Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 405
October 3, 2012
October 3, 2012: Up in the Air, Part Three
[Just to prove that American Studies inspirations can and do come from everywhere, this week I’m going to feature five topics that I was prompted to think about by the
US Airways Magazine
on my flight down to Philly. Please share your responses to any of these topics, or other American Studies topics you’ve recently been inspired to think about!]
On the largely, ironically forgotten author who deserves to be remembered and read.Just after the feature article on Charlotte, the magazine includes a briefer piece on various historic sites elsewhere in North Carolina. A few of them are connected to Asheville, the Western North Carolina, mountain city that has provided hotel stays and getaways for many prominent Americans (including multiple presidents at George Vanderbilt’s enormous Biltmore House) over the last century and more. Unmentioned among those references, however, is the modernist American novelist who grew up in Asheville and whose mother made her living in the city’s booming early 20th century real estate and boarding businesses: Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe’s absence from the article is unsurprising, as he has I would argue largely been forgotten in the 65 years since his tragic early death; but it’s also both ironic and unfortunate.The irony of Wolfe’s elision, both from our collective memories and from an article on North Carolina, is that he was, as much as any American author, deeply concerned with the question of how and whether an artist—or anyone—can both remain part of and escape from his home and past. The original subtitle of his novel Look Homeward, Angel (1929) was A Story of the Buried Life, and the novel begins with a fragmented quote that includes the lines “Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language” and “O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.” Throughout, Wolfe’s hugely autobiographical novel engages both backwards—into his own, his family’s, his city’s, and the national pasts—and forwards, wondering whether its protagonist can unearth those pasts, will become himself buried in the process, should instead move on into a more separate future, and so on. Five years later, Wolfe would explore those same themes again, from some of the same yet also very distinct angles, in You Can’t Go Home Again (1934). For this author to be absent from most of our national narratives of modernist writers, American literature, or even his home state is, again, powerfully ironic.But it’s more than that: it’s a shame. Even in his own lifetime, Wolfe struggled with his editors over his sprawling and difficult style, and found limited (or at least more limited than he otherwise might have) audiences and successes as a result. Yet it seems to me that Wolfe’s style is as entirely interconnected with his content and themes as were those of his fellow modernists Hemingway and Faulkner; while it’s fair to say that Wolfe’s was not as influential as either of theirs, I would also argue that the experience of reading his can be just as rewarding and meaningful on its own terms. Moreover, while some of Hemingway’s characters and stories feel more focused on European experiences and some of Faulkner’s more specific to the South, Wolfe’s works are, to my mind, profoundly representative of shared American (and perhaps human) questions, both from that early twentieth century moment and from across all our generations and communities. Time to put him back on the map, I’d say.Next air-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Wolfe? Other authors or artists we should better remember?10/3 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Thomas Wolfe, whose flawed but powerful novels have a great deal to tell us about his own life, his home state, and turn of the 20th century America; and John Ross, whose lengthy and often tragic leadership of the Cherokee Nation reflects some of America’s darkest as well as its most inspiring histories and moments.
On the largely, ironically forgotten author who deserves to be remembered and read.Just after the feature article on Charlotte, the magazine includes a briefer piece on various historic sites elsewhere in North Carolina. A few of them are connected to Asheville, the Western North Carolina, mountain city that has provided hotel stays and getaways for many prominent Americans (including multiple presidents at George Vanderbilt’s enormous Biltmore House) over the last century and more. Unmentioned among those references, however, is the modernist American novelist who grew up in Asheville and whose mother made her living in the city’s booming early 20th century real estate and boarding businesses: Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe’s absence from the article is unsurprising, as he has I would argue largely been forgotten in the 65 years since his tragic early death; but it’s also both ironic and unfortunate.The irony of Wolfe’s elision, both from our collective memories and from an article on North Carolina, is that he was, as much as any American author, deeply concerned with the question of how and whether an artist—or anyone—can both remain part of and escape from his home and past. The original subtitle of his novel Look Homeward, Angel (1929) was A Story of the Buried Life, and the novel begins with a fragmented quote that includes the lines “Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language” and “O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.” Throughout, Wolfe’s hugely autobiographical novel engages both backwards—into his own, his family’s, his city’s, and the national pasts—and forwards, wondering whether its protagonist can unearth those pasts, will become himself buried in the process, should instead move on into a more separate future, and so on. Five years later, Wolfe would explore those same themes again, from some of the same yet also very distinct angles, in You Can’t Go Home Again (1934). For this author to be absent from most of our national narratives of modernist writers, American literature, or even his home state is, again, powerfully ironic.But it’s more than that: it’s a shame. Even in his own lifetime, Wolfe struggled with his editors over his sprawling and difficult style, and found limited (or at least more limited than he otherwise might have) audiences and successes as a result. Yet it seems to me that Wolfe’s style is as entirely interconnected with his content and themes as were those of his fellow modernists Hemingway and Faulkner; while it’s fair to say that Wolfe’s was not as influential as either of theirs, I would also argue that the experience of reading his can be just as rewarding and meaningful on its own terms. Moreover, while some of Hemingway’s characters and stories feel more focused on European experiences and some of Faulkner’s more specific to the South, Wolfe’s works are, to my mind, profoundly representative of shared American (and perhaps human) questions, both from that early twentieth century moment and from across all our generations and communities. Time to put him back on the map, I’d say.Next air-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Wolfe? Other authors or artists we should better remember?10/3 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Thomas Wolfe, whose flawed but powerful novels have a great deal to tell us about his own life, his home state, and turn of the 20th century America; and John Ross, whose lengthy and often tragic leadership of the Cherokee Nation reflects some of America’s darkest as well as its most inspiring histories and moments.
October 2, 2012
October 2, 2012: Up in the Air, Part Two
[Just to prove that American Studies inspirations can and do come from everywhere, this week I’m going to feature five topics that I was prompted to think about by the
US Airways Magazine
on my flight down to Philly. Please share your responses to any of these topics, or other American Studies topics you’ve recently been inspired to think about!]
On the country music star who exemplifies two important and impressive current trends.In another article, this issue of the magazine profiles Zac Brown, the country singer/songwriter who, with his Zac Brown Band, has released a couple of big-selling and Grammy-winning albums in the last few years (with a third, Uncaged, recently released as well). There are few American Studies topics on which I’m less qualified to pontificate than contemporary country music, so I won’t pretend to have a great deal to say about what Brown means in that world; the current album does seem impressively mixed and diverse in its influences and styles, not in an artificial “crossover” kind of way(ie, someone trying to be a pop star for its own sake) but because he and his band found inspiration in all these different modes. But in reading the profile, I was particularly struck by two non-musical sides to Brown’s identity and career, both of which I’d connect to other important contemporary themes.Before his band made it big Brown was best known, at least in his home area of Georgia, as a chef and the proprietor of the restaurant Zac’s Place. Although he’s mostly had to pass those duties on to others over the last few years, he’s continued to emphasize regional food and cooking in a variety of ways; including, most impressively to me, his use while on tour of the tractor-trailer he calls “Cookie.” That kitchen-on-wheels enables Brown to serve the band and many lucky fans home-cooked (well, trailer-cooked) meals featuring his own recipes and other regional favorites. There’s a lot to like about that custom, but to me it’s particularly interesting as a complement to the slow-food movement of the last couple decades. Obviously Brown isn’t, most of the time, serving his foods within close proximity to their points of origin—one of the main goals of the movement—but you could say he’s trying to bring his version of slow food with him wherever he goes, and to allow fans everywhere to experience the joys of such regional culinary traditions. Brown’s other most unique project (in the making) is also by far his most inspiring. As a young man, Brown worked at a couple of local summer camps that brought together typical kids and those with special needs, and the experience has clearly stuck with him; he has purchased a large tract of land and developed his own camp, Camp Southern Ground, which has already begun operation, is scheduled to open in full in the summer of 2014, and will likewise offer options for special needs kids (especially those with neurobehavioral disorders such as Asperger’s and Tourette’s) as well as for typical summer campers. Again, there’s a lot that’s great about this project, but I would link it some prominent and important current efforts to move away from a purely medicating approach to childhood disorders, and to consider instead how social and emotional treatments and responses can often help kids struggling with such disorders at least as much as any medication. These are of course very complex and evolving questions, but at the very least Brown’s camp represents an exemplary attempt to treat the whole kid, and to bring special needs kids into full contact with their peers at the same time. Important and inspiring work on many fronts, I’d say! Next air-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Inspiring work, by celebrities or anybody else, you’d highlight?10/2 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Nat Turner, the Virginia slave and preacher who led one of the most violent, successful, and significant slave revolts, and whose voice continues to echo long beyond that moment; and Wallace Stevens, the lawyer and insurance salesman who also wrote some of the most dense, complex, erudite, and evocative 20thcentury American poetry.
On the country music star who exemplifies two important and impressive current trends.In another article, this issue of the magazine profiles Zac Brown, the country singer/songwriter who, with his Zac Brown Band, has released a couple of big-selling and Grammy-winning albums in the last few years (with a third, Uncaged, recently released as well). There are few American Studies topics on which I’m less qualified to pontificate than contemporary country music, so I won’t pretend to have a great deal to say about what Brown means in that world; the current album does seem impressively mixed and diverse in its influences and styles, not in an artificial “crossover” kind of way(ie, someone trying to be a pop star for its own sake) but because he and his band found inspiration in all these different modes. But in reading the profile, I was particularly struck by two non-musical sides to Brown’s identity and career, both of which I’d connect to other important contemporary themes.Before his band made it big Brown was best known, at least in his home area of Georgia, as a chef and the proprietor of the restaurant Zac’s Place. Although he’s mostly had to pass those duties on to others over the last few years, he’s continued to emphasize regional food and cooking in a variety of ways; including, most impressively to me, his use while on tour of the tractor-trailer he calls “Cookie.” That kitchen-on-wheels enables Brown to serve the band and many lucky fans home-cooked (well, trailer-cooked) meals featuring his own recipes and other regional favorites. There’s a lot to like about that custom, but to me it’s particularly interesting as a complement to the slow-food movement of the last couple decades. Obviously Brown isn’t, most of the time, serving his foods within close proximity to their points of origin—one of the main goals of the movement—but you could say he’s trying to bring his version of slow food with him wherever he goes, and to allow fans everywhere to experience the joys of such regional culinary traditions. Brown’s other most unique project (in the making) is also by far his most inspiring. As a young man, Brown worked at a couple of local summer camps that brought together typical kids and those with special needs, and the experience has clearly stuck with him; he has purchased a large tract of land and developed his own camp, Camp Southern Ground, which has already begun operation, is scheduled to open in full in the summer of 2014, and will likewise offer options for special needs kids (especially those with neurobehavioral disorders such as Asperger’s and Tourette’s) as well as for typical summer campers. Again, there’s a lot that’s great about this project, but I would link it some prominent and important current efforts to move away from a purely medicating approach to childhood disorders, and to consider instead how social and emotional treatments and responses can often help kids struggling with such disorders at least as much as any medication. These are of course very complex and evolving questions, but at the very least Brown’s camp represents an exemplary attempt to treat the whole kid, and to bring special needs kids into full contact with their peers at the same time. Important and inspiring work on many fronts, I’d say! Next air-inspired post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Inspiring work, by celebrities or anybody else, you’d highlight?10/2 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Nat Turner, the Virginia slave and preacher who led one of the most violent, successful, and significant slave revolts, and whose voice continues to echo long beyond that moment; and Wallace Stevens, the lawyer and insurance salesman who also wrote some of the most dense, complex, erudite, and evocative 20thcentury American poetry.
October 1, 2012
October 1, 2012: Up in the Air, Part One
[Just to prove that American Studies inspirations can and do come from everywhere, this week I’m going to feature five topics that I was prompted to think about by the
US Airways Magazine
on my flight down to Philly. Please share your responses to any of these topics, or other American Studies topics you’ve recently been inspired to think about!]
On the Museum that’s helping redefine what such institutions and spaces can include and do.The feature story in this edition of the magazine was on Charlotte, North Carolina; a US Airways hub and the host city for the recent Democratic National Convention, Charlotte is also, as the article argued, one of the more on-the-rise American cities. There are various reasons for that trend, but I would argue that many of the most compelling reflect impressive combinations of longstanding historical and distinctly 21st century American elements: the bike-sharing program that allows riders to wind through the city’s historic sites on the Mecklenburg County Greenway; the demographic diversity (“minorities” represent the majority of the city’s population) that includes centuries-old communities (such as African Americans) and much more recent arrivals (Asian American immigrants). And no Charlotte attraction better weds history to 21stcentury trends than the Levine Museum of the New South. I’ve written before in this space about how difficult it can be to create historic sites or museums to remember our most complex and (often) dark histories, with the longstanding but still-unrealized idea of a museum of American slavery as exhibit A for that argument. Washington, D.C.’s National Museum of the American Indiancould certainly be highlighted as an exemplary such engagement—while the NMAI does focus on many more informative and inspiring themes (presenting the identities and customs of different cultures and tribes, for example), it most definitely also engages with the darker histories to which Native Americans have so long been linked. Yet I would argue that creating a museum for the post-bellum American South—a period that has been called the nadir of African American life, and that was centrally defined by histories of segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and more—, constructing a space that remembers and engages with such histories as part of a complex whole, represents an even more significant challenge.I haven’t visited the Levine Museum yet (and if you have, I’d love to hear your takes in the comments!), so I can’t analyze in any in-depth way how it responds to that challenging and important task. I’ll admit that my extremely positive first take on the Museum is due in significant measure to seeing that it’s hosting the Without Sanctuary lynching exhibitionthis fall; I know of no exhibition that more fully and powerfully engages with a dark history than that one. But from what I can tell, including from the magazine’s own write-up, the Museum’s own exhibits are similarly willing to engage in compelling and complex terms with other regional histories, from sharecropping and segregation to the challenges and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement. I’m sure that it also includes more celebratory exhibits; but even there—if the central permanent exhibit, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers , is any indication—the Museum works to include divisive and tragic histories alongside the more positive or unifying ones, and asks its visitors to consider how all of those disparate but interconnected stories come together to form this one community. The more museums that can offer that to Americans, the better!Next magazine-inspired story tomorrow,BenPS. Takes on the Levine Museum? Other impressive museums you’d highlight? 10/1 Memory Day nominee: Daniel Boorstin, the towering historian and Librarian of Congress whose pioneering and influential scholarly works include The Americans trilogy and three comprehensive volumes of world historical writing.
On the Museum that’s helping redefine what such institutions and spaces can include and do.The feature story in this edition of the magazine was on Charlotte, North Carolina; a US Airways hub and the host city for the recent Democratic National Convention, Charlotte is also, as the article argued, one of the more on-the-rise American cities. There are various reasons for that trend, but I would argue that many of the most compelling reflect impressive combinations of longstanding historical and distinctly 21st century American elements: the bike-sharing program that allows riders to wind through the city’s historic sites on the Mecklenburg County Greenway; the demographic diversity (“minorities” represent the majority of the city’s population) that includes centuries-old communities (such as African Americans) and much more recent arrivals (Asian American immigrants). And no Charlotte attraction better weds history to 21stcentury trends than the Levine Museum of the New South. I’ve written before in this space about how difficult it can be to create historic sites or museums to remember our most complex and (often) dark histories, with the longstanding but still-unrealized idea of a museum of American slavery as exhibit A for that argument. Washington, D.C.’s National Museum of the American Indiancould certainly be highlighted as an exemplary such engagement—while the NMAI does focus on many more informative and inspiring themes (presenting the identities and customs of different cultures and tribes, for example), it most definitely also engages with the darker histories to which Native Americans have so long been linked. Yet I would argue that creating a museum for the post-bellum American South—a period that has been called the nadir of African American life, and that was centrally defined by histories of segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and more—, constructing a space that remembers and engages with such histories as part of a complex whole, represents an even more significant challenge.I haven’t visited the Levine Museum yet (and if you have, I’d love to hear your takes in the comments!), so I can’t analyze in any in-depth way how it responds to that challenging and important task. I’ll admit that my extremely positive first take on the Museum is due in significant measure to seeing that it’s hosting the Without Sanctuary lynching exhibitionthis fall; I know of no exhibition that more fully and powerfully engages with a dark history than that one. But from what I can tell, including from the magazine’s own write-up, the Museum’s own exhibits are similarly willing to engage in compelling and complex terms with other regional histories, from sharecropping and segregation to the challenges and triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement. I’m sure that it also includes more celebratory exhibits; but even there—if the central permanent exhibit, Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers , is any indication—the Museum works to include divisive and tragic histories alongside the more positive or unifying ones, and asks its visitors to consider how all of those disparate but interconnected stories come together to form this one community. The more museums that can offer that to Americans, the better!Next magazine-inspired story tomorrow,BenPS. Takes on the Levine Museum? Other impressive museums you’d highlight? 10/1 Memory Day nominee: Daniel Boorstin, the towering historian and Librarian of Congress whose pioneering and influential scholarly works include The Americans trilogy and three comprehensive volumes of world historical writing.
September 30, 2012
September 30, 2012: September 2012 Recap
[A recap of the month that was in American Studying, which this time began a couple days late—see the August 2012 Recap for September 1 and 2!]
September 3: Labor Day Special: In honor of Labor Day, I took the day off but provided links to five posts in which I discuss work, the labor movement, and related American questions.September 4: Fall Forward, Part One: A series on my fall projects and plans begins with this website, and all the ways you can contribute to it!September 5: Fall Forward, Part Two: On my fall plans to bring a couple of my most-taught courses into the digital age—and how you can help!September 6: Fall Forward, Part Three: On my fall efforts to design an online exhibition on 21st century immigrant American writers—and how you can help!September 7: Fall Forward, Part Four: On the book I’m writing this fall, and a central question for which I’d love your thoughts and input!September 8-9: Fall Forward, Part Five: The last in the fall series, on three ways you can get involved, this fall and beyond, with the New England American Studies Association.September 10: Isabella Stewart Gardner: A series inspired by Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum kicks off with a post on Ms. Gardner herself.September 11: John Singer Sargent: On the American painter who was Gardner’s closest friend and a very significant artist in his own right.September 12: The Boston Cosmpolitans: On the justifiable critiques of yet unquestionable inspirations provided by Gardner, Sargent, and their peers.September 13: An Education by Henry Adams: On what all Americans can learn from Henry Adams’ international life and writings.September 14: Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Last in the series, on the sculptor and memorial creator whose cosmopolitan legacy is particularly impressive.September 15-16: Crowd-Sourcing the Gardner: A crowd-sourced set of responses to the week’s series and ideas on its places, figures, themes, and connections.September 17: American Hope Part One: A series inspired by my current book project kicks off with some thoughts on Shawshank, Obama, and the challenges of hope.September 18: American Hope Part Two: Taking James Kloppenberg’s lead, I highlight two American voices and traditions to which Obama’s images of hope can be connected.September 19: American Hope Part Three: On Franklin Roosevelt, Cinderella Man Jim Braddock, and narratives of hope in the Great Depression.September 20: American Hope Part Four: On the Wilmington Massacre, The Marrow of Tradition, and the counter-intuitive but definite urgency of hope.September 21: American Hope Part Five: On the question of whether we can and should still trust to hope, and what it means if we can’t.September 22-23: Crowd-Sourced Hope: The next crowd-sourced post, with more American Studiers’ responses and ideas on the week’s topics and questions.September 24-29: Grad Student Crowd-Sourced Post Extraordinaire!: In honor of my friend Jeff Renye’s dissertation defense, a week-along opportunity for graduate students (and their friends) to share the great work they’re doing.Next series begins tomorrow,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space in the months to come?9/30 Memory Day nominee: Ann Jarvis, the Methodist social worker and activist whose Civil War Mother’s Day Work Clubs and post-war Mothers’ Friendship Day became the inspiration for a nationally recognized Mother’s Day holida\y (created at the urging of her daughter Anna).
September 3: Labor Day Special: In honor of Labor Day, I took the day off but provided links to five posts in which I discuss work, the labor movement, and related American questions.September 4: Fall Forward, Part One: A series on my fall projects and plans begins with this website, and all the ways you can contribute to it!September 5: Fall Forward, Part Two: On my fall plans to bring a couple of my most-taught courses into the digital age—and how you can help!September 6: Fall Forward, Part Three: On my fall efforts to design an online exhibition on 21st century immigrant American writers—and how you can help!September 7: Fall Forward, Part Four: On the book I’m writing this fall, and a central question for which I’d love your thoughts and input!September 8-9: Fall Forward, Part Five: The last in the fall series, on three ways you can get involved, this fall and beyond, with the New England American Studies Association.September 10: Isabella Stewart Gardner: A series inspired by Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum kicks off with a post on Ms. Gardner herself.September 11: John Singer Sargent: On the American painter who was Gardner’s closest friend and a very significant artist in his own right.September 12: The Boston Cosmpolitans: On the justifiable critiques of yet unquestionable inspirations provided by Gardner, Sargent, and their peers.September 13: An Education by Henry Adams: On what all Americans can learn from Henry Adams’ international life and writings.September 14: Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Last in the series, on the sculptor and memorial creator whose cosmopolitan legacy is particularly impressive.September 15-16: Crowd-Sourcing the Gardner: A crowd-sourced set of responses to the week’s series and ideas on its places, figures, themes, and connections.September 17: American Hope Part One: A series inspired by my current book project kicks off with some thoughts on Shawshank, Obama, and the challenges of hope.September 18: American Hope Part Two: Taking James Kloppenberg’s lead, I highlight two American voices and traditions to which Obama’s images of hope can be connected.September 19: American Hope Part Three: On Franklin Roosevelt, Cinderella Man Jim Braddock, and narratives of hope in the Great Depression.September 20: American Hope Part Four: On the Wilmington Massacre, The Marrow of Tradition, and the counter-intuitive but definite urgency of hope.September 21: American Hope Part Five: On the question of whether we can and should still trust to hope, and what it means if we can’t.September 22-23: Crowd-Sourced Hope: The next crowd-sourced post, with more American Studiers’ responses and ideas on the week’s topics and questions.September 24-29: Grad Student Crowd-Sourced Post Extraordinaire!: In honor of my friend Jeff Renye’s dissertation defense, a week-along opportunity for graduate students (and their friends) to share the great work they’re doing.Next series begins tomorrow,BenPS. What would you like to see in this space in the months to come?9/30 Memory Day nominee: Ann Jarvis, the Methodist social worker and activist whose Civil War Mother’s Day Work Clubs and post-war Mothers’ Friendship Day became the inspiration for a nationally recognized Mother’s Day holida\y (created at the urging of her daughter Anna).
September 24, 2012
September 24-29,2012: Grad Student Crowd-Sourced Post Extraordinaire!
On Friday, September 28th, my friend and grad school colleague Jeff Renye defends his PhD dissertation, “Panic at the British Borderlands: The Great God Pan, Victorian Sexuality, and Sacred Space in the Works of Arthur Machen.” In honor of that occasion, I thought I’d open up this week’s blog as a crowd-sourced post extraordinaire, one dedicated to the great work being done by graduate students (in every discipline and field) around the country and the world.
So … please share in the comments below! If you’re a grad student yourself, I’d love to hear a bit about what you’re working on, whether for a dissertation, a Master’s thesis, or in any other aspect of your work. If you’re a faculty member who has worked or is working with grad students, please feel free to highlight aspects of their work. If you’re just friends with such a grad student, have one in your family, or otherwise know of his or her work and think it’s worth sharing (and I’m sure it is!), please feel equally free to do so. Bottom line, I’d really love for this to be a space where we can hear and talk about the great work being done by graduate students, to honor Jeff’s work and add all these voices and ideas to the conversation—so please share some of that work, if you would. Thanks!September recap on Sunday, next series next week,BenPS. Here’s a quote Jeff has highlighted, to get the ball rolling: “But no one could look into the alchemical writings of the Middle Ages and deny them the name of literature. Alchemy, in spite of all confident pronouncements on the subject, remains still a mystery, the very nature and object of the quest are unknown. The baser alchemists – there were quacks and impostors and dupes then as now – no doubt sought or pretended to seek some method of making gold artificially, but the sages, those who practiced the true spagyric art, were engaged in some infinitely more mysterious adventure...initiated in the perfect mysterious."—Arthur Machen, "The Literature of Occultism," 1899.9/24-9/29 Memory Day nominees: For each day’s nominee, please see the Memory Day Calendar!
So … please share in the comments below! If you’re a grad student yourself, I’d love to hear a bit about what you’re working on, whether for a dissertation, a Master’s thesis, or in any other aspect of your work. If you’re a faculty member who has worked or is working with grad students, please feel free to highlight aspects of their work. If you’re just friends with such a grad student, have one in your family, or otherwise know of his or her work and think it’s worth sharing (and I’m sure it is!), please feel equally free to do so. Bottom line, I’d really love for this to be a space where we can hear and talk about the great work being done by graduate students, to honor Jeff’s work and add all these voices and ideas to the conversation—so please share some of that work, if you would. Thanks!September recap on Sunday, next series next week,BenPS. Here’s a quote Jeff has highlighted, to get the ball rolling: “But no one could look into the alchemical writings of the Middle Ages and deny them the name of literature. Alchemy, in spite of all confident pronouncements on the subject, remains still a mystery, the very nature and object of the quest are unknown. The baser alchemists – there were quacks and impostors and dupes then as now – no doubt sought or pretended to seek some method of making gold artificially, but the sages, those who practiced the true spagyric art, were engaged in some infinitely more mysterious adventure...initiated in the perfect mysterious."—Arthur Machen, "The Literature of Occultism," 1899.9/24-9/29 Memory Day nominees: For each day’s nominee, please see the Memory Day Calendar!
September 22, 2012
September 22-23, 2012: Crowd-Sourced Hope
[Inspired by my current book project and much else in contemporary American culture and society, this week’s series has focused on hope in America. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and ideas of other American Studiers—please add yours below!]
Following up the Shawshank quotes in Monday’s post, Jeff Renye notes a similar quote in the great recent German film The Lives of Others (2006): “Hope always dies last.” As Jeff argues, the film’s multi-part ending (which I’m not going to spoil here!) might illustrate the darkness in that quote; although it’s possible to argue that it is ultimately more genuinely hopeful instead. In any case, another cultural and national engagement with dark histories and the question of hope to be sure!Responding to the literary and philosophical connections in Tuesday’s post, Linda Patton Hoffman notes how fully “Transcendental (and Anti-Transcendental) ideas flow throughout American society,” argues for how much “Melville [was] way ahead of his time,” and makes the case that “all should read Walden —slowly and thoughtfully.”Following up on my Wilmington thoughts in Thursday’s post, Jonathan Goodwin highlights Philip Gerard’s book Cape Fear Rising (1994), a historical novel based on the Wilmington coup and massacre (which neither he nor I have read, so if you have, please share your thoughts in the comments below!).Steve Railton highlights one of the best hope-related lines in American literature, Ishmael’s description of Queequeg as “hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair” in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). Ezekial Healy points instead to a more recent, pop culture engagement with hope, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)—a film that also features as one of its most famous lines, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope!”Finally, I can’t fail to mention a new blog post by my grad advisor and uber-American Studier Miles Orvell, based on his just-about-to-be-released book on Main Street (and much else American Studies). Check it out!Week-long special post goes up on Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Reactions to any of these thoughts, the week’s posts, or other takes on hope in America?9/22 Memory Day nominee: James Lawson, the minister, draft resister, and Civil Rights leader whose theories and practice of nonviolence connect traditions of faith and spirituality, social protest and activism, and many other American voices and ideals.9/23 Memory Day nominee: A tie between two very talented and very American musicians, songwriters, artists, and legends, Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen.
Following up the Shawshank quotes in Monday’s post, Jeff Renye notes a similar quote in the great recent German film The Lives of Others (2006): “Hope always dies last.” As Jeff argues, the film’s multi-part ending (which I’m not going to spoil here!) might illustrate the darkness in that quote; although it’s possible to argue that it is ultimately more genuinely hopeful instead. In any case, another cultural and national engagement with dark histories and the question of hope to be sure!Responding to the literary and philosophical connections in Tuesday’s post, Linda Patton Hoffman notes how fully “Transcendental (and Anti-Transcendental) ideas flow throughout American society,” argues for how much “Melville [was] way ahead of his time,” and makes the case that “all should read Walden —slowly and thoughtfully.”Following up on my Wilmington thoughts in Thursday’s post, Jonathan Goodwin highlights Philip Gerard’s book Cape Fear Rising (1994), a historical novel based on the Wilmington coup and massacre (which neither he nor I have read, so if you have, please share your thoughts in the comments below!).Steve Railton highlights one of the best hope-related lines in American literature, Ishmael’s description of Queequeg as “hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair” in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). Ezekial Healy points instead to a more recent, pop culture engagement with hope, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)—a film that also features as one of its most famous lines, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope!”Finally, I can’t fail to mention a new blog post by my grad advisor and uber-American Studier Miles Orvell, based on his just-about-to-be-released book on Main Street (and much else American Studies). Check it out!Week-long special post goes up on Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Reactions to any of these thoughts, the week’s posts, or other takes on hope in America?9/22 Memory Day nominee: James Lawson, the minister, draft resister, and Civil Rights leader whose theories and practice of nonviolence connect traditions of faith and spirituality, social protest and activism, and many other American voices and ideals.9/23 Memory Day nominee: A tie between two very talented and very American musicians, songwriters, artists, and legends, Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen.
September 21, 2012
September 21, 2012: American Hope Part Five
[Inspired by my current book project and much else in contemporary American culture and society, this week’s series focuses on hope in America. Your texts, takes, and thoughts very welcome for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
On the unquestionable limits of hope, and how we might respond to them.Toward the beginning of The Two Towers (2002), the second film in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a new character, the banished Rohirrim warrior Éomer, warns three of our returning heroes, “Do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands.” On the specific question he is addressing—whether Merry and Pippin, the two hobbits for whom these three characters are searching, are still alive—Éomer is proven wrong by subsequent events. That, and many other details of the film’s arc, might suggest that he is likewise wrong more generally, that the forces for good can and should still trust to hope to carry them through. But I don’t believe it’s anywhere near that simple. For one thing, the events of the film and the trilogy as a whole take a terrible toll on those forces for good—lives lost and others forever changed, cities abandoned and destroyed, and so on. And for another, whatever victories good does achieve by the film and trilogy’s end cannot necessarily be attributed to hope, but rather to a desperate refusal to surrender even when all hope seems lost.Is that the same thing, or at least a distinction without a significant difference? Perhaps—certainly something must inspire us to continue even when we feel that there is no hope, and maybe we thus would have to call that inspiration a secret, desperate, unyielding hope nonetheless. But on the other hand, if continuing to struggle in the absence of hope is defined as simply another form of hope, then we risk reducing the idea to one of those empty signifiers that means everything and nothing. So let’s call that source of unyielding struggle something different: perseverance, resilience, stubbornness, pride. It’s not a bad thing by any means, and can even comprise something to admire and emulate—there are few situations where surrendering the fight and giving in to the worst is the right decision—but it is a desperate one, a last resort, a perspective that we must resist as much as possible (since it can very easily lead to despair, to cynicism, to a sense that both the fight itself and what we’re fighting for don’t ultimately matter, and more). Which is to say, while the absence of hope does not necessarily imply a giving in to the worst—there’s a spectrum in between those two extremes—it’s a lot closer to that than we should want to go unless we have no other choice.Which leads me, to put my cards on the table, to right now. To a presidential election in which one campaign has relied almost entirely on lies, perhaps to appeal to a base in which a majority of registered voters believe the current president to have been born in another country. To a world in which a war between Israel and Iran—a war which would almost certainly involve numerous other nations, the U.S. among them—seems at times almost unavoidable. To a future where, by virtually every meaningful measure and analysis, many of the worst effects of global climate change have become almost a certainty. Those are just a few of the many reasons why it feels as if we American Studiers, we Americans, we humans must heed Éomer’s advice and stop trusting to hope. But there’s another option, and it’s at the core of my new book project: that we should find hope by engaging with the darkest histories and realities. Fortunately for us, we have some pretty great models for doing so, in the powerfully realistic yet ultimately hopeful novels that I’ll be reading in that book. To paraphrase the final section of Obama’s DNC speech, they give me hope.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more chance: what do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America for that weekend post?9/21 Memory Day nominee: Edouard Glissant!
On the unquestionable limits of hope, and how we might respond to them.Toward the beginning of The Two Towers (2002), the second film in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a new character, the banished Rohirrim warrior Éomer, warns three of our returning heroes, “Do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands.” On the specific question he is addressing—whether Merry and Pippin, the two hobbits for whom these three characters are searching, are still alive—Éomer is proven wrong by subsequent events. That, and many other details of the film’s arc, might suggest that he is likewise wrong more generally, that the forces for good can and should still trust to hope to carry them through. But I don’t believe it’s anywhere near that simple. For one thing, the events of the film and the trilogy as a whole take a terrible toll on those forces for good—lives lost and others forever changed, cities abandoned and destroyed, and so on. And for another, whatever victories good does achieve by the film and trilogy’s end cannot necessarily be attributed to hope, but rather to a desperate refusal to surrender even when all hope seems lost.Is that the same thing, or at least a distinction without a significant difference? Perhaps—certainly something must inspire us to continue even when we feel that there is no hope, and maybe we thus would have to call that inspiration a secret, desperate, unyielding hope nonetheless. But on the other hand, if continuing to struggle in the absence of hope is defined as simply another form of hope, then we risk reducing the idea to one of those empty signifiers that means everything and nothing. So let’s call that source of unyielding struggle something different: perseverance, resilience, stubbornness, pride. It’s not a bad thing by any means, and can even comprise something to admire and emulate—there are few situations where surrendering the fight and giving in to the worst is the right decision—but it is a desperate one, a last resort, a perspective that we must resist as much as possible (since it can very easily lead to despair, to cynicism, to a sense that both the fight itself and what we’re fighting for don’t ultimately matter, and more). Which is to say, while the absence of hope does not necessarily imply a giving in to the worst—there’s a spectrum in between those two extremes—it’s a lot closer to that than we should want to go unless we have no other choice.Which leads me, to put my cards on the table, to right now. To a presidential election in which one campaign has relied almost entirely on lies, perhaps to appeal to a base in which a majority of registered voters believe the current president to have been born in another country. To a world in which a war between Israel and Iran—a war which would almost certainly involve numerous other nations, the U.S. among them—seems at times almost unavoidable. To a future where, by virtually every meaningful measure and analysis, many of the worst effects of global climate change have become almost a certainty. Those are just a few of the many reasons why it feels as if we American Studiers, we Americans, we humans must heed Éomer’s advice and stop trusting to hope. But there’s another option, and it’s at the core of my new book project: that we should find hope by engaging with the darkest histories and realities. Fortunately for us, we have some pretty great models for doing so, in the powerfully realistic yet ultimately hopeful novels that I’ll be reading in that book. To paraphrase the final section of Obama’s DNC speech, they give me hope.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more chance: what do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America for that weekend post?9/21 Memory Day nominee: Edouard Glissant!
September 20, 2012
September 20, 2012: American Hope Part Four
[Inspired by my current book project and much else in contemporary American culture and society, this week’s series focuses on hope in America. Your texts, takes, and thoughts very welcome for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
On the counter-intuitive but real and important urgency and immediacy of hope.Hope can seem like a long-term proposition, an emphasis on the need for such overarching, big-picture thinking when the present’s immediate circumstances feel untenable or at least unchangeable. Certainly I would agree that hope does entail and require an ability to look beyond the specifics or details of any one moment or situation, to consider what might be possible and different tomorrow as long as we don’t let those individual moments and situations become all-encompassing. But on the other hand, I think there can be a real danger in the idea that hope takes time to come to fruition, that we have to be willing and able to wait for it; sometimes perhaps there’s no other way, but in many circumstances, as the old saying goes, waiting gives the devil time, allows the worst of the present to become hardened into something set and even more difficult to change.In my very first post on this blog, I wrote about the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre and coup, one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history; at the end of that post, I linked to a letter sent by an anonymous African American woman to President McKinley, pleading for federal intervention as the massacre’s violence and horrors continued into the weeks beyong Election Day. In the face of some of the most desperate circumstances ever to face a community, the letter expresses not only the despair and pain and frustration and terror that she and all of her peers were feeling, but also in its very existence a profound hope; that is, her choice to write and send the letter speaks to her hope, spoken “from the depths of my heart,” that she can reach her nation’s government and its highest elected representative, that her voice and experiences can change the course of history and save her community. Of all the tragedies surrounding this American low point, none is more tragic than the simple fact that her hopes were not rewarded; McKinley and the federal government did nothing, and the events in Wilmington continued to run their horrific course.There are a number of things we could learn from Wilmington, if we better remembered it, and certainly many of them are bleak; high on that list would be the simple fact that the federal government, like the national media and much of white America, was all too willing to accept and even support the white supremacist stories of events such as Wilmington. But from McKinley and company’s inaction we can also learn just how often and how much hope must be met by action, as urgently and immediately as that hope demands. As I wrote in that earlier post, Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition(1901), the novel inspired by the Wilmington events that is also my favorite American novel and one of the two with which my book will open, ends with a moment of almost utopian hope that precisely captures this dynamic: the novel’s final line, which I can quote without spoiling the details, is “There’s time enough, but none to spare.” The sentence’s first clause is indeed a profoundly hopeful one, in the face of the many horrors that have preceded it; and the second, despite the “but” formulation, to my mind complements it, suggesting that the hope will not endure if it is not acted upon and made into something more concrete and lasting. The arc of history might be long, but sometimes both history and hope require immediacy as well.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/20 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two 20thcentury figures who impacted American literature and society in profoundly different but equally significant ways, Upton Sinclair and Maxwell Perkins.
On the counter-intuitive but real and important urgency and immediacy of hope.Hope can seem like a long-term proposition, an emphasis on the need for such overarching, big-picture thinking when the present’s immediate circumstances feel untenable or at least unchangeable. Certainly I would agree that hope does entail and require an ability to look beyond the specifics or details of any one moment or situation, to consider what might be possible and different tomorrow as long as we don’t let those individual moments and situations become all-encompassing. But on the other hand, I think there can be a real danger in the idea that hope takes time to come to fruition, that we have to be willing and able to wait for it; sometimes perhaps there’s no other way, but in many circumstances, as the old saying goes, waiting gives the devil time, allows the worst of the present to become hardened into something set and even more difficult to change.In my very first post on this blog, I wrote about the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina massacre and coup, one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history; at the end of that post, I linked to a letter sent by an anonymous African American woman to President McKinley, pleading for federal intervention as the massacre’s violence and horrors continued into the weeks beyong Election Day. In the face of some of the most desperate circumstances ever to face a community, the letter expresses not only the despair and pain and frustration and terror that she and all of her peers were feeling, but also in its very existence a profound hope; that is, her choice to write and send the letter speaks to her hope, spoken “from the depths of my heart,” that she can reach her nation’s government and its highest elected representative, that her voice and experiences can change the course of history and save her community. Of all the tragedies surrounding this American low point, none is more tragic than the simple fact that her hopes were not rewarded; McKinley and the federal government did nothing, and the events in Wilmington continued to run their horrific course.There are a number of things we could learn from Wilmington, if we better remembered it, and certainly many of them are bleak; high on that list would be the simple fact that the federal government, like the national media and much of white America, was all too willing to accept and even support the white supremacist stories of events such as Wilmington. But from McKinley and company’s inaction we can also learn just how often and how much hope must be met by action, as urgently and immediately as that hope demands. As I wrote in that earlier post, Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition(1901), the novel inspired by the Wilmington events that is also my favorite American novel and one of the two with which my book will open, ends with a moment of almost utopian hope that precisely captures this dynamic: the novel’s final line, which I can quote without spoiling the details, is “There’s time enough, but none to spare.” The sentence’s first clause is indeed a profoundly hopeful one, in the face of the many horrors that have preceded it; and the second, despite the “but” formulation, to my mind complements it, suggesting that the hope will not endure if it is not acted upon and made into something more concrete and lasting. The arc of history might be long, but sometimes both history and hope require immediacy as well.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/20 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two 20thcentury figures who impacted American literature and society in profoundly different but equally significant ways, Upton Sinclair and Maxwell Perkins.
September 19, 2012
September 19, 2012: American Hope Part Three
[Inspired by my current book project and much else in contemporary American culture and society, this week’s series focuses on hope in America. Your texts, takes, and thoughts very welcome for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
On two different and complementary narratives of hope in one of America’s darkest times.For us American Studiers who are interested in the question of how hope can be found and kept in our darkest moments, it’s a good idea to examine closely the histories of particular such moments, and to consider specifically narratives of hope in them. I did that in part—if somewhat implicitly—in the series on bad American memories and how we engage with them, since most such engagements try to find the possibility of meaning and hope in the face of those dark histories. Those memories were generally tied to particular communities, though (if, as I argued, still broadly and nationally relevant), and so it’s worth examining as well our most collectively shared dark moments. And certainly at the top of that list, to my mind competing only with the Civil War in its breadth of impact, would have to be the economic, social, and communal nadir that was the Great Depression.From literally the first moment of his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Depression by creating a narrative of a hope in an original and striking way. In the opening paragraph of his 1932 inaugural address, Roosevelt “first of all … assert[ed his] firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The line, like the tone of the whole speech, was as somber and serious as the moment demanded; but it’s an argument for hope nonetheless, one that suggests quite explicitly that the absence of hope (the opposite of it, even) represents a far worse threat than any economic or social realities could. Nearly a decade later, Roosevelt extended and amplified that idea, making “freedom from fear” one of his core “Four Freedoms” to which all Americans and all citizens of the world are entitled. Roosevelt’s emphasis on fear, on the dark and negative side of the emotional spectrum, connects directly to the central point of my current book: that we can’t find genuine hope until we admit and engage with the darkest realities and histories, and the emotions that they engender.Obviously I believe in the value of that engagement—but I also recognize the need, at our darkest moments in particular, for feel-good stories, for histories that can inspire hope because they represent the best of what we can be and do. The depths of the Depression produced many such stories in America, and none was more famous nor more inspiring than that of Irish American boxer James J. Braddock, whose epic comeback tale was recently portrayed in the film Cinderella Man (2005). Braddock’s story offered Americans hope for at least two key reasons: he and his family had experienced the same desperate situation and poverty of so many of their peers, making him a truly representative everyman; and yet he had literally fought his way out of those conditions, becoming heavyweight champion from 1935 to 1937 and embodying the sense that the future was not determined nor circumscribed by the worst of the past and present. What Braddock seemed to exemplify, that is, was what Americans and America could achieve once they had faced down their worst fears and found their way through them to the hard-earned freedom for which Roosevelt argued.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/19 Memory Day nominee: Sarah Louise “Sadie” Delany, the legendary educator and Civil Rights pioneer, whose book Having Our Say (1993), co-authored with her sister Bessie, is one of America’s most unique and important autobiographies.
On two different and complementary narratives of hope in one of America’s darkest times.For us American Studiers who are interested in the question of how hope can be found and kept in our darkest moments, it’s a good idea to examine closely the histories of particular such moments, and to consider specifically narratives of hope in them. I did that in part—if somewhat implicitly—in the series on bad American memories and how we engage with them, since most such engagements try to find the possibility of meaning and hope in the face of those dark histories. Those memories were generally tied to particular communities, though (if, as I argued, still broadly and nationally relevant), and so it’s worth examining as well our most collectively shared dark moments. And certainly at the top of that list, to my mind competing only with the Civil War in its breadth of impact, would have to be the economic, social, and communal nadir that was the Great Depression.From literally the first moment of his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Depression by creating a narrative of a hope in an original and striking way. In the opening paragraph of his 1932 inaugural address, Roosevelt “first of all … assert[ed his] firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The line, like the tone of the whole speech, was as somber and serious as the moment demanded; but it’s an argument for hope nonetheless, one that suggests quite explicitly that the absence of hope (the opposite of it, even) represents a far worse threat than any economic or social realities could. Nearly a decade later, Roosevelt extended and amplified that idea, making “freedom from fear” one of his core “Four Freedoms” to which all Americans and all citizens of the world are entitled. Roosevelt’s emphasis on fear, on the dark and negative side of the emotional spectrum, connects directly to the central point of my current book: that we can’t find genuine hope until we admit and engage with the darkest realities and histories, and the emotions that they engender.Obviously I believe in the value of that engagement—but I also recognize the need, at our darkest moments in particular, for feel-good stories, for histories that can inspire hope because they represent the best of what we can be and do. The depths of the Depression produced many such stories in America, and none was more famous nor more inspiring than that of Irish American boxer James J. Braddock, whose epic comeback tale was recently portrayed in the film Cinderella Man (2005). Braddock’s story offered Americans hope for at least two key reasons: he and his family had experienced the same desperate situation and poverty of so many of their peers, making him a truly representative everyman; and yet he had literally fought his way out of those conditions, becoming heavyweight champion from 1935 to 1937 and embodying the sense that the future was not determined nor circumscribed by the worst of the past and present. What Braddock seemed to exemplify, that is, was what Americans and America could achieve once they had faced down their worst fears and found their way through them to the hard-earned freedom for which Roosevelt argued.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/19 Memory Day nominee: Sarah Louise “Sadie” Delany, the legendary educator and Civil Rights pioneer, whose book Having Our Say (1993), co-authored with her sister Bessie, is one of America’s most unique and important autobiographies.
September 18, 2012
September 18, 2012: American Hope Part Two
[Inspired by my current book project and much else in contemporary American culture and society, this week’s series focuses on hope in America. Your texts, takes, and thoughts very welcome for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
On the links between our contemporary debates over hope and two of America’s most longstanding ideas and ideals.As I argued in yesterday’s post, Barack Obama has recently worked to redefine the images and ideas of hope on which he had campaigned for and won the presidency. Since his election, of course, some of his supporters have done the same in a very different light, disappointed and even disillusioned by what they have seen as the gaps between such ideas and the realities of Obama’s presidency. There would be various ways to analyze that trend, but to my mind one of the more convincing analyses is that advanced by American historian and scholar James T. Kloppenberg in his Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (2010). For Kloppenberg, these disappointed supporters (and other Obama critics) have misread the president’s ideas from the outset, and more exactly have failed to understand the historical and philosophical figures, traditions, and contexts with which Obama’s ideas and goals should be put in conversation.Kloppenberg’s connections and argument are multi-layered and complex, and deserve to be read and engaged with on their own terms, not in whatever ways I could paraphrase them here. So instead, I wanted to link the specific question of hope, as I framed it yesterday and as Obama did in his DNC speech, to a couple of other American narratives, ideas that have been central to our conversations for a couple centuries now. At the heart of the speech was what I’d call a communal individualism, an emphasis on creating and strengthening a society that gives each American the chance to succeed in his or her own life and arc. Both levels of hope at the heart of that idea—the hope that each individual has that potential, and the hope that a community can collectively help engender it—seem to me indebted to Transcendentalism, to Emersonian ideals such as the importance of each individual’s perspective and the way that those individual perpsectives can be perfected and made part of a collective oversoul. Emerson was perhaps the first modern American liberal, in some key ways, and this link would help further that idea.Transcendentalism is often opposed, in histories of the period and of American thought more generally, to pessimism about human nature—see for example Melville’s famous critique in Moby-Dick’s “Mast Head” chapter for a contemporary such rejoinder to Emersonian ideals. But I would actually argue that another contemporary writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, highlighted in a work such as The Scarlet Letter (1850) a third possibility and American narrative, one that includes both pessimism and hope among its ideas. On the one hand, Hawthorne’s depiction of his two male protagonists, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingsworth, portrays Americans as fundamentally flawed, doomed by their own failings to come up short of our national, spiritual, and human ideals. But on the other, while his female protagonist Hester Prynne is similarly flawed, she also finds a way to remake not only herself but also her community, building from her own darkest moments an identity and a new communal role and ideal that, the novel’s conclusion suggests, influences the town long after she is gone. Hawthorne’s American landscape is far more fraught and flawed than Emerson’s—but at the same time it is more full of possibility and even hope than Melville’s. We would do well to remember this narrative in our analyses of Obama and his presidency as well, I’d say.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/18 Memory Day nominee: Clark Wissler, the pioneering psychologist and anthropologist whose scientific work with Native American cultures, support for his peers, and ideas of culture and personality paved the way for much future research and analysis.
On the links between our contemporary debates over hope and two of America’s most longstanding ideas and ideals.As I argued in yesterday’s post, Barack Obama has recently worked to redefine the images and ideas of hope on which he had campaigned for and won the presidency. Since his election, of course, some of his supporters have done the same in a very different light, disappointed and even disillusioned by what they have seen as the gaps between such ideas and the realities of Obama’s presidency. There would be various ways to analyze that trend, but to my mind one of the more convincing analyses is that advanced by American historian and scholar James T. Kloppenberg in his Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (2010). For Kloppenberg, these disappointed supporters (and other Obama critics) have misread the president’s ideas from the outset, and more exactly have failed to understand the historical and philosophical figures, traditions, and contexts with which Obama’s ideas and goals should be put in conversation.Kloppenberg’s connections and argument are multi-layered and complex, and deserve to be read and engaged with on their own terms, not in whatever ways I could paraphrase them here. So instead, I wanted to link the specific question of hope, as I framed it yesterday and as Obama did in his DNC speech, to a couple of other American narratives, ideas that have been central to our conversations for a couple centuries now. At the heart of the speech was what I’d call a communal individualism, an emphasis on creating and strengthening a society that gives each American the chance to succeed in his or her own life and arc. Both levels of hope at the heart of that idea—the hope that each individual has that potential, and the hope that a community can collectively help engender it—seem to me indebted to Transcendentalism, to Emersonian ideals such as the importance of each individual’s perspective and the way that those individual perpsectives can be perfected and made part of a collective oversoul. Emerson was perhaps the first modern American liberal, in some key ways, and this link would help further that idea.Transcendentalism is often opposed, in histories of the period and of American thought more generally, to pessimism about human nature—see for example Melville’s famous critique in Moby-Dick’s “Mast Head” chapter for a contemporary such rejoinder to Emersonian ideals. But I would actually argue that another contemporary writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, highlighted in a work such as The Scarlet Letter (1850) a third possibility and American narrative, one that includes both pessimism and hope among its ideas. On the one hand, Hawthorne’s depiction of his two male protagonists, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingsworth, portrays Americans as fundamentally flawed, doomed by their own failings to come up short of our national, spiritual, and human ideals. But on the other, while his female protagonist Hester Prynne is similarly flawed, she also finds a way to remake not only herself but also her community, building from her own darkest moments an identity and a new communal role and ideal that, the novel’s conclusion suggests, influences the town long after she is gone. Hawthorne’s American landscape is far more fraught and flawed than Emerson’s—but at the same time it is more full of possibility and even hope than Melville’s. We would do well to remember this narrative in our analyses of Obama and his presidency as well, I’d say.Next in the series tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Texts, takes, thoughts on hope in America?9/18 Memory Day nominee: Clark Wissler, the pioneering psychologist and anthropologist whose scientific work with Native American cultures, support for his peers, and ideas of culture and personality paved the way for much future research and analysis.
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