Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 419
February 23, 2012
February 23, 2012: Images of Charleston
[This week's posts, following the lead of Tuesday's Mardi Gras-inspired celebration of New Orleans and friends, will take American Studies approaches to a few complex and interesting American cities. This is the second in the series.]
Three distinct yet ultimately interconnected narratives and histories of one of America's prettiest and most complex cities.
I don't know that Charleston will ever escape the shadow of Fort Sumter, the legacy of the shots fired on that federal fortress in the city's harbor on April 12th, 1861; those shots constituted the action that (by most historians' accounts) truly inaugurated the Civil War, and while of course they were simply the culmination of a variety of other histories, they nonetheless stand alone as the defining moment that ushered in four of the most destructive and divisive years in the nation's history. Nor is it coincidence that such a moment occurred in Charleston—South Carolina had been the first state to secede from the union, nearly three weeks before the second state (Mississippi) did so, and Charleston, perhaps the state's most significant city, was thus one of the hotbeds of Confederate activity from the outset. If Charleston will indeed forever be associated with the outbreak of the war, that wouldn't necessarily be out of line.
Yet to my mind, if we American Studiers are to identify a defining face for Charleston throughout those subsequent war years, it's a pretty complex and compelling one: the face of Mary Boykin Chesnut, whose wartime diary Mary Chesnut's Civil War remains one of our literary history's most singular and significant works. Chesnut's book, in its multiple editions but most especially in the Pulitzer-winning version edited by C. Vann Woodward (and available at that link), reflects an intimate, evolving, self-reflective, contradictory, and never uninteresting version of the city (although Mary and her politically active husband moved to other Confederate sites during the war as well) and the period. Mary is not without her prejudices and limitations, of course, but she is also, as the diary consistently reveals, nothing less than a three-dimensional and vital American, someone whose voice and identity, perspective and experiences can greatly enhance our sense of our national histories and communities.
Compelling as Mary Chesnut was and remains, however, it's two fictional Charlestonians whom I would nominate as the best faces to represent the city's complex American histories and communities. Those two are Porgy and Bess, two African American residents of the fictional Catfish Row (based directly on the city's Cabbage Row) in the early decades of the twentieth century; they were originally created by novelist DuBose Heyward in Porgy (1925), moved into a play of the same name two years later by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, and brought to international and lasting prominence in Heyward and George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess (1935). That latter work, which Gershwin famously called an American folk opera, could be said to have originated an entire new artistic genre, one that brought the lives and voices (in every sense) of its title characters and their community to the kind of heightened and epic status that opera always conveys. While it has been met with its share of critiques and controversy, and is certainly not without its racial stereotypes or limitations, the opera also foregrounds a side of Charleston and America that we would do well to locate at the heart of the city's histories and stories.
So is Charleston Fort Sumter and those defining shots? Mary Sumter and her revealing diary? Porgy and Bess and their street and saga? Yup. Next city post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any cities you'd nominate for the final post? I'm open to suggestions!
2/23 Memory Day nominee: W.E.B. Du Bois, who was the subject of my (sadly lost) introductory blog post for many reasons that can be boiled down to this one: I believe him to be the single most impressive and inspiring American. Let's just make it official: from now on my Hall will be known as the Du Bois Hall of American Inspiration.
Three distinct yet ultimately interconnected narratives and histories of one of America's prettiest and most complex cities.
I don't know that Charleston will ever escape the shadow of Fort Sumter, the legacy of the shots fired on that federal fortress in the city's harbor on April 12th, 1861; those shots constituted the action that (by most historians' accounts) truly inaugurated the Civil War, and while of course they were simply the culmination of a variety of other histories, they nonetheless stand alone as the defining moment that ushered in four of the most destructive and divisive years in the nation's history. Nor is it coincidence that such a moment occurred in Charleston—South Carolina had been the first state to secede from the union, nearly three weeks before the second state (Mississippi) did so, and Charleston, perhaps the state's most significant city, was thus one of the hotbeds of Confederate activity from the outset. If Charleston will indeed forever be associated with the outbreak of the war, that wouldn't necessarily be out of line.
Yet to my mind, if we American Studiers are to identify a defining face for Charleston throughout those subsequent war years, it's a pretty complex and compelling one: the face of Mary Boykin Chesnut, whose wartime diary Mary Chesnut's Civil War remains one of our literary history's most singular and significant works. Chesnut's book, in its multiple editions but most especially in the Pulitzer-winning version edited by C. Vann Woodward (and available at that link), reflects an intimate, evolving, self-reflective, contradictory, and never uninteresting version of the city (although Mary and her politically active husband moved to other Confederate sites during the war as well) and the period. Mary is not without her prejudices and limitations, of course, but she is also, as the diary consistently reveals, nothing less than a three-dimensional and vital American, someone whose voice and identity, perspective and experiences can greatly enhance our sense of our national histories and communities.
Compelling as Mary Chesnut was and remains, however, it's two fictional Charlestonians whom I would nominate as the best faces to represent the city's complex American histories and communities. Those two are Porgy and Bess, two African American residents of the fictional Catfish Row (based directly on the city's Cabbage Row) in the early decades of the twentieth century; they were originally created by novelist DuBose Heyward in Porgy (1925), moved into a play of the same name two years later by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, and brought to international and lasting prominence in Heyward and George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess (1935). That latter work, which Gershwin famously called an American folk opera, could be said to have originated an entire new artistic genre, one that brought the lives and voices (in every sense) of its title characters and their community to the kind of heightened and epic status that opera always conveys. While it has been met with its share of critiques and controversy, and is certainly not without its racial stereotypes or limitations, the opera also foregrounds a side of Charleston and America that we would do well to locate at the heart of the city's histories and stories.
So is Charleston Fort Sumter and those defining shots? Mary Sumter and her revealing diary? Porgy and Bess and their street and saga? Yup. Next city post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any cities you'd nominate for the final post? I'm open to suggestions!
2/23 Memory Day nominee: W.E.B. Du Bois, who was the subject of my (sadly lost) introductory blog post for many reasons that can be boiled down to this one: I believe him to be the single most impressive and inspiring American. Let's just make it official: from now on my Hall will be known as the Du Bois Hall of American Inspiration.
February 22, 2012
February 22, 2012: Chinatown and Los Angeles
[This week's posts, following the lead of Tuesday's Mardi Gras-inspired celebration of New Orleans and friends, will take American Studies approaches to a few complex and interesting American cities. This is the first in the series.]
What one of the great American films can help us analyze about the history and identity of one of the most complex American cities.
I don't think I need to use too much space here arguing for the greatness of Chinatown (1974) . By any measure, from contemporary awards (ie, nominated for 11 Oscars and 10 BAFTAs and 7 Golden Globes) to historical appreciations (named to the National Film Registry by the Film Preservation Board in 1991) to ridiculously obvious criteria (a recent poll of British film critics named it "the best film of all time"!), Roman Polanski's film noir (although it feels at least as right to write "Robert Towne's film noir," since the screenplay is to my mind the greatest one ever filmed) about a world-weary private detective and pretty much everything else in 1937 Los Angeles is one of the most acclaimed and honored American films. It stars Jack Nicholson at the absolute height of his career and powers; features a pitch-perfect supporting cast including legendary director John Huston as one of the great villains of all time; centers on a multi-generational Southern California familial and historical mystery that would make Ross MacDonald proud; is equal parts suspenseful, funny, sexy, dark, and emotionally affecting; and has the single greatest final line ever (not gonna spoil it or any main aspect of the plot here!). If you haven't seen it yet, I can't recommend strongly enough that you do so.On top of all of that, I think Chinatown is one of the very few hugely successful and popular American films that is deeply invested in complex and significant American Studies kinds of questions (interestingly, it lost the Best Picture Oscar to another such film, The Godfather Part II ). By the 1970s it was likely very difficult to remember—and is of course even more unfamiliar in our own Hollywood-dominated cultural moment—just how unlikely of a site Los Angeles had once been for one of the nation's largest and most important cities; despite its close proximity to the Pacific Ocean, LA is more or less built in a desert, and by the turn of the 20th century, when the city's population had just moved past the 100,000 mark, it seemed impossible for the city to provide enough water to support that community. It took the efforts of one particularly visionary city planner, William Mulholland, to solve that problem; Mulholland and his team designed and constructed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a mammoth project that, once completed in 1913, assured that the city could continue to support its ever-growing (especially with the rise of Hollywood in the 1920s) population.
But if that's the basic historical narrative of LA's turning point, an American Studies perspective would want to push a lot further on a number of different factors and components within that: where the water was coming from, and what happened in those more rural and agricultural communities as a result of the aqueduct's creation; how much of the money involved was public, how much was private and from whom, and if the project benefited the whole of the city equally or if its effects were similarly linked to class and status; what role LA's significant diversity—even in those early years it already included sizeable Mexican, African, and Asian American populations, for example—played in this process; whether the city's built environment, its architecture and neighborhoods and streets and etc, shifted with the new availability of water, or whether there were other factors that more strongly influenced its planning; and so on. And perhaps the most impressive thing about Chinatown is that it manages at least to gesture at almost all of those questions and issues, without becoming for even a moment the kind of (forgive me) dry historical drama that they might suggest.I've been fortunate enough to spend a good bit of time in and around two of America's oldest and most storied cities, Philadelphia and Boston; and have been close enough to Washington, DC, and New York to feel like I have a pretty good sense of those two equally foundational (at least for the last couple hundred years) locales. But one of the most amazing attributes of this ginormous nation of ours is the number of similarly unique urban settings, each with its own complex and multipart history and story. In an earlier post I recommended Cable's The Grandissimes as a fictional introduction to New Orleans; Chinatown makes for a pretty great cinematic intro to LA. Next city post tomorrow,
BenPS. More links:
1) Some interesting interviews on the film that were included as DVD Extras: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDt7lXdE58A2) David Wyatt's Five Fires, a very engaging history of California and one of the best works of American Studies scholarship I know; its section on Chinatown begins on page 140: http://books.google.com/books?id=wovoJWGdsOsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=five+fires&source=bl&ots=IBB5IwSCnR&sig=lwAstc7O-6RUeq8fOFy0tUBc1m0&hl=en&ei=aTb5TI_SKcGclgfs4sHhBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=chinatown&f=false
3) Any Los Angeles texts or contexts you'd highlight?
2/22 Memory Day nominee: James Russell Lowell, who while not as talented a versifier as his New England peers, nor as innovative as Whitman, enjoyed a significantly more wide-ranging and multi-faceted career than any other 19th century America poet: from his unique and vital satires (such as "The Biglow Papers") to his insightful literary criticism; his analyses of communal and political life to his philosophical and poetic embraces of American and human ideals; and his exemplary public scholarship, combining a Harvard professorship with his long tenure editing The Atlantic Monthly.[image error]
What one of the great American films can help us analyze about the history and identity of one of the most complex American cities.
I don't think I need to use too much space here arguing for the greatness of Chinatown (1974) . By any measure, from contemporary awards (ie, nominated for 11 Oscars and 10 BAFTAs and 7 Golden Globes) to historical appreciations (named to the National Film Registry by the Film Preservation Board in 1991) to ridiculously obvious criteria (a recent poll of British film critics named it "the best film of all time"!), Roman Polanski's film noir (although it feels at least as right to write "Robert Towne's film noir," since the screenplay is to my mind the greatest one ever filmed) about a world-weary private detective and pretty much everything else in 1937 Los Angeles is one of the most acclaimed and honored American films. It stars Jack Nicholson at the absolute height of his career and powers; features a pitch-perfect supporting cast including legendary director John Huston as one of the great villains of all time; centers on a multi-generational Southern California familial and historical mystery that would make Ross MacDonald proud; is equal parts suspenseful, funny, sexy, dark, and emotionally affecting; and has the single greatest final line ever (not gonna spoil it or any main aspect of the plot here!). If you haven't seen it yet, I can't recommend strongly enough that you do so.On top of all of that, I think Chinatown is one of the very few hugely successful and popular American films that is deeply invested in complex and significant American Studies kinds of questions (interestingly, it lost the Best Picture Oscar to another such film, The Godfather Part II ). By the 1970s it was likely very difficult to remember—and is of course even more unfamiliar in our own Hollywood-dominated cultural moment—just how unlikely of a site Los Angeles had once been for one of the nation's largest and most important cities; despite its close proximity to the Pacific Ocean, LA is more or less built in a desert, and by the turn of the 20th century, when the city's population had just moved past the 100,000 mark, it seemed impossible for the city to provide enough water to support that community. It took the efforts of one particularly visionary city planner, William Mulholland, to solve that problem; Mulholland and his team designed and constructed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a mammoth project that, once completed in 1913, assured that the city could continue to support its ever-growing (especially with the rise of Hollywood in the 1920s) population.
But if that's the basic historical narrative of LA's turning point, an American Studies perspective would want to push a lot further on a number of different factors and components within that: where the water was coming from, and what happened in those more rural and agricultural communities as a result of the aqueduct's creation; how much of the money involved was public, how much was private and from whom, and if the project benefited the whole of the city equally or if its effects were similarly linked to class and status; what role LA's significant diversity—even in those early years it already included sizeable Mexican, African, and Asian American populations, for example—played in this process; whether the city's built environment, its architecture and neighborhoods and streets and etc, shifted with the new availability of water, or whether there were other factors that more strongly influenced its planning; and so on. And perhaps the most impressive thing about Chinatown is that it manages at least to gesture at almost all of those questions and issues, without becoming for even a moment the kind of (forgive me) dry historical drama that they might suggest.I've been fortunate enough to spend a good bit of time in and around two of America's oldest and most storied cities, Philadelphia and Boston; and have been close enough to Washington, DC, and New York to feel like I have a pretty good sense of those two equally foundational (at least for the last couple hundred years) locales. But one of the most amazing attributes of this ginormous nation of ours is the number of similarly unique urban settings, each with its own complex and multipart history and story. In an earlier post I recommended Cable's The Grandissimes as a fictional introduction to New Orleans; Chinatown makes for a pretty great cinematic intro to LA. Next city post tomorrow,
BenPS. More links:
1) Some interesting interviews on the film that were included as DVD Extras: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDt7lXdE58A2) David Wyatt's Five Fires, a very engaging history of California and one of the best works of American Studies scholarship I know; its section on Chinatown begins on page 140: http://books.google.com/books?id=wovoJWGdsOsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=five+fires&source=bl&ots=IBB5IwSCnR&sig=lwAstc7O-6RUeq8fOFy0tUBc1m0&hl=en&ei=aTb5TI_SKcGclgfs4sHhBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=chinatown&f=false
3) Any Los Angeles texts or contexts you'd highlight?
2/22 Memory Day nominee: James Russell Lowell, who while not as talented a versifier as his New England peers, nor as innovative as Whitman, enjoyed a significantly more wide-ranging and multi-faceted career than any other 19th century America poet: from his unique and vital satires (such as "The Biglow Papers") to his insightful literary criticism; his analyses of communal and political life to his philosophical and poetic embraces of American and human ideals; and his exemplary public scholarship, combining a Harvard professorship with his long tenure editing The Atlantic Monthly.[image error]
February 21, 2012
February 21, 2012: The Big Easy and Friends
[In honor of Mardi Gras, here's a post from last spring on New Orleans and other cities that I have visited only once (thus far) in my life and yet that in that brief time taught me something significant about America, each in its own very unique way. First in a series on American Studies and American cities, with all new posts starting Wednesday!]
5) Rome: I was fortunate enough to spend a summer month in Rome, for a graduate course, and certainly much of what made that time so memorable was just how different it was from anywhere I've traveled within the United States. Yet perhaps the most exemplary such difference actually helped me to understand something that America could do much more successfully—live with our past. I was struck in Rome by how much the truly ancient historical presences there abut and even converse with the most modern ones—you're walking down a 21st century street, turn a corner, and there's the Coliseum. Parking lots run right up to the edge of centuries- (if not millennia-) old ruins. You can dip your feet in fountains that might well have been built by a Caesar. Compared to our American tendency to curtain off the "historical" parts of our cities, to treat them as monuments to be visited and impressed by and then left behind as we return to our modern lives and settings, I think the Roman version is infinitely more accurate to the continuing presence and meaning of the past, and potentially a lot more healthy and productive for a society.4) Las Vegas: And now for something completely different. I didn't spend much time in Vegas; my family and I flew in and out of it on a trip to visit Western national parks and stayed there for, I believe, just the one night of our initial arrival. And I was only 12, so what made the most of an impression was the newspaper vending machines on the Strip that contained advertisements for escort services; perhaps there's an AmericanStudies lesson in that, but if so it's a bit too bleak for me to contemplate. Only slightly less bleak, though, were the interconnected two lessons of the One Armed Bandits: first their ubiquity, there were slot machines immediately past the airport's boarding gate (ie, as soon as they could legally be there, there they were), in the Denny's where we had dinner, you name it; and second their destructiveness, as I watched (during the literally five minutes we spent in a casino) a woman win a couple thousand dollars in quarters on a slot and, without pausing, start feeding them back in again. One of the first times I truly understand just how willing Americans are to feed into the worst situations of their fellow citizens, especially those who can least afford it; probably a human lesson, but certainly one that appears far too often in our national history and identity.
3) Los Angeles: But don't worry, not just in the potentially bleak ways that could continue those Vegas lessons. Sure, LA, where my wife and I spent a couple days prior to a Southern California wedding a few years back, features prominently the Hollywood Sign and everything that it represents, and in the couple hours we spent walking up and down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards I felt plenty of that gilded surface and saw plenty of the contrasting, darker realities lying just beneath or beside it. But we also visited the site of the La Brea tar pits, which now features a museum that provides some pretty in-depth geological and paleontological examinations of the pits and the world in which they existed; and as we strolled around the site with our two-month-old younger son, we ogled the life-size recreation of a dying mammoth alongside three different elementary school class field trips: one composed largely of Hispanic American kids, one a mixture of African American and Asian American kids, and one that could have come straight out of an Iowa farm town (and maybe they did, although that'd be one heck of a field trip). Only in LA, no?2) Sitka, Alaska: I spent a week in Sitka with my wife, who was starting a month-long visiting medical residency there. That residency alone, and the work it enabled my wife to do with the largely impoverished and mostly Native American population whom the hospital served, was an inspiring American idea and practice. But even the guy who was just there to see the sights and work on the revisions of his first book got to experience a pretty amazingly American morning: I started by visiting the historic fort, which had belonged first to the Russians and then (after Seward's folly) to the American settlers; then walked down to the site of the Aleut community that had existed in an uneasy (and far too often violent) relationship to those European settlements; and ended by kayaking out into the harbor, where we got a very overt reminder of the kinds of natural power that the American frontier had always offered and still offers in Alaska: a couple thousand pound sea lion surfaced just a few feet away from our kayaks, said hi (I think), and then moved on with his evening. All four of those communities—Russian Americans, Anglo Americans, Native Americans, sea lion Americans—still occupy Sitka in one way or another, and it's better and more American for the mixture.
1) New Orleans: I wrote about New Orleans through the lens of Cable's The Grandissimes (1881) in one of my first few posts, and much of what I said about Cable's novel, and especially its multi-lingual, multi-national, multicultural, multi-perspectival mélange of histories and peoples and governments and stories, is what likewise makes the Crescent City such a pitch-perfect American space. We visited in the winter of 2004, just about exactly a year before Katrina hit, but certainly that event, both in the horrific inequities and brutalities it exposed and in the inspiring ways that the city has begun to rise from that watery abyss, only amplifies how centrally American, in the worst and the best ways, New Orleans has always been and most definitely continues to be. Makes we want to go back!I should, and hopefully will, return to all of these places, with the possible exception of Vegas. But in that city, as in each of these cases, what happened there most definitely did not stay there—I brought it home with me, and with it a more complex and layered and meaningful understanding of America and all that I have yet to learn about it. Next city post tomorrow,
BenPS. What have you learned from the places you've gone?
2/21 Memory Day nominee: A tie between two Civil Rights pioneers and leaders: Barbara Jordan, whose legislative achievements and legacy go far beyond being the first black female Congresswoman from the South; and John Lewis, who continues to lead in Congress but whose efforts with SNCC and the Freedom Rides were even more vital and inspiring.[image error]
5) Rome: I was fortunate enough to spend a summer month in Rome, for a graduate course, and certainly much of what made that time so memorable was just how different it was from anywhere I've traveled within the United States. Yet perhaps the most exemplary such difference actually helped me to understand something that America could do much more successfully—live with our past. I was struck in Rome by how much the truly ancient historical presences there abut and even converse with the most modern ones—you're walking down a 21st century street, turn a corner, and there's the Coliseum. Parking lots run right up to the edge of centuries- (if not millennia-) old ruins. You can dip your feet in fountains that might well have been built by a Caesar. Compared to our American tendency to curtain off the "historical" parts of our cities, to treat them as monuments to be visited and impressed by and then left behind as we return to our modern lives and settings, I think the Roman version is infinitely more accurate to the continuing presence and meaning of the past, and potentially a lot more healthy and productive for a society.4) Las Vegas: And now for something completely different. I didn't spend much time in Vegas; my family and I flew in and out of it on a trip to visit Western national parks and stayed there for, I believe, just the one night of our initial arrival. And I was only 12, so what made the most of an impression was the newspaper vending machines on the Strip that contained advertisements for escort services; perhaps there's an AmericanStudies lesson in that, but if so it's a bit too bleak for me to contemplate. Only slightly less bleak, though, were the interconnected two lessons of the One Armed Bandits: first their ubiquity, there were slot machines immediately past the airport's boarding gate (ie, as soon as they could legally be there, there they were), in the Denny's where we had dinner, you name it; and second their destructiveness, as I watched (during the literally five minutes we spent in a casino) a woman win a couple thousand dollars in quarters on a slot and, without pausing, start feeding them back in again. One of the first times I truly understand just how willing Americans are to feed into the worst situations of their fellow citizens, especially those who can least afford it; probably a human lesson, but certainly one that appears far too often in our national history and identity.
3) Los Angeles: But don't worry, not just in the potentially bleak ways that could continue those Vegas lessons. Sure, LA, where my wife and I spent a couple days prior to a Southern California wedding a few years back, features prominently the Hollywood Sign and everything that it represents, and in the couple hours we spent walking up and down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards I felt plenty of that gilded surface and saw plenty of the contrasting, darker realities lying just beneath or beside it. But we also visited the site of the La Brea tar pits, which now features a museum that provides some pretty in-depth geological and paleontological examinations of the pits and the world in which they existed; and as we strolled around the site with our two-month-old younger son, we ogled the life-size recreation of a dying mammoth alongside three different elementary school class field trips: one composed largely of Hispanic American kids, one a mixture of African American and Asian American kids, and one that could have come straight out of an Iowa farm town (and maybe they did, although that'd be one heck of a field trip). Only in LA, no?2) Sitka, Alaska: I spent a week in Sitka with my wife, who was starting a month-long visiting medical residency there. That residency alone, and the work it enabled my wife to do with the largely impoverished and mostly Native American population whom the hospital served, was an inspiring American idea and practice. But even the guy who was just there to see the sights and work on the revisions of his first book got to experience a pretty amazingly American morning: I started by visiting the historic fort, which had belonged first to the Russians and then (after Seward's folly) to the American settlers; then walked down to the site of the Aleut community that had existed in an uneasy (and far too often violent) relationship to those European settlements; and ended by kayaking out into the harbor, where we got a very overt reminder of the kinds of natural power that the American frontier had always offered and still offers in Alaska: a couple thousand pound sea lion surfaced just a few feet away from our kayaks, said hi (I think), and then moved on with his evening. All four of those communities—Russian Americans, Anglo Americans, Native Americans, sea lion Americans—still occupy Sitka in one way or another, and it's better and more American for the mixture.
1) New Orleans: I wrote about New Orleans through the lens of Cable's The Grandissimes (1881) in one of my first few posts, and much of what I said about Cable's novel, and especially its multi-lingual, multi-national, multicultural, multi-perspectival mélange of histories and peoples and governments and stories, is what likewise makes the Crescent City such a pitch-perfect American space. We visited in the winter of 2004, just about exactly a year before Katrina hit, but certainly that event, both in the horrific inequities and brutalities it exposed and in the inspiring ways that the city has begun to rise from that watery abyss, only amplifies how centrally American, in the worst and the best ways, New Orleans has always been and most definitely continues to be. Makes we want to go back!I should, and hopefully will, return to all of these places, with the possible exception of Vegas. But in that city, as in each of these cases, what happened there most definitely did not stay there—I brought it home with me, and with it a more complex and layered and meaningful understanding of America and all that I have yet to learn about it. Next city post tomorrow,
BenPS. What have you learned from the places you've gone?
2/21 Memory Day nominee: A tie between two Civil Rights pioneers and leaders: Barbara Jordan, whose legislative achievements and legacy go far beyond being the first black female Congresswoman from the South; and John Lewis, who continues to lead in Congress but whose efforts with SNCC and the Freedom Rides were even more vital and inspiring.[image error]
February 20, 2012
February 20, 2012: Precedents Day
My suggestion, repeated from last President's Day, for how we can make this national holiday into a more meaningful remembrance of our leaders and histories.
One of the most nonsensical of our current national narratives (emphasis on the national—the top ten thousand most nonsensical current narratives stem from the general area of one Mr. Beck, but I'm focusing here on narratives that have achieved a pretty broad and cross-community level of support and buy-in) is the idea that we have lost a certain kind of civility in our public or political discourse, and that one of our main goals should be finding and reemphasizing it. Civility may or may not be a worthy goal in and of itself, but it has most definitely never been central to our public and political cultures; even a few minutes' reading of the materials related to the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates over the Constitution, the controversies over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the extremely heated and divisive Adams v. Jefferson election of 1800, and many other foundational moments should be more than enough to make clear how uncivil those cultures have often been from the outset.That isn't necessarily a good thing, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's a historical reailty thing, and the goodness or badness of it would have a lot more to do with our own perspectives and agendas in narrating the histories. And the truth of the matter, as it so often is when it comes to our national narratives—hence this blog, at least in significant measure—is that we have precious little interest in understanding or narrating the historical realities, especially since they so often refuse to fit neatly into our simplifying ideas (such as "We used to be one big happy family who were nice to each other, and now we're so divided and partisan and mean"). Much has been made of a particular line from President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial service, when he expressed his hope that the tragedy's deaths could "help usher in more civility in our public discourse"; but I would contend that the far more significant sentiment came later in the same sentence, when he called instead for "a more civil and honest public discourse." Again, whether or not civility is a worthwhile pursuit, I believe that honesty is most definitely a more worthwhile and valuable one—and, not unrelatedly, that an honest assessment of our history would force us to admit that we have never been particularly civil.
So on this President's Day, I'd like to set, in my own small way and space, a precedent for future remembrances of our national leaders: honesty rather than celebration, accuracy to history's complexities rather than "respect for the office of the president" (which is really just another way of saying civility) and all that. This does not, I hope it goes without saying, mean simply revisionist attacks on our presidents; those are just as simplifying, just as dishonest, as any hagiographies could be. Instead, I mean genuinely complex, honest engagement with the whole pictures; not necessarily of every president (to put it uncivilly, who really gives a fuck about Chester Arthur?), but of the ones we particularly want to remember as prominent parts of our histories and identities. Obviously such honest engagement would require more time and effort than a simple President's Day remark allows, but still, even in the shortest lines we can work in starting points toward it: Thomas Jefferson, articulate defender of democracy and slaveowner who almost certainly conducted a multi-decade affair with a slave, impassioned opponent of the Alien and Sedition Acts and imperialist who more than doubled the nation's lands with the likely unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase; Abraham Lincoln, who held a nation together and in the process decimated fundamental civil liberties like habeas corpus, who without question would have been willing to sacrifice any pretense of abolitionism to preserve the union but who once the war had begun was a vocal and steadfast defender of African American rights; Ulysses Grant, who presided over the most corrupt administration of the century but wrote and worked ceaselessly for freedmen's rights; Teddy Roosevelt, who contributed greatly to negative stereotypes of Native Americans and the Filipino insurgency but helped solidify the National Park System and entrench Progressive reforms; and so on.None of those get close to capturing the complexities of each man and administration, and the precedent would be most ideal if it just inspired more reading and research, more investigation and analysis of these historical figures and periods and the many issues and questions to which they connect. And if in so doing we got a bit closer to the historical realities of who and what we've been, and started to emphasize honesty and accuracy more than either agendas or civility, well, that'd be a day worth celebrating each year. More tomorrow,
BenPS. Links:
1) Full text of Grant's eloquent and memorable Memoirs (1886): http://www.bartleby.com/1011/2) Full text of Roosevelt's influential and troubling The Strenuous Life (1900): http://www.bartleby.com/58/
3) What else should we remember?
2/20 Memory Day nominee (no known birthdate so date of death): Frederick Douglass, one of the most significant and impressive, eloquent and brilliant, and vital and inspiring Americans, full stop.[image error]
One of the most nonsensical of our current national narratives (emphasis on the national—the top ten thousand most nonsensical current narratives stem from the general area of one Mr. Beck, but I'm focusing here on narratives that have achieved a pretty broad and cross-community level of support and buy-in) is the idea that we have lost a certain kind of civility in our public or political discourse, and that one of our main goals should be finding and reemphasizing it. Civility may or may not be a worthy goal in and of itself, but it has most definitely never been central to our public and political cultures; even a few minutes' reading of the materials related to the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates over the Constitution, the controversies over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the extremely heated and divisive Adams v. Jefferson election of 1800, and many other foundational moments should be more than enough to make clear how uncivil those cultures have often been from the outset.That isn't necessarily a good thing, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's a historical reailty thing, and the goodness or badness of it would have a lot more to do with our own perspectives and agendas in narrating the histories. And the truth of the matter, as it so often is when it comes to our national narratives—hence this blog, at least in significant measure—is that we have precious little interest in understanding or narrating the historical realities, especially since they so often refuse to fit neatly into our simplifying ideas (such as "We used to be one big happy family who were nice to each other, and now we're so divided and partisan and mean"). Much has been made of a particular line from President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial service, when he expressed his hope that the tragedy's deaths could "help usher in more civility in our public discourse"; but I would contend that the far more significant sentiment came later in the same sentence, when he called instead for "a more civil and honest public discourse." Again, whether or not civility is a worthwhile pursuit, I believe that honesty is most definitely a more worthwhile and valuable one—and, not unrelatedly, that an honest assessment of our history would force us to admit that we have never been particularly civil.
So on this President's Day, I'd like to set, in my own small way and space, a precedent for future remembrances of our national leaders: honesty rather than celebration, accuracy to history's complexities rather than "respect for the office of the president" (which is really just another way of saying civility) and all that. This does not, I hope it goes without saying, mean simply revisionist attacks on our presidents; those are just as simplifying, just as dishonest, as any hagiographies could be. Instead, I mean genuinely complex, honest engagement with the whole pictures; not necessarily of every president (to put it uncivilly, who really gives a fuck about Chester Arthur?), but of the ones we particularly want to remember as prominent parts of our histories and identities. Obviously such honest engagement would require more time and effort than a simple President's Day remark allows, but still, even in the shortest lines we can work in starting points toward it: Thomas Jefferson, articulate defender of democracy and slaveowner who almost certainly conducted a multi-decade affair with a slave, impassioned opponent of the Alien and Sedition Acts and imperialist who more than doubled the nation's lands with the likely unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase; Abraham Lincoln, who held a nation together and in the process decimated fundamental civil liberties like habeas corpus, who without question would have been willing to sacrifice any pretense of abolitionism to preserve the union but who once the war had begun was a vocal and steadfast defender of African American rights; Ulysses Grant, who presided over the most corrupt administration of the century but wrote and worked ceaselessly for freedmen's rights; Teddy Roosevelt, who contributed greatly to negative stereotypes of Native Americans and the Filipino insurgency but helped solidify the National Park System and entrench Progressive reforms; and so on.None of those get close to capturing the complexities of each man and administration, and the precedent would be most ideal if it just inspired more reading and research, more investigation and analysis of these historical figures and periods and the many issues and questions to which they connect. And if in so doing we got a bit closer to the historical realities of who and what we've been, and started to emphasize honesty and accuracy more than either agendas or civility, well, that'd be a day worth celebrating each year. More tomorrow,
BenPS. Links:
1) Full text of Grant's eloquent and memorable Memoirs (1886): http://www.bartleby.com/1011/2) Full text of Roosevelt's influential and troubling The Strenuous Life (1900): http://www.bartleby.com/58/
3) What else should we remember?
2/20 Memory Day nominee (no known birthdate so date of death): Frederick Douglass, one of the most significant and impressive, eloquent and brilliant, and vital and inspiring Americans, full stop.[image error]
February 18, 2012
February 18-19, 2012: Tim McCaffrey's Guest Post
[I met Tim McCaffrey when he was getting his Master's in English from Fitchburg State's MA program; if he ever gets the chance to teach high school English, or History, or anything, his students and school would be blessed to have him. But in any case he already connects to audiences through his funny and moving newspaper columns, his blog, and his historical and cultural interests and ideas.]
Jackie Robinson is well known as the man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947. His achievement is a touchstone of the Civil Rights movement, and the story of how Robinson was able to withstand the institutional and personal racism he faced during his years with the Brooklyn Dodgers has been documented in writing an on film. What may not be quite as well known, however, is that three years earlier, then Army Lieutenant Jackie Robinson was court martialed following an incident where he refused to move to the back of a bus in Fort Hood, Texas – eleven years before Rosa Parks took her famous stand in Alabama.In his autobiography, I Never Had It Made, Robinson describes what occurred after he sat next to the light-skinned African-American wife of a fellow officer:
"The driver glanced into his rear-view mirror and saw what he thought was a white woman talking with a black second lieutenant. [The driver] became visibly upset, stopped the bus, and came back to order me to move to the rear. I didn't stop talking, didn't even look at him…I had no intention of being intimidated into moving to the back of the bus."The driver eventually returned to his seat and continued the route, but continued to shout threats at Robinson. At the last stop, the driver ran off the bus and called the military police, who escorted the lieutenant to the duty officer.
Robinson was not afraid to stand up for himself, and he reacted strongly when asked questions like, "Don't you know you've got no right sitting up there in the white part of the bus?" An argument ensued, and Robinson was charged with disrespecting a senior officer and failing to obey a direct command. Since Robinson had been nationally famous for his achievements as a college athlete (he had starred in football at UCLA and was the first person to letter in four different sports at the school) the Army brass might have been expected to quietly make his case go away. Yet the case was pursued. Robinson's commanding officer, a Colonel Bates, knew that Robinson was a man of integrity who had been treated unfairly and refused to sign the court martial papers, but Robinson was in the middle of a transfer to a different battalion at the time of the incident and his new commander willingly signed the papers. Lt. Robinson's fame did mean that if the powers that were in the Army wanted to avoid negative publicity, there would have to be a fair trial – a courtesy that might not have been afforded to an African-American of lesser stature in 1944.
Also, perhaps due to the high profile nature of the case, Robinson had other advantages. He wrote, "My first break was that the legal officer assigned to defend me was a Southerner who had the decency to admit to me that he didn't think he could be objective. He recommended a young…officer who did a great job on my behalf."In the end, a combination of Robinson's testimony, his lawyer's skill, and a glowing commentary on Robinson's character by Colonel Bates resulted in an acquittal on all charges. As Robinson himself said, "…luckily there were some members of that court-martial board who had the honesty to realize what was going on."
From Robinson's comments, it is clear that he did not expect fair treatment, and that he considered it fortunate to receive an even break. It is frightening to think how many other African-Americans, who didn't have the advantage of the public spotlight, may have been railroaded into unfair trials and undeserved punishments. Jackie Robinson was granted an honorary discharge from the Army shortly after his acquittal. He joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1945. He then played a season with the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league team before joining the Dodgers and changing professional sports forever. Following his baseball career, Robinson remained active in the Civil Rights movement. His status as a great American and an important historical figure is unquestioned. When the need arose for someone to stand up and challenge the racist status quo, Jackie Robinson was always willing to answer the call, but as he wrote, "…there is one irrefutable fact of my life which has determined much of what happened to me: I was a black man in a white world. I never had it made."
A couple of links if you want to learn more:http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/spring/robinson.html
http://www.commandposts.com/2011/07/the-court-martial-of-jackie-robinson/Thanks, Tim!
More next week,Ben
2/18 Memory Day nominee: Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and scholar whose best novel, one amazing short story, and pioneering work of literary criticism might all be better than her (still plenty great) best-known novel.2/19 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Karen Silkwood, the nuclear power plant worker and activist whose inspiring life and mysterious death made her an ideal subject for one of the 1980s most interesting American Studies films; and Amy Tan, whose multigenerational, transnational American novels and non-fiction pieces on family, heritage, and identity I'd put right there with Morrison's and every other 20th century great's.
Jackie Robinson is well known as the man who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947. His achievement is a touchstone of the Civil Rights movement, and the story of how Robinson was able to withstand the institutional and personal racism he faced during his years with the Brooklyn Dodgers has been documented in writing an on film. What may not be quite as well known, however, is that three years earlier, then Army Lieutenant Jackie Robinson was court martialed following an incident where he refused to move to the back of a bus in Fort Hood, Texas – eleven years before Rosa Parks took her famous stand in Alabama.In his autobiography, I Never Had It Made, Robinson describes what occurred after he sat next to the light-skinned African-American wife of a fellow officer:
"The driver glanced into his rear-view mirror and saw what he thought was a white woman talking with a black second lieutenant. [The driver] became visibly upset, stopped the bus, and came back to order me to move to the rear. I didn't stop talking, didn't even look at him…I had no intention of being intimidated into moving to the back of the bus."The driver eventually returned to his seat and continued the route, but continued to shout threats at Robinson. At the last stop, the driver ran off the bus and called the military police, who escorted the lieutenant to the duty officer.
Robinson was not afraid to stand up for himself, and he reacted strongly when asked questions like, "Don't you know you've got no right sitting up there in the white part of the bus?" An argument ensued, and Robinson was charged with disrespecting a senior officer and failing to obey a direct command. Since Robinson had been nationally famous for his achievements as a college athlete (he had starred in football at UCLA and was the first person to letter in four different sports at the school) the Army brass might have been expected to quietly make his case go away. Yet the case was pursued. Robinson's commanding officer, a Colonel Bates, knew that Robinson was a man of integrity who had been treated unfairly and refused to sign the court martial papers, but Robinson was in the middle of a transfer to a different battalion at the time of the incident and his new commander willingly signed the papers. Lt. Robinson's fame did mean that if the powers that were in the Army wanted to avoid negative publicity, there would have to be a fair trial – a courtesy that might not have been afforded to an African-American of lesser stature in 1944.
Also, perhaps due to the high profile nature of the case, Robinson had other advantages. He wrote, "My first break was that the legal officer assigned to defend me was a Southerner who had the decency to admit to me that he didn't think he could be objective. He recommended a young…officer who did a great job on my behalf."In the end, a combination of Robinson's testimony, his lawyer's skill, and a glowing commentary on Robinson's character by Colonel Bates resulted in an acquittal on all charges. As Robinson himself said, "…luckily there were some members of that court-martial board who had the honesty to realize what was going on."
From Robinson's comments, it is clear that he did not expect fair treatment, and that he considered it fortunate to receive an even break. It is frightening to think how many other African-Americans, who didn't have the advantage of the public spotlight, may have been railroaded into unfair trials and undeserved punishments. Jackie Robinson was granted an honorary discharge from the Army shortly after his acquittal. He joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1945. He then played a season with the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league team before joining the Dodgers and changing professional sports forever. Following his baseball career, Robinson remained active in the Civil Rights movement. His status as a great American and an important historical figure is unquestioned. When the need arose for someone to stand up and challenge the racist status quo, Jackie Robinson was always willing to answer the call, but as he wrote, "…there is one irrefutable fact of my life which has determined much of what happened to me: I was a black man in a white world. I never had it made."
A couple of links if you want to learn more:http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/spring/robinson.html
http://www.commandposts.com/2011/07/the-court-martial-of-jackie-robinson/Thanks, Tim!
More next week,Ben
2/18 Memory Day nominee: Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and scholar whose best novel, one amazing short story, and pioneering work of literary criticism might all be better than her (still plenty great) best-known novel.2/19 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Karen Silkwood, the nuclear power plant worker and activist whose inspiring life and mysterious death made her an ideal subject for one of the 1980s most interesting American Studies films; and Amy Tan, whose multigenerational, transnational American novels and non-fiction pieces on family, heritage, and identity I'd put right there with Morrison's and every other 20th century great's.
February 17, 2012
February 17, 2012: Love Lessons
[The last in the love-inspired series, on some of this American Studier's loves!]
When I was 5 (or so), I fell in love with Edward Ormondroyd's David and the Phoenix (1957). Ormondroyd's whimsical and magical and deeply affecting children's novel taught me a great many serious and life-defining things, from the power of the imagination to recognizing and accepting and growing through loss. But it also taught me about fauns and Pan, about banshees and sea serpents, about some of the truest meanings of mythology and fantasy and story in ways that prepared me for much of what I would love most over the next three decades, from Tolkien and George R.R. Martin to Leslie Marmon Silko and Junot Díaz. And most of all, Ormondroyd, like Lobel and Sendak and Seuss and their peers, taught me to listen and to read.When I was 15 (or thereabouts), I fell in love with Alistair MacLean's H.M.S. Ulysses (1955). MacLean's gripping and thrilling and hugely moving novel of a British destroyer in the North Atlantic during World War II taught me about the deadly serious power of waves and wind, of frost and ice, of the true meaning of a U-Boat lying in ambush or a fighter plane bearing down on a convoy. But it also taught me about cowardice and heroism, about victory and defeat, about some of the truest meanings of sacrifice and brotherhood and history in ways that likewise prepared me for much of what I would love over the next two decades, from O'Brien and Samuel Eliot Morrison to Ambrose Bierce and Kurt Vonnegut. And most of all, MacLean, like Chesnutt and Faulkner and Penn Warren and others, taught me that history is alive and present still.
When I was 25 (more or less), I fell in love with Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000). Nolan's challenging and funny and profoundly unique and perfect film about a man with no memory who cannot escape the past taught me about the ways in which story and structure and style can so fully complement and complicate and enrich theme and meaning, making every moment and frame and choice part of an absolutely unified whole. But it also taught me about memory and truth, about story and identity, about how much narratives can define who we are and who we have been and who we hope to be, ideas that have prepared me for much of what I have written and thought about over the decade since. And most of all, Nolan, like Sayles and Jason Bourne and Shakespeare in Love and others, taught me that great art can be both entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure.As I approach 35 (nearly), I'm still in love with all those texts and artists, all those meanings and lessons, and many more. I am who I am because of them, as I am because of the love of the many amazing people with whom I've shared such works (most especially Mom, Dad, and Connie). But I have also fallen in love with Aidan Orion Tsao Railton (2005) and Kyle Vincent Tsao Railton (2007). Those two smart and crazy-making and beautiful boys have taught me more than I could ever put into words here, and of the many things I love to imagine about them, high on the list is when I can help them find new loves of their own—and add those loves and their lessons to my identity. Happy Valentine's week! More this weekend, the next guest post!
BenPS. Links:
1) Part of the opening chapter of David: http://www.purplehousepress.com/david_ex.htm
2) Some good info on MacLean and Ulysses: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maclean.htm
3) The great last scene from Memento (only watch if you've already seen the movie!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqW9fnkhqrs&feature=related
4) Any loves and lessons you want to share?
2/17 Memory Day nominee: Huey Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party whose complex and influential 20th century American life also included community social programs and activism in Oakland, publishing the memoir Revolutionary Suicide (1973), and receiving a PhD in social philosophy from UC Santa Cruz (all before it was tragically cut short by a senseless street killing when Newton was just 47).
When I was 5 (or so), I fell in love with Edward Ormondroyd's David and the Phoenix (1957). Ormondroyd's whimsical and magical and deeply affecting children's novel taught me a great many serious and life-defining things, from the power of the imagination to recognizing and accepting and growing through loss. But it also taught me about fauns and Pan, about banshees and sea serpents, about some of the truest meanings of mythology and fantasy and story in ways that prepared me for much of what I would love most over the next three decades, from Tolkien and George R.R. Martin to Leslie Marmon Silko and Junot Díaz. And most of all, Ormondroyd, like Lobel and Sendak and Seuss and their peers, taught me to listen and to read.When I was 15 (or thereabouts), I fell in love with Alistair MacLean's H.M.S. Ulysses (1955). MacLean's gripping and thrilling and hugely moving novel of a British destroyer in the North Atlantic during World War II taught me about the deadly serious power of waves and wind, of frost and ice, of the true meaning of a U-Boat lying in ambush or a fighter plane bearing down on a convoy. But it also taught me about cowardice and heroism, about victory and defeat, about some of the truest meanings of sacrifice and brotherhood and history in ways that likewise prepared me for much of what I would love over the next two decades, from O'Brien and Samuel Eliot Morrison to Ambrose Bierce and Kurt Vonnegut. And most of all, MacLean, like Chesnutt and Faulkner and Penn Warren and others, taught me that history is alive and present still.
When I was 25 (more or less), I fell in love with Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000). Nolan's challenging and funny and profoundly unique and perfect film about a man with no memory who cannot escape the past taught me about the ways in which story and structure and style can so fully complement and complicate and enrich theme and meaning, making every moment and frame and choice part of an absolutely unified whole. But it also taught me about memory and truth, about story and identity, about how much narratives can define who we are and who we have been and who we hope to be, ideas that have prepared me for much of what I have written and thought about over the decade since. And most of all, Nolan, like Sayles and Jason Bourne and Shakespeare in Love and others, taught me that great art can be both entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure.As I approach 35 (nearly), I'm still in love with all those texts and artists, all those meanings and lessons, and many more. I am who I am because of them, as I am because of the love of the many amazing people with whom I've shared such works (most especially Mom, Dad, and Connie). But I have also fallen in love with Aidan Orion Tsao Railton (2005) and Kyle Vincent Tsao Railton (2007). Those two smart and crazy-making and beautiful boys have taught me more than I could ever put into words here, and of the many things I love to imagine about them, high on the list is when I can help them find new loves of their own—and add those loves and their lessons to my identity. Happy Valentine's week! More this weekend, the next guest post!
BenPS. Links:
1) Part of the opening chapter of David: http://www.purplehousepress.com/david_ex.htm
2) Some good info on MacLean and Ulysses: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maclean.htm
3) The great last scene from Memento (only watch if you've already seen the movie!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqW9fnkhqrs&feature=related
4) Any loves and lessons you want to share?
2/17 Memory Day nominee: Huey Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party whose complex and influential 20th century American life also included community social programs and activism in Oakland, publishing the memoir Revolutionary Suicide (1973), and receiving a PhD in social philosophy from UC Santa Cruz (all before it was tragically cut short by a senseless street killing when Newton was just 47).
February 16, 2012
February 16, 2012: Remembering Yasuhiro Ishimoto
Celebrating the inspiring cross-cultural life and incredible work of a truly unique and talented photographer.
I'll publish the last post in my love-inspired series tomorrow; but even though this post wasn't originally part of the week's plans, it's certainly inspired by three very parallel and important emotions. For one thing, I love Yasuhiro Ishimoto's photographs, and I hope this space has consistently made clear just how highly I value the kinds of emotions and responses that beautiful and powerful works of art can inspire. In fact, the kinds of empathy that great works of art can create—the kind I feel, for example, for the African American father and daughter captured in one of the dozen shots in this CNN gallery—is, I would argue, very similar in crucial ways to the love and connection that we can feel for important people and voices in our lives.
For another thing, I admire his consistently impressive responses to what must have been very challenging and difficult life experiences, from his leaving Japan (where he and his parents had moved shortly after his 1921 birth in California) in 1939 to avoid military service to, ironically and tragically, his being held in a Japanese American internment camp for two years during the war. Rather than allow his perspective or work to be negatively impacted by such experiences, Ishimoto made them part of his art and identity in the best senses, as exemplified by his arguments (textual and photographic) in the book A Tale of Two Cities (1999) for what both sides of his heritage and life had contributed to his career and vision. What I love most about America is precisely its ability to yield such amazingly inspiring lives and stories, voices and identities, and Ishimoto is an entirely worthy addition to the American Hall of Inspiration.
And for a third thing, I will freely admit that I had only barely heard of Ishimoto prior to a couple of days ago, when my good friend and colleague Jeff Renye passed along the above link to the CNN gallery (which also includes, if you scroll over the right-hand side of the page, an obituary for Ishimoto, who recently passed away at the age of 90). That's not a good thing in and of itself, of course, and so I'm writing this post in large part to argue for why Ishimoto should occupy a more prominent place in our national narratives and consciousness than (if I'm any indication) he does. But what is a good thing, and what is in fact at the heart of my goals for the American Studier website and much of my ongoing work, are the kinds of collaborations and learning that Jeff's sharing exemplifies, and that define just how powerfully our perspectives and ideas, our voices and identities, can be influenced and strengthened by all those around us. (ADDENDUM: Look for some additional thoughts of Jeff's in the first comment on this post!)
Lots to love! Last post in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any nominees of yours for the Hall of Inspiration? Share the love!
2/16 Memory Day nominee: Henry Adams, who built on the legacy of his uber-American family to become one of our most inspiring Renaissance Americans: from his novels, non-fiction, and unique and powerful memoir to his pioneering identity as a transnational, cosmopolitan traveler and thinker.
I'll publish the last post in my love-inspired series tomorrow; but even though this post wasn't originally part of the week's plans, it's certainly inspired by three very parallel and important emotions. For one thing, I love Yasuhiro Ishimoto's photographs, and I hope this space has consistently made clear just how highly I value the kinds of emotions and responses that beautiful and powerful works of art can inspire. In fact, the kinds of empathy that great works of art can create—the kind I feel, for example, for the African American father and daughter captured in one of the dozen shots in this CNN gallery—is, I would argue, very similar in crucial ways to the love and connection that we can feel for important people and voices in our lives.
For another thing, I admire his consistently impressive responses to what must have been very challenging and difficult life experiences, from his leaving Japan (where he and his parents had moved shortly after his 1921 birth in California) in 1939 to avoid military service to, ironically and tragically, his being held in a Japanese American internment camp for two years during the war. Rather than allow his perspective or work to be negatively impacted by such experiences, Ishimoto made them part of his art and identity in the best senses, as exemplified by his arguments (textual and photographic) in the book A Tale of Two Cities (1999) for what both sides of his heritage and life had contributed to his career and vision. What I love most about America is precisely its ability to yield such amazingly inspiring lives and stories, voices and identities, and Ishimoto is an entirely worthy addition to the American Hall of Inspiration.
And for a third thing, I will freely admit that I had only barely heard of Ishimoto prior to a couple of days ago, when my good friend and colleague Jeff Renye passed along the above link to the CNN gallery (which also includes, if you scroll over the right-hand side of the page, an obituary for Ishimoto, who recently passed away at the age of 90). That's not a good thing in and of itself, of course, and so I'm writing this post in large part to argue for why Ishimoto should occupy a more prominent place in our national narratives and consciousness than (if I'm any indication) he does. But what is a good thing, and what is in fact at the heart of my goals for the American Studier website and much of my ongoing work, are the kinds of collaborations and learning that Jeff's sharing exemplifies, and that define just how powerfully our perspectives and ideas, our voices and identities, can be influenced and strengthened by all those around us. (ADDENDUM: Look for some additional thoughts of Jeff's in the first comment on this post!)
Lots to love! Last post in the series tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Any nominees of yours for the Hall of Inspiration? Share the love!
2/16 Memory Day nominee: Henry Adams, who built on the legacy of his uber-American family to become one of our most inspiring Renaissance Americans: from his novels, non-fiction, and unique and powerful memoir to his pioneering identity as a transnational, cosmopolitan traveler and thinker.
February 15, 2012
February 15, 2012: Love, Puritan Style
[The next post in my love-inspired series, on John Winthrop and Puritan ideals of love and charity.]
There's an old joke, perhaps most famously repeated by George Bush (the elder), that a Puritan was a person who couldn't sleep at night, worrying that someone, somewhere might be having a good time. If the Puritan settlers of New England are primarily known in our national narratives for contributing significantly to a couple of the most idealized aspects of American identity (work ethic, pursuit of freedom), they are secondarily and still centrally known as an extremely stern and dour group, a people for whom confession and penitence made for a perfect Friday night. And not without some accuracy—this is the community, after all, that within a century of arriving in America had banished two of its most prominent but slightly unorthodox citizens (Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson) for heretical beliefs and practices and had executed numerous other citizens for witchcraft-related crimes. Within the Puritans' first decade in America, for that matter, the community's leadership found it necessary to destroy (literally, burning much of it to the ground) Thomas Morton's "heathen" community of Merrymount (famous in its own era, and immortalized two centuries later in a Hawthorne short story, for its Maypole and friendly relationships with local Native Americans) and exile Morton to England.There's no question that the Puritans' search for a space in which they could practice their religion freely was (at least in their first century in America) complemented by a need to define almost everyone else, including at times members of their own community and congregations, as outside of that religion and so unwelcome in their settlements. But a focus on that side of their identity can elide another equally significant, and much more appealing and inspiring, side: their strong and consistent emphasis on communal cohesiveness and support, on a community in which the leaders and the most successful make it one of their central goals that all citizens, especially those who are least prosperous, are taken care of. In part that emphasis stemmed from practical realities and concerns, from the community's decades of exile and wandering (first to Holland and then, when that nation turned out to be little more welcoming than England had been, to America) and the near-constant reminders that they could count on almost no one other than each other for support and survival. But these concepts of community were likewise central to many of the Puritans' fundamental understandings of both their own identities and their Christian faith, as exemplified by one of their founding American texts: John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630), better known as the Arbella sermon since he wrote and delivered it on board that ship some time before its Puritan passengers arrived in Boston to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony (with Winthrop as the first governor).
Winthrop's sermon is remembered largely (if not solely) for a phrase from its penultimate paragraph, "city upon a hill." But while subsequent quotations of the moment have read it as a celebration of America's potential and identity—as in the closing of Reagan's Farewell Address, where he consistently misquoted it as "shining city upon a hill"—Winthrop there is arguing to his audience that if they are to be celebrated (and not condemned), they must do their best to practice what they preach and believe, "for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill." As the sermon's title indicates, and as virtually every one of its thirty-odd paragraphs argues, the central element of Puritan belief and practice as defined by Winthrop is "Christian charity," a phrase which encompasses both the modern idea of charity (giving to those less fortunate) and the word's Scriptural origins (in the Greek word agape, which can be translated as both "charity" and "love"). Lest there be any doubt of Winthrop's emphases, he includes in the midst of the sermon a series of "Questions" that might challenge the idea that all members of a community should give to support those who need it, and answers each question with passion, arguing throughout that the only way the Puritans can embody Christian identity and practice its love is to be entirely and communally charitable. "We must," he argues just before the "city" line, "be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities."There's plenty to criticize in the Puritans, from those exiles and executions to the brutal wars with neighboring Native Americans about which I've already written in this space. There are also lots of reasons to make sure that we see them as one of many founding American communities, rather than our shared and singular point of origin. But there's also lots in their identities and words, their practices and beliefs, that can impress and inspire—and I'd say Winthrop's sermon and the visions of community, charity, and love it constructs are at the top of that list. Next love-inspired post tomorrow,
BenPS. I'd love for you to be charitable with your ideas and connections! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
2/15 Memory Day nominee: Susan B. Anthony, one of a handful of American reformers whose efforts (centrally on behalf of suffrage, but also for numerous other causes including abolitionism, temperance, labor, and education reform) transcended their era and established her as a model for impassioned, effective, and meaningful activism.
There's an old joke, perhaps most famously repeated by George Bush (the elder), that a Puritan was a person who couldn't sleep at night, worrying that someone, somewhere might be having a good time. If the Puritan settlers of New England are primarily known in our national narratives for contributing significantly to a couple of the most idealized aspects of American identity (work ethic, pursuit of freedom), they are secondarily and still centrally known as an extremely stern and dour group, a people for whom confession and penitence made for a perfect Friday night. And not without some accuracy—this is the community, after all, that within a century of arriving in America had banished two of its most prominent but slightly unorthodox citizens (Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson) for heretical beliefs and practices and had executed numerous other citizens for witchcraft-related crimes. Within the Puritans' first decade in America, for that matter, the community's leadership found it necessary to destroy (literally, burning much of it to the ground) Thomas Morton's "heathen" community of Merrymount (famous in its own era, and immortalized two centuries later in a Hawthorne short story, for its Maypole and friendly relationships with local Native Americans) and exile Morton to England.There's no question that the Puritans' search for a space in which they could practice their religion freely was (at least in their first century in America) complemented by a need to define almost everyone else, including at times members of their own community and congregations, as outside of that religion and so unwelcome in their settlements. But a focus on that side of their identity can elide another equally significant, and much more appealing and inspiring, side: their strong and consistent emphasis on communal cohesiveness and support, on a community in which the leaders and the most successful make it one of their central goals that all citizens, especially those who are least prosperous, are taken care of. In part that emphasis stemmed from practical realities and concerns, from the community's decades of exile and wandering (first to Holland and then, when that nation turned out to be little more welcoming than England had been, to America) and the near-constant reminders that they could count on almost no one other than each other for support and survival. But these concepts of community were likewise central to many of the Puritans' fundamental understandings of both their own identities and their Christian faith, as exemplified by one of their founding American texts: John Winthrop's sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630), better known as the Arbella sermon since he wrote and delivered it on board that ship some time before its Puritan passengers arrived in Boston to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony (with Winthrop as the first governor).
Winthrop's sermon is remembered largely (if not solely) for a phrase from its penultimate paragraph, "city upon a hill." But while subsequent quotations of the moment have read it as a celebration of America's potential and identity—as in the closing of Reagan's Farewell Address, where he consistently misquoted it as "shining city upon a hill"—Winthrop there is arguing to his audience that if they are to be celebrated (and not condemned), they must do their best to practice what they preach and believe, "for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill." As the sermon's title indicates, and as virtually every one of its thirty-odd paragraphs argues, the central element of Puritan belief and practice as defined by Winthrop is "Christian charity," a phrase which encompasses both the modern idea of charity (giving to those less fortunate) and the word's Scriptural origins (in the Greek word agape, which can be translated as both "charity" and "love"). Lest there be any doubt of Winthrop's emphases, he includes in the midst of the sermon a series of "Questions" that might challenge the idea that all members of a community should give to support those who need it, and answers each question with passion, arguing throughout that the only way the Puritans can embody Christian identity and practice its love is to be entirely and communally charitable. "We must," he argues just before the "city" line, "be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities."There's plenty to criticize in the Puritans, from those exiles and executions to the brutal wars with neighboring Native Americans about which I've already written in this space. There are also lots of reasons to make sure that we see them as one of many founding American communities, rather than our shared and singular point of origin. But there's also lots in their identities and words, their practices and beliefs, that can impress and inspire—and I'd say Winthrop's sermon and the visions of community, charity, and love it constructs are at the top of that list. Next love-inspired post tomorrow,
BenPS. I'd love for you to be charitable with your ideas and connections! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
2/15 Memory Day nominee: Susan B. Anthony, one of a handful of American reformers whose efforts (centrally on behalf of suffrage, but also for numerous other causes including abolitionism, temperance, labor, and education reform) transcended their era and established her as a model for impassioned, effective, and meaningful activism.
February 14, 2012
February 14, 2012: Love in Color
[The next post in my love-inspired series, on broadening our national narratives and images of interracial relationships. Happy Valentine's Day!]
I don't have the slightest bit of hard proof for this (if such a thing could be produced in any case), but I believe that when we Americans think and talk about interracial relationships, we do so first and foremost, and perhaps much of the time solely, through the lens of black and white. As is often, and I hope overtly, the case, my starting point for this idea is my own perspective, my own engagement with such simplifying national narratives—despite my own interracial marriage to someone whose identity falls outside of that binary, I believe that I do tend to link the topic explicitly and consistently to issues of black and white (as illustrated by an earlier post on cultural representations of controversial issues, where I mentioned Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and All in the Family/The Jeffersons in relation to interracial relationships). And moving beyond my own individual perspective, I would cite two quick (and very distinct) examples of this trend at work more broadly: the Supreme Court case that overturned all remaining state laws outlawing interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia (1967), was responding not only to a marriage between a white man and a black woman but also to a statute that framed the issue in terms of those two races, and thus the Court's decision likewise focused (not entirely, but at times) on how such laws treated "the white and Negro participants in an interracial marriage"; and one of the best scholarly works on images of this topic in our literary history, Werner Sollors' Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997), likewise focuses (as its title indicates) on those two racial identities and communities.
The respective prominence of two American films released within a year of one another, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) and Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (1992), provides another illustration of this trend, as well as an opportunity to move beyond any one understanding of interracial marriage and toward a more meaningful analysis of the issue in American culture and identity more broadly. Both films were successful at the (domestic) box office, especially in relationship to their respective budgets and releases: Lee's film grossed $32.5 million, on a budget of roughly $14 million and a wide release; Nair's grossed $7.3 million, on a budget of under $1 million and a pretty limited release. Both similarly received prestigious recognition from film festivals and awards ceremonies dedicated to supporting independent films: Nair's triumphed at the Venice Film Festival and won an Independent Spirit Award (among others); Lee's won at Cannes and a New York Film Critics Circle Award (ditto). Yet it seems clear to me that Lee's film has lasted in our public consciousness in a way that Nair's has not. While there are any number of plausible factors for that difference, many of which have little to do with race—Lee was only two years removed from Do the Right Thing (1989) , the film that had put him on the map in a major way, while Nair had directed only one other, relatively unknown feature film, Salaam Bombay! (1988) ; Lee's film featured a star-making, award-winning turn from Samuel L. Jackson as a mercurial crack addict (although Nair's film did star Denzel Washington in an award-winning role, just two years after winning an Oscar for Glory, so this factor doesn't quite hold up)—I think it's fair to say that Lee's portrayal of a romance between an African-American architect and an Italian-American secretary tapped into our dominant narratives about interracial relationships much more fully than Nair's depiction of a Ugandan-Indian-American motel employee falling for an African-American carpet cleaner.
One could get plenty of mileage trying to figure out which factors have most contributed to the two films' respective legacies (or, quite possibly, discovering that I'm wrong about those legacies), but again and as usual my ideal would be a different and I believe more broadly productive emphasis: what we can gain by watching both films, not only individually but also as a pair of contemporaneous cultural representations of interracial relationships in the closing decade of the 20th century. And I think that both are particularly interesting, and particularly if complicatedly interconnected, in their depictions of the protagonists' families and social networks. I don't mean just how those families and networks respond to the interracial relationships themselves—certainly the near-universal judgments and critiques from all three (or four, if New York African American is considered distinct from Mississippi African American) cultural communities are telling, but I think the films are at least as interesting in how they construct the complex worlds of their respective settings and the familial and social networks within them. That means in each case both a kind of immigrant community (very literally and recently for the Ugandan Indian family in Mississippi; more as a vibrant and ongoing heritage for the Italian Americans in Jungle) and a homegrown African American one, but also includes other social and cultural factors—such as drug culture or the rise of an African American urban middle class in Jungle and the dictatorship and impact of Idi Amin or African American life in the post-Civil Rights South in Mississippi—that add significant layers and complications to any black and white vision of these different communities.
And that's my ultimate point here (along with, y'know, watch these imperfect but unique and compelling movies): it's not just that interracial relationships are more than black and white, or that American ethnic and racial history likewise entails more than that duality. Both of those statements are true, and well worth our acknowledgment and engagement, but what both of these films also portray and symbolize is just how colorful American identity, and the social and familial and romantic relationships that comprise it, really are. Next love-inspired post tomorrow,Ben
PS. 1) Not the very beginning, but a pretty early sequence from Jungle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRvG9NHgTy42) Great scene (set in Uganda as the Indian family's father returns there briefly) from Masala: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4S6KAV1VHM
3) OPEN: Any representations of interracial relationships you'd add into the mix?
2/14 Memory Day nominee: Anna Howard Shaw, the women's rights and suffrage activist who was also the first female ordained Methodist minister in America, received the Distinguished Service Medal for her efforts during World War I, and extended her activism to an important anti-lynching conference in the final months of her life.
I don't have the slightest bit of hard proof for this (if such a thing could be produced in any case), but I believe that when we Americans think and talk about interracial relationships, we do so first and foremost, and perhaps much of the time solely, through the lens of black and white. As is often, and I hope overtly, the case, my starting point for this idea is my own perspective, my own engagement with such simplifying national narratives—despite my own interracial marriage to someone whose identity falls outside of that binary, I believe that I do tend to link the topic explicitly and consistently to issues of black and white (as illustrated by an earlier post on cultural representations of controversial issues, where I mentioned Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and All in the Family/The Jeffersons in relation to interracial relationships). And moving beyond my own individual perspective, I would cite two quick (and very distinct) examples of this trend at work more broadly: the Supreme Court case that overturned all remaining state laws outlawing interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia (1967), was responding not only to a marriage between a white man and a black woman but also to a statute that framed the issue in terms of those two races, and thus the Court's decision likewise focused (not entirely, but at times) on how such laws treated "the white and Negro participants in an interracial marriage"; and one of the best scholarly works on images of this topic in our literary history, Werner Sollors' Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997), likewise focuses (as its title indicates) on those two racial identities and communities.
The respective prominence of two American films released within a year of one another, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) and Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (1992), provides another illustration of this trend, as well as an opportunity to move beyond any one understanding of interracial marriage and toward a more meaningful analysis of the issue in American culture and identity more broadly. Both films were successful at the (domestic) box office, especially in relationship to their respective budgets and releases: Lee's film grossed $32.5 million, on a budget of roughly $14 million and a wide release; Nair's grossed $7.3 million, on a budget of under $1 million and a pretty limited release. Both similarly received prestigious recognition from film festivals and awards ceremonies dedicated to supporting independent films: Nair's triumphed at the Venice Film Festival and won an Independent Spirit Award (among others); Lee's won at Cannes and a New York Film Critics Circle Award (ditto). Yet it seems clear to me that Lee's film has lasted in our public consciousness in a way that Nair's has not. While there are any number of plausible factors for that difference, many of which have little to do with race—Lee was only two years removed from Do the Right Thing (1989) , the film that had put him on the map in a major way, while Nair had directed only one other, relatively unknown feature film, Salaam Bombay! (1988) ; Lee's film featured a star-making, award-winning turn from Samuel L. Jackson as a mercurial crack addict (although Nair's film did star Denzel Washington in an award-winning role, just two years after winning an Oscar for Glory, so this factor doesn't quite hold up)—I think it's fair to say that Lee's portrayal of a romance between an African-American architect and an Italian-American secretary tapped into our dominant narratives about interracial relationships much more fully than Nair's depiction of a Ugandan-Indian-American motel employee falling for an African-American carpet cleaner.
One could get plenty of mileage trying to figure out which factors have most contributed to the two films' respective legacies (or, quite possibly, discovering that I'm wrong about those legacies), but again and as usual my ideal would be a different and I believe more broadly productive emphasis: what we can gain by watching both films, not only individually but also as a pair of contemporaneous cultural representations of interracial relationships in the closing decade of the 20th century. And I think that both are particularly interesting, and particularly if complicatedly interconnected, in their depictions of the protagonists' families and social networks. I don't mean just how those families and networks respond to the interracial relationships themselves—certainly the near-universal judgments and critiques from all three (or four, if New York African American is considered distinct from Mississippi African American) cultural communities are telling, but I think the films are at least as interesting in how they construct the complex worlds of their respective settings and the familial and social networks within them. That means in each case both a kind of immigrant community (very literally and recently for the Ugandan Indian family in Mississippi; more as a vibrant and ongoing heritage for the Italian Americans in Jungle) and a homegrown African American one, but also includes other social and cultural factors—such as drug culture or the rise of an African American urban middle class in Jungle and the dictatorship and impact of Idi Amin or African American life in the post-Civil Rights South in Mississippi—that add significant layers and complications to any black and white vision of these different communities.
And that's my ultimate point here (along with, y'know, watch these imperfect but unique and compelling movies): it's not just that interracial relationships are more than black and white, or that American ethnic and racial history likewise entails more than that duality. Both of those statements are true, and well worth our acknowledgment and engagement, but what both of these films also portray and symbolize is just how colorful American identity, and the social and familial and romantic relationships that comprise it, really are. Next love-inspired post tomorrow,Ben
PS. 1) Not the very beginning, but a pretty early sequence from Jungle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRvG9NHgTy42) Great scene (set in Uganda as the Indian family's father returns there briefly) from Masala: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4S6KAV1VHM
3) OPEN: Any representations of interracial relationships you'd add into the mix?
2/14 Memory Day nominee: Anna Howard Shaw, the women's rights and suffrage activist who was also the first female ordained Methodist minister in America, received the Distinguished Service Medal for her efforts during World War I, and extended her activism to an important anti-lynching conference in the final months of her life.
February 13, 2012
February 13, 2012: Remembering Nat Love
[Extending last week's Black History Month series, but also moving into a week of posts inspired by love, here's a repeat of a post from about a year ago on Nat Love, one of the turn of the 20th century's most unique and interesting Americans.]
For those scholars who like to identify and define certain dominant American narratives—a group that, it will surprise no reader of this blog, would include a certain AmericanStudier—the Western frontier presents a particularly challenging topic. On the one hand, no one could dispute that many of our most mythologized, iconic, and heroic national figures are Western in origin; but on the other hand, what do those figures symbolize? Do they represent the carving out of a path for American "civilization" as it moved west (Daniel Boone) or an attempt to escape that path (Natty Bumppo)? Did they take the law into their own hands (outlaws like Billy the Kid) or maintain law and order in a wild society (marshals like Wyatt Earp)? Were they cowboys and railroad men, doing the dangerous but somewhat corporate work of settling the frontier? Or Indians and bandits, existing outside of, and perhaps (as the kids' game implies) in opposition to, those types?The answer, of course, is yes, our frontier myths encompass all of those roles and identities and many others as well. After all, of the many ways in which we could argue that the frontier exemplifies America (an argument that AmericanStudiers as diverse as Richard Slotkin, Annette Kolodny, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Alexis de Tocqueville have all made), to my mind the most convincing is in its thoroughly cross-cultural community, the ways in which every prominent Western event and site and place were constituted out of at least a couple different cultures and identities, peoples and perspectives. Many of those cross-cultural contacts were far from ideal, violent clashes and conflicts between the army and Native American tribes, Irish and Chinese rail workers, California squatters and Mexican landowners, and many other variations. Yet while such violent encounters have understandably been the focal point of many of the recent revisions of frontier history—just as the violence of the Wild West was a focal point for many of the original stories of the region—these cross-cultural and combinatory Western communities could also produce unique and impressive American identities, lives and stories that embody the best possibilities of such a hybrid setting. And at the top of that list would have to be Nat Love (1854-1921).
Much of what we know of Love we have learned from the man himself, courtesy of his engaging and mythologizing autobiography, Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907). That book's subtitle is over forty words long and yet still manages only to highlight some of the diverse worlds and identities through which Love moved in the course of his very Western and very American life: from his birth in slavery to dual frontier careers as a cowboy on the cattle ranges and a prize-winning rodeo competitor known as "Deadwood Dick." The subtitle doesn't even get to Love's final iteration as a Pullman conductor, returning to the West where he had made his name and fortune as a buttoned-up representative and spokesman (quite literally, as this section of the narrative reads at times like an advertisement) for the technology and comfort of the new railway lines. These hugely diverse stages and worlds can make the narrative feel scattershot in tone and focus, and Love similarly divided in perspective, but that's precisely what makes the book and the man so emblematic of the frontier—this is a man who was born a slave and who still experienced frequent racism in his Pullman work, but who also became one of the period's most celebrated rodeo performers and a frontier legend; a man who worked as a cowboy alongside peers from every culture and community in the west, went to work for one of the Gilded Age's most successful corporations, and closes his book addressing eastern audiences who have likely never been further west than the Mississippi.
There's no way to boil that life and identity down to a single type or narrative; his subtitle couldn't even boil it all down to forty words. Many of the frontier's cross-cultural experiences were, again, not nearly as successful as Love's, but that too is central to the point—a narrative of the frontier, like a narrative of America, would need to include both Love and Little Big Horn, and everything and everybody in between and alongside. "Cowboys and Indians," that is, can and must mean both mythic confrontations and the possibility that the "and" does indeed symbolize connection and community. More tomorrow, on one of the smartest and scariest novels I've ever read.Ben
PS. Three links to start with:1) Full text of Life and Adventures: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/natlove/natlove.html
2) A great companion website for a great book on one of those very violent cross-cultural contacts, Karl Jacoby's Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (2008): http://brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/
3) OPEN: Who or what would you add to our stories of the West?2/13 Memory Day nominee: Chuck Yeager, the aviator and World War II veteran whose test flights contributed directly to the development of the space program, helped change the course of American and world history, and led to his starring role in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.
For those scholars who like to identify and define certain dominant American narratives—a group that, it will surprise no reader of this blog, would include a certain AmericanStudier—the Western frontier presents a particularly challenging topic. On the one hand, no one could dispute that many of our most mythologized, iconic, and heroic national figures are Western in origin; but on the other hand, what do those figures symbolize? Do they represent the carving out of a path for American "civilization" as it moved west (Daniel Boone) or an attempt to escape that path (Natty Bumppo)? Did they take the law into their own hands (outlaws like Billy the Kid) or maintain law and order in a wild society (marshals like Wyatt Earp)? Were they cowboys and railroad men, doing the dangerous but somewhat corporate work of settling the frontier? Or Indians and bandits, existing outside of, and perhaps (as the kids' game implies) in opposition to, those types?The answer, of course, is yes, our frontier myths encompass all of those roles and identities and many others as well. After all, of the many ways in which we could argue that the frontier exemplifies America (an argument that AmericanStudiers as diverse as Richard Slotkin, Annette Kolodny, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Alexis de Tocqueville have all made), to my mind the most convincing is in its thoroughly cross-cultural community, the ways in which every prominent Western event and site and place were constituted out of at least a couple different cultures and identities, peoples and perspectives. Many of those cross-cultural contacts were far from ideal, violent clashes and conflicts between the army and Native American tribes, Irish and Chinese rail workers, California squatters and Mexican landowners, and many other variations. Yet while such violent encounters have understandably been the focal point of many of the recent revisions of frontier history—just as the violence of the Wild West was a focal point for many of the original stories of the region—these cross-cultural and combinatory Western communities could also produce unique and impressive American identities, lives and stories that embody the best possibilities of such a hybrid setting. And at the top of that list would have to be Nat Love (1854-1921).
Much of what we know of Love we have learned from the man himself, courtesy of his engaging and mythologizing autobiography, Life and Adventures of Nat Love (1907). That book's subtitle is over forty words long and yet still manages only to highlight some of the diverse worlds and identities through which Love moved in the course of his very Western and very American life: from his birth in slavery to dual frontier careers as a cowboy on the cattle ranges and a prize-winning rodeo competitor known as "Deadwood Dick." The subtitle doesn't even get to Love's final iteration as a Pullman conductor, returning to the West where he had made his name and fortune as a buttoned-up representative and spokesman (quite literally, as this section of the narrative reads at times like an advertisement) for the technology and comfort of the new railway lines. These hugely diverse stages and worlds can make the narrative feel scattershot in tone and focus, and Love similarly divided in perspective, but that's precisely what makes the book and the man so emblematic of the frontier—this is a man who was born a slave and who still experienced frequent racism in his Pullman work, but who also became one of the period's most celebrated rodeo performers and a frontier legend; a man who worked as a cowboy alongside peers from every culture and community in the west, went to work for one of the Gilded Age's most successful corporations, and closes his book addressing eastern audiences who have likely never been further west than the Mississippi.
There's no way to boil that life and identity down to a single type or narrative; his subtitle couldn't even boil it all down to forty words. Many of the frontier's cross-cultural experiences were, again, not nearly as successful as Love's, but that too is central to the point—a narrative of the frontier, like a narrative of America, would need to include both Love and Little Big Horn, and everything and everybody in between and alongside. "Cowboys and Indians," that is, can and must mean both mythic confrontations and the possibility that the "and" does indeed symbolize connection and community. More tomorrow, on one of the smartest and scariest novels I've ever read.Ben
PS. Three links to start with:1) Full text of Life and Adventures: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/natlove/natlove.html
2) A great companion website for a great book on one of those very violent cross-cultural contacts, Karl Jacoby's Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History (2008): http://brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/
3) OPEN: Who or what would you add to our stories of the West?2/13 Memory Day nominee: Chuck Yeager, the aviator and World War II veteran whose test flights contributed directly to the development of the space program, helped change the course of American and world history, and led to his starring role in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.
Benjamin A. Railton's Blog
- Benjamin A. Railton's profile
- 2 followers
Benjamin A. Railton isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
