village on the coast of Maine, to spend a secluded summer in a place that time seems to have forgotten. Although we learn at the outset that she has been there before and knows some of its inhabitants, that fact is perhaps the only concrete details we will ever learn about the narrator, who serves mostly as an observer of the town’s places and people and an occasion for them to share their own voices and stories. Indeed, it is only in the framing stories (describing her arrival and departure, respectively) that the narrator is a focal point at all; the others, in classic local color fashion, center on distinct settings and communities within this unique and perfectly drawn little world. Without overstating a contrast based on one work in particular, I’d say that there’s something to be made of the fact that in this late 19th century short story cycle (compared to the week’s 20th century examples) the first-person narrator is both an outsider to the central setting and experiences and a writer who observes and transcribes much more than she participates or shares in them.A similar dynamic can be found—if with a key distinction—in Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales (1899). Like Jewett’s narrator, Chesnutt’s narrator John travels (this time with his wife Annie, whose ill health has necessitated the move) to a complex new setting, in this case a former slave plantation during the post-war Reconstruction era. And as in Jewett, John serves mostly as a frame through which one of that place’s inhabitants, the ex-slave storyteller Uncle Julius, shares his own voice and stories, the titular conjure tales that capture (in Julius’ dense, carefully constructed dialect voice) supernatural yet realistic Southern histories of slavery and race. Yet while Jewett located her narrator most fully in the book’s overall frames (its opening and closing stories), Chesnutt makes John and Annie (and their interactions with Julius) the frames of each story, keeping them more consistently present throughout the book and linking his local color and historical fictions to these contemporary, outsider characters. As a result, Conjure not only portrays the past but also and most importantly connects it to an evolving present, a multi-layered non-chronological structure that foreshadows some key aspects of late 20thcentury short story cycles.April recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other short story cycles you’d highlight?

April 28, 2016: Short Story Cycles: The Things They Carried

[This semester, as part of my Ethnic American Lit course, I’ve taught all or part of three short story cycles: Love Medicine, The Joy Luck Club, and The House on Mango Street. So this week I wanted to AmericanStudy those three works, as well as a few other examples of this complex literary genre.]On the value of reading a cycle’s stories on their own terms, and the necessity of not stopping there.Nearly a year ago, as part of my July 4th series, I wrote about Tim O’Brien’s compelling and powerful short story “Speaking of Courage,” and implicitly made the case for that work as a standalone text, one that can and should be read as a distinct short story. The same can definitely be said for most of the other long stories that comprise the heart of O’Brien’s short short cycle The Things They Carried (1990), the book that also features “Speaking”: the title story, “On the Rainy River,” “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” and “How to Tell a True War Story” (among others) are all amazing works that have plenty to offer if read on their own terms. Indeed, I would go further: although perhaps best known as a novelist, O’Brien is a master of the short story form, and each of those stories is dense and demanding enough that they require us to focus in on them individually, closely, and at length, a form of close reading that it might be more difficult to perform fully or successfully if we’re reading them as chapters of a longer work.So we can and should read O’Brien’s short stories individually—but at the same time, I would argue that we should ideally do so with the book in hand, because they build upon, engage with, and even complicate and change both one another and the shorter inter-chapters that surround them. That interconnected nature is most dramatically illustrated by “Good Form,” a very short piece that comes late in the book (it’s the 18thof the book’s 22 stories), that opens “It’s time to be blunt,” and that bluntly seems to deconstruct every other story in the superficially autobiographical collection. “I’m forty-three years old, true, and I’m a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier,” O’Brien continues. “Almost everything else is invented.” There is, of course, no necessary reason why we should have otherwise read the book’s individual stories as accurate or authentic to either O’Brien’s life or historical experiences—other than that, y’know, they often feature Tim O’Brien as a character, and that they’re part of a book dedicated to many of the story’s other featured characters, and that they deal with specific historical events and moments from the Vietnam War and its era, and that they include sentences like “This is true” (the opening line of “How to Tell”), and…Okay, so there are lots of reasons to read the book’s individual stories as “true”—and O’Brien likewise engages with but tries to challenge and revise our understanding of precisely that question in “Good Form,” arguing that the “form” he utilizes throughout the collection is because, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” It’s of course possible to capture the former in an individual short story, or even a single moment within such a story, and O’Brien’s collection is full of those moments.  But I would argue that reading them in relationship to each other, and ultimately as part of a whole, offers an even more potent and powerful effect, one that both undermines and amplifies our perspective on war and America, memory and history, identity and perspective, and what works of art and culture can do to portray and help create such themes. O’Brien’s book is one of our greatest short story cycles, and the way it creates both individual and collective effects is one of its greatest strengths.Last cycle tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other short story cycles you’d highlight?