Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 399

November 2, 2012: AmericanSpooking, Part 4

[This week’s series is, well, obvious. Your thoughts on American scary stories—real or fictional, artistic or historical, fun or horrifying, and anything else you can think of—will help me assemble a weekend post that’s all treats and no tricks. Boo!]
On what we can make of the two opposed endings to the novel and film versions of the same scary story.I don’t like losing readers, even for the best of reasons; but if you either haven’t read Steven King’s The Shining (1977) or haven’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s film version (1980) of the novel, and are interested in checking them out sometime, you should probably skip this post, as I’m gonna spoil the heck out of the endings to both. Because while there are definitely stylistic and even thematic differences between the two versions throughout, it’s really the endings where they become not only distinct but starkly contrasting and opposed. I won’t spoil every single detail, but suffice it to say that King’s novel ends hopefully, with notes of redemption for its protagonist Jack Torrance and especially for his relationship to his son and family; whereas Kubrick’s film ends with Torrance murderously pursuing that same son with an axe and, thwarted, freezing to death, more evil in his final moments than he has been at any earlier moment in the film. There are various ways we could read this striking distinction, including connecting it to the profoundly different worldviews of the two artists (at least as represented in their collected works): King, despite his penchant for horror, is to my mind a big ol’ softie who almost always finds his way to a happy ending; Kubrick has a far more bleak and cynical perspective and tended to end his films on at best ambiguous and often explicitly disturbing notes. Those different worldviews could also be connected to two longstanding American traditions and genres, what we might call the sentimental vs. the pessimistic romance (in that Hawthornean sense I discussed yesterday): in the former, such as in Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851), the darkest supernatural qualities give way by the story’s end to more rational and far happier worlds and events; in the latter, such as in his contemporary Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (also 1851), the darkness is only amplified and deepened by concluding events, leaving us adrift (literally and figuratively) in an eternally scary world.King’s and Kubrick’s texts, and more exactly their respective conclusions, certainly fit into those traditions. But given that both create similarly horrifying worlds and events right up until those endings, I would also connect their distinct final images to the dueling yet interconnected ideas at the heart of my current book project: dark histories and hope. Where the two versions differ most overtly, that is, is in whether they offer their audiences any hope: in King’s novel, Torrance finds a way through his darkest histories and to final moments of hope for his family’s future (achieved at great personal sacrifice); in Kubrick’s film, hope has abandoned Torrance as fully as has sanity, and both his family and the audience can only hope that they can survive and escape his entirely dark world. Obviously you know which I prefer; but I would also argue that, whatever the appeal of horror for its own sake, without the possibility of hope and redemption it’d be a pretty bleak and terrible genre.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s topics? Thoughts on other American scary stories, of any type? Add ‘em for the weekend post!11/2 Memory Day nominee: Conrad Weiser, the farmer, soldier, tanner, judge, and monk (they did a lot back in the 18th century) who also served as Pennsylvania’s chief diplomatic emissary to Native Americans for many decades of complex but important cross-cultural encounters.

November 1, 2012: AmericanSpooking, Part 3

[This week’s series is, well, obvious. Your thoughts on American scary stories—real or fictional, artistic or historical, fun or horrifying, and anything else you can think of—will help me assemble a weekend post that’s all treats and no tricks. Boo!]
On whether America can have home-grown horror—and where we might find it.Nathaniel Hawthorne once famously complained (in the Preface to The Marble Faun) about “the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong … Romances need ruin to make them grow.” Given what he and his era meant by “the Romance,” it’s possible to paraphrase his point this way: America was, at least in the early 19th century but perhaps remains, too young, too devoid of a distant past and the ancient castles and ruins that come with it, to produce a Gothic literary tradition in the same way as Europe. Even Edgar Allan Poe, the Hawthorne contemporary and American Gothic writer who would seem so clearly to disprove this idea, set his most Gothic stories either abroad or (as in “The Fall of the House of Usher”) in an undefined place that could be anywhere (and feels more European than American to be sure). So it might indeed be fair to ask whether there can be a homegrown American Gothic.It was of course in implied response to such a question that Grant Wood painted American Gothic (1930), one of the most famous and most ambiguous works of American art. Using his sister and the family dentist as his models for the iconic farmer and his wife, Wood created what seemed to be a simple and realistic portrait of two average (and somewhat unhappy and stiff, but not particularly mysterious) people. But then he gave it that title, and the whole thing suddenly became a great deal more complex and challenging. Is the title sarcastic, contrasting the simplicity and even boring-ness with those much more mysterious and compelling qualities Hawthorne had listed? Is it genuine, attempting to draw attention to the horrors that can lurk in quiet farmyards or families? Or is it an ironic combination of the two, recognizing that America does not have the overtly gothic qualities but might in its apparent simplicity and ordinariness possess a more subtle and very different but ultimately no less horrifying quality?Your mileage may vary, of course, and Wood’s painting will always remain open to those and many other possible interpretations. But I would argue for the ironic interpretation, not least because it fits with the painting’s own two contrasted yet interconnected levels (what’s on the canvas and what’s in the title). And I would connect it to our contemporary popular culture by noting the echoes of Wood’s title in the recent hit TV show American Horror Story. At least in its first season (apparently the show will change settings and characters yearly), Story could be seen as an extended and far more explicit (this is 2012, and they had a full season of episodes to fill) representation of the idea that average American families and homes contain within them great and gothic horrors, that the scariest thing of all might not be a ruined castle full of vengeful ghosts and supernatural terrors, but a sunlit suburban home full of, well, those same things. I’d like to think that Hawthorne would be entirely on that board with that idea.Next spoooooky post tomorrow,BenPS. American scary stories to highlight for the weekend post? Don’t be scared to share!11/1 Memory Day nominee: Parker David Robbins, the North Carolinian and US Colored Troops Civil War veteran who went on to an inspiring career as a politican, inventor, businessman, and exemplary late 20th century Renaissance Man.

October 31, 2012: October 2012 Recap

[The spooooky posts resume tomorrow, but first, this recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
October 1: Up in the Air, Part One: First in a series inspired by articles in the US Airways magazine, this one on a Charlotte, North Carolina, Museum.October 2: Up in the Air, Part Two: Next in the series, on the varied and inspiring efforts of country star Zac Brown.October 3: Up in the Air, Part Three: The series continues with a post on Asheville, North Carolina’s forgotten son, Thomas Wolfe.October 4: Up in the Air, Part Four: On the complex, challenging, and very American history of Puerto Rico’s Vieques island.October 5: Up in the Air, Part Five: The series concludes with a post on the appeals and downsides of American nostalgia.October 6-7: Brother Ali: A tribute post to a very unique and talented young American musician.October 8: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part One: First in a series of nominations for a Cross-Cultural Day alternative to Columbus Day, this one on images of the arrival and exploration era.October 9: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Two: The series continues with a post on the cross-cultural and inspiring life of Ely Parker.October 10: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Three: Next in the series, on two distinct but equally cross-cultural late 19th century literary works.October 11: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Four: On the voice, writings, and identity of Zitkala-Sa.October 12: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Five: Last in the series, on some important and inspiring cross-cultural work being done right now.October 13-14: Crowd-sourcing Columbus Day Alternatives: A crowd-sourced post, drawn from responses to the week’s series and topics.October 15: Guest Post on Margaret Weis Brown: A series on children’s literature begins with Ilene Railton’s post on Brown and Goodnight Moon.October 16: Ezra Jack Keats: The series continues with a tribute to a particularly progressive children’s book and author.October 17: Mike Mulligan and His America: Next in the series, on the complex historical and cultural themes of Virginia Lee Burton’s classic.October 18: Maurice Sendak: A tribute to the William Faulkner of children’s lit.October 19: Frustrating George: The series concludes with a post on the most appalling and more inspiring sides to H.A. Rey’s mega-hit.October 20-21: Crowd-sourcing Children’s Books: Another crowd-sourced post, following up the week’s series with lots of other voices and ideas.October 22: Adverse Reactions, Part One: A series on inspiring responses to horrible situations begins with a post on the voices and texts of Angel Island.October 23: Adverse Reactions, Part Two: On Trayvon Martin’s parents, Jim and Sue Brady, and turning tragedy to activism.October 24: Adverse Reactions, Part Three: On the multiple layers of inspiration in Helen Keller’s life, work, and perspsective.October 25: Adverse Reactions, Part Four: On two recent, very different, but equally impressive memoirs about loss and its aftermaths.October 26: Adverse Reactions, Part Five: The series concludes with just a few of the reasons why Abraham Lincoln exemplifies my week’s theme.October 27-28: Crowd-sourcing American Adversity: Other AmericanStudiers reflect on the week’s questions and topics.October 29: AmericanSpooking, Part One: The Halloween-inspired series begins with a post on Poe, Danielewski, and horror.October 30: AmericanSpooking, Part Two: Next in the series, on five exemplary American scary stories.Back to the scares tomorrow,BenPS. Topics, themes, texts, or thoughts you’d like to see in this space in the coming months? Guest posts you’d like to write? Let me know!10/31 Memory Day nominee: Juliette Gordon Low, the Southern belle turned world traveler and children’s advocate whose 1912 founding of the Girl Scouts (known first as the American Girl Guides) has impacted millions of young Americans (and American sweet teeth).

October 30, 2012: AmericanSpooking, Part 2

[This week’s series is, well, obvious. Your thoughts on American scary stories—real or fictional, artistic or historical, fun or horrifying, and anything else you can think of—will help me assemble a weekend post that’s all treats and no tricks. Boo!]

My nominees for five of the scariest works of or moments in American literature (in chronological order):1)      Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland, or the Transformation (1798): Brown’s novel suffers from some seriously over-wrought prose, and it can be hard to take its narrator seriously as a result; the pseudo-scientific resolution of its central mystery also leaves a good bit to be desired. But since that central mystery involves a husband and father who turns into a murderous psychopath bent on destroying his own idyllic home and family, well, none of those flaws can entirely take away the spookiness.
2)      Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839): Just about any Poe story would fit in this space. But given how fully this story’s scares depend precisely on the idea of what reading and art can do to the human imagination and psyche of their susceptible audiences, it seems like a good choice.
3)      Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948): I don’t think there’s anything scarier, in the world or in the imagination, than what people are capable of doing to each other. And Jackson’s story is probably the most concise and perfect exemplification of that idea in American literary history. I’ve read arguments that connect it to the Holocaust, which makes sense timing-wise; but I’d say the story is purposefully, and terrifyingly, more universal than that.
4)      Ray Bradbury, “The Veldt”(1950; don’t know why the font is so small in that online version, but you can always copy and paste and then enlarge—it’s worth it!): The less I give away about Bradbury’s story, the better. Suffice it to say it’s a pretty good argument for not having kids, or at least for only letting them play with very basic and non-technological toys. Ah well, that ship has sailed for me.
5)      Mark Danielewksi, House of Leaves (2000; that’s the companion website): As I wrote in yesterday’s post, Danielewksi’s novel is thoroughly post-modern and yet entirely terrifying at the same time. Don’t believe it’s possible? Read the book—but try to keep some lights on, or maybe just read outside, while you do.October recap tomorrow, back to the spoooooky posts Thursday,BenPS. American scary stories to highlight for the weekend post? Don’t be scared to share!10/30 Memory Day nominee: Elizabeth Madox Roberts, the far-too-forgotten early 20th century novelistand poetwho portrayed her beloved Kentucky with both sensitive realism and modernist innovation.

October 29, 2012: AmericanSpooking, Part 1

[This week’s series is, well, obvious. Your thoughts on American scary stories—real or fictional, artistic or historical, fun or horrifying, and anything else you can think of—will help me assemble a weekend post that’s all treats and no tricks. Boo!]
On the limitations and the possibilities of scary stories.I don’t have any problem thinking of genre fiction and scholarly conversations about literature in the same ballpark, or even on the same base—I’m the guy who wrote one of my early entries here about Ross MacDonald’s hardboiled detective novels, and am also the guy who created an Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy class and has had an unabashedly good time teaching it twice now. When you get right down to it, it can be pretty difficult to parse out what qualifies as genre fiction and what doesn’t in any case—Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936) owes a lot to detective fiction , Twain’s Connecticut Yankee (1889) is in many ways a Jules Verne-esque time travel sci fi novel, and, as critic David Reynolds has convincingly argued, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter (1850) has a great deal in common with contemporary potboiler works of religion, romance, and scandal. So while I’m not averse to making judgment calls about whether a particular text is worth extended attention (in a class, in scholarly work, etc), I try not to base those calls on whether it’s been put in a particular generic box or not.And yet, I’ll admit that I have a bit of an analytical prejudice against works whose primary purpose—or one of them at least—is to scare their audiences. I suppose it has always seemed to me that a desire to frighten, while very much a valid and complex formal and stylistic goal—and one brought to the height of perfection I’d say by Edgar Allan Poe, whose every choice and detail in a story like “The Fall of the House of Usher”(1839) contributes to its scariness, making it a perfect example of his theory of the unity of effect—, is nonetheless a desire that requires an audience to turn off their analytical skills, to give in entirely to primal responses that, while not insignificant, are to my mind a bit more passive than ideal. (I’d compare this for example to humor, which certainly does tap into primal responses as well but which nonetheless can still ask an audience to think as well as laugh.) This isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to weird tale kind of scares, ones that connect an audience to deeply unfamiliar worlds and force them to imagine what they might entail and affect; but the more mainstream horror, tales of vampires and zombies and ghosts and the like, does often ask an audience mainly to react in terror to the artist’s and text’s manipulations.But like any reasonable person who recognizes his or her prejudices, I’d like to challenge and eventually undermine this perspective of mine, and a text that has very much helped me to begin doing so in this case is Mark Danielewski’spostmodern horror novel House of Leaves (2000). Postmodern is a must-use adjective in any description of Danielewski’s novel, which features, among other things, at least three distinct narrations and narrators (one of whom does much of his narrating in footnotes, and another who does the majority of his narrating in footnotes on those footnotes); pages with only a single word, located in a random location; elaborate use of colored type to signal and signify different (if vague and shifting) emphases; and a large number of invented scholarly works, fully and accurately cited both parenthetically and in the aforementioned footnotes (alongside some actual works). Yet—and I know that scariness is a very subjective thing, which is perhaps another reason why I have a hard time analyzing it, but nonetheless—the novel is also deeply, powerfully, successfully scary. And moving, for that matter—certainly to my mind the best horror (and Poe would qualify here for sure) reveals and sympathizes with humanity even as it threatens and destroys many of its human characters, and Danielewski’s novel does each of those things, to each character at each level of story and narration, very fully and impressively. Yet I believe that the book’s principal purpose, first and last, is to scare its readers, and for me, at least, it has done so, not only the first time I read it but the second and third as well (another mark of the best horror I’d say).So what?, you might ask. Well, for starters, you should check out House of Leaves, perhaps beginning with this fun and, yes, scary companion website. But for me, I suppose the ultimate lesson here is that the more I’m open to the potential power and impressiveness of any work of literature (and art in any medium), both emotionally and analytically, the more I can find the greatest works, of our moment and every other one. Nothing scary about that! Next spoooooky post tomorrow,BenPS. American scary stories to highlight for the weekend post? Don’t be scared to share!10/29 Memory Day nominee: Henry George, the writer, economist, and political activist whose Progress and Poverty, despite some outdated theories, remains one of the most prescient and salientworks on inequality published in America.

October 27-28, 2012: Crowd-Sourcing American Adversity

[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I have highlighted a handful of such moments; this crowd-sourced post is drawn from responses to them and other ideas from fellow AmericanStudiers.]
Jeff Renye highlights the very complex case of Lance Armstrong, which represents at one and the same time (to my mind) a genuine triumph over adversity and a fraudulent version of same. Fellow AmericanStudier Matt Goguen is considering writing an analytical piece for the site on Armstrong, so stay tuned for that. But I’ll ask you all as well—what do you think about Armstrong and these questions?Since that was it for the crowd-sourced responses this week, I wanted to frame one more question to which I’d love to hear your responses, readers and fellow AmericanStudiers: which books, figures, stories, histories, do you turn to when you’re experiencing your own adversity? Who or what inspires you? Why?Next series next week,BenPS. So what do you think?10/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two unique, significant, and hugely talented 20thcentury American authors, Sylvia Plath and Maxine Hong Kingston.10/28 Memory Day nominee: Jonas Salk!

October 26, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Five

[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]

On the American leader who just plain exemplifies inspiring responses to adversity.

There are a lot of reasons why Abraham Lincoln consistently tops polls asking about the “best” or “greatest” American presidents, and I’m sure Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg will remind us of many in a couple months. But I would argue that virtually all of those reasons have one central element: they demonstrate the various and always impressive ways in which Lincoln responded to the most challenging and adverse moment in American history. Here are just a few examples:1)      His words: Again and again, Lincoln found nearly perfect words with which to respond to our darkest moments. The Gettysburg Address is exhibit A, but I would also highlight both the First and Second Inaugurals as among the top five such speeches as well.
2)      His actions: I know that there are pragmatic, and even cynical, ways to view the Emancipation Proclamation; I’m sure that the upcoming film, like the book on which it’s based, will explore those multiple sides to some degree. But the truth is that neither abolitionism nor emancipation were widely popular in the North, and that if nothing else (and there is much else), Lincoln’s choice to issue represented significant social and political risk.
3)      His breadth: The harshest and most accurate critiques that can be leveled at Lincoln would have to do with the things he was willing to sacrifice in pursuing the war effort, with habeas corpus chief among them. Yet at the same time that he was pursuing that effort with explicit and understandable focus, he was also always thinking about the nation’s future and identity beyond. To highlight one example, Lincoln began pursuing the purchase of Alaska during the war, recognizing that America must continue to grow even as its unity remained in doubt.For those reasons, and many more, Lincoln will always be one of our most inspiring national figures, and a true exemplar of how we can and must try to turn our darkest moments—even those we bring upon ourselves—into brighter futures.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance to add to that post: Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight? Thoughts on any  of the week’s topics?10/26 Memory Day nominee: Mahalia Jackson, for the groundbreaking and powerful recordings that helped make her “The Queen of Gospel,” but also for her courageouscivil rights activism and advocacy.[image error]

October 25, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Four

[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]

On two memoirs that deal very differently, but equally impressively, with tragic losses.Memoir, or as it’s often called within scholarly conversations “life writing (although the concept includes biographical as well as autobiographical works),” is a pretty complex and fraught literary genre. Even leaving aside the questions of veracity and authenticity that have been raised by numerous recent memoirs (most particularly James Frye’s A Million Little Pieces [2003] and the Oprah-related scandal it produced), the basic facts of any memoir are plenty complex enough: a person looking back at his or her life and trying to write about some of its events and themes for outside audiences, with various private and public motives, with all of the choices that go into any written work, with all that is potentially left out, and so on. Yet as long as we recognize all those factors, and thus treat memoirs as fundamentally creative works, the genre can also provide powerful and inspiring stories, narratives of individuals dealing with and working through (in many cases) difficult and adverse situations.Moreover, memoirs can highlight in their style and tone, as much as in their content and themes, the hugely varied and equally effective ways in which we can respond to such situations. To that end, I would point to two recent, justly celebrated memoirs, one by an already prominent writer and one that established its author on the literary scene, but both dealing centrally with tragic losses and the authors’ responses to them. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking(2005) details the author’s many stages and extremes in the year after the unexpected death of her husband of forty years, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, a period during which their daughter was also gravely ill. Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) traces the author’s many years of stewardship over his younger brother, an effort that Eggers undertook after their parents’ unexpected deaths within 32 days of one another (Eggers was 21 and his brother  8 at the time). Both number among the most compelling American memoirs I’ve read, and certainly among the most vital contributions to the genre in the early 21stcentury. Yet despite those many parallels, the two books could not be more different in their predominant styles and tones. Those differences are due in no small measure to their authors’ distinct voices: Didion has throughout her career written complex psychological, fragmented, and often stream of consciousness novelsand non-fiction, and adopts similar perspectives and themes for her memoir; whereas Eggers has become known as a founder of McSweeney’s , the editor of the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and other counter-cultural and satirical works, and brings that persona to both of his roles (as author and as main character) in his memoir. But I would also argue that the books’ differences reflect two distinct, if perhaps complementary, ways to write and work through loss and adversity: in Didion’s case, to allow each and every part of the experience its time and space, to engage with every emotion and response without judgment or fear (or at least not self-consciousness), and to chart that process in writing; and in Eggers’ case, to emphasize self-consciously the hyperbole itself, the extremes of adversity and of heroism in combating them, to find the humor but also certainly the pathos within those extremes, and to tell that story with charisma for his audience. Each, again, works very well on its own terms; together they offer a multi-part map to dealing with, and writing about, the worst of what people can experience.Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/25 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering 20th century Americans who took America and the worldto entirely new placesand ideas, Richard Byrd and Henry Steele Commager.

October 24, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Three

[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]

On one of the best American examples of turning adversity into triumph—and a whole lot more.Thanks in no small measure to The Miracle Worker, both the 1957 William Gibson play and the 1962 Academy Award-winning film, I’d argue that most Americans have a good sense of the amazing life and story of Helen Keller. Left deaf and blind by an illness that hit her when she was just 19 months old, during a period (the early 1880s) when such childhood disabilities were even more affecting and challenging (to say the least) than they remain in our own era, Keller could very easily have become simply a tragic story of lost potential and family struggles, one of many in a century when childhood mortality rates were strikingly high. But thanks to dedicated parents, one truly pioneering and impressive teacher, and her own perseverance, Keller instead became, in the course of her nearly nine full decades of life, one of the nation’s foremost authors, lecturers, and activists.The specifics of how Keller learned to overcome her disabilities and becoming a highly functioning member of society (indeed, one who functioned at a higher level than almost all of her peers, of all physical abilities), which of course are the famous heart of The Miracle Worker, would be inspiring in any era; again, in her own late 19th century childhood they were that much more impressive still. It’s important to reiterate that she did not accomplish those triumphs on her own; or, rather, that two equally impressive women, her mother Kate Adams Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, significantly contributed their own inspiring perspectives and perseverance to her life and triumphs. Taken together, the lives and efforts of these three women exemplify not only the most ideal response to a tragic (or at least very adverse) situation, but also the degree to which community and collaboration consistently offer the best possibilities for hope and progress in the face of such adversities.Yet I would also highlight one more individual and unique, and to my mind equally inspiring, aspect of Helen Keller’s life and identity: her socialism. While that political and social philosophy was not, in the late 19th and early 20th century moments when Keller first connected to it, nearly as controversial here in the United States as it became in the mid-20th century and remains in our own contemporary moment, neither of course was it in the American mainstream. (At least not overtly—as I have blogged elsewhere, the Pledge of Allegiance was authored in 1892 by an avowed socialist, to cite one subtle such presence.) But to my mind, what makes Keller’s socialism so impressive has nothing to do with political debates, and everything to do with what it reflects in her own trajectory: the fact that, having dealt with and overcome some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, Keller gravitated toward a philosophy that was grounded in significant measure in sympathy for, and a focus on alleviating the condition of, all those in desperate situations. It would be easy to imagine Keller embracing the “self-made” mantra that was at the core of many Gilded Age American narratives, but she went instead in the exact opposite direction: recognizing in response to her own challenges and triumphs that any and all such successes depend on community and support. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/24 Memory Day nominee: Annie Edson Taylor, the Civil War widow and retired schoolteacher who capped an impressive and inspiring subsequent life of travel and adventure by becoming, at the age of 63, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

October 23, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Two

[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]

On the moments in which great tragedy turns to powerful activism.Earlier this year, I blogged about the Trayvon Martin shooting, and more exactly about the American narratives and realities of race to which that shooting connected. Preparations for the 2013 trial of Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman, are underway in Florida, and so many of those narratives and realities have returned to the conversations and debates surrounding Zimmerman’s actions, Martin’s death, the media coverage in the aftermath, and more. Yet amid all those narratives and debates, and even amid the (what I hope are) more measured analyses such as those I offered in my initial post, it can be easy to lose sight of the case’s two simplest and most profound truths: the inarguable tragedy of Martin’s death, and of the death of any 17 year old; and what such a tragic loss means to those who knew and loved Martin, his parents most especially. Moreover, if we can focus on that tragedy and on Martin’s parents, we will do more than do justice to those horrors: we will be able to see how they are working to turn tragedy into activism, to respond to their loss not only with the inevitable grief and anger but with impassioned efforts to make the nation and world a better place. His parents have focused those efforts on the so-called Stand Your Ground Laws (also known as the Castle Doctrine), the laws that have been passed in more than twenty states over the last few years and that allow armed Americans to shoot and kill their fellow citizens in increasingly broadly defined situations of “self-defense” and thus avoid criminal charges or prosecution. Whether or not Zimmerman’s actions fell under Florida’s such law is an open question, and one on which his trial will certainly hinge; but Trayvon’s parents have not in any case limited their efforts to that question and case, choosing instead to challenge the legality and rationality of the laws throughout the nation. Whatever your position on the laws, I believe those efforts, to seek what his parents call “change for Trayvon,” embody the best kind of response to such an unthinkable loss and tragedy.In responding in that impressive way, Martin’s parents join a list of Americans who have done the same, turning tragedy into inspiring activism. Near the top of that list, for me, would be Jim and Sue Brady; Jim was the Reagan Press Secretary who was seriously wounded in and permanently disabled by the 1981 John Hinckley assassination attempt on the president, and in the years after that shooting, both Jim and Sue became vocal and committed activists for gun control and reform. Those efforts, which became known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violenceand led to the passage of the 1993 Brady Bill, are of course as controversial and open to debate as any gun control measures, or any social and political activism at all for that matter. But I would hope, again, that all Americans and people, regardless of our positions on particular issues, can be inspired by Jim and Sue Brady, and by the way in which they responded to a great and defining tragedy with lifelong activism, not so much for themselves (no gun control legislation will change what happened to Jim nor ameliorate his present situation in any way) but for all their fellow Americans. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/23 Memory Day nominee: Johnny Carson, who redefined a television genre but whose influence on 20thcentury American culture and society went far beyond just late nights.