March 31, 2025: Foolish Texts: A Fool’s Errand

[For thisyear’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool”in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word,for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]

On twoinspiring layers to one of our most unique novels.

In this earlypost, I wrote about the life and career of Albion Tourgée, one of myfavorite Americans for a wide variety of reasons (including but not limited tothose I detailed in that post). I had a good bit to say there about his firstnovel A Fool’sErrand, by One of the Fools (1879), so I’d ask you to check outthat post if you would and then come on back for some further thoughts.

Welcomeback! As I discussed in that post, the title of Tourgée’s novel is notmisleading, as it takes a consistently ironic and self-deprecating perspectiveon its autobiographical protagonist’s efforts to contribute positively toReconstruction’s efforts. To be very clear, that doesn’t mean Tourgée iscritical of Reconstruction’s goals when it comes to African Americans andequality (he dedicated his life to those goals, as I hope that prior postillustrated at length), but rather that he recognizes that his own youthful, loftyambitions and sense of self-importance were severely punctured by hisexperiences during Reconstruction and his recognition of the limitations ofboth any individual’s reach and (more complicatedly to be sure) societal change.I remain less cynical and more optimistic than the tone of Fool’s Errand(yes, even in early 2025), but I nonetheless think being able to reflectthoughtfully and critically on our own ambitions and arc is an important andinspiring skill to model.

In boththat prior post and the paragraph above I focused on the real-life elements of Tourgée’sbook—the autobiographical echoes and the political and cultural contexts ofReconstruction. But while those are undoubtedly present and perhaps even paramountin the book, it’s important to add that it is a novel, a work of fiction, aswas Tourgée’s follow-up second book about the Black experience ofReconstruction, BricksWithout Straw (1880). Which is to say, having spent years serving as alawyer, politician, and journalist (careers he would continue fully andsuccessfully for the rest of his life), at the age of 40 Tourgée turned hishand to creative writing and published not one but two novels in a two-yearspan. And they’re good, with really interesting creative choices (such as the distancedthird-person narration of Fool’s) that engage his readers and get themthinking about those aforementioned personal and political contexts. As someonewho’s own career and writing have evolved a good bit over the decades, and whohopes that trend continues for the rest of my life, I find this aspect of Tourgée’snot-at-all foolish books particularly inspiring as well.

Nextfoolish text tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Foolish texts you’d share?