Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 323

April 28, 2015: Communist Culture: Dos Passos and Wright

[In honor of May Day, a series on some compelling cultural representations of communism in American history and identity.]On two strikingly parallel yet also importantly distinct 1930s to ‘50s American arcs.As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, despite our longstanding collective national antagonism toward communism there have been both moments and communities in which the political philosophy has had substantially broader and deeper appeal. In the 1930s, two such factors came together to help produce a sizeable and vocal cohort of writers and intellectuals who embraced communism: the Great Depression’s heightening of wealth inequalities and social stratification seemed to highlight the limitations and even destructive capabilities of unchecked capitalism, leading a number of American writers and artists to imagine and depict alternative social and communal ways of living; and those economic woes, coupled with the continued destructive forces of segregation, lynching, and other communal ills and threats, led many African Americans similarly to seek an alternative to the dominant American systems.Those responses happened (and thus differed) within multiple communities, but they can be succinctly illustrated by two individuals, writers whose most significant novels bookend the 1930s in American literature and culture. John Dos Passos had been publishing fiction since the mid-1920s, but it was the trilogy that came to be collected as U.S.A. (1938)—The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936)—that exemplified both his stylistic experimentation and his socialistic philosophies. Richard Wright launched his career with the short story collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) but truly entered the literary stratosphere two years later with Native Son (1940), the best-selling and hugely controversial novel that features both one of American literature’s most eloquent defenders of communism (in the lawyer Max) and a character (protagonist Bigger Thomas) whose tragic and brutal arc makes numerous, purposefully ineloquent but nonetheless compelling arguments for the philosophy.In the 1940s to 50s, both writers famously broke with those philosophies and with the Communist Party: Wright in one pivotal moment, the essay “I Tried to Be a Communist” (1944); and Dos Passos more gradually, in a series of public statements and positions that culminated in his qualified support for Joseph McCarthy (among other turning points). Yet I would also argue that their shifts represent two quite distinct personal and national narratives: Dos Passos genuinely seemed, in response to World War II, the Cold War, and other factors, to change in his political and social perspectives; whereas to my mind Wright’s perspectives remained largely unchanged, and he came instead to see, as does for example Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the Communist Party as an imperfect and indeed failed vehicle through which to seek such political and social change. Such a distinction would of course become even more important in the 1960s, when a new generation of African American activists found anew a compelling alternative in American socialism.Next cultural communism tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Cultural representations of communism you’d highlight?

April 27, 2015: Communist Culture: “The Palace-Burner”

[In honor of May Day, a series on some compelling cultural representations of communism in American history and identity.]On the masterpiece of a poem that destroys easy “us vs. them” narratives.I made the case for my favorite American poet, Sarah Piatt, in one of my first posts, and did so in large part through her best poem, “The Palace-Burner” (1873). There are a lot of factors that make “Palace-Burner” one of the great American poems, including its exemplification of Piatt’s frequent use of a unique and multi-layered perspective that I named in my first book the dialogic lyric, an individual speaker’s perspective filtered through conversation and the shifts and evolutions it always produces. But at the top of the list for me would be Piatt’s incredibly sophisticated representation—through the lens of a mother and young son discussing a newspaper picture of a female rebel from the 1871 Paris Commune—of what I called in this post three crucial and interconnected levels to empathy: “connecting to seemingly distant others, working to understand those to whom we’re close, and examining our own identities through those lenses.”This wasn’t necessarily the case in the 1870s (although given the immense popularity of Horatio Alger novels in the period, maybe it was), but over the century and a half since I would say that there have been few world communities with which Americans have had, collectively, a more difficult time empathizing than communists. Of course there are significant exceptions, both in terms of time periods during which that philosophy has seemed more appealing (such as the Great Depression, about which more in tomorrow’s post) and in terms of American communities who have been sufficiently disenfranchised from our dominant national narratives to see the wisdom of such alternatives (such as African Americans in the mid-20th century, on whom likewise more tomorrow). But when it comes to our overarching, dominant narratives, communism has been one of the most consistent “them’s” to our constructed “us” for a long while; we can see both sides of that equation, for example, in our consistent need to define the Soviet Union as “godless” in contrast to equally constructed images of the United States as a “Christian nation.”There would be various possible ways to complicate and revise that kind of “us vs. them” narrative, including highlighting the many originating and influential forms and moments of American socialism and communism. But Piatt takes another, and to my mind particularly compelling, tack: creating in her poetic speaker a woman who seems thoroughly removed from not only communism but political conversations in general (especially in the “separate spheres” mentality that continued to reign for most middle-class American families in the period); and then giving that speaker the opportunity to consider whether and how she and a foreign communist woman might have anything in common. Neither the speaker nor the poem come to any easy or comfortable answers—empathy is neither of those things in any case—but they ask the questions, and that seems to me to an impressive model for all of us.Next cultural communism tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Cultural representations of communism you’d highlight?

April 25-26, 2014: How Would a Patriot Act?: You

[To follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I stole a phrase from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlighted five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per post-contact century. This post adds you to the mix—so add your nominees in comments, please!]This weekend’s genuinely patriotic American is you.The problem with what I called (in Monday’s post) the “easy” version of American patriotism, the version that asks us to pledge allegiance, stand for the anthem, say “God Bless America” at the drop of a hat, and so on, is not that everybody can do it. The problem, as I see it, is that everybody can do it without much effort at all (other than the rote performance of those kinds of rituals), and certainly without thinking or critical engagement with complex questions and narratives, with defining debates over our ideals and our realities. The problem, in short, is that it’s easy—and, to quote from one of my favorite moments in American literature (a line from the culminating section of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony [1977]), “The only thing is: it has never been easy.”So this is where you come in—you fellow AmericanStudiers, whoever and wherever you are. If I could highlight one ongoing goal for my work on this site, I’d say the same thing that I’d say for my published writing and works in progress, for my contributions to Talking Points Memo and other sites, for my year-plus of book talks, for my work with students, for my work in the Adult Learning classes I’ve had the chance to teach, for everything I do these days as a professional and public scholar: to help people engage more fully, with more complexity, with our American histories and stories, our national identity and community. While of course I have my own ideas and arguments about those topics, at the end of the day I promise that I’m not trying to get everybody to buy into them—I can’t imagine a better America, in fact, than one in which we can all debate these questions, from positions of knowledge and engagement, of passion and empathy, of civic responsibility and personal stakes.My guess, without knowing many of you personally yet (and again and as always—introduce yourselves, please!), is that we’re all on the same page here. So the next step is to extend these efforts, to share these goals and ideals with more and more of our fellow Americans (and AmericanStudiers everywhere). Am I asking you to send your friends and loved ones to this blog?? Maybe a bit. But mostly I’m just asking you to have these conversations, to do this work, in your ways and communities with your own voice and perspective, to share in the work that is and will continue to be so crucial to our American future. I know it won’t be easy—it never has been—but I can’t imagine anything more important, nor more patriotic.Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. Any thoughts? Any other patriotic Americans you’d nominate?

April 24, 2015: How Would a Patriot Act?: César Chávez

[To follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I’m going to steal my title from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlight five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per post-contact century. Please nominate your own choices to contribute to a collectively patriotic weekend post!]Today’s genuinely patriotic American is César Chávez.I don’t have any illusions about how many Americans would disagree with me that a labor activist and leader, and one who did most of his work on behalf of migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, and other impoverished American communities, could be a unifying and inspiring figure. Our increasingly divided and partisan versions of American history (and everything else) have, I would argue, meant one of a couple things for how we remember inspiring recent patriots: either we create warm and fuzzy images of them that elide much of both their complexity and their greatness, as we have with Martin Luther King, Jr.; or many of us come to see them as a negative and destructive force, as I believe is the case with Chávez. But one of the central jobs of public American Studies scholarship, as I see it, is precisely to find the way to do a couple difficult and even potentially contradictory things at the same time: to help us collectively connect more fully and with more complexity to our national histories and stories, perhaps especially the dark and divisive ones; and alongside and (at least ideally) through them to imagine and argue for unifying American communities and identities to which we can all connect as we move forward. And I think our most impressive and inspiring Americans offer a great opportunity to do both of those things at the same time: with King, for example, if we can remember both his impassioned stands against poverty, war, and other injustices and yet at the same time recognize his transcendent arguments for a universal, color-blind, whole national future and community, we have a model for both sides of this two-part process.I’d say exactly the same for Chávez. It’s certainly fair to say that he wasn’t scared of a fight, of taking a stand, of being divisive or unpopular in service of his goals, even of appearing to be anti-American (at least if “American” means the government and its various extensions) as a result; there’s a reason why he, like King, was the target of FBI investigations for decades. But I would argue that such activism, far from seeking to undermine American identity or ideals, embraced and extended them; that, just like Quock Walker, Chávez worked to embody the Declaration of Independence’s arguments for equality, to live them in his own efforts and to help millions of other Americans connect to them as well. And as the ongoing work of his Foundation makes clear, those efforts, while focused on particular American communities, can and should be extended to every American, as an ideal embodiment of Bruce Springsteen’s belief that, “In the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins.” Pretty patriotic concept, I’d say.Your nominees this weekend,Ben
PS. What do you think? Nominees you’d add for that weekend post?

April 23, 2015: How Would a Patriot Act?: Yung Wing

[To follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I’m going to steal my title from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlight five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per post-contact century. Please nominate your own choices to contribute to a collectively patriotic weekend post!]Today’s genuinely patriotic American is Yung Wing.I’ve written a lot, starting with that linked post (still one of my favorite blog posts to date) and continuing into my third book and this piece, about Yung Wing’s amazing story and the many significant and powerful American stories to which it and he connect. Yung’s work founding the Chinese Educational Missionexemplifies his contributions to American identity on many levels: from the idea for the school, to bring more than one hundred young Chinese men to America and help create a trans-national and cross-cultural community through such connections; to the requirement that the students be allowed to attend West Point as part of their experiences; to the Celestials, the baseball team that the students formed and through which some of their most inspiring and heartbreaking (and profoundly American) moments occurred.But Yung’s individual story and life feature many equally amazing American moments, and I want to reiterate and highlight two here. The first is his attempt to volunteer for the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War. Yung had been in America for less than two decades at that time, had graduated from Yale only a decade before (in 1854), and was still ostensibly a diplomatic representative of the Chinese government; yet at this moment of extreme national crisis, when many of his fellow Americans would choose to buy their way out of enlistment, Yung volunteered to serve. He was turned down, which just goes to show how frequently our official national narratives (of patriotism and much else) have failed to recognize the best of what our nation is and can be. But official bigotry shouldn’t and can’t elide his individual patriotism and courage. (Which could also help us better remember the Chinese Americans who did serve in the Civil War.)The second moment I want to highlight came even more directly in response to such official bigotry. As I traced at length in that blog post, the discrimination leading up to and culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act destroyed Yung’s American life on two significant levels: it forced the closure of the Mission and the departure of its students; and it led to the revoking of Yung’s citizenship and his own forced exile from America, during which (among other tragedies) his wife Mary passed away and his sons were fostered to another family. But when his younger son Bartlett was graduating from Yale in 1902, the next stage in the family’s multi-generational American story, Yung returned to attend; he came as a diplomatic guest, but from what I can tell he then stayed as an illegal immigrant, spending much of the final decade of his life in Connecticut (with, I devoutly hope, his sons). Am I arguing that an act of illegal immigration—during the first years when that concept had any meaning—was an inspiringly patriotic American act? You’re damn right I am.Next nominee tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think?

April 22, 2015: How Would a Patriot Act?: Quock Walker

[To follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I’m going to steal my title from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlight five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per post-contact century. Please nominate your own choices to contribute to a collectively patriotic weekend post!]Today’s genuinely patriotic American is Quock Walker.I wrote a lot about the Revolutionary period’s African American slave petitions for freedom, of which Quock Walker’s is one of the most famous, in the blog post linked at his name above, and won’t repeat all those specifics, or my sense of why those petitions embody the best of what the Revolution and its ideas and ideals meant and have continued to mean in American culture and identity, here.But I will take things one step further, and ask this: what if we thought of Walker, and his fellow petitioners, as among the Founding Fathers (and Mothers)? After all, the Declaration and Constitution were (as we’ve long acknowledged) based on existing ideas and writings, given new American form. And that’s exactly what Walker and his peers and supporters did with their petitions, taking the Declaration’s and Revolution’s language and ideas and bringing them to powerful, eloquent, vitally American life. Walker’s case is credited with helping end slavery in Massachusetts (a complicated question as they always are, but it contributed for sure). Using the Declaration to end part of the national tragedy with which it was intertwined? That’d be plenty patriotic enough on its own terms. But if we go bigger, if we see Walker and his peers as true Founders, among the most genuinely and impressively Revolutionary Americans, then our whole legacy of patriotism has a different, and even more inspiring, point of origin. Works for me.Next nominee tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think?

April 21, 2015: How Would a Patriot Act?: Squanto

[To follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I’m going to steal my title from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlight five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per post-contact century. Please nominate your own choices to contribute to a collectively patriotic weekend post!]Today’s genuinely patriotic American is Tisquantum, better known by the Anglicized name “Squanto.”It’s fair to say that the whole tone of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation—and also, quite literally, of the Pilgrims’ first experiences in America, as Bradford describes them at least—changes with the arrival of Squanto (paragraph 136 in that edition). From that first mention it’s clear that this is a man with a complex identity and perspective: he is described as “a native of this place” but also one who has “been in England,” and with these two identities and the multiple languages that come with them he connects the Pilgrims to the local Wampanoag chief Massasoit, with whom they make their first peace treaty. And Bradford finds Squanto’s individual experiences, as a kidnapped slave turned explorer and translator, compelling enough to spend most of the rest of this chapter quoting another Englishman’s narrative of them.Partly Bradford’s extended focus is due to his culturally myopic sense of Squanto as literally a gift from God, “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.” Yet if we set aside the paternalism and, again, myopia necessary to define another person as an instrument for one’s own good, Bradford’s descriptions, coupled with the history provided in the extended narrative, can help us realize a striking and crucial fact: Squanto turned a horrific and traumatic set of experiences, ones based directly on cultural conflict and oppression, into a perspective and life that worked toward and indeed modeled cultural conversation and connection. He did so, it seems clear, for the good both of the Pilgrims and of the Wampanoags, and more exactly for the good of the new, cross-cultural community that came into existence the second those two peoples met. What’s more patriotic than that?As will be the case for all of this week’s focal figures, there’s plenty more, and more complexity and even tragedy, in Squanto’s story and what it symbolizes than I can get into here. The arc of the 17th century in Massachusetts was not, after all, toward justice. Yet if I have one overarching argument here, it’s the same one that’s at the heart of my fourth book: we can’t seek our ideal America, nor our ideal Americans, by eliding the darkest histories; instead we have to look to precisely those histories and find the genuine and impressive patriots who lived and engaged with and responded to them. Tisquantum is a great place to start.Next patriot tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Any nominations?

April 20, 2015: Patriot’s Day Special Post

[In honor of Patriot’s Day—a holiday up here in New England, at least—here’s my annual post on the easier and harder forms of patriotism. A series on complex, genuine American patriots will follow!]
On the only time and way we can be patriotic.
One of my favorite literary exchanges of all time, and the one with which I begin the Introduction to my recently completed fourth book, occurs in the opening chapter of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones(1996; the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series that has been adapted into the popular HBO show). Seven year-old Brandon “Bran” Stark is riding home with his father and brothers from his first experience witnessing one of his father’s most difficult duties as a lord, the execution of a criminal; his father insists that if he is to sentence men to die, he should be the one to execute them, and likewise insists that his sons learn of and witness this once they are old enough. Two of Bran’s brothers have been debating whether the man died bravely or as a coward, and when Bran asks his father which was true, his father turns the question around to him. “Can a man be brave when he is afraid?” Bran asks. “That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father replies.
On the surface the line might seem obvious, an appeal to some of our very trite narratives about courage in the face of danger and the like (narratives that operate in explicit contrast to the ideas of cowardice with which I engaged in Friday’s post). But to my mind the moment, like all of Martin’s amazingly dense and complex series, works instead to undermine our easy narratives and force us to confront more difficult and genuine truths. That is, I believe we tend to define bravery, courage, heroism as the absence of fear, as those individuals who in the face of danger do not feel the same limiting emotions that others do and so can rise to the occasion more fully. But Martin’s truth is quite the opposite—that bravery is instead something that is found through and then beyond fear, that it is only by admitting the darker and more potentially limiting realities that we can then strive for the brightest and most ideal possibilities. I find that insight so potent not only because of its potential to revise oversimplifying narratives and force us to confront a complex duality instead, but also because it posits a version of heroism that any individual can achieve—if everyone feels fear in the face of danger, then everyone has the potential to be brave as well.
HBO recently premiered the fifth season of their award-winning series A Game of Thrones; the first season covered all of that first book of Martin’s, the second moved on to book two, and so on for subsequent seasons. I’ve watched season one and have mixed feelings, but no matter what the series has brought Martin’s works and themes to a far wider audience. But if that’s one reason why I’m thinking about this exchange today, the other is the aforementioned Massachusetts-specific holiday: Patriot’s Day. As with our narratives of courage and heroism, I believe that far too many of our ideals of patriotism focus on what I would call the easy kind: the patriotism that salutes a flag, that sings an anthem, that pledges allegiance, that says things like “God bless America” and “greatest country in the world” by rote. Whatever the communal value of such patriotism, it asks virtually nothing of individuals, and does even less to push a nation to be the best version of itself (if anything, it argues that the nation is already that best version). So in parallel to Martin’s line, I would argue for the harder and more genuine kind of patriotism, the kind that faces the darkest realities and strives for the brightest hope through that recognition, the kind that, when asked “Can an American be a patriot if he/she is critical of his/her country?,” replies, “That is the only time an American can be a patriot.”
Happy Patriot’s Day! The patriotic series continues tomorrow,Ben

PS. What do you think?

April 18-19, 2015: Crowd-sourced Reading List

[This week I’ve offered another entry in my biannual series on interesting and impressive new releases in AmericanStudies. This reading list is drawn from the responses and recommendations of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]First, an addendum to the series: here’s my review of Allyson Hobbs’ wonderful A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America in the current issue of the American Book Review !In response to my call for other books, Mark Rice highlights “Jill Lepore’s book on Wonder Woman.”Candice Roberts Tweets, “I’m really enjoying Jo Paoletti’s Sex and Unisex .”Nancy Caronia writes, “Although not brand new, my students are LOVING Adichie’s Americanah. They find it smart, funny, and incisive with regards to the critique of American culture. Memoir—Daisy Hernandez’s A Cup of Water Under My Bedfor its third wave feminist intersectionality. The memoir is a poignant look at gender fluidity, immigraition, bilingual education (or not).”DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld agrees with Nancy about Hernandez, noting, “I just read with Daisy last weekend! It was such a wonder to meet her and yes, A Cup is great. I am reading Mr. and Mrs. Doctor by Julie Iromuanya. So far, so good.” Later DeMisty does double duty, Tweeting out another rec, Seedlip and Sweet Apple by Arra Ross.Emily Lauer Tweets that she’s “talking about the graphic novel Americus at a conference this week. It’s YA, about a small town book banning.”Patricia Ringle Vandever notes that she “just finished Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and loved it!”Erin Fay writes, “My favorites this year have been I Am Malala , The Grapes of Wrath , and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking .”Grace Connor shares, “I’m working on the truly massive (14 and counting, all 900ish pages…) Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. I almost hoped starting out that it wouldn’t be worth committing to the full series, but it has some of the most innovative fantasy characters ever!”My student Andrew DaSilva highlights, “Although not new by any means, might I suggest The Jesuit Relations , or The New American Economy if one might have an interest in the US and its economic policy shapers. And for fun novels that take place in America Trauma by Patrick McGrath or the slightly older novel The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I almost forgot to include Coolidge by Amity Shales and True Compass by Ted Kennedy along with Pat & Dick by Will Swift if you're into memoirs and biographies. I've read or plan to read all the suggested above if ya have any questions or comments. All cover a variety of topics and genres.”Sam Southworth writes, “Seems that Mr. Kissinger's last tome and that French income inequality economist guy are the ones that pop up most often in written sources. I personally have been drawn into David Rothkopf's 2014 volume entitled National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear , particularly Chapter 7 ("Eyeball to Eyeball Again") concerning the nefarious machinations of Mr. Putin. These sorts of books can be stunningly dull with a rare pearl among the analytical chowder, but this guy has some insight due to his research on the NSC, and a fairly good writing style, which blessed scholarly trait seems to grow more rare with each passing season. Almost one hundred pages of notes invites wing-nuttery source-checking, and I am inclined to agree with him when he says we cannot entirely turn our backs from dismal and strife-torn areas, whatever our weariness and incomprehension of the essential underlying forces at work in the Middle East and elsewhere, but, dear God, who among us would wish for more foreign adventure and warfare as the over-riding motif of the Twenty-First Century? The very best of these sorts of strategic thinkers can help us shift our thoughts beyond mere tawdry political considerations, wherever we find ourselves on the spectrum, and introduce welcome reference points in the past that can perhaps, by dint of herculean heavy lifting and good leadership, point the way to some future worth the having, and not the zombie apocalypse that our culture seems fascinated with.”Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. What books would you add to this list? 

April 17, 2015: New AmericanStudies Books: Cowardice: A Brief History

[Another entry in my biannual series on interesting and impressive new releases in AmericanStudies. Add your favorite works, new or old, in comments for a crowd-sourced weekend reading list!]On a book that reminds us of the value of looking at things from the other side.In John Guare’s complex and powerful play Six Degrees of SKeparation (1990), a great deal is made of a certain painting by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, which is, as the oft-quoted refrain puts it, “painted on both sides.”Ultimately this detail, highlighted by con artist Paul to his confident Ouisa Kittredge the last time they see each other, seems to function as a way to remind Ouisa that the life she’s currently leading is not her only option, that there are other possibilities and other choices that might lead to them (one of which she begins to take as the play concludes). But I would argue that there’s another and equally salient way to read this repeated line: to see it as a more specific reminder that many things have two sides, and that looking at any particular thing from the other, perhaps less frequently observed side (the reverse, that is) might yield a very different perspective than what we are used to seeing from the front.Exemplifying that shift in perspective is the first book by my friend and former Boston University Writing Program colleague Chris Walsh, Cowardice: A Brief History (Princeton, 2014). When I worked with Walsh, he was (as I understood it, at least) working on a book about war, which is to be the sure the side of this particular duality at which we most often look. Not only because it is through wars that we tend for example to view and define our history (there’s a reason why two-part American literature and history surveys so frequently divide at 1865), although that certainly is a part of my point. But also and even more saliently because when we remember wars, when we think and write about them, when we tell stories of them, it is almost always through moments and histories from or directly related to the war itself—those who fight them, those affected by them, those on a homefront but connected to the war nonetheless, their causes, their legacies, and so on. Sometimes those war stories do feature individual characters who are afraid to fight—Jeremy Davies’ cowardlytranslator in Saving Private Ryan (1998), for example—but whole stories or narratives focused on such so-called cowards? Not so much.I can’t say for sure if Walsh’s Cowardice is the first scholarly analysis dedicated entirely to the subject, but it’s the first I’ve seen, and an excellent illustration of the value of looking at a topic from the other side in any case. Partly that’s because of the new ideas about the familiar topic, war, produced by that shift in perspective: Walsh’s focus helps us think both about the often unspoken narratives that underpin war efforts and the corresponding fears against which those narratives are created. But this new perspective is even more striking precisely because it examines one of those alternative narratives, the concept of cowardice, and considers the social, historical, literary and cultural, and psychological causes and effects of this narrative on its own terms (rather than, like Davies’s character, as an afterthought in war narratives). Such an alternative focus might, for example, help us start to unpack one of the most unexpected moments in any American text, the concluding lines of Tim O’Brien’s short story “On the Rainy River” (from The Things They Carried ), in which the narrator has traveled to the Canadian border to consider dodging the draft: “I was a coward. I went to the war.”Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: what AmericanStudies books would you recommend?