European journal of American studies

13-2 | 2018 Summer 2018

Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12538 DOI: 10.4000/ejas.12538 ISSN: 1991-9336

Publisher European Association for American Studies

Electronic reference European journal of American studies, 13-2 | 2018, “Summer 2018” [Online], Online since 26 June 2018, connection on 08 July 2021. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12538; DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.4000/ejas.12538

This text was automatically generated on 8 July 2021.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Death of American Studies Simon J. Bronner

The Man Who Counted All Prostitutes in New York City: John R. McDowall and the Scandal of the Magdalen Report Alexander Moudrov

“To Preserve This Remnant:” William Apess, the Mashpee Indians, and the Politics of Nullification Neil Meyer

Circulating in Commonplaces: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Celebrity Status in the Netherlands Laurens Ham

“If You Could Die…”: Hart Crane’s “Accursed Share” in Mexico Beatrice Pire

Preaching Prophets: Upton Sinclair and The Moslem Sunrise Steven Bembridge

Tonal Poetry, Bop Aesthetics, and Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard James J. Donahue

The Visible Aspect of Things: Towards a Synchronic Reading of Donald Barthelme Surya Bowyer

Fetishism and Form: Advertising and Ironic Distance in Don DeLillo’s White Noise Adam Szetela

“Nothing could stop it, nothing”: The Burden of Postsouthern History in Barry Hannah’s “Uncle High Lonesome” Clare Chadd

Good Work and Good Works: Work and the Postsecular in George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline Brian Jansen and Hollie Adams

The Eternal Night of Consumer Consciousness: The Metaphorical Embodiment of Darkness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Inbar Kaminsky

Intertextual Dialogue and Humanization in David Simon’s The Corner Mikkel Jensen

Writing Yourself Home: US Veterans, Creative Writing, and Social Activism Frank Usbeck

Interacting Interests: Explaining President Obama´s Libyan Decision Mikael Blomdahl

Hero, Champion of Social Justice, Benign Friend: Theodore Roosevelt in American Memory Katy Hull

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The Death of American Studies

Simon J. Bronner

1 The admittedly provocative title of this paper spins off Richard M. Dorson’s landmark pamphlet The Birth of American Studies published on the occasion of the American Revolution Bicentennial in 1976. The widely distributed 30-page tract is important for its early historical consideration of American Studies as an institutionalized branch of learning in academe. Dorson was a member in 1936 of what is often acknowledged as the first doctoral program in American Studies, the “History of American Civilization” program at Harvard University.1 Dorson used the opening of an international American Studies center in Warsaw to reflect on the roots of what was then a growing American Studies movement in the United States and abroad. As he reflected back on the first forty years of American Studies with the implication that it had reached maturity or mid-life, I extend his life course metaphor here with an assessment of the forty years since his declaration of an “apex” moment for American Studies.

2 I recall that pivotal moment well, since at the time I served as Dorson’s editorial assistant and student at Indiana University, in addition to having just begun my involvement with American Studies (see Bronner 1982; Bronner 1998, 349-412). Dorson was proud of being present at the creation of American Studies and brought several of his fellow pioneer Americanists from Harvard to Indiana University, including Henry Nash Smith, Daniel Aaron, and Leo Marx. If as an historian he felt a need to establish a genesis for American Studies, as an academic visionary and program builder he encouraged new formulations of the subject and as a globally minded scholar was especially gleeful about its expansion abroad (see Abrahams 1989 on Dorson as an “Americanist”).

3 To Dorson, the emergence of American Studies was not a natural consequence, as it had sometimes been presented, of nationalist intellectual forces in the United States swirling during the 1930s by students to depart from studying ancient European civilization as the center of world history. To be sure, he understood the impetus for the rise of the United States as a global industrial power in the early twentieth century on national studies. He also recalled the grip of Eurocentrism in his own education and the desire in his generation for appreciating American arts as well as contemporary experience (Dorson was born in 1916 in New York City, received his Ph.D. from Harvard

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in 1942, and died in 1981 in Bloomington, Indiana). He could also recount the national dialogue during the Great Depression on America’s future as well as its past as one that transcended disciplinary boundaries. He credited above all, however, the combination of strong, innovative personalities at Harvard for driving American Studies forward. Although there were calls for integrating studies of the United States elsewhere at the time, the cachet of Harvard taking the lead was significant to the academic respectability of American Studies nationally. Dorson commended the intrepid spirit and humanistic vision of his Harvard professors for establishing a major intellectual movement directed toward the growth of a distinct hybrid discipline that would be focused on explaining the American experience. For him, and them, American Studies was not just an early formulation of area studies; it was a special way of analyzing American history and culture, especially at the grassroots, to explain American experience and modern identity.

4 Dorson named Harvard professors Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiesen, Ralph Barton Perry, Howard Mumford Jones, and Bernard DeVoto as parents of an academic child drawing on their multiple backgrounds to raise an intellectual prodigy. They left to their offspring the task of developing, in Dorson’s words, “a new kind of looking glass for proper scrutiny” of American culture in a global context. The founders uncovered an American subject “worth looking at,” Dorson reflected, and passed on to their progeny an identity of “Americanist” that differed from a historian, literary scholar, anthropologist, or philosopher. “Heroic scholars,” Dorson called them, because they “enlarged the vision of the meaning of America,” particularly by broadening what scholars studied to include folk and popular arts, ethnic and racial groups, and women and occupational groups (Dorson 1976a, 30). Together with his other heroes including his naming of an inspirational woman Constance Rourke from Vassar who wrote American Humor (1931), “They established American Studies as a humane branch of learning,” Dorson declared (Dorson 1976b, 26, 30). Although it is difficult to assign a singular method and theory to them, much of their work was integrative in the sense of using history and culture to locate social patterns and persistent ideas. Following the lead of Perry Miller (1956), they often applied symbolic, psychological, and rhetorical analysis or “close readings” of texts for behavioral information that led to positing kinds of American identities and practices as they have changed through time and space (see Edwards 2016; Fuller 2006; Murphey 2001; Smith 1957; Tate 1973). Howard Mumford Jones, who had taught comparative literature, and Constance Rourke, who did her post-graduate studies in London and Paris, were particularly globally minded and concerned for European-American cultural interchange (Jones 1964; Jones 1979; Rourke 1942; Rubin 1980).

5 Dorson’s life course metaphor broadcast in 1976 suggested that American Studies had reached intellectual maturity at 40 in a progressive upward slope and the family of American Studies had spread well beyond Harvard. In that trek away from home, “American Civilization” that Dorson studied at Harvard had given way to “American Studies” at leading doctoral programs at Yale, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico, and Maryland, among others. By 1950, departments of American Studies had also been formed outside of the United States in the University of Manchester, England, and Tokyo University, Japan. In 1979, Gene Wise, not a Harvard man (received his Ph.D. from Syracuse in 1963), followed Dorson with a retrospective of what he called the “American Studies movement” for American Quarterly. In addition to noting the foundational significance of Harvard’s program, Wise also chronicled the design of a

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course at Yale in 1931 on “American Thought and Civilization” by Stanley T. Williams and Ralph Henry Williams and American Civilization programs in 1936-1937 at George Washington University, Western Reserve University, Union College, and University of Pennsylvania (Wise 1979a, 415). He identified the movement’s history as a “sequence of representative acts” or “paradigm dramas” that mark historical phases. Rather than view this sequence as one stage displacing the other, Wise (1979b) in the framework of intellectual historian Vernon Louis Parrington (1927) discerned in each phase a “trans- actional quality” with factions in dialogue with one another, often taking the form of heated debate. Thus, American Studies, he argued, grew out of contention rather than consensus. Indeed, it drew its strength from serving as an open forum in which ideas in tension could coalesce and approaches negotiated toward the mission of identifying and interpreting the Americanness of America. In this essay, I apply his approach of interpreting contentious moments as direction-setting trials, rather than mere markers on a timeline, of the movement.

6 If American Studies is a flexible social movement structured to invite challenges to it rather than a stable institution purposed to sustain itself, then the movement has the benefit potentially of changing with the times and embracing innovation as part of a new paradigm (see Kuhn 1970). Yet the same praxis of self-criticism can problematically lead to schism and even demise of the movement. American Studies leading up to the apex of 1976 differed from other disciplines by being issue or theme, rather than methodologically, oriented, and allowing for coalescence of different approaches and concerns. Movement leaders held the view of an American Studies concept that could serve as a stream of ideas rather than a pillar or doctrine. I argue in this essay that the forty-year period for American Studies after Dorson’s “mid-life” speech was characterized by an organizational turn away from, or even “death” of, intellectual resolution and inclusion typical of the “Americanist.” I hypothesize reasons for this turn related to tumult within the American Studies Association and suggest ways that the academic schism might lead to a new vibrant trajectory, an Americanist renaissance if you will, that leaves the early stage of a diffuse American Studies behind.

American Studies Coming of Age

7 An initial contentious “representative act,” to use Gene Wise’s term, was the naming of an interdisciplinary area study devoted to the United States and the associated identification of scholars who took it up. In the early years of the American Studies movement, the academics who predominated had their primary affiliations in departments of English and history, and the question arose whether American Studies could become a primary identity for students and scholars (Bassett 1975; Walker 1958). In this context, Dorson (1979) contributed to Wise’s retrospective with an essay speculating that a basis for a separate academic identity, if not discipline, is the distinctive personality of the American Studies scholar. He observed that “What they shared was a sense of exhilaration at manifold expressions of America as a civilization” (Dorson 1979, 370). In an early allusion to America as empire, the rhetoric of civilization pointed to the kind of society that expanded, often taking in other cultures and integrating, or colonizing, them into a sense of the whole. Use of “civilization” joined American Studies to classical learning that had excluded the American subject and announced the lens through which it was viewed to be humanistic. In keeping with

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the idea that historically, civilizations proceeded from east (China and the Near East as “cradles of civilization” to west (particularly Greek and Roman civilizations and the idea of “classical” culture from them) the study of American civilization transitioned the scholarly emphasis on European (or Western) civilization to North America, which presumably succeeded Europe as the world’s center. The term civilization suggested within the society cultural practices that became lasting, dominant, and pervasive in their ascendant spheres of influence.

8 European scholars wanting to include American literature and history in their purview for the most part shared the approach to “civilization.” For example, the by-laws drafted in 1954 by the European Association of American Studies declared the organization’s purpose of “furthering the studies in Europe of the Civilization of the United States of America” (Mead, Skard, and Wightman 1955, 5; emphasis added), although the title of the organization and much of the news it broadcast concerned “the field of American Studies,” which sounded more open to multiple disciplinary concerns and approaches to contemporary culture (Skard 1955b, 4). Among the scholars contributing to the direction of the organization were Harvard Americanists Daniel Aaron, Daniel Boorstin, Kenneth Murdock, and Arthur Schlesinger. Perhaps trying to defuse the notion that the Americanists wanted to study the United States in isolation, the summary prepared by Sigmund Skard, professor of American literature at the University of Oslo, stated that most “of the topics were concerned with the European impact on America” (Skard 1955a, 11). Skard added that from a European viewpoint, though, more attention was needed on American influence on Europe and the agents or intermediaries for exerting that influence—culturally as well as politically and economically. Indeed, Skard quoted one anonymous scholar as writing, “the impact of European ideas and institutions on American civilization and culture has been fairly thoroughly studied,” while according to Skard, “little has been done the other way” (Skard 1955a, 12). The driving question both ways, Skard declared, was “What is it that makes…American anything, American?” (Skard 1955a, 14).

9 Walther Fischer from Marburg reporting “The Establishment and the Aims of the ‘German Society for American Studies’ (‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien’)” in the newsletter identified two main practical experiences in Germany of American Studies. One was American Studies as an extension of “English Studies” to students planning to be secondary school teachers. The other which he labeled an “American conception” of area studies was broader in its inclusion “besides humanistic concerns of language and literature, all the ‘social sciences’ such as history, economics, art, and philosophy” and their methodologies (Fischer 1955, 10). He traced interest in an area study devoted to the United States to the first “Amerika-Institut” founded in Berlin in 1910, decades before Dorson’s announcement of birth for the field in 1936 (see Fluck 2016). He hoped for a “real integration, a synthesis on the highest level of scholarship” of the two trends in American Studies in Germany to appeal to a wide array of students planning on professions beyond English teaching such as lawyers, economists, and journalists for a new Europe. He suggested Amerikastudien as a translation of American Studies in the big-tent approach of American Studies initiated in the United States, although writing in German, he referred to Amerikanistik (Americanistics) as a more focused and objective social scientific area study to separate from the pre-war use of Amerika-kunde with its suggestion of the National Socialist use of Volkskunde and

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inaugurate, in his words, “a new phase of American Studies” led by Americanists (Fischer 1955, 8; see also Fischer 1951; Fluck 2016; Strunz 1999, 241-42).

10 Following up on his Warsaw address, Dorson identified the doctoral children of Harvard’s founding figures representing that “Americanist” type: Henry Nash Smith, Daniel Aaron, Edmund S. Morgan, and Frederick B. Tolles. Yet there was bound to be a lag in their ability to implement their integrative Americanist vision because the number of American Studies programs was small. Dorson, for example, had multiple appointments at Indiana University in American Studies, history, and folklore, but he predicted that the second generation of Americanists would increasingly lodge within American Studies programs. He liked the Americanist label to refer to someone who is analytical in approaching the society and culture of the United States as well as advocating for the field of study.

11 Dorson held special praise for fellow Harvard undergraduate Daniel Boorstin (1914-2004) as an Americanist. Dorson pointed to Boorstin’s trilogy of American experience titled The Americans as “American Studies history” or “cultural history” at the grassroots that mainstream historians generally appeared to dismiss or ignore (Dorson 1979, 371). Boorstin, in fact, had been elected president of the American Studies Association (ASA) in 1969, and used its pulpit, according to his biographer John Diggins, to urge historians particularly to shed their awe of high-brow Europe and devote themselves to the prosaic, commonplace in America as a basis of American Studies (Diggins 1971). Boorstin also warned against the ASA taking an ideological position. He wanted American Studies to have an image of respected researchers rather than partisan activists. That did not mean he wanted to avoid confrontation and conflict. He advocated for keeping the lines of communication open among different sides in the Vietnam War debate and wanted Americanists to cover America, and Americans, as they spanned the globe. He foresaw a special public role for Americanists to provide background for contemporary issues with integrative studies of the United States during the Bicentennial of American Independence in 1976, and Dorson also considered this event a pinnacle moment for American Studies both in the United States and in Europe (Winks 1976).

12 Toward that end of emphasizing the vernacular in American Studies and suggesting an Americanist recasting of American experience, Boorstin had created the Chicago History of American Civilization series. Boorstin contracted Dorson to produce a book on American folklore in the series (Dorson 1959; see also Bauman, Abrahams, and Kalčik 1976; Bronner 1993; Mechling 1989). Critical to Boorstin’s philosophy was the idea that unlike the European divide between high aristocratic and low vernacular culture, the United States was marked by “a homogeneity of thought and culture quite alien to the European experience” (Boorstin 1956, 140). With the United States having skipped the aristocratic phase, Boorstin claimed, the country was marked by its commonness. At the same time, American thought was diffuse, again in contrast to European intellectual life, Boorstin argued. He pointed out that the country lacked an intellectual center and philosopher class. American Studies could respond to this development by covering thought and culture in a conceptual whole. It could, and should, be “neither the history of our intellectuals nor the story of our philosophies,” Boorstin declared (1956, 143). The Americanist in his view would be interested in the process rather than the product of America. Further, this type of scholar, whether from inside or outside the United States, should be the contextualist par excellence, able to

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identify broad cultural continuities and localized situations (see Berkhofer 1989). “By rejecting ideologies,” Boorstin elaborated, “we reject the sharp angles, the sudden turns, the steep up-and-down grades, which mark political life in many parts of the world, in favor of the slow curves, the imperceptible slopes of institutional life” (1956, 150). American culture had taught its scholars to think institutionally, Boorstin opined, and this trait could effectively frame the direction for Americanists that incorporates, and yet separates itself from, the disciplines of history, philosophy, and literature (Boorstin 1956, 150; see also Berkhofer 1979; Bronner 2017; Murphey 1999).

13 Dorson picked up Boorstin’s institutional cue in Wise’s volume on the history of the American Studies movement. Dorson offered an ethnographic portrait of the differences among scholars of different disciplinary stripes from his experience at conferences. He characterized the American Studies type “having a certain flair that denotes a liberated spirit” that separates him or her from anthropologists (“rough and ready, gruff and hearty” he wrote of them), literature scholars (who, he wrote, “move discreetly and discourse courteously”), and historians (“matter-of-fact and pragmatic” he quipped) (Dorson 1979, 369). Although somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Dorson’s characterizations were meant to verify a label of Americanist as independent from, rather than a supplement to, other disciplines.

Fig. 1: Ngrams for American Studies, 1955-2000 (smoothing factor of 5)

Fig. 2: Ngrams for Americanist , 1955-2000 (smoothing factor of 5)

14 One statistical indication of rhetorical usage of “Americanist” as a signal label for an American Studies scholar analyzing American culture at the grassroots rather than an American historian or literary scholar is through analysis of the Google books database. According to Ngram Viewer of Google Books, the title of “Americanist” rose dramatically 350 percent from 1960 to 1970 and then plummeted in 1980 back to pre -1960-levels (fig. 1). Yet use of “American Studies” continued at 1970 levels until dipping dramatically in 1990 (fig. 2). During the 1990s, six of the 10 presidents of the

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American Studies Association (ASA) either did not have American Studies degrees or were not affiliated with American Studies programs. The ASA awards program did not have any prizes named after the founding Harvard figures or the doctoral children that Dorson named, but featured accolades named after figures with affiliations outside of American Studies programs such as Angela Y. Davis, Lora Romero, and Yasuo Sakakibara.

15 Noting the expansion of attendance at ASA meetings beyond the core audience of representatives from American Studies programs and departments, reports from the ASA’s committee on academic programs during the 1990s complained that the ASA was not doing enough for American Studies academic programs and the core Americanist base (Davidson 1993; Hilbish 1993). According to the Individual Member Survey of 1990-91, half of the ASA membership had joined less than 6 years before. American Studies or American Civilization degrees accounted for only 35 percent of the membership (Hilbish 1993, 4). In 1993, the ASA’s Standing Committee on American Studies Programs organized a pre-convention meeting devoted to American Studies Program directors. The second session on “The Question of Identity” asked “What do we make of the decline of American Studies programs at the same time that membership in the American Studies Association reaches an all time high?” (“Pre- Convention” 1993). Reflecting later on the conflict during the 1990s between the old Americanist core and the emigres from other disciplines to the ASA, Matthias Oppermann in American Studies in Dialogue (2011; based on his dissertation for Humboldt University, Germany) argued that much of the conflict was over the main innovative project of American Studies to create a new cultural pedagogy which was dissipating with more attention to separate historical, literary, or art historical approaches brought by a tide of new members.

16 In response, Daniel Aaron, one of Dorson’s American Civilization classmates at Harvard, in 2007 titled his autobiography The Americanist and maintained the need for what he dubbed a Whitmanesque conception of the American Studies scholar as a “practitioner of things American” (Aaron 2007, 1). He implied that American Studies as it had developed after the 1990s was more diffuse, more politicized, and less effective as a scholarly enterprise of Americanists. Again looking at Ngram statistics for contents of books in the period after the 1990s, Aaron was joined in the use of Americanist by a rising tide of scholars after a fallow period (fig. 3). Whether this rhetoric constituted a neo-Americanist movement (with impetus from a rising tide of European scholars) as a counter to insurgent atomizing trends of American Studies or is a signal of another schism is a question I address in the next section.

Fig. 3: Ngram for Americanist, 1998 to 2005, smoothing factor of 3

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Contesting Claims for American Studies

17 One sign of schism is the debates set off in 2003 by Leo Marx’s identification of a “Great Divide” in American Studies (Marx 2003; Marx 2005; capitalization as in original). Marx, another of Harvard’s original Americanist brood, observed that this divide was between the founding Americanist vision of a holistic, affirmative, nationalistic project “primarily aimed at identifying and documenting the distinctive features of the culture and society” and a new politicized regime that “undertook the serious empirical investigation of the often microscale oppositional identity politics generated by the barriers of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual preferences” (Marx 2003-2004). The debate heated up to the point that Amy Kaplan, president of the American Studies Association in 2003-2004, issued “A Call for a Truce” (2005). She hoped there would be common ground in paying “more attention to the nation-state in American studies, [because]… in focusing so much on national identity from a cultural perspective, we haven’t spent enough time on state, governmental, and economic institutions or the relations between state and nation” (Kaplan 2005, 143). Yet she rejected his holistic vision of seeing “America as a whole” and accused him of sticking to “exceptionalism” that she found repulsive.2 She preferred work since the 1990s of the “idea of America as an ideological, discursive, or mythic construct, an ‘imagined community’ that excludes as well as includes, that has hierarchical and imperial as well as egalitarian and democratic dimensions” (Kaplan 2005, 143; see also Gillman 2005; Kaplan and Pease 1993). Yet critics viewed this idea of America as another form of exceptionalism that substituted an aggregated malevolent image for “America’s promise” (Radway 2009; Roark, et al. 2017).

18 Both Marx and Kaplan wanted to take credit for their versions of American Studies globalizing work on American culture; considering American ethnic, gender, and racial diversity; and expanding, as well as complicating, the meaning of America. Kaplan thought the embrace of these areas owed to a younger post-Cold War generation, while Marx claimed that these trends were original contributions of his founding American Studies cohort. Kaplan concluded that maybe a truce, or coalescence, was not possible as had occurred during the 1970s. She confessed that “after calling for a truce, I did nonetheless get into a defensive attack mode” (Kaplan 2005, 146). And others launched salvos on a mode of thinking they pejoratively called nationalist and simplistic in a binary with supposedly global and complex frame of study that was preferred for an era variously dubbed “postmodern,” “post-nationalist,” or “postcolonial” (Rowe 2000; Rowe 2002a; Rowe 2002b).

19 For American Studies academic administrators participating in a forum on “The New Goals of American Studies Programs” in 2005, the divisive issue was not the focus on diverse or global identities, which they agreed had been apparent in American Studies since its founding, but the matter of changing scholarly practice and organizational development (Bronner 2005; see also Bronner 2008). Their worry was that papers at American Studies Association meetings and publications in its journal American Quarterly disclaimed objective, rigorous methodology or research in favor of political grandstanding. Indeed, the ethnic inclusiveness of earlier meetings appeared to them undermined by factions that wanted to ostracize ethnic and religious groups they characterized as favoring a nationalistic or superordinate position (see Castronovo and

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Gillman 2009; Wood 2013). Particularly pointed in this view was Walter W. Hölbling of the Department of American Studies at the Karl-Franzens-University in Austria. He observed from a European perspective an unnecessary implosion of American Studies as practiced by scholars in the United States. He wrote, “Looking at the U.S. from… across the ocean, the object of our study—the United States—is still clearly discernible and has not disappeared” (Hölbling 2005, 15). He emphasized the keywords of inclusiveness and everyday (and an added call for attention to popular culture and media) as intellectual concerns in the conclusion of his essay: “For our teaching of U.S. culture and society, only an inclusive approach guarantees the necessary, and certainly the more authentic, complexity and differentiation in our understanding of the U.S. to make students aware that the flood of simulacra they receive via everyday mass media are mostly rather stereotyped versions of ‘American’ reality” (Hölbling 2005, 17). Takashi Sasaki of the Graduate School of American Studies of Doshisha University in Japan agreed and thought that the inclusive approach of Americanists should include the objective perspective of social sciences “necessary,” he wrote, “for Americanists outside the United States to position American Studies in a global context” (Sasaki 2005, 14).

20 The debate at the dawn of the new millennium was the not first time that American Studies divided over the charge of politicization and analytical subjectivity. In his ASA presidential address in 1990 titled “The Politics of American Studies,” Allen Davis recalled turmoil within American Studies during the 1970s as a result of the agitation of the “Radical Caucus” in the American Studies Association (ASA) and protests at international American Studies conferences of America’s presence in Southeast Asia and Europe. He opened with the example of the disruption of speakers at a global conference at Salzburg, Austria, sponsored by the Bicentennial Committee for International Conferences of Americanists, United States Information Agency, and the Bureau of Educational Cultural Affairs of the United States State Department. These unprecedented events, according to Davis, owed to “a considerable debate about the relationship between American Studies scholarship and American money and power” (1990, 354).

21 Although the rise of American Studies could be tied in Europe and North America to what Davis called “the cold war climate” of democratic opposition to the Soviet Union by supporting American Studies programs, discontent had grown among American Studies scholars with America’s involvement in Vietnam. Some scholars such as John William Ward held the view that scholarship should more vociferously combat America’s militarism (Brown 2006), while others maintained that scholarship should keep a social scientific objectivity (Cole 1971; see also Dorson 1976b, 21-24). Davis reflected that the label of radicals the group gave itself was not apt because they were not really revolutionaries or extremists. In his view, “they merely wanted to transfer some of the movement for freedom and equality they witnessed all round them to their teaching and learning” and invoked radicalism to draw attention to their resistance generally, in the rhetoric of the period, to a societal “establishment” (Davis 1990, 360; see also Deloria and Olson 2017, 100-4). Especially after riots in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they sought new dialogues on the purposes of American Studies scholarship to be relevant to American social realities. And they were not alone — even more dissident

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movements arose within the American Historical Association and Modern Language Association (Davis 1990, 360).

22 A contentious moment or “representative act” for the American Studies movement began in 1969 at the American Studies Association conference in Toledo, Ohio, when the group identifying as “The Radical Caucus” threatened to divide the ASA over student representation on the ASA Council, involvement of Third World countries in the American Studies movement, continuation of the Civil Rights movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. The matter appeared to have been resolved by 1971 with negotiations to change ASA policies and election procedures. In his report to the ASA, president Robert Walker declared that “a wasteful and destructive confrontation was avoided” (Walker 1971, 260). Walker commented that accord was reached because both sides agreed on maintaining the professionalism, rather than political partisanship, of scholars in the American Studies movement. According to Walker, “It should be clear by now that, in spite of the terminology [of ‘radical’], the ASA has not been ‘politicized’” (1971, 260). Referring to surveys conducted by the ASA Council, Walker claimed that “the very large majority of the membership has expressed a strong wish that the ASA remain a professional association and avoid stands on political issues external to immediate professional concerns” (1971, 260; emphasis added). Davis reflecting on the turmoil two decades later agreed with Walker’s assessment that “the sympathetic hearing extended to the Radical Caucus prevented the division that occurred in other professional organizations” (1990, 362). He also observed another consequence of the conflict: the ASA became more of a national body rather than a federation of regional organizations. This nationalization appeared in keeping with a push to establish American Studies as a discipline with a global group that met annually in prominent locations and represented a primary affiliation for its members.

The Challenge of Culture in American Studies

23 One schism that could not be resolved, however, was with a faction of Americanists who propounded the transformation of the diffuse-sounding label of “American Studies” into a more focused American cultural studies. This designation, its advocates maintained, would be more populist and democratic by giving more attention to folk and popular culture. This group, led by some of the original founders of the ASA including Russel Nye, Ray Browne, and Marshall Fishwick, claimed that the ASA was elitist in its historical and literary subject matter and in the kinds of scholars who participated in its conferences. In response, the trio launched a Midwest Conference on Literature, History, Popular Culture, and Folklore at Purdue University in 1965 that was meant to draw attention to material, and approaches, allegedly left out of the purview of “American Studies.” The regional conference was in keeping with the organizational landscape of American Studies which was lodged in regional organizations (Davis 1990, 357). The challenge of the papers to elitist American Studies scholarship led Ray Browne working with Donald M. Winkelman and Allen Hayman to issue the conference proceedings as New Voices in American Studies in 1966 and launch the Journal of Popular Culture (JPC) in 1967 (Browne, Winkelman, and Hayman 1966). The inclusive rhetoric of “voices” was Whitmanesque in invoking the poet’s populist reference to “different voices winding in and out” in Leaves of Grass (1900, 343; see also Gray 2015, 69-105) and drawing attention in the midst of the civil rights movement to suppressed ethnic and

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racial differences in the more recent title of 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States by Richard Wright (1941). Browne still expressed the hope that his vernacular culture initiative could transform rather than displace the American Studies movement. Writing in the introduction under the heading of “The Proper Study for American Studies,” Browne observed “the various fields loosely associated with ‘American Studies’ have developed into a coherent discipline with momentum” (1989, 10), but bemoaned the elitism of American Studies reflected in the lack of attention to folk and popular culture. With this attention, Browne hypothesized, American Studies could fill an intellectual niche not covered by history, English, and social science.

24 Nye organized the ASA meeting in 1969 in Toledo with the hope of featuring popular culture studies and more broadly to encourage a shift of American Studies toward an American cultural studies. Impatient with the rate of change within the ASA, however, Russel Nye and Marshall Fishwick after the meeting in 1969 called for an organization that was independent of the ASA (Browne 1989, 21). Browne recalled that they “still felt that the focus of the ASA was too narrow, too elitist and not sufficiently relevant” and was not transformable (Browne 1989, 57). After consideration of intellectual terms for their group including “contemporary culture” and “comparative culture,” and in light of folklorists already having an American Folklore Society, they decided on the global label of “popular culture” within a Popular Culture Association. Despite Browne’s hope that it was meant to supplement the ASA’s activities, he realized that the ASA “continued to look upon us as a deliberate threat” (Browne 1989, 22). The Popular Culture Association grew rapidly and gained a populist reputation as an organization that did not limit participation to academics. Whereas previously he had avoided establishing an organizational competitor to the ASA, in 1978, Browne launched a Journal of American Culture (JAC) as the organ of a new American Culture Association (Browne 1978, 57). The emphasis in the name was the substitution of “culture” for the diffuse “studies.” The American organization met with the Popular Culture Association (PCA), but was not limited to popular culture. As he explained the difference, “A paper on the influence of Puritanism in the printing trade would belong to JAC, but one on the effect of Puritan hymnals on Protestant songs would properly belong in JPC” (Browne 1989, 58). Nonetheless, the difference to many scholars was not entirely clear and the label of “American culture studies” was often associated with popular culture studies. Indeed, the ACA appeared to be more concerned with developing theories related to popular culture and media studies than to developing American Studies as a discipline.

25 Undoubtedly, popular culture studies drew people away from American Studies which still had by the 1990s an elitist academic reputation, but increasingly, a number of programs took on the “American culture” label and by the start of the new century ASA conferences featured more popular culture in their purview (Berkhofer 1989; Mechling, Merideth, and Wilson 1973; Shank 1997; Sykes 1963). Yet a difference in approach could be discerned. Textbooks by PCA/ACA leaders touted an “iconology” in popular culture studies that would have as its goal the identification and interpretation of popular American icons, including celebrities, products (especially film and music), and institutions (Berger 2012; Browne, Grogg, and Landrum 1975; Cottrell 2015, Fishwick and Browne 1970; Hinds, Motz, and Nelson 2006; Lewis 1972; Nye 1970). In turn, ASA conferences worked to champion more of the ethnic and racial diversity that the PCA/ ACA had claimed was missing from the ASA.

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26 The influence of folk cultural research was especially evident in not only the rise of ethnographic methods to supplement historical and literary approaches to ethnic, ordinary, or vernacular lives, but also in the emphasis on the diversity (often ethnic, occupational, regional, and gender) of plural cultures and migratory nature of traditions across borders (Bauman, Abrahams, and Susan Kalčik 1976; Bronner 1993). Through folklore, Dorson asserted in a volume co-edited by Ray Browne, one is able “to see American culture from new angles” (Dorson 1971, 79). The perspective is from the bottom up with special attention to social life and the agency of communities in the use of traditions. Instead of viewing a hierarchy on a ladder of civilization from the lowly folk to the elite at the top, he sketched a relationship of folk as the root of popular, mass, and elite ideas (Dorson 1971, 91). He declared that the influence of folk cultural research is one that forces students out of the library and into the field and that has them thinking comparatively about American social “reality.” He identified an obstacle in American Studies in the “professional resistance to local as opposed to national history” (1971, 87); if that could be overcome, he editorialized, then a new generation of students will be able to give “sound, perceptive treatments” of a plural American culture (1971, 93). With the obstacle of national history removed, Dorson’s bridging of the ethnographic present and historic past as well as the keynote of plural culture are evident in the definition of American Studies given in American Studies: A User’s Guide by Philip J. Deloria and Alexander I. Olson for the twenty-first century: “American Studies is an interdisciplinary practice that aims to understand the multiplicity of the social and cultural lives of people in—and in relation to—the United States, both past and present (2017, 6; emphasis added).

27 The understanding brought to these lives in American Studies often appeared to be critical. Surveying books on American culture produced by ASA leaders, Alan Wolfe (2003) characterized many of the books from new students with American Studies affiliations as “anti-American Studies” because as a group they took a negative view of the United States with harsh complaints about lingering inequality, marginalization, and injustice in American Society. They frequently referred to the inspiration of Antonio Gramsci and the Birmingham School of “cultural studies” that unlike Boorstin argued for a class-based conception of American society beset by conflicts between an elite who used popular culture to manipulate the masses and an underclass that suffered from its racialization and feminization (Lears 1985; Storey 2009; Wolfe 2003). As Günter Lenz in his chronicle of the “New American Studies” points out, European neo-Marxist thought was attractive because of “its critique of the self, of history, of enlightenment, not only in terms of an inherent critique of philosophy, but as historical and social process” (2017, 11). Yet what Lenz called the Left’s “deconstruction of all the traditional foundations and strategies of critical discourse” led to a “trap of a superficial synthesis or a harmonization of oppositions, contradictions, or difference” (2017, 3). Although critical theory picked up on issues of plurality, globalism, and inequality anticipated by the founders of the American Studies movement, Lenz thought that the crisis of the Left in the post-civil-rights era of the 1980s when liberalism became mainstreamed in academe led to a rejection, or deconstruction, of progressive theories so as to establish a radical presence of political interventionism (2017, 5, 62-88). It suggested in Gramscian terms that a problem with America was its intellectual construction by Americanists. Despite their calls for building an inclusive inquiry into American experience, warts and all, the Americanists intellectually constructed as “old” and even reactionary, were scapegoated as being complicit in

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modern American social problems. In other words, the new American Studies ironically undermined the need for American Studies.

28 For many scholars invested in this revisionary “new American Studies,” the American Studies movement born at Harvard and Yale did not constitute a foundation on which to build a changing edifice; scholars looking for a synthesis needed to look elsewhere, perhaps in European neo-Marxist thought, or start anew (see Oppermann 2017). In this view, American Studies should be dissolved and replaced with a new paradigm of an atomized, problematized, and illusory America in the world (see Kaplan and Pease 1994; Lipsitz 2001; Pease and Wiegman 2002; Rowe 2000; Rowe 2002b). There did not appear to be much room for negotiation as there had been with other paradigm dramas. Again, the issue of naming came up to give separation from the Americanist movement. In a signal of the crisis of American Studies as constituted in the American Studies Association, Janice Radway in her presidential address to the ASA notably challenged the naming of American Studies and called for a label to convey “the importance of difference and division within American history, on the significance of ‘dissensus’…” (Radway 1999, 2). This new label would guide the American Studies Association, she thought, in redefining its role “in a larger social and political context” and potentially changing its identity as well as its name (1999, 2). To do so, she simplified, and demonized, the Americanist position as promoting American culture to be “exceptional in some way and…dominated by consensus” (1999, 2), even though Dorson’s characterization of the founders was that they indeed were innovative by exploring social difference, global connections, and indeed issues of empire (see DeVoto 1952; Jones 1964). Radway thought that American Studies enforced “the achievement of premature closure through an implicit, tacit search for the distinctively American ‘common ground’” (1999, 3). She wanted to separate American Studies from what she called “a rapidly advancing global neo-colonialism that specifically benefits the United States, by an association whose very name still so powerfully evokes the ghostly presence of a phantasmatic, intensely longed-for, unitary ‘American’ culture” (1999, 8).

29 Radway considered three possibilities for conceptual as well as onomastic change. One was to rename the ASA the Association for the Study of the United States, so as to refocus attention away from the “American” label which she thought of as an “imperial gesture” (1999, 18). She worried, however, that this alternative would alienate international scholarly communities. She wrote that perhaps adding “International” to the association would be more inclusive, but then again, it was not in keeping with the radical stance that situating a study by political borders leads to a “greater isolationism in the intellectual construction of the U.S.” (1999, 20). She then considered the “Inter- American Studies Association” to focus on transnational American social and cultural relations. Then again, she backtracked, “such a name would implicitly place the entire ‘American’ field in relation to the imperial Europe that first began to define it” (1999, 20). In her globalizing onomastics, she strived to create distance from colonizing Europe as well as the United States. Her culminating suggestion was a “Society for Intercultural Studies” to eliminate the space of America as an organizing rubric for an “area study.” To its credit, “intercultural” would signal a post-structural turn away from the nationalism, she thought, but was concerned that in an era of global massification that “it would be particularly dangerous to do away with the respect for local contexts” (1999, 23). The American Studies Association did not change its name as a result of her address, but it did arguably become radically recast. Or maybe it was not so radical as the New Americanists thought. Matthias Oppermann writing on the

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history of American Studies noted that they adhered to the old elitist “paradigm of print texts” and he was surprised that they still gave little attention to media, visual culture, and popular culture, as the Americanists had (2017, 19).

30 Despite Radway’s expressed concern for expanding the internationalization of American Studies at century’s end, a number of scholars thought the effort did not go far enough in recentering holistic scholarship on the United States. On June 1, 2000, twenty-two professors meeting in Bellagio, Italy, launched the International American Studies Association with the purpose of providing, according to its website, “a space for interdisciplinary dialogues about American culture and society.” It declared itself to be the “only world-wide, independent, not governmental association for Americanists” (Jaidka 2017). It challenged the ability of the American Studies Association with its foundational context in the United States of being able to “speak with authority and understanding about U.S. culture” (Jaidka 2017). It also referred to a critical mandate, but one more focused on “critical internationalism” that countered the perceived “insularity” of ideas by United States scholars assumed to have universal validity (Desmond and Dominguez 1996; Lee 1995). Seeking reconciliation as president of the ASA, Emory Elliott brought up the IASA’s concerns in his presidential address to the ASA and hoped that resolution could be achieved by having more dialogue as an extension of the pedagogical concept of diversity between “those of us who study the United States from the inside and those who do so from the outside” (Elliott 2007, 6). Validating the organizing principle of the IASA, he urged ASA members to “carefully consider outside perspectives and criticism,” but also thought that the ASA is “uniquely positioned to explore the transnational without undermining the political and institutional stakes of these other fields and programs” (Elliott 2007, 9-10). The IASA remained independent, however, and produced its own publications and conferences outside the United States.

31 Even if embracing critical internationalism could be a connecting thread among the emerging factions of the Americanists and the new American Studies, the ASA’s slide toward politicization of its subject caused unrest from within. With the provocative title of “The Idiocy of American Studies,” Steven Watts in 1991 admonished the post- structuralist “hordes” in the new American Studies that “its injunctions have created an interpretive framework that is one-dimensional, while it has defined a politics that may be compelling for its academic practitioners, but is of little use otherwise” (Watts 1991, 627). Watts’s warning in the ASA’s organ of American Quarterly did not stop the tide of critical works, including several special-theme issues concentrating on conflict, such as Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies (2011), Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (2012), and Species/Race/Sex (2013). Acknowledging in 2015 that the new American Studies with its anti-nationalist orientation had become aggressively dominant and intolerant of opposing views of scholars working in American culture, popular culture critic Michael Walsh in The Devil’s Pleasure Palace caustically chided the upstarts for the “pernicious” effects of its “reactionary philosophy of ‘critical theory’” (Walsh 2015, 1). He animatedly characterized this cultish scholarship as “overly intellectualized and emotionally juvenile” and responsible for a subversive function of “destruction, division, hatred, and calumny” in American society—all “disguised as a search for truth that will lead to human happiness here on earth” (Walsh 2015, 1).

32 As the range of editorial jabs between 1991 and 2015 shows, this latest battle in American Studies lasted longer than the earlier crises of the 1970s and appeared less

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resolvable. In the midst of this growing public debate, several American Studies programs that had played significant roles in the American Studies movement closed. A number of prominent long-standing programs such as Indiana University (Dorson’s base), Michigan State University (home to Russel Nye), and the University of Pennsylvania (one of the first programs to be established) shut down. Other programs became embedded in departments hanging post-structural shingles: the American Studies program at the University at Buffalo came under the auspices of a department of transnational studies, Washington State University’s program joined the department of critical culture, gender, and race studies, and New York University’s program was administered by the department of social and cultural analysis.

33 That is not to say that the American Studies landscape had become monolithic. An ASA survey of programs in 2007 noted that many American Studies programs had dropped their claims of interdisciplinarity as their raison d’etre in favor of calls for cultural interpretation and applied work (Bronner 2008). The doctoral program in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California was committed, according to its website, to “the consequences of disparity and inequity, and the enactment of community and citizenship in Los Angeles, California, the United States and the world.” The doctoral program in American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg, established in 2009, meanwhile declared its allegiance to the American Studies movement’s “understanding of the American experience developed within the intellectual legacy of American Studies.” Despite the addition of these two doctoral programs, ASA leaders became concerned about a perceived decline in American Studies programs overall and a downturn in ASA membership since 1993. In response, the ASA Council in 2014 established a task force “for American Studies in Higher Education in the U.S. and Globally” (Task Forces 2014). Apparently concerned for public skepticism of American Studies as a viable intellectual field, the task force announced its primary objective of making “a case for the centrality of American studies within and across contemporary discourses of higher education, civil society, and democracy so as to ensure a vibrant future for the field” (Task Forces 2014).

34 A twofold change occurred during years of American Studies program crisis in the early twenty-first century. One was the “topic drift” away from American Studies as a new perspective on American culture and another was the appropriation of scholarship in service to ideology rather than intellectual discovery. Charles Kupfer in 2016 protested that the new American Studies “now serves chiefly as validation system for academicians who know their findings in advance: racism, sexism, and imperialism.” He was not objecting to interrogations of racism, sexism, and imperialism in American experience, but rather the fallacious methodology of presenting a priori assumptions as conclusions. Activism, he worried, was presented as theory. Looking for an analytical methodology whose findings were confirmable and would garner academic respect, he complained that in the critical paradigm claimed by the new American Studies, “studies” meant a dubious conclusion of “call-outs and condemnations.” Yet what he referred to as the field might represent the proclamations of the American Studies Association rather than an active group of Americanists, especially those attracted to the holistic concept from abroad.

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The Causes of Civil War and Its Aftermath

35 Divisions within American Studies came to a head in 2013 when the ASA’s National Council proposed a resolution to endorse a boycott of Israeli institutions (Mullen 2015; Musher 2015). Although the action was on a single resolution, the result was a civil war on a host of issues related to the future of American Studies. Despite opposition of eight former presidents of the ASA to the proposal, the ASA Council moved ahead with the resolution. The result was the withdrawal of several American Studies programs from the ASA’s institutional membership, a host of high profile criticisms of the ASA by American Studies scholars, and widespread public opprobrium for the ASA (Kulik 2013; Organizations 2017). Indeed, a journalist for the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 5, 2014) characterized the American Studies Association as “a pariah of the United States higher-education establishment” (Schmidt 2014). The term “American Studies” was tainted by links to the ASA, particularly after over 200 university presidents in the United States condemned the ASA’s resolution and its academic leaders (Schmidt 2014).

36 With the field inviting closer public scrutiny because of the resolution, commentators noted that American Studies no longer represented intellectual innovation and appeared fragmented into innumerable areas: ethnic studies, Native American Studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and so on (Kupfer 2016; Pells 2016). The “studies” became a problem in an intellectual landscape that no longer considered interdisciplinarity special as an academic distinction (Klein 1999). Through the twentieth century, American Studies programs touted the initiative of American Studies in advancing interdisciplinary models in academe, but with the proliferation of integrative curricula, American Studies in the twenty-first century did not stand out as a bellwether (see Moran 2002). After praising American Studies as the most innovative movement in the American and international academic world from the 1940s to the 1960s, intellectual and cultural historian Richard Pells from the University of Texas in 2016 critiqued the new American Studies as purposeless, irrelevant to the outside world, and narrow in its subject matter.

37 Still, the question remained whether the tarnished image of American Studies resulted from the actions of the ASA which represented the field or the turf wars among departments within American universities (see Augsburg and Henry 2009). For example, appearing on the nationally broadcast Charlie Rose Show (PBS) former president of Harvard University Larry Summers suggested that the ASA did not meet the standards of a learned society and encouraged university presidents not to subsidize participation in or travel to ASA meetings (ASA Members for Academic Freedom 2013). Drew Gilpin Faust, Summer’s successor at Harvard, who had been part of the University of Pennsylvania’s American Studies program as student and faculty member, announced on behalf of Harvard University disapproval of the ASA’s boycott (Office of the President 2013). Faust was joined in condemnation of the ASA by most institutions with American Studies programs and members of the ASA National Council, including Yale University, Brown University, and New York University (Jacobson 2013). Of concern to many Americanists was that the actions of the American Studies Association were dragging down the reputation of American Studies as a legitimate field of learning (Kulik 2013).

38 Empirical evidence of the troubles of American Studies well before the boycott resolution was provided by Jerry A. Jacobs in 2013 of the Population Studies Center at

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the University of Pennsylvania. He pointed out that “Even at its peak of popularity in the early 1970s, a mere two-tenths of one percent of undergraduates [and less than one-twentieth of one percent of master’s students] obtained their degrees in American Studies, and only a slightly higher fraction of doctorates were granted in this field” (Jacobs 2013, 1). He added that in his count, “most of the presidents of the American Studies association over the last 20 years had their principal appointments in either English or History departments” (Jacobs 2013, 1-2). He drew significance from the fact that many scholarly endeavors undertaken by those with training in American Studies are just as narrow and specialized as those pursued by their counterparts trained in English and history. Jacobs concluded that as a result of the fragmentation of topics, “American Studies programs have declined in number and have not recouped these losses” (Jacobs 2013, 16). The highest attrition rate was in master’s degree programs in small colleges.

39 The window of opportunity, however, is that the survival rate of doctoral programs in American Studies was relatively strong at 75 percent, and with their continuity, could be the basis of a revitalized movement away from the ill-starred direction fermented by the American Studies Association. Jacobs’s diagnosis was that “For the emerging paradigm to endure, it must continue to generate a dynamic research agenda that elicits commitment from succeeding generations of scholars” (Jacobs 2013, 35). I propose that a need still exists for a holistic project to document and interpret American culture in a diverse local, regional, and global context much as Dorson envisioned. To be sure, the project has evolved and the addition of more social sciences, awareness of digital culture and media, practice and performance theory, studies of bodylore and embodiment, and new perspectives on gender, tradition, and aging have informed a new paradigm built upon the foundation of an Americanist intellectual legacy. But when the dust settles, the Americanist label for the professional investigator and for an alternative professional organization is crucial if the project is to have a future.

Rebirth: In Consideration of Americanistics

40 In conclusion, I will answer Jacobs’s call with a trifold proposal of a dynamic research agenda that I hope can be sustained in a revitalized movement of Americanists.

41 1. Differentiate “American Studies” in addition to English and History from an Americanist agenda of an integrative project primarily aimed at identifying, documenting, and analyzing the characteristic features of the diversity and unity of American culture locally, nationally, and globally. As Skard noted, attention needs to include not only the influence of the world upon and within America, but also on America in the world. This differentiation might be accomplished by American Studies programs with Americanist goals designating their distinctive scope with the label of “American Thought and Culture” or as I will outline below a field of learning called “Americanistics.” Programs could also add “Society” to emphasize sociological as well as cultural aspects. Indeed, this subject should integrate social sciences as well as humanities by appealing to anthropological and sociological Americanists who have a parallel tradition. Organizationally, the students of the subject can align with centers and groups that promote open dialogue such as the John F. Kennedy Institute for North

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American Studies, European Association for American Studies, and the Society of Americanists rather than the American Studies Association.3

42 2. The designation of a field or a discipline by its content is problematic. It has plagued the study of folklore and popular culture, for example, although folklore has a label for a professional “folklorist” which popular culture does not have. One possibility is to align with social sciences with a suffix of “ology” such as “Americanology” but more closely related to Americanist is a variation of linguistics such as Americanistics. In German-speaking countries, Americanistik is already in usage with connotations of cultural historical and social scientific concerns (Strunz 1999).4 Anticipating this rhetorical move in English, Rob Kroes pointed to the establishment of a chair in Americanistics in the Netherlands in 1947 as instructive. He considered “American Studies—as an American approach brought over to Europe…an anachronism” (1987, 56). Understanding “the rival concept” of Americanistics as moving beyond its origins in language study to society and culture, the difference from American Studies, he argued, is its “consistently stereoscopic vision,” an analytical comparative perspective that takes into account perceptions from within the United States as well as outside of it (1987, 56, 62-63). The appeal of “ics” as a suffix is its connection not only to systematic identification but also to the interpretation of meaning (see, for example, the discourse on the designation of folkloristics as the study of folklore in Ben-Amos 1985; Bronner 2006; Montenyohl 1996). It also suggests an adjective of an Americanistic project to describe studies taking a holistic approach. Ultimately, the designation is important to differentiate from the Americanist as a professional endeavor from the lurkers and grandstanders of American Studies.

43 3. Ultimately, the Americanist agenda is dynamic and inclusive because it offers as ethical guidelines of professionalism an objective search for social and cultural patterns and an a diverse community of practice, if not a discipline, devoted to goals of cumulative scholarship. It can evolve in the movement as an intellectual enterprise to identify and explain patterns, ideas, and traditions characterizing the nation and its people in regional and global contexts. As a discipline it is based on an intellectual heritage reaching into the late nineteenth century (Bronner 2017).

44 Most of all, Americanistics is a problem-oriented approach, spirit, or “way of seeing things whole” (Bronner 2017; Küchler 2017, 25-28). It can be an independent branch of learning although it clearly draws upon ethnographic, psychological, and historical perspectives on everyday life and vernacular culture. Organizationally, it should restore the inclusive “stream of ideas” from different sectors that could lead to coalescence. This proposal for a “re-birth” of the Americanist agenda will undoubtedly look different from the American civilization concept Dorson knew at Harvard, but I hope it will produce the “exhilaration” he and his fellow liberated spirits felt at pursuing, and affecting, the expanded, changing meanings of America in the world.

45 Acknowledgments

46 This essay is a revised version of a paper delivered at Society of Americanists meeting, March 31-April 1, 2017, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I wish to acknowledge the lively discussion from the audience that informed my revision, and the separate comments of Charles Kupfer, Anthony Buccitelli, and Spero Lappas.

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NOTES

1. The Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan claims on its website in 2017 that it “was the first formal academic program in American studies, and that, from its start in 1935, it looked beyond the confines of history and literature” (https://lsa.umich.edu/ac/about-us/department-history.html). Harvard’s site flatly declares “we are the oldest American Studies program in the country” (americanstudies.fas.harvard.edu). Gene Wise in his American Studies “Calendar” (1979) lists the Harvard program as the first Ph.D. program in 1936, and cites the precedent in 1933 of a course at Harvard co-taught by F.O. Matthiessen and Perry Miller. Wise also credits A. Whitney Griswold’s Yale dissertation “The American Cult of Success” (1933) as “one of the first American Studies Ph.D.’s in country” (415). 2. Kaplan was using exceptionalism pejoratively to indicate the view she rejected that America was superior to, and different from, other nations in the world. The Americanists tended not to use the term, which has a source in Karl Marx’s view that the United States, alone among industrial societies, lacks a significant socialist movement or labor party (Lipset and Marks 2000). The issue for many Americanists was the ways that particular American historical and social conditions influenced distinctive cultural development in the United States much as they had for other countries. Long acknowledging cultural, social, and geographic diversity, Dorson and others asked about the themes and ideas that connected Americans. See Edwards and Weiss 2011. 3. The Society of Americanists was launched at a conference on March 31, 2017, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. According to its website ( https://sites.psu.edu/ americanist/) The Society of Americanists (SOA) is a coalition of persons, organizations, and academic programs devoted to the study of the United States. SOA has its purpose fostering integrated studies of American history, society, arts, and culture in all their aspects; providing a forum for discussion of scholarly and professional issues among its members, including an annual conference and communications; and promotion of the profession of Americanists devoted to the study of the United States in a global context. Its distinctive niche in the organizational landscape of learned, professional societies in American Studies is to represent the discipline and profession of Americanists and advance analytical approaches to the research and interpretation of the United States” (Society of Americanists 2016). 4. The Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik [Journal of English and American Studies] published by De Gruyter proclaims its scope as “the entire spectrum of English and American language, literature and culture” (https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ zaa). Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik [Work in English and American Studies] published by Narr Francke Attempto Verlag is devoted to einzelnen Teildisziplinen, or the individual disciplines of English and American studies. Degrees are offered in Amerikanistik at universities such as the University of Graz, which announces its goal of “teaching and research to the study of the overall cultural and social development of the U.S.A.” (https://amerikanistik.uni-graz.at/en/the-department/). To be sure, Amerikastudien/American Studies is the official journal of the German Association for American Studies and has featured innovative, inclusive studies of the United States in a global perspective (http://www.amerikastudien.de/quarterly/). My point, however, is that the term Americanistics more clearly designates the analytical inter-cultural

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approach to the study of the United States and could be the keyword that avoids problems in the field with a diffuse, politicized “American Studies.”

ABSTRACTS

Using the life-course metaphor in Richard M. Dorson’s landmark address “The Birth of American Studies” in Warsaw on the occasion of forty years since the start of the groundbreaking Harvard program in American Studies, this essay questions whether American Studies in the forty years afterwards suffered a fatal malaise. It applies the analytical approach of historiographer Gene Wise to identify “representative acts” that mark paradigm dramas resulting from tension in holding together an interdisciplinary field subject to schism and displacement. The essay posits that the American Studies movement as it was conceptualized within the American Studies Association in the United States went into decline in the late twentieth century, largely because of the association’s inability, or unwillingness, to resolve differences between “Americanist” research-based scholars, many international, working within an American Studies tradition identified by Dorson and those coming to it from outside American Studies supposedly following “critical” thought. The critical school came to be dominant in the American Studies Association with a paradoxical attitude undermining the very subject, and organization, that it purports to promote. Looking at the work of American Studies programs and organizations beyond the American Studies Association, the essay suggests that it is possible to revitalize American Studies on the model of “Americanistics” sustained primarily in European centers and associations.

AUTHOR

SIMON J. BRONNER Simon J. Bronner is distinguished professor emeritus of American Studies and folklore at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, where he was the founding director of the American Studies doctoral program. He has also taught at Leiden University (Netherlands), Osaka University (Japan), Harvard University (USA), Dickinson College (USA), and University of California, Davis (USA).He is the author and editor of over forty books, including most recently Pennsylvania Germans: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2017), Youth Cultures in America (2016), Campus Traditions (2012), and Explaining Traditions (2011). He served as editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies online until 2016 and in addition to currently editing the Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies now edits book series on Material Worlds for the University Press of Kentucky and Folklore and Ethnology for Lexington Books. His recent awards include the Mary C. Turpie Prize from the American Studies Association for teaching, advising, and program development in American Studies; Kenneth Goldstein Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Folklore Society for academic leadership; and Lifetime Achievement Medal from the American Folklore Society for scholarship in children’s folklore.

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The Man Who Counted All Prostitutes in New York City: John R. McDowall and the Scandal of the Magdalen Report

Alexander Moudrov

1 The Rev. John R. McDowall’s ill-fated crusade against prostitution in New York City in the 1830s should have been a success. The young minister had a solid résumé of a dedicated activist and the genuine desire to help the city at the time when New Yorkers started to realize that prostitution was an increasingly alarming issue. Before moving to New York, McDowall studied theology at Princeton, where he often supplemented his classes with fieldwork by preaching to alcoholics, atheists, deists and other unsavory characters in hopes of turning them to God. Afterwards, he was dispatched to Rhode Island, where he tirelessly travelled throughout the state on behalf of the Providence Tract Society. There he proved to be such an earnest preacher that Arthur Tappan, a prominent reformer and abolitionist, encouraged McDowall to move to New York. And so in 1830, the young man formally left Princeton and moved to the city to combat vice with unrivaled enthusiasm.

2 His journalistic and literary efforts, which are the focus of this article, were an integral part of that campaign and, as we will see, the main reason for its downfall. For the next few years after he moved to New York, McDowall devoted all his time not only to ministering to prostitutes in the slums and organizing rescue societies but also to writing about the extent of urban vice to bring the subject of prostitution to the attention of the reluctant public. In some respects, his interest in New York’s underworld anticipated the rise of the urban gothic novel, which emphasized negative stereotypes about European and American cities. He started his crusade against prostitution by co-authoring the First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the New York Magdalen Society (1830), a fourteen-page publication better known as the Magdalen Report. It was followed with Magdalen Facts (1832), an eclectic collection of materials about McDowall’s work in the notoriously dangerous area known as Five

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Points. In 1833 he started McDowall’s Journal, which was designed “to expose public immorality, to elicit public sentiment, and to devise and carry into the effect the means of preventing licentiousness” (McDowall’s Journal 1). He also contributed articles to The Liberator, The New York Spectator, and The Observer and Telegraph, which were reprinted in many other papers throughout the country to make him a nationally recognizable figure.

3 McDowall’s interest in such a scandalous issue as prostitution should not have alarmed the general public. His literary methods, after all, reflected the conventions of the enduring American tradition of didactic sensationalism, which dates back to the early colonial period. McDowall’s seventeenth-century predecessors eagerly exploited scandalous topics, particularly crime and sexual impropriety, in their sermons to warn people against backsliding. To recall Williams Bradford’s words, colonial magistrates routinely turned to scandalous crimes and other “things fearful to name” in order to make such crimes “marveled at” as cautionary tales of human depravity (385-386). Even when many American Protestants moved away from the rigid Calvinism of early colonists two centuries later, the didactic tradition of sensationalism remained fairly popular among American religious writers and even influenced conventions of secular crime literature.1 As a part of this tradition, McDowall insisted that all manifestations of crime were interconnected and needed to be methodically exposed either from pulpit or in didactic publications. He wholeheartedly believed that cautionary tales about crime, particularly about prostitution, advanced Christian principles in his country.

4 What is remarkable, however, is that McDowall’s fate was different from that of many other ministers who in the past exploited scandalous issues in print with impunity. Almost from the start of his campaign, he was accused of impropriety, bad taste, and even licentiousness. He was ridiculed in press for his interest in fallen women and was ironically accused of promoting prostitution rather than combatting it. In 1834 the third Presbytery of New York, which had the authority to revoke his preaching license, actually ordered him to cease his journalistic activity and, when he failed to comply with that order, defrocked him on the charges of inappropriate conduct. Less than two years later, still a young man, he died exhausted by the controversy he created. What we have to ask, therefore, is why McDowall’s approach, which was not much different from the one adopted by clergymen in early America, met so much resistance in the city known for its relative tolerance.

5 Previous studies of McDowall’s crusade tended to emphasize McDowall’s unorthodox religious views and methods as the main cause of his troubles. Larry Whiteaker’s Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform in New York, 1830-1860, the most extensive study of McDowall’s work, explains that the reformer’s turbulent experiences reflected changes in American Protestantism in the early nineteenth century. Whiteaker’s argument echoed John W. Kuykendall’s earlier essay “Martyr to the Seventh Commandment,” in which Kuykendall surveyed McDowall’s provocative literary efforts but ultimately explained the hostility McDowall encountered by pointing out his disagreements with religious and civic leaders, who found his methods unconventional. As Kuykendall also reminded us, McDowall’s ultimate renunciation of Presbyterianism further cemented his status as a religious maverick. David S. Reynold’s Beneath the American Renaissance and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America briefly acknowledged the

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controversial nature of McDowall’s publications, but they analyzed them only in their immediate social and literary context.

6 This essay explains McDowall’s downfall as a reformer by not only analyzing his provocative works but also explaining how changing literary trends in the early nineteenth century shaped the scandal caused by his efforts. My analysis of McDowall’s doomed career relies on the argument that the attacks that effectively ended his crusade reflected the crisis of the American tradition of didactic sensationalism, the conventions of which could no longer escape public scrutiny. If before the nineteenth century religious figures in America had a virtual monopoly on writing about scandalous topics, writers and journalists in the early republic moved away from didactic conventions and started to exploit controversial subjects for new literary purposes. One particularly notable sign of this trend was Americans’ growing fascination with scandals involving powerful figures and the clergy, which increased in frequency in the early nineteenth century. Readers of all ranks did not only eagerly devour news about corrupt clergy but also become suspicious of clergymen and reformers in general.

7 I will therefore frame McDowall’s downfall in symbolic terms and describe him as a victim of changing literary conventions. He was heavily indebted to the neo-Puritan brand of didactic sensationalism, the conventions of which became suspect in the beginning of the nineteenth century. While he was not a Calvinist in the same sense as early European colonists, he wrote in the tradition of the American jeremiad reminiscent of the seventeenth-century sermons of Samuel Danforth, Benjamin Colman, and Increase Mather. His task was to make his countrymen realize the extent of their profound depravity and, hopefully, awaken their appreciation for traditional religious values. Following the tenets of didactic sensationalism, McDowall insisted that provocative exposure of crime, with emphasis on shocking details, was essential for New Yorkers’ effort to combat prostitution and other transgressions. As his first biographer wrote, McDowall’s “pen must be constantly dipped in the muddy abominations of all that is loathing, and his paper blotted with blackened details of charnel-houses of the dead” (Memoir and Select Remains 377). So strong was McDowall’s fondness for the shocking that his fellow reformer Lewis Tappan politely reproached him that he was “more gifted in searching out and exposing iniquities than in suggesting remedies” (Tappan 114). Even when he preached to destitute people, his goal was to make his listeners aware of their sinfulness through fear.

8 Once, when he was making rounds in Five Points, he was invited into a house where he found a dead poor man surrounded by his family and acquaintances. Instead of comforting them, he delivered an impromptu hellfire sermon in the tradition of Jonathan Edwards. “Think of Hell,” he thundered: Think of your midnight reveling ‘midst cursing, bitterness, fighting, drunkenness, theft, and murder—of your terrific dreams, and the shrieks of the lost echoing in your ears, in the lone hours of night—of your own criminal conduct, and resolution to commit suicide and murder.... You already anticipate... taste of agonies of the pit. Look! Here on this table lies a man; it is his body; his soul is now rejoicing in heaven, or is tormented in hell. In him behold your future situation. (McDowall, Magdalen Facts 25)

9 He proudly recalled this sermon in one of his first books, which also reminds us that the episode was not isolated but actually reflected McDowall’s preaching routine. He was, like early American jeremiad preachers, eager to frame virtually any seemingly

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negative occurrence as an example of what he perceived as the nation’s cultural downfall. “The chastity of the nation is violated,” he proclaimed on another occasion while discussing the proliferation of prostitution, “the manners, the fashions, the habits, of society are full of seduction—and licentiousness daringly and unabashedly stalks abroad in its nakedness. Our profligacy, as a people, runs parallel with our oppression. We steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and then impiously declare that we are delivered to do all these abominations” (“Prostitution” 1). Students of Puritan homiletics might accuse McDowall of inadvertent plagiarism, because we can easily find similar language in scores of early American sermons.

10 New Yorkers, like all Americans, were quite familiar with repetitive and abstract preaching about “our profligacy” but seemed to be unprepared for McDowall’s eagerness to tackle prostitution by examining its extent and causes in detail. The Magdalen Report, which he co-authored, was a bombshell designed to strip naked the entire New York sex industry and to drag all crimes into the open on the scale McDowall’s contemporaries were apparently not inclined to tolerate. The report started with a doubtful but shocking claim that “the number of females in this city who abandon themselves to prostitution is not less that [sic.] TEN THOUSAND,” or more than 20% of women of child-bearing age in the city. It went on to allege that the trade, like a disease, spread into every part of New York, with hundreds of seedy establishments hiding in such legitimate ventures as “boarding houses, dressmakers, milliners, stores and shops of various kinds.” It added that prostitution knew no boundaries and victimized “girls and women of all ages and colors, married and single” (New York Magdalen Society 5).2

11 The committee’s speculation about the causes of prostitution was particularly irksome to the report’s readers, because it hinted at the fundamentally unjust nature of American society. The document put much emphasis on the economic factors, particularly poverty, as a cause of the problem. To put it simply, “very many cases of prostitution were the result of sheer necessity,” with many young prostitutes described as “daughters of poor parents, and especially widowed mothers, whose necessities compelled them to seek employment as domestics” (New York Magdalen Society 2). In yet another provocative twist, the Magdalen Report also suggested that perhaps Americans’ appreciation for domestic virtue prevented the so-called fallen women from redeeming themselves, even in cases in which those women were clearly victimized by opportunistic men. As the report claimed, there were many “daughters of the wealthy, respectable and pious citizens of our own and other states, seduced from their homes by the villains who infest the community, preying upon female innocence, and succeeding in their diabolical purpose” (New York Magdalen Society 6).

12 One of the most controversial points in the report was that the blame for the prostitution should be shared by both prostitutes and their customers. Its authors did not hesitate to blame men of all ranks for seducing women and patronizing prostitutes, and threatened to reveal “the names of scores of the men and boys who are the seducers of the innocent” (New York Magdalen Society 5). At the same time they also blamed prostitutes for seducing young men: bad women multiply the seduction of heedless youth, more rapidly than bad men seduce modest women. A few of these courtesans suffice to corrupt whole cities, and there can be no doubt that some insinuating prostitutes have initiated more young men into these destructive ways, than the most abandoned rakes have debauched virgins during their whole lives. (5)

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13 This explains why the report likened prostitution (or prostitutes, to be exact) to an epidemic, “the pest and nuisance of society” (New York Magdalen Society 7).3

14 In the aftermath of the report, McDowall continued his crusade against prostitution with other publications and defended his work with the strategy that worked for many ministers in the past. As he wrote in the inaugural issue of McDowall’s Journal, which he created to raise awareness about various city ills, “The evils must be shown to the public to interest them to remove the evils” (McDowall’s Journal 1). He was dismayed by what he believed was his contemporaries’ reluctance to address provocative issues for fear of offending parishioners’ sense of decency. He complained that ministers generally discouraged discussions of anything that could be deemed provocative and obscene. As he put it, “A fastidious taste excludes from the pulpit sermon even a strong remark on the sin of debauchery.” As a result, churches “ceased to teach men that licentiousness is sin,” which, he alleged, contributed to proliferation of prostitution (McDowall, Magdalen Facts 26). Young women, who were never apparently warned about the dangers of vice, grew to become hapless victims of seducers. Young men, for their part, easily succumbed to sinful practices without fully understanding the repercussions of their actions. In McDowall’s view, many sex crimes could be prevented if churches simply made better efforts to expose vice without fear of offending the public.4

15 McDowall’s religious orthodoxy was also apparent in that he was eager to denounce bad foreign influence that, he was convinced, undermined traditional American values. He was, for example, absolutely intolerant of “liberal” religions and what he called “the relics of French infidels” (McDowall, Magdalen Facts 29). He called deists “Satan’s confessed imps” (22). He described Thomas Paine as a heretic whose works were to be banned in colleges in order to keep students “pure and undefiled” (23) McDowall also had little good to say about contemporary journalism, those “infidel and licentious daily and weekly papers” (28). He complained about the proliferation of obscene pamphlets, which he claimed could be found on virtually every corner. He railed against foreign books about “seducers, and debauchees, and rakes, and assignations, and seductions, and illicit amours,” which in his view promoted licentiousness (27). Theaters, he went on echoing the Puritans and contemporary moralists, were even worse. They nourished corrupt sensuality that transformed every man into a seducer and every woman into an unwitting victim.

16 What was ironic, of course, was that McDowall’s provocative denunciation of licentiousness was thrown right back at him. The Magdalen Report caused what one contemporary described as “clamor and indignation” that rolled through the entire country (“Prostitution” 55). Following the appearance of The Magdalen Report, the city was buzzing with speculations about the veracity of its claims and the integrity of its authors. Very few New Yorkers wanted to believe McDowall’s assertions. It was not long before opportunistic satirists turned the hapless minister into an object of consternation and ridicule. Within just a few months, there appeared several mocking tributes to McDowall and his fellow reformers, including Orthodox Bubbles (1831), Peter Pendergrass’ play Magdalen Report: A Farce (1831), and The Phantasmagoria of New-York, A Poetical Burlesque upon a Certain Pamphlet, Written by a Committee of Notorious Fanatics, Entitled The Magdalen Report (1831), not to mention countless newspaper articles that turned McDowall’s campaign into a widely publicized scandal that lasted till his untimely death.

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17 The common refrain in attacks on McDowall was that his work did not combat lasciviousness but actually encouraged it. One of the first mocking reviews of the Magdalen Report to appear was Orthodox Bubbles. The pamphlet was printed in Boston for those who were not familiar with the original report. It did not even try to sound like an objective review, greeting readers with a telling image of several reformers enjoying company of prostitutes (Fig. 1). McDowall can be identified as the man on the left with a religious tract in his pocket and a young woman on his lap. The dialogue that follows reveals that McDowall actually tells the woman to “repent and be pious” while fondling her. The overall message of Orthodox Bubbles is that such reformers are corrupt and their report, contrary to its ostensible purpose, encouraged young men to patronize prostitutes. It concludes with a rhetorical question: “How long will it be before these houses [brothels] will be well known to every young man in the city as they are to Arthur Tappan, E. Wainwright, and their coadjutors?” (24).

Figure 1. “An Anxious or Inquiring Meeting.” From Orthodox Bubbles. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

18 In his study of popular antebellum anticlerical literature, David S. Reynolds used the term “reverend rake” to describe religious reformers who were suspected of hiding their sexual and criminal proclivities under the cloak of respectability which their profession traditionally carried (Reynolds 267). The anonymous play Magdalen Report: A Farce, published as a cheap and affordable pamphlet, skillfully exploited Americans’ growing mistrust of the clergy. It satirized McDowall in the character of Zachariah Gundy, a self-proclaimed reformer and “a man of business,” who claimed that he was an earnest reformer but could be seen around the town in the company of young women of questionable reputation. He had his pockets filled with copies of “Maddening” Report, which he distributed to curious young people all over the town. Its effect was both alarming and comical. Young women, who learned from the report that prostitutes “make money like smoke,” quit their jobs and hit the streets in search of rich clientele or a suitable residence in a brothel. “There never was such a supply of

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youth and beauty before,” one procuress cheerfully chirped. Young men, for their part, treated the report as “the City chart, and the guide to the temple of Venus” (Pondergrass 5). Zachariah Gundy opened their eyes to opportunities of random sexual encounters rather than to the dangers of licentiousness. “Before that came out,” one young man confessed referring to the “Maddening” Report, “I used ter stay home o’nights, just like a fool.... But ever since Mr. Gundy give me this Report... I’ve begun to enjoy myself” (3). Enjoyment involved not only illicit sex but also endless drinking, another scourge of antebellum America. Parents and elders moaned in disgust, hoping that Gundy would be “sewed up in a sack and thrown into the river” (10).

19 The poem Phantasmagoria of New-York, penned by the satirist who wrote under the mischievous nom de plume Obediah Fudge, took aim at the “committee of notorious fanatics” who authored The Magdalen Report with an all-out attack on the clergy. Every “modern saint,” the poem started, was simply a “Demi-devil plaster’d o’er with paint” (3). These reptiles are a dangerous holy faction, Religion’s now reduced to a mere trade, A sort of speculation, to be made On ignorance—strutting with holy zeal, As they the qualms of conscience keenly feel. (4)

20 Phantasmagoria then described the alleged findings of the Magdalen Report as a “gross story” and dangerous fiction that besmirched women of New York and made men needlessly suspicious of women in general (7).

21 McDowall responded to “sneers, scoffs, reproaches, insinuations, sarcasm, private abuse and obscene caricatures” aimed at himself and other authors of the Magdalen Report with more publications, of which Magdalen Facts stands out as a prime example of his commitment to the neo-Puritan traditional of didactic sensationalism (v). It was designed to use what the author called “facts” against accusations of what Phantasmagoria described as dangerous “fictions” of the Magdalen Report. To give the book the air of authenticity, it was published as a documentary collection of McDowall’s field reports and diary entries mixed with letters from repentant prostitutes and victims of seduction. But what made the book seem even more authentic were vividly sensational stories of seductions, rape, kidnapping, alcoholism, and suicide among prostitutes and their patrons. In this respect, McDowall anticipated brutal realism of Jacob Riis’s photographic images of New York slums. With an eye on provocative details, as in the story “Two Females” about two young women forced into sex slavery by their African-American captor, McDowall did not seem to be interested in sober meditation on the subject of prostitution but sought to rile his readers’ sense of decency in the name of decency. David S. Reynolds dubbed this approach “immoral didacticism,” which ostensibly had noble goals but tended to “subvert the very meaning of vice and virtue” (57).

22 It is likely that Magdalen Facts was intentionally shocking in detail to undermine the notion that McDowall, like Zachariah Gundy in Magdalen Report: A Farce, promoted licentiousness. The book’s deliberately sad stories about young people who suffered as a result of their irresponsible sexual behavior were certainly not designed to promote reckless lifestyle. But McDowall still could not shake off his detractors’ suspicion of ill intent, because the notion that exposure of licentiousness actually promoted licentiousness was not farfetched in the 1830s. After all, New Yorkers of that time

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period became quite familiar with disingenuous reform publications that claimed to be moralistic in nature but in fact promoted the city’s sex trade. Jacksonian America saw a rapid rise of pseudo-moralistic press, popular with young men in New York and other cities. Such weeklies as The Owl, Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard, Polyanthos, The Flash, The Libertine, The Rake, The New York Scorpion, The Monthly Cosmopolitan, Broadway Belle, and Venus Miscellany celebrated the city’s sexual decadence while disingenuously decrying the downfall of New Yorkers’ morals. The Libertine, for example, amused its readers with biographies of famous prostitutes, tepid moralizing about the dangers of libertinism, and snapshots of the lives of promiscuous people. The New York Scorpion was also humorously insincere about its goals. Its editor claimed that his publication was devoted to “the prevention and overthrow of VICE in its various forms and shades, [such] as Crimes, Misdemeanors, [and] Prostitution.”5 As if following McDowall’s strategy, he promised to expose the city’s ills and “set forth FACTS without embellishment.” To this end, he indulged his readers with “full particulars” about “cases of SEDUCTIONS, ELOPMENT AND ABDUCTIONS” (Graham 1). What was clear to everyone, of course, was that such papers did not at all intend to combat licentiousness but rather to promote sexual freedom.

23 Those who disliked the Magdalen Report could also point out that it inspired an entire genre of informative guides to the city’s sex trade. Prostitution Exposed; or, A Moral Reform Directory (1839), whose author wrote under the mischievous penname Butt Ender, reads like a colorful parody of the Magdalen Report. Butt Ender was hardly serious that his pamphlet was a reform publication, but he nonetheless dedicated it to “The Ladies’ Reform Association,” whom he praised for their efforts “to suppress the evil.” He gave the pamphlet a deceitfully serious title: Prostitution Exposed; or, A Moral Reform Directory: Laying Bare the Lives, Histories, Residences, Seductions, &c. of the Most Celebrated Courtezans and Ladies of Pleasure of the City of New-York: Together with a Description of the Crime and its Effects: As also, of the Houses of Prostitution and their Keepers, Houses of Assignation, their Charges and Conveniences, and other Particulars Interesting to the Public. The public could, of course, overlook Butt Ender’s insincere moralizing. One wonders whether they even paid attention to the ostensibly serious title of the pamphlet the title page of which was positioned right next to a provocatively erotic image of a young woman (Fig. 2). It was also difficult to miss another telling detail: the pamphlet offered a current list of brothels, with short comments about their inhabitants, and even mentioned where to find abortionists. Many other publications of this sort appeared in the aftermath of the Magdalen Report and include The Bachelor’s Guide, and Widow’s Manual; Containing Three Thousand One Hundred and Eighty-Six Names of Widow Ladies’, and House Keepers in the Cities of New York and Brooklyn (1842), George Thompson’s The G'hals of Boston; or, Pen and Pencil Sketches of Celebrated Courtezans (1850), Fast Man’s Directory, and Lovers’ Guide to the Ladies of Fashion and Houses of Pleasure in New-York and other Large Cities (1853), The Young Man’s Guide to Pleasure in New York and All Other Cities (ca. 1855), and George Ellington’s Women of New York; or, The Underworld (1869).

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Figure 2. Frontispiece to Prostitution Exposed; or, A Moral Reform Directory. Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society.

24 These publications marked the rise of a new form of sensationalism in that they appealed to readers’ voyeuristic inclinations. While American ministers of the colonial era routinely exploited sex scandals in print for strictly didactic purposes, a growing number of nineteenth-century American writers turned to the subject of sex to gratify readers’ voyeuristic curiosity about anything related to sex and to satisfy readers’ prurient interests. The differences between these two forms of sensationalism were exacerbated by the fact that proponents of voyeuristic sensationalism often ridiculed the conventions of didactic sensationalism promoted by the clergy.6 The popularity of the new form of sensationalism coincided with the increase in attacks on the image of clergymen as exemplars of good behavior. The subject of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, which dwells on consequences of a minister’s illicit affair with a young woman, deeply resonated with the general public at the time in part precisely because of this trend.

25 The rise of sex scandals involving religious figures after the Revolution was dramatic, particularly in the early nineteenth century. When in 1841 one judge faced the task of presiding over the trial of a clergyman who was accused of raping his parishioner, he expressed a concern that would have surprised many of his predecessors. Could he fill the jury box with unprejudiced men who did not automatically assume that all clergymen were seducers? It was a legitimate concern. Many Americans at that time grew to believe that religion was merely “a fabric and its professors hypocrites” (Trial of Rev. Washington Van Zandt 3). Scores of ministers in antebellum America were accused and tried for crimes that run the entire spectrum of the period’s criminal code: brutality, seduction, adultery, homosexuality, financial machinations, theft, murder, and heresy. The trials took place so often, and in so many parts of the country, that it seemed that one scandal metamorphosed into another. Their records, promptly

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printed, vented sensationalist news throughout all the states, thus giving the impression that the entire country was engulfed in an epidemic of sex crimes. In that culture, the news of a clergyman on trial ceased to be an exception and became a recognizable archetype in the American press.

26 The McDowall controversy in the 1830s was one of many manifestations of these cultural developments. It was preceded by a few notable but not particularly well- publicized scandals involving some clergymen. In 1810 in New York, the Baptist preacher William Parkinson stood trial for assault on the woman who claimed that he raped her. Two years later in New Jersey, Presbyterian David Barclay was tried for adultery. Ammi Rogers, an Episcopal from Connecticut was found guilty of seduction and forcing his victim to have an abortion “with pernicious and poisonous drugs” in 1820. The 1822 case of William Hogan, who was tried for an attempted rape and battery, threw another prominent religious figure into a sex scandal that turned his name into a byword of clerical duplicity. What changed in the 1830s, when McDowall happen to find himself fending accusations of lasciviousness, was that even more cases of ministers’ misconduct started to receive wider sensational coverage in press.

27 Perhaps the most notorious case of the decade involved Ephraim K. Avery, a Methodist from Rhode Island. Avery, who was occasionally dubbed as Ephraim “A Very” Bad Man, was tried for brutal rape and murder of a young factory worker named Maria Cornell in 1833. The trial was widely covered in press and turned Avery, who happened to be acquitted for his crime to many people’s dismay, into an object of derision. In 1835, Eleazer Sherman, another Rhode Island clergyman, was convicted in an ecclesiastical court for sodomy. The same year, Charles L. Cook, a former minister, was put on trial as an accessory to theft committed by some boys in his employ. He was earlier (in 1832) found guilty of “lewd conduct” and “highly aggressive and unchristian character,” and left church. The 1835 trial for theft revealed that he was sexually involved with boys in his employ, “lasciviousness in conduct and conversations with youth of his own sex” (Trial... of Charles L. Cook 15) The suspicions were confirmed by his wife and some witnesses, one of whom “stated privately that Dr. Cook had often expressed to him his aversion to the female sex, and the he preferred the company of a boy to that of a woman” (11). This, by far, is not a complete list of scandalous revelations involving clergymen in antebellum America, which became more frequent as the time went by.

28 The rise of controversial religious movements and sects, whose leaders were endlessly vilified in press, added to Americans’ mistrust of religious figures. Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, was a target of many New York and other American papers. Attacks on McDowall were also taking place right at the time when New Yorkers indulged in scandalous revelations about the New York sect created by Robert Matthews, who called himself a prophet of God of the Jews or, when the mood struck, simply God. It probably did not help McDowall’s reputation that he was somewhat familiar with the Prophet, who was eventually tried for murder in another widely publicized trial. The 1835 cartoon titled “Mystery of Babylon” reflects the extent of the public’s growing disrespect of religious leaders. It depicts religion as a monster with many heads, each of which represents different forms of Christianity: Catholics, Episcopalians, Calvinists, Universalists, Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers (Fig. 3). In that environment, religious reformers were therefore often targeted because of general mistrust of their profession.

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Figure 3. “Mystery of Babylon” (New York, 1835). Library of Congress.

29 In 1834 the third Presbytery of New York, which licensed McDowall as a minister, warned him about his initiatives and suggested that he stop publishing his journal. He was charged with financial fraud and “other scandalous things, too bad to name” (McDowall, Memoir 311). Soon after that the same court suspended him from the ministry. What is remarkable is that the court’s decision was rather ambiguous. It acknowledged that prostitution became a real problem in the city and “that the sin of lewdness is lamentably prevalent in our country.” They also expressed their concerns about “the existence and circulation of obscene and immodest prints, of novels and other works, adopted to break down the barriers of natural decency and chaste education, and the direct agency for seduction” (McDowall, Memoir 338). It appeared that the Presbytery was close to agreeing with McDowall in his battle against prostitution, but its members chose to distance themselves from his methods. What they believed was that ministers should not go too far in their efforts to expose vice, “lest the very efforts to prevent this vice should themselves become the occasion of its spread.”7 The ambiguity of the Presbytery’s position was quite revealing. It was mindful of the social problems that befell the country and was willing to address it, but it could not endorse provocative methods of combating them. The court’s decision read, in a sense, as an implicit condemnation of the American tradition of didactic sensationalism. Whereas seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ministers could openly exploit sex scandals in print for religious purposes, religious authorities in the nineteenth-century chose to stay away from the subject, leaving it essentially to a new brand of writers who happily exploited the subject of sex for its voyeuristic appeal.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation. Boston, 1856. Print.

Graham, C. G. “From the Editor.” The New York Scorpion, 23 June 1849: 1. Print.

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Vintage Book, 2002. Print.

M’Dowall’s Journal—Extra, January 1833. Print.

McDowall, John Robert. Magdalen Facts. New York, 1832. Print.

---. “Prostitution—McDowall’s Journal,” The Liberator, 5 Apr 1834. Print.

Memoir and Select Remains of the Late Rev. John R. McDowall: The Martyr of the Seventh Commandment, in the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1838. Print.

New York Magdalen Society. First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the New York Magdalen Society. New York, 1830. Print.

Orthodox Bubbles, or A Review of the "First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the New York Magdalen Society." Boston, 1831. Print.

The Phantasmagoria of New-York, A Poetical Burlesque upon a Certain Libellous Pamphlet, Written by a Committee of Notorious Fanatics, Entitled the Magdalen Report. New York, [1831]. Print.

Pondergrass, Peter. Magdalen Report: A Farce. New York, 1831. Print.

“Prostitution.” Liberator, 5 Apr 1834: 55. Print.

Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Print.

Tappan, Lewis. The Life of Arthur Tappan. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1870. Print.

Trial (before the Municipal Court) of Charles L. Cook, Late Preacher of the Gospel of the Orthodox and Restorationist Denominations, for Receiving Stolen Goods. Boston, 1835. Print.

Trial of Rev. Washington Van Zandt for the Seduction of Maria Murdock. Rochester, NY: 1841. Print.

NOTES

1. For the role of religious didacticism in the development of American crime literature, see Alexander Moudrov’s “Early American Crime Fiction: Origins to Urban Gothic.” A Companion to Crime Fiction. Ed. Charles Rzepka and Lee Horseley (Oxford: Wiley and Blackwell, 2010). 2. Timothy J. Gilfoyle, in City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, surveyed different sources of other contemporary estimates that argued that anywhere between 4 to 41 percent of women were prostitutes. 3. In her study of McDowall’s work, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz incorrectly insists that “[a]lthough McDowall’s exposé had plenty of rakes and villains who destroyed the flower of young womanhood, the primary figure in McDowall’s account is the male victim” (147). Whiteaker, for his part, writes that “McDowall and his associates demanded that similar punishment be imposed upon licentious mails,” but in reality “the double standard prevented the punishment of many licentious men” (91).

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4. McDowall found himself amidst a contentious debate over the question whether young people, particularly young women, should be prevented from studying controversial topics. Townsend Stith, in Thoughts on Female Educations (1831), argued that it was not necessary for young women to study anything controversial because the “proper sphere of woman is the domestic circle” (16). Other writers timidly recommended a broader kind of education involving not only such subjects as literature and philosophy but also some training that could prepare women for exigencies of what they called “real” life. Almira H. Lincoln Phelps argued in Lectures to Young Ladies (Boston, 1833) that God did not intend people to “separate themselves from the world by ceasing to hold intercourse with it; we cannot believe that the Christian, as some zealots teach, is in the performance of his highest duty, by withdrawing from the world and burying himself in a cloister, in order to give his heart wholly to God and the service of religion.” She encouraged young women to go out into the world where “you may do much towards healing the moral deceases of your thoughtless companions” (23-4). William A. Alcott’s popular Young Man’s Guide (1834) offers an example of how educators carefully balanced their thoughts on the subject. On the surface, the writer assumed the position of discouraging young men from inquiring into anything that had to do with vice (avoid theaters, licentious publications, etc.). At the same time the Guide included several chapters, fairly detailed, on different manifestations of vice, which suggests that Alcott would agree with McDowall’s approach to education. 5. Mottoes of sporting papers were meant to give the impression that their editors adhered to the principles of didactic sensationalism. Albany Switch: “From folly’s brow to tear the mask away, make vice himself his dirty face display” (26 April, 1846). Dixon’s Polyanthos: “We give each hydra in his den to know,—We buy no favor for we fear no foe” (9 October 1841). The Libertine adopted Alexander Pope dictum “Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,—that to be hated needs to be seen” (15 June 1842). 6. For a more extensive discussion of voyeuristic sensationalism, see Alexander Moudrov’s “The Scourge of ‘Foreign Vagabonds’: George Thompson and the Influence of European Sensationalism in Popular Antebellum Literature.” Transatlantic Sensations. Ed. John Cyril Barton and Kirstin N. Huston (Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2012). 7. The records of the trial appeared, among other places, in “McDowall’s Trial” ( New York Evangelist, Nov 5 and 12, 1836) and McDowall’s own publication, Charges Preferred Against New York Benevolent Society, and the Auditing Committee, in 1835 and 1836, by J. R. McDowall, in the Sun and Transcript, Answered and Refuted by Himself!! In his Own Journal!!! In the Year 1833 (New York, 1836).

ABSTRACTS

The Reverend John R. McDowall is known primarily as a controversial crusader against prostitution in New York in the 1830s. In the first half of that decade, when he lived in the city, he studied causes of prostitution, proposed methods of preventing it, and worked on creating institutions that would allow prostitutes to reenter respectable society. While previous studies of McDowall focused solely on his work as a reformer, it is important to recognize that his publications were an important component of his efforts. The intense hostility to his crusade, which led to his early death, reflected not only his controversial ideas about gender relations and the role of religion in combatting prostitution but also changing literary trends in antebellum America. This article surveys his publications and reactions to them in relation to the rise of new

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forms of sensationalist literature, which turned reformers who tackled controversial issues into targets of antebellum American writers and journalists.

INDEX

Keywords: John R. McDowall, New York City, reform literature, urban literature, journalism, urban gothic, antebellum American literature

AUTHOR

ALEXANDER MOUDROV Alexander Moudrov earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the GraduateCenter of the City University of New York, where he completed his dissertation on early American sensationalist literature. He published essays on such writers as George Thompson, Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov, and Plato, as well as studies of various social aspects of American culture. He teaches in the Comparative Literature department at Queens College and the American Studies Program at the College of Staten Island in New York.

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“To Preserve This Remnant:” William Apess, the Mashpee Indians, and the Politics of Nullification

Neil Meyer

1 In the 1830s, while the state of Georgia fought a protracted battle in the Supreme Court to remove Cherokee Indians from gold-rich land in the state, a more local battle was taking place in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts. The Indian community of Mashpee, made up of Wampanoag and other Indian nations, attempted to live a free existence as Christian Indians (Campisi 67). Local whites sought to take unfair and illegal advantage of their land and the state attempted to exert further control over them in matters both political and religious. The Mashpee fought back in person and in print and were joined by Pequot Indian and Methodist itinerant minister William Apess, who was adopted by the community and helped lead charges against the state’s restrictive laws, their Harvard-appointed minister, and a local community that often took advantage of Mashpee resources.

2 Compared to the much-discussed removal policies imposed on the Cherokees contemporaneously, the “rebellion” at Mashpee appears smaller in scale and less widely known. But in this conflict with the Massachusetts government, the Mashpee community engaged provocatively in the discourses of states’ rights and slavery that animated national conversations in the era of Cherokee removal and the South Carolina nullification crisis. And this battle produced the work, The Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts, Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained (1835), a documentary history of the Mashpee’s political struggles, written collaboratively by Apess and the larger community. Indian Nullification enacts a singular political critique for its era, using the national conflict over slavery and states’ rights to produce a specific discourse of resistance on behalf of their community’s autonomy.

3 The national context for American Indian nations and their relationship to the U.S. government came out of two cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia the following year; these cases revised the prior fifty years of the U.S.’s relationship to American Indian nations and shaped the public discourse around

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American Indians and land rights. But the title of the book makes direct reference to the “nullification crisis” brought about by the slave-holding elites of South Carolina. They claimed an extreme states’ rights position around federal tariffs, which many understood to be a conflict around the federal government’s ability to ultimately regulate slavery. By reading Indian Nullification through the discourses around Indian nations, states’ rights, and slavery, we can see how Apess and the Mashpee saw the issues of the Cherokee in Georgia and the South Carolina nullification crisis as interrelated and used both sides of the nullification discourse to call out the state of Massachusetts on the contradictions of its federally leaning politics in order to gain greater political autonomy for Mashpee.

4 Scholars such as Maureen Konkle, David J. Carlson, and Andy Doolen have thoughtfully discussed the political valences of Indian Nullification and the political autonomy sought by the Mashpee community through their legal struggles. This essay builds off their work but argues that the discourse of slavery is fundamental to the discourse of nullification, and that Apess and the writers of Indian Nullification used that white supremacist valence to enact a trenchant critique of Massachusetts politics, dismantling its sentimental discourse of benevolent paternalism and laying bare the racism at the heart of the state’s Indian policies. By rhetorically adopting the slavery- infused language of “nullification” in agitating for their rights, Apess and the Mashpee exploded the dominant political discourses of Massachusetts and the antebellum United States. This essay will survey the contemporaneous discussions of Cherokee removal policy and the nullification crisis to see how Apess and the collaborative authors of Indian Nullification wrote in the presence of those political battles and deployed them within the text.

1. Constitutional Law, Nullification, and the Cherokee Nation

5 The Cherokee Indian nation lived across a broad swath of land covering portions of Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina, but the majority lived on lands within the state of Georgia. The Cherokee boundaries were made official in the eyes of the United States government in its first national treaty with the Cherokees, the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, article 4; those boundaries were confirmed in the 1791 Treaty of Holston as well. But these treaties would prove meaningless when the state of Georgia began encroaching on the Cherokee’s gold-rich lands and in 1829 and the state passed several laws asserting the state’s control of Indians and their lands. These encroachments on the Cherokees provoked two significant court battles, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), which set the parameters for the national discussion on Indian sovereignty in ways that came to bear on the work Apess and the Mashpee did in their conflict.

6 The legal wrangling between the Cherokees and the U.S. government reveals several issues related to the battle the Mashpee fought several years later.i The Cherokee and the Mashpee were interpolated into the discourse of the “vanishing Indian” as well as the discourse of sentimental benevolence, both of which we will see in Justice John Marshall’s majority ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. But that ruling, along with Justice Smith Thompson’s dissent, reveals an important gap between the Cherokee, understood as a significant tribal community (if not a “nation”) and the concept of

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“remnant” Indians, those small, dispersed, and diffuse Indian communities that were not to be understood as sharing in any form of national legitimacy. Even Thompson’s dissent in favor of the Cherokees left little space for Mashpee and similar communities.

7 As Konkle states about Marshall’s ruling in Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, “The problem for John Marshall’s Supreme Court was that it had to assert colonial authority [over the Cherokees]—tyrannical, imperial authority, of the kind the United States had thrown off in the Revolution—while appearing not to” (17). Marshall had to validate U.S. treaty making, while finding a way to deny the Cherokees standing.

8 He managed this with his dramatic and now famous revision of the nation’s relationship to the Indian nations occupying U.S. land. In his majority opinion Marshall argued that the Supreme Court could not bring the claim before Congress because they were not a foreign nation but rather a “domestic dependent nation.” Marshall held this to be true for the Cherokees and for any and all Indian nations occupying land claimed by the U.S.

9 But Marshall also indulged in the rhetoric of the “Vanishing Indian” to buttress the logic of his case. It is worth quoting one telling example at length: If courts were permitted to indulge their sympathies, a case better calculated to excite them can scarcely be imagined. A people once numerous, powerful, and truly independent, found by our ancestors in the quiet and uncontrolled possession of an ample domain, gradually sinking beneath our superior policy, our arts and our arms, have yielded their lands by successive treaties, each of which contains a solemn guarantee of the residue, until they retain no more of their formerly extensive territory than is deemed necessary to their comfortable subsistence. To preserve this remnant, the present application is made. (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1)

10 Here Marshall deployed sentimental rhetoric to color the plight of Indian nations in terms of their “remnant” status. In Marshall’s telling, the contemporary Indian nation was a pale shadow of its once great past, brought low by “our arts and our arms,” both Euro-American cultural superiority and Euro-American violence. The case of the Cherokee before the Supreme Court was to “preserve this remnant,” where the Cherokees stand synecdochally for all the vanishing Indians across the continent.ii

11 But Cherokee lives in the early nineteenth century told a different story. Marshall’s rhetoric is a perfect example of Brian Dippie’s claim that “The belief in the Vanishing Indian was the ultimate cause of the Indian’s vanishing” (7). The Cherokees had made significant attempts to unite formally as a nation in a way that Americans would find intelligible—through print culture, farming, and democratic political organization in particular. But such “improvements” did not convince Marshall that the Cherokees were any more than a “remnant people.”

12 Justice Smith Thompson, in his dissent, argued that whatever the “quality” of the Cherokee nation, the U.S. had always treated them as a nation and in no way had the Cherokee ceded that right. However, he too invoked the specter of “remnant people” to clarify his dissent. After claiming that the Cherokee were “sovereign and independent… not within the jurisdiction nor under the government of the states within which they were located,” he makes a telling caveat: This remark is to be understood, of course, as referring only to such as live together as a distinct community, under their own laws, usages, and customs; and not to the mere remnant of tribes which are to be found in many parts of our country, who have become mixed with the general population of the country; their national

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character extinguished; and their usages and customs in a great measure abandoned; self-government surrendered; and who have voluntarily, or by force of circumstances which surround them, gradually become subject to the laws of the states within which they are situated. (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1)

13 Even in Thompson’s sympathetic stance towards the Cherokees he made sure to exclude those Indian peoples who did not, for various reasons, share in the benefits of a nation, with a “national character.” This dismissal would no doubt include the Mashpee.iii But Indian Nullification displays an awareness that their “remnant” status makes their political ground more tenuous. As we will see, Apess and the Mashpee did not turn to the same arguments that the Cherokee made about their national character while still engaging with the rhetoric found in the ruling.

14 Konkle writes, “While autonomy conceded in treaties did not necessarily make life easier for Native peoples, it provided a mechanism for resistance to EuroAmerican authority and an opening for critique on the part of Native intellectuals and political leaders in the nineteenth century” (5). As we see with the Cherokee, that “mechanism for resistance” merely bought them time before the Supreme Court and the Jackson presidency overcame them. But treaty discourses as a mode of resistance required Indians to be organized into communities that Americans saw as legitimate, a status the Cherokee could not ultimately assume, let alone the people of Mashpee. This impasse meant that Apess and the Mashpee had to look elsewhere for a meaningful political discourse that might provide a site of resistance, and they found it in an unlikely place; in the radical separatism of the slave-owning “nullifiers” of South Carolina.

2. South Carolina and the Crisis of Nullification

15 The issue of Georgia’s authority over Cherokee lands was interrelated with the infamous sectional crisis of South Carolina and “nullification,” an interrelationship Apess rhetorically exploited in Indian Nullification. Georgia was ultimately reined in from intervening with the Cherokees outside of federal authority in the case Worcester v. Georgia (1832). With Andrew Jackson in office, Georgia governor Wilson Lumpkin felt confident that removal would ultimately win the day and that the federal government would not enforce Marshall’s ruling. But by ignoring the ruling, Lumpkin feared he would implicitly align himself with the nullifiers of South Carolina and attract the anger of Jackson. The contemporary understanding of the Cherokee crisis and South Carolina’s nullification as being woven together is important for our understanding of how Apess uses the concept of “nullification” in his text.iv Apess held the state of Massachusetts against these two related political stances, making the state see itself in the light of Georgia’s removal policy and South Carolina’s slave-holding political elite.

16 Nullification emerged over South Carolina’s resistance to a federal “protective tariff.” The Tariff of 1828 was meant to protect U.S. manufacturing, but South Carolina and other Southern states believed the tariff benefitted the Northern manufacturing states at the expense of the agrarian South. Many Southern states petitioned the government to repeal or reduce the tariff, but South Carolina took the additional step of “nullifying” the tariff, arguing their constitutional right to do so. This doctrine of nullification was formulated by senator John C. Calhoun in the 1832 text The South Carolina Exposition and Protest. As described by historian Richard Ellis, Calhoun argued that “the Constitution was a compact among the states that had delegated only specifically defined powers to

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the national government and that the states had completely retained their own sovereignty” (8). If states felt the government went beyond those defined powers, “a state had the power to declare such an action unconstitutional and therefore null and void within its boundaries.” This left the federal government with two options: to “refrain from enforcing the objectionable law” or attempt the nearly impossible by amending the Constitution (Ellis 8).

17 The Exposition created a firestorm, with much of the South eager to distance itself from South Carolina’s radical position. Even those who adhered deeply to the concept of “states’ rights” (including Andrew Jackson himself) saw the theory of nullification as outside of the mainstream of states’ rights logic and a threat to the stability of the Union. Georgia governor Lumpkin recognized the gauntlet thrown down by South Carolina and the threat of military intervention that the conflict might produce on the part of the federal government (Ellis 112-113).

18 But the doctrine of nullification was about more than tariff reform or the immediate political issues of Cherokee rights. South Carolina’s nullification stance produced the most sustained sectional crisis in the U.S. before the Civil War, calling into question the compact between the states and the federal government and the very concept of “union.” In this regard, though the federal government won the battle, it ultimately lost the war. South Carolina managed to get the tariff reduced (though not rescinded) and never had to answer for a stance on the relationship of the states to the federal government that had no serious Constitutional founding nor overall popular support (Ellis 180).

19 The intersecting issues of the Cherokee and nullification taught two lessons that would come into play for the Mashpee community. The first was from the Cherokee, who attempted to conform closer to the standards of the surrounding white world while relying on the power of the federal government for legal protection, both to no avail. The second was the lesson of South Carolina, namely that radical threats against the power of the federal government, having ultimately proved successful, would go unpunished and lead to compromise.

20 Andy Doolen has written on the way the discourse of abolitionism informed the work of Apess, specifically arguing for the work of William Lloyd Garrison as a rhetorical and intellectual model.v I agree that Garrison’s work can be seen as a touchstone for Apess, but the Cherokee crisis and nullification provided an additional avenue through which the issue of slavery informed the political work of Indian Nullification.vi The threat of secession and the state of Georgia’s response to the federal judiciary showed that the discourse of states’ rights worked as a mechanism of white supremacy and operated against both Indians and slaves alike. The state of Massachusetts publicly stood against slavery and Georgia’s position towards the Cherokees and Apess used those positions to his rhetorical advantage. As we will see, Apess wedded the Cherokee crisis to Mashpee, casting Massachusetts in the role of Georgia. But instead of calling on the federal government as the Cherokees did, Apess and Mashpee called their acts of political resistance “nullification.” Doing so rejected Massachusetts’s understanding of itself in relation to its Indian population. Massachusetts was not dealing with an Indian community under control but a political body in a state of rebellion.

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3. Indian Nullification and the Specter of Disunion

21 A brief review of Mashpee's status vis-à-vis Massachusetts will help in understanding the grievances outlined in Indian Nullification. The community was set up as a kind of proto-reservation in the seventeenth century as a “plantation” for various displaced Indians of the region. As James Clifford notes, “Mashpee was originally an artificial community, never a tribe” (295), a reality that will lead to legal difficulties for Mashpee deep into the twentieth century. The colonial government of Massachusetts granted the community a relative degree of autonomy that would be slowly dismantled over the coming decades. Like other Indian lands within Massachusetts, Mashpee was located within the boundaries of a local community, but not subject to the latter’s jurisdiction. They were instead beholden to state laws but had no political voice in shaping those regulations, which were handled through an overseer system (Nielsen 401). As Deborah A. Rosen writes, “according to the 1763 statute incorporating the town of Mashpee, only two of the five overseers had to be English, and all five were chosen by Indians. As it turned out, even that limited degree of self-government was short lived”; by 1778 all of the overseers had to be white (10). Donald Nielsen writes, Massachusetts “denied the individual Indian the opportunity to learn how to conduct his own affairs,” by regulating how Indians handled the disposal of their land and resources (Nielsen 401). But as we will see, the state failed to protect the land it regulated on behalf of the Mashpee, and the community had no legal autonomy to protect that land on its own terms.vii

22 At the time of the conflict related in the book, the Mashpee were under an additional set of regulations related to their religious lives. The community struggled with the Rev. Phineas Fish, a man appointed through a 1711 bequest from Englishman William Williams for the purposes of Christianizing the Wampanoag. The community was frustrated by Fish’s seeming indifference to both their spiritual and material well-being and sought to regain control of the meeting house left to his control by the Harvard trustees who oversaw the Williams bequest. It is important to note that, like the Williams bequest, the overseer system put in place by the colonial government reflected the logic of New England eighteenth-century missionary ambitions. What both the spiritual and legal regulations had in common was a discourse and practice of benevolent paternalism, one cloaked in the language of the state and the other in conversion; a discourse reflected also in Marshall’s Cherokee Nation ruling. This was ultimately then a two-fold battle: A fight for autonomy from the Massachusetts legislature and a fight against the appointment of Fish.

23 The “rebellion” (and I put it purposefully in scare quotes) that set things in motion at Mashpee was a result of the failure of the existing system to protect the interests and resources of the Mashpee community. Apess and other Mashpee residents forced from their land a group of whites who were taking Mashpee lumber, an act that led to an altercation soon involving state authorities. The Mashpee rightfully did not see this as a “rebellion” but protection of their resources. But Apess was briefly imprisoned for his role in the confrontation and it precipitated the community’s direct engagement with the state of Massachusetts for redress. The long process of engagement with the Massachusetts legislature, Harvard University, and the nearby communities of Cape Cod produced Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Mashpee Tribe; or, The Pretended Riot Explained, published in 1835. This fascinating,

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polyvocal text is both a reflection on the Christian Indian community and a model of its politics in action. Though Apess is a strong presence throughout the text, as Barry O’Connell points out, “it is the work of many hands” (165). The text is a collection of documents including petitions to the Legislature, contemporary news reports and commentary, and private letters, all woven together and analyzed by a narration that is strongly but not exclusively that of Apess. It is that many-handed quality of the text that is significant politically and rhetorically to this essay. What Apess and the rest of the Mashpee community do in Indian Nullification is create a text that mirrors the collectivist politics of the community in opposition to Massachusetts's silencing political efforts. No one voice speaks on behalf of the Mashpee, no one person claims a heroic role in the conflict, no one individual claims ownership of the community or its political aims. Apess et al. put together a document that reflects a community of readers and writers and attempt to bring the community’s lived practice into a writing practice. Indian Nullification reflects a lived political practice at odds with the benevolent paternalism imposed by the Williams bequest, the authority of the Harvard trustees, and the policies of the state of Massachusetts.

24 The book begins with prefatory material specifically appealing to the citizens of Massachusetts, calling them “the descendants of the pale men who came across the big waters to seek among them a refuge from tyranny and persecution” (O’Connell 167). This call to the people of Massachusetts based on their colonial history will come into play throughout the text. The book then narrates the arrival of Apess and outlines the Mashpee’s grievances towards both the State of Massachusetts and Harvard University. It shares the joint resolutions made public by the tribe and then moves on to share articles from local newspapers related to the tribe’s cause. In this way the book moves in its early pages through multiple voices and styles of writing, setting the tone for the whole work. Though Apess seems to shape much of the narrative as writer/editor, the community’s voice emerges through those embedded texts, such as a letter sent to the Barnstable Journal about its claims, written as a collective “we” (O’Connell 165).viii

25 But it is the incorporation of other print sources that best reveals the polyvocality of the text. A statement titled “Marshpee Indians” (originally submitted by the tribe to the Barnstable Journal) is followed with an editorial penned by ally Benjamin F. Hallett (the tribe’s attorney) for his Boston Daily Advocate, which incorporates two letters sent to Hallett by tribal spokespersons. This material from the Advocate is introduced with the following comment: “In the editorial remarks will be discerned the noble spirit of independence and love of right, which are prominent characteristics of Mr. Hallett’s character” (O’Connell 196). Hallett’s item in turn is followed by a more hostile editorial from the Barnstable Journal, critiquing the “revolt” of the Mashpee, which elicits the commentary of the Mashpee: “The writer here says that the Indians are vile and degraded, and admits that they can be improved. He gives no explanation of the causes of their degradation” (O’Connell 200). This series of documents and passages moves across corporately written documents by the Mashpee to newspaper editorials featuring opposing points of view. What unites these different sources is a narration that comments upon and critiques those sources. This authorial voice links these disparate sources together, and this voice is importantly not explicitly ascribed to Apess but meant to speak on behalf of the Mashpee community. It represents a kind of corporate authorship that is also a political act, a community voice in writing that speaks to Mashpee’s internal coherence and its political activity. The text of Indian

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Nullification is an act of resistance; the Mashpee may be a “remnant,” but they are organized and unified politically.

26 This collective identity animated much of the public and official writing of the Mashpee throughout the conflict. In a statement to the Harvard trustees, the Mashpee declared their unhappiness with Fish as their minister and wrote, “we do say, as the voice of one, with but few exceptions, that we as a tribe, for a long time, have had no desire to hear Mr. Fish preach” (O’Connell 175). This statement is interesting as a model of the collective practice of the Mashpee community. It declares a single tribal position on Fish, while also acknowledging that that unanimity is not completely comprehensive (“with but few exceptions”). This is an example of how the Mashpee communicate in a voice that acknowledges difference while speaking with the strength of a community united around politics and faith. That combination is necessary to the unique situation of Mashpee because it produces a discourse of resistance that speaks to both fronts of their battle, with Rev. Fish and the state of Massachusetts.

27 The parallels drawn between the Mashpee and the Cherokee crisis came not just from the Mashpee, but also from the larger public sphere of Massachusetts at this time. Like much of the North, the people of Massachusetts, with their federalist-leaning politics, were significantly opposed to Georgia’s attempts to circumvent federal policy and displace the Cherokee from their lands.ix In another editorial in his Boston Daily Advocate Benjamin F. Hallett writes, “We now see how unjust we have been to the Georgians in their treatment of the Cherokees, and if we persist in oppressing the Marshpee Indians, let us hasten to unresolve all the glowing resolves we made in favor of the Georgia Indians” (O’Connell 226). Hallett here played off of a sentiment already expressed in the pages of the Advocate. He again writes, “We have an overflow of sensibility in this quarter toward the Cherokees, and there is now an opportunity of showing to the world whether the people of Massachusetts can exercise more justice and less cupidity toward their own Indians than the Georgians have towards the Cherokees” (O’Connell 196). The language of “sensibility” here, like Marshall’s 1831 Supreme Court ruling, is telling. Redressing the wrong of the Cherokee and the Mashpee is an act of sympathetic white benevolence as much as an issue of justice.

28 Despite its problems, Hallett, Apess and the Mashpee deployed that sentimental logic when effective. In a public letter circulated to multiple papers (and written collectively), the community writes: As our brethren, the white men of Massachusetts, have recently manifested much sympathy for the red men of the Cherokee nation, who have suffered much from their white brethren; as it is contended in this State, that our red brethren, the Cherokees, should be an independent people, having the privileges of the white men; we, the red men of the Marshpee tribe, consider it a favorable time to speak. We are not free. We wish to be so, as much as the red men of Georgia. (O’Connell 205)

29 The Mashpee compliment the state for their “sympathy” towards the Cherokee. But they did not dwell long on this, shifting their focus to the more important issue of “freedom.” “Sympathy” existed as a fleeting emotion, moved by the whims of white power; turning that sympathy towards the more concrete discourse of freedom moves beyond that sympathy.

30 But the discourse of freedom was also tuned to a specifically Massachusetts audience, one that cherished its historical relationship to the American Revolution. In his introduction to the book Apess writes that “he is sensible that he cannot write truly on

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this subject, without attracting the worst wishes of those who are enemies to liberty, or would reserve it exclusively to themselves” (O’Connell 168). In another collectively written letter to the Barnstable Journal, he and his collaborators describe their own situation as parallel to colonial Boston and compare the Mashpee’s seizure of wood stolen by local whites to the Boston Tea Party (O’Connell 195). And most importantly for this discourse, the Mashpee community refers to its own role in the American Revolution both in this same letter and in a petition to the legislature, which reads as follows: “We also beg leave to remind your Honors that our fathers shed their blood for liberty, and we their children have had but little benefit from it” (O’Connell 250). Having sent multiple volunteers to the revolutionary effort, the Mashpee linked their community historically to the War of Independence and rightfully emphasize their own present lack of independence. This reminder is both an accurate summary of their history in Massachusetts and a successful rhetorical strategy, allowing the community the flexibility I argue is necessary for their political survival.

31 This strategy gains additional complexity when we look at the ways the community engaged the tensions around the Cherokee and nullification political conflicts. As noted earlier, the community was eager and able to align its plight with that of the Cherokee and their northern supporters against the state of Georgia. Apess and the Mashpee seemed fully aware that Georgia governor Lumpkin’s refusal to defer to the Supreme Court decision handed down in Worcester v. Georgia was nullification in fact if not in name, and that Massachusetts residents were overall both sympathetic to the plight of the Cherokee and invested in the power of the federal government and the Supreme Court. But the writers of Indian Nullification did not rest comfortably with that shared political sentiment; rather, they turned it back onto white Massachusetts residents by recognizing the racial politics inherent in the discussion.

32 However, much of the scholarship on Indian Nullification sees the deployment of “nullification” in more narrowly political terms. Jean O’Brien writes, “Apess could only have been suggesting that Indians have the right to nullify the unjust laws of the state of Massachusetts. In effect, he is asserting a parallel between governmental entities in order to assert the political status of New England tribes vis-à-vis the state” (182). This reading attends to the more concrete goals of Apess and Mashpee but evacuates the historical and racial politics of nullification as it was argued by South Carolina’s slave- holding political elite. This turns what was essentially South Carolina’s attempt at dismantling the Union into a kind of reform discourse. I argue that in deploying the concept of nullification Apess and the Mashpee were forcing a radical confrontation with the politics of white Massachusetts and the New England federalist political leaning through the racial charge inherent in the term “nullification.”

33 It is important to recognize that nullification was an unprecedented rejection of the Constitution, created and enacted by a slave-holding elite that controlled South Carolina politics. In her book The Counterrevolution of Slavery, Manisha Sinha argues “The Carolina doctrine of nullification was the political expression of a self-conscious and assertive slaveholding planter class that deviated significantly from the republican heritage of the country and the growing democratization of national politics” (10). Radically undemocratic South Carolinians pursued nullification not simply because of their unhappiness with the Tariff of 1828, but also because they saw it as a threat to their system of racial slavery by the northern and western portions of the country. As South Carolina lawyer, politician, and pro-unionist James Petigru stated at the time, “It

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is clear that our nullifiers mean to pick a quarrel with the north about negroes— Nullification has done its work. It has prepared the minds of men for a separation of the States—and when the question is moved again it will be directly union or disunion” (Sinha 60).

34 Foregrounding the racial politics of nullification allows us to move towards a more nuanced understanding of the rhetorical work performed by Indian Nullification. Andy Doolen writes that Apess “frames his history with the nullification controversy” because the Southern strategy was a blueprint for defending minority rights within the framework of American constitutionalism. Apess develops a doctrine of Indian nullification that at once abolishes the state’s unconstitutional laws over a minority group while declaring independence from a corrupt overseer system. Like Calhoun’s doctrine, Apess does not wish to threaten secession…. He is committed to a position that enables the Mashpee to remain within the United States with specific constitutional rights. (Doolen 166)

35 Doolen reads the constitutionalism of nullification as a political stance and therefore sees Apess’s usage in more literal terms. But Apess was also doing something more politically radical by looking in two directions that are seemingly contradictory: To the plight of the Cherokees of Georgia and the federalist argument that Georgia overstepped its bounds (an argument the people of Massachusetts supported) and to the logic of the slave-holding elite of South Carolina, a radically anti-federalist position that brought South Carolina to the brink of military conflict with the U.S. government and that was understood to be a stance on both the tariff and southern slavery. But what Apess and his collaborators did was not articulate the contradiction on their own, but rather turn it back onto the state of Massachusetts and its policies towards Mashpee. The book aimed not just to reform the Massachusetts law in order to gain greater political independence for Mashpee (though Indian Nullification is indeed doing that), but also to short-circuit the logic of white, federalist, benevolent Massachusetts. Apess and the Mashpee thus dared to align themselves rhetorically with arch-slave owners like Calhoun and the elites of South Carolina.

36 The idea of a “remnant” Indian community speaking in the political language of a slave-holding separatist elite in and of itself ruptures the political logic of Massachusetts. The very title is a provocation on a scale that I feel critics have not fully appreciated, even when recognizing the work’s obvious political valences. To bring Calhoun’s states’ rights provocations down another level, from federal versus state to state versus local, and to bring these provocations into the conflict between Indian communities and the states’ white elected officials is an unprecedented move in the realm of Indian activism of this time. The attempt is no doubt connected to the political autonomy that Konkle and others analyze, but the rhetorical reversal it achieves damns Massachusetts and calls into question its established political order. The specter of Indian communities as politically untamable as southern nullifiers is insurrectionary. To invoke nullification is not simply to engage in the political language of the day or an ironic reversal (though it is both of those), but also to bring the potential of disunion and disorder within the borders of Massachusetts.

37 One example reveals this logic at work in the text. The Mashpee were told by a Massachusetts judge, through an agent to the Indians, that “merely declaring a law to be oppressive could not abrogate it; and that it would become us, as good citizens whom the government was disposed to treat well, to wait for the session of the

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Legislature and then apply for relief” (O’Connell 183).Though not by the name of “nullification,” Barnstable county Justice of the Peace John Reed tells the Mashpee the same thing that Jackson and his allies told South Carolina (Gura 84). But Apess, in a parenthetical aside following this summary, plays a card unavailable to South Carolina: “surely it was either insult or wrong to call the Marshpees citizens, for such they never were, from the Declaration of Independence up to the session of the Legislature in 1834” (O’Connell 183). In this move the text reveals what is distinctly “Indian” about the Mashpee’s deployment of nullification. In the South Carolinian formulation, nullification was an abrogation of a compact made among the states without constitutional logic or precedent; but the Mashpee Indians were never part of any compact, constitutional convention, or legislative body. Apess brings the provocative language of nullification into play in order to reveal a significant difference: citizenship. The Mashpee were asked to wait on a deliberative political process that they could not actually take part in—they could not send an elected representative to the Massachusetts legislature and their petitions merely placed them at the mercy of legislative benevolence. Like the Cherokee before the Supreme Court, they requested political recognition but were denied it. In this way, adopting the discourse of nullification goes beyond provocation (though provocation is an important rhetorical mode here) and becomes a way to break apart the incoherence of the Mashpee’s role in the state’s political life. They were apart from the political realm but asked to submit to it nonetheless; they were jailed for rioting based on state laws they could not create and defending laws that were not enforced.

38 Like South Carolinian nullifiers, Apess and the Mashpee invoked the legacy of the American Revolution to support their resistance. Addressing the reader they write “I will ask him how, if he values his own liberty, he would or could rest quiet under such laws. I ask the inhabitants of New England generally how their fathers bore laws, much less oppressive, when imposed upon them by a foreign government” (O’Connell 211). This statement invokes the patriotic sympathies of a Massachusetts readership and likens the Mashpee to such patriots, a move like that of the South Carolina nullifiers. But again, the specter of citizenship haunts this language if one follows its logic. If South Carolinians were rebels, then they stood outside of the union, though claiming to be staunch defenders of its constitutional principles. But the Mashpee did stand outside that union and therefore had a logical case for resistance to unjust laws.

39 In paralleling themselves to the Cherokees of Georgia, the Mashpee highlighted their similarities and imply that the Northern federalist logic, which defends the Cherokee, should apply to Mashpee as well. But this parallel to South Carolina reveals a politically useful gap—the role of citizenship in taking part in the political process. The Mashpee wanted something complex but legitimate, to have autonomy from the Massachusetts system and political power within it. If Apess’s dance on both sides of the nullification debate seems contradictory, it is precisely because the situation was contradictory. No legitimized political discourse existed in the antebellum United States to give the Mashpee what they deserved—Marshall wrote all Indians out of nationhood, Thompson wrote all “remnants” out of political standing in his dissent, and Massachusetts “oversees” the Mashpee, denying them political representation and community independence. Nullification was then the wedge that Apess and the Mashpee used to disrupt this situation, using the national panic South Carolina initiated beginning with Calhoun’s Exposition and Protest. Invoking nullification within an argument about Indian rights, Indian Nullification disrupts Massachusetts’s understanding of its federalist

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politics. Like southern Democrat Andrew Jackson, Massachusetts was opposed to Southern nullification, but its treatment of the Mashpee made the state more like Jackson in his stand against the Cherokee; the state’s politics were laid bare.

40 These contradictions might also speak to the inherent problem of “sovereignty” when discussing Mashpee as sovereignty has a complex place in the discussion of Indian political community. Rochelle Raineri Zuck writes, “Apess draws on the Israelite captivity among the Egyptians” to “elicit sympathy” from his local audience and ultimately “assert Mashpee sovereignty” (15). Other scholars, such as Deborah A. Rosen, have taken sovereignty as the aim of Apess’s work in Mashpee. Taiaiake Alfred criticizes the Western, “adversarial,” and “coercive” nature of the term “sovereignty” (59). On the other hand, Amanda Cobb points in a productive direction, arguing, “Our understanding of sovereignty must be flexible and negotiable but not so flexible that the term can mean anything” (116).

41 Keeping that flexibility in mind, Indian Nullification offers its own clear vision of political sovereignty—democratic community representation, community-based decision making, and recognition of their independent and protected status by the state of Massachusetts. But what the text offers is also what Scott Richard Lyons calls “rhetorical sovereignty,” the “inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires… to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse” (Lyons 448-49). With this in mind, we can look back on the work of Apess and the Mashpee as an act of rhetorical sovereignty that also critiques the very instability around that concept. The text stakes out the community’s values and identity in the context of their political battles by highlighting the myriad conflicts over the concept of sovereignty happening at their own political moment—the sovereignty of American Indian communities, both “nations” and “remnants,” the sovereignty of individual states and communities within states, etc. Indian Nullification reveals how unstable the word was in this moment; complicating the concept of sovereignty as Apess and the Mashpee did is an attempt to avoid the inevitable political endgame of sovereignty in U.S.-Indian relations: violence and removal.

4. Conclusion

42 Following the parallels between the Cherokee and the Mashpee means that both are fighting for rights inherent in the U.S. Constitution, not only the discourse of “liberty” but also the more specific rights of treaty and property rights. But by framing the Cherokee and Mashpee in a parallel political situation means that Massachusetts was not the benevolent ally of the Cherokee (as they saw themselves) but more like Georgia and other Americans interested in eradicating Indians for their land. The Mashpee write, “Other editors speak ill enough of Gen. Jackson’s treatment of the southern Indians. Why do they not also speak ill of all the head men and great chiefs who have evil entreated the people of Marshpee? I think Governor Lincoln [of Massachusetts] manifested as bitter and tyrannical a spirit as Old Hickory ever could, for the life of him” (O’Connell 238). Apess and the Mashpee revised the state’s narrative of benevolence towards the Cherokees by reframing their Indian sympathies around policies in their own state, revealing that Massachusetts’s sympathies were deeply flawed as they extended only to those Indians they had no relationship to. In doing so,

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they deployed nullification as the most loaded rhetorical weapon available, a concept that invoked slave power, the sectional fragmentation of the union, and armed conflict between state and federal power. They drew their Massachusetts readership into this issue by inverting their role in the conversation, turning them, as in the above quote, into General Jacksons.

43 In this regard, the writers of Indian Nullification offered a unique political discourse in the antebellum United States, one that deployed the sectional conflicts of the day but moved beyond those sectional differences. The dichotomies that shaped the era’s political conversation—North/South, federalist/states’ rights, slavery/abolitionism— were reworked and reframed while the role of sentimentalism in the discourse of race and benevolence was disrupted. But if Indian Nullification subverted the sectional discourse, it could not overcome that discourse. The movement of the U.S. towards the Civil War revealed the impossibility at the time of thinking beyond regional power politics and the economy of slavery.

44 Well into the twentieth century, Mashpee continued to do legal battle over its community rights and formations—the battles of the 1830s were part of a much longer struggle. We can then turn back to Indian Nullification for a window into another sense of political and social formation, tenuously but tenaciously made available by the Mashpee community in their writing and lives. They with Apess created a political discourse that both engaged and elided the power of the state. Their discourse asserted a communal Indian identity that was also flexible and inclusive, a discourse that by undercutting the dominant logic of its day imagined a freer life for the community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bragaw, Stephen G. “Thomas Jefferson and the American Indian Nations: Native American Sovereignty and the Marshall Court.” Journal of Supreme Court History 31.2 (2006): 155–180. Print.

Campisi, Jack. The Mashpee Indians: Tribe on Trial. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991. Print.

Carlson, David J. Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Print.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1. Supreme Court of the United States. 1831. Supreme Court Collection. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School, n.d. Web. 3 March 2018.

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Print.

Cobb, Amanda J. “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty: Definitions, Conceptualizations, and Interpretations.” American Studies 46.3/4 (2005): 115–132. Print.

Dippie, Brian W. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1982. Print.

Donaldson, Laura. ‘‘Making a Joyful Noise: William Apess and the Search for Postcolonial Method(ism),’’ Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 7.5 (2005): 180-198. Print.

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Doolen, Andy. Fugitive Empire: Locating Early American Imperialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Print.

Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States Rights and the Nullification Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print.

Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print.

Gura, Philip F. The Life of William Apess, Pequot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Print.

Haynes, Carolyn. “‘A Mark for Them All to... Hiss At’: The Formation of Methodist and Pequot Identity in the Conversion Narrative of William Apess.” Early American Literature 31.1 (1996): 25– 44. Print.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

Konkle, Maureen. Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Print.

Lyons, Scott. “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?” College Composition and Communication 51.3 (2000): 447-468. Print.

Nielsen, Donald M. “The Mashpee Indian Revolt of 1833.” The New England Quarterly 58.3 (1985): 400–420. Print.

O’Brien, Jean M. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Print.

O’Connell, Barry, ed. On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. Print.

Rifkin, Mark. “Shadows of Mashantucket: William Apess and the Representation of Pequot Space.” American Literature 84.4 (2012): 691-714. Print.

Rosen, Deborah A. American Indians and State Law: Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship, 1790-1880. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Print.

Sinha, Manisha. The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Print.

Taiaiake, Alfred. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.

Zuck, Rochelle Raineri. “William Apess, the ‘Lost Tribes,’ and Indigenous Survivance.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 25.1 (2013): 1–26. Print.

NOTES i. See Konkle 15, Carlson 116-117, and Doolen, chapter 5. I will return to these issues later in the article. ii. This is what Konkle calls “the strong arm of sympathy for Indians in the nineteenth century” (121). iii. The New Bedford Press (Massachusetts) used such language in an article on the Mashpee: “The remnants of that race of men who once owned and inhabited the forests and prairies of the Old

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Colony that have now given place to large and populous villages and the busy hum of civilized man, are, it would seem, somewhat dissatisfied with the manner in which they are governed by the State authority” (O’Connell 191). iv. As Justice Story wrote to Justice Marshall “The recent attacks in Georgia and the recent Nullification doctrine in South Carolina are but parts of the same general scheme, the object of which is to elevate an exclusive State sovereignty upon the ruins of the General Government” (quoted in Bragaw 158). v. Doolen writes, “By exposing the ideological nature of white power and by nationalizing the effects of slavery, Garrison provided a means for connecting the plight of New England Indians to the histories of slavery” (158). vi. Mashpee residents also had a long history of welcoming black and other Indian residents into the community through marriage and adoption, which explains the community’s understanding of how black and Indian forms of unfreedom were related. See Clifford, 307. vii. The situation of Mashpee possesses striking parallels to the Pequot reservation of Mashantucket in Connecticut, a community where several of Apess’s relatives resided. Mark Rifkin writes about Mashantucket in relation to Apess’s work, calling that community a “shadow referent” in A Son of the Forest. Think about the connections between these two communities helps us understand how the issues Apess addresses in Indian Nullification were perhaps formed through his specific history with another embattled New England Indian community. See Mark Rifkin, “Shadows of Mashantucket: William Apess and the Representation of Pequot Space.” American Literature 84:4 (Dec 2012): 691-714. viii. O’Connell suggests that William G. Snelling probably edited the collection and wrote its introduction (168). ix. I use the term “federalist” here not to refer to the specific Federalist Party, which no longer existed at this time, but to the nationalist political values popular in Massachusetts during this period. Party labels shifted at this time, but the values of the Federalist and later Whig parties maintained dominance in Massachusetts politics. See Formisano, Ronald P. The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

ABSTRACTS

This article situates the work of American Indian writer and activist William Apess in the context of contemporaneous debates around removal of the Cherokee nation from the state of Georgia and the secession crisis brought on by South Carolina. These two national political battles inform the work Apess does with the Mashpee Indian community of Cape Cod, represented by their collected work The Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts, Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained (1835). Building on the scholarship by Maureen Konkle, Andy Doolen, and others, this article argues that Apess frames the state-level political battle of the Mashpee in the larger national context of removal and southern secession as a means of disrupting the political logic of the state of Massachusetts. In seeing the political treatment of the Cherokee by the federal government, Apess rhetorically recasts the Mashpee community as “nullifying” state law as a means to both barter for enhanced rights for the community and, more importantly, call into question what Indian citizenship and sovereignty meant for the most vulnerable forms of Indian community in antebellum New England.

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INDEX

Keywords: William Apess, nullification, Native American literature, United States history, law and literature

AUTHOR

NEIL MEYER Neil Meyer is Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York (CUNY). He works in the fields of early American Studies and composition studies. His work can be found in New England Quarterly and Early American Studies.

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Circulating in Commonplaces: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Celebrity Status in the Netherlands

Laurens Ham

1 In 2015 and 2016, the journals Critical Survey and Comparative American Studies each published a special issue on nineteenth-century transatlantic celebrity, each journal taking its cue from the 2014 University of Portsmouth conference Celebrity Encounters: Transatlantic Fame in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America. Whereas the conference title suggested a scope limited to exchanges between Britain and the US, the titles of the journal issues explicitly promise a comparison between American and European celebrity: Celebrity Encounters: Famous Americans in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Transatlantic Celebrity: European Fame in Nineteenth-Century America , respectively (emphasis LH). The introductions to both issues also mention this supposed European perspective, but all twelve actual articles compare the US to Britain only, creating an erroneous impression of ubiquitous celebrity while focusing on a single European nation.

2 This academic mono-fixation is far from unique.1 Studies of transatlantic cultural encounters often neglect the non-Anglophone parts of Europe, which results in generally flattering interpretations of the role of American writers as celebrities in the nineteenth-century European book market. It is clear, after all, that Britain is far from representative when it comes to the institutional and ideological literary situations in Europe as a whole: in the 1850s, the UK had the most commercialized and professionalized literary field in the world. Fred Inglis describes that this has been the case since the mid-seventeen hundreds, when England began producing commodities like books, clothes, and paintings on a hitherto unseen scale (Inglis 39-40). The first bestselling authors in the US date from around a century later; examples include Susan Warner (The Wide, Wide World, 1850), Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (The Song of Hiawatha, 1855). American literature therefore did not become “mass phenomenon” until the 1850s (Dowling 1-2), and we

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might assume that bestselling authors in smaller, non-English-speaking European areas did not rise to prominence until even later.

3 In this article, I wish to investigate American celebrity culture in one of these smaller countries: the Netherlands. I will focus on who was arguably the biggest literary star of her time, Harriet Beecher Stowe, an international record breaker both in sales and in media presence. She was also the American writer with the largest number of reviews in nineteenth-century Dutch media: 60 reviews in total, James Fenimore Cooper coming in second with 58 articles (Riewald and Bakker 10-11). In several recent studies, Stowe’s celebrity is presented as a “European,” “transatlantic” phenomenon (Kohn, Meer and Todd; Weber 94).2 But to what extent can Stowe be considered an actual celebrity in the Netherlands during the second half of the nineteenth century? Were the amount and the contents of the textual representations of her authorial figure anywhere as impressive as the number of books that she sold? While the phenomenal success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin often gets mentioned in studies about Dutch book culture of the mid-1850s, Stowe’s celebrity status in this part of Europe has never been studied before.

4 Focusing on the Dutch institutional and ideological situations, I aim to show that although textual representations of Harriet Beecher Stowe did indeed circulate around 1850, this circulation did not take on the massive scale that seems necessary for a celebrity status. Whereas Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, by Dutch standards, an incredible success, journalists were only marginally aware of the authorial figure of Stowe herself. Journalists and writers generally acquired knowledge about her life and work through secondary sources such as British and American newspapers and letters, and the information obtained was often superficial at best. From an ideological point of view, the phenomenon of literary celebrity was a controversial one in the nineteenth- century Netherlands. Longer articles in literary periodicals start criticizing and ridiculing Stowe and her works even as early as 1854, only a year after her successful entrance onto the Dutch literary market. Such disparaging comments seem to be indicative of a certain aversion to celebrity, and suggest that there were several social debates going on in the Netherlands that hampered the emergence of a so-called “celebrity society.”

1. Measuring Celebrity?

5 Before we can discuss the case of Stowe’s celebrity, we need to address the complex matter as to whether celebrity can be measured at all. How are we to determine the scale of Stowe’s success in the Netherlands? This matter touches upon several debates in celebrity studies on how one is to define and demarcate celebrity. One could for instance wonder whether writers who were active before the period of mass media could be labeled celebrities at all, given the fact that media channels only reached small audiences. As the editors of Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature (2016) euphemistically write: “Opinions differ as to the origin of celebrity” (Franssen and Honings 4). Many scholars agree that a recognizable European celebrity culture had been established by the early nineteenth century (e.g., Finnerty and Rosenquist 1), but some authors situate the origin of a celebrity culture as early as classical antiquity (e.g., Visser 6).

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6 These divergent interpretations can be traced back to two different but deeply intertwined debates. First of all, Franssen and Honings rightly state that it makes all the difference whether or not one chooses to equate the decidedly older phenomena of “fame” or “renown” with the more modern concept of “celebrity” (4). According to Braudy, for instance, notions of fame and renown date back to at least Alexander the Great, but Schickel among others asserts that the concept of celebrity must be distinguished from these older phenomena (Franssen and Honings 4). Although in the centuries before the eighteenth, individuals could certainly achieve renown because of (a perception of) their great merit, such people did not win celebrity, that mass-scale kind of popularity that is detached from one’s personal qualities (Inglis 4-5). A celebrity, after all, is often interpreted as “a person who is known for [her] well- knownness,” to quote Daniel J. Boorstin’s seminal definition (Boorstin 217). This question of definitions is closely related to a second issue, namely whether one interprets celebrity merely as a cultural phenomenon or also as a social-economic one. Inglis seems to favor the latter position. You could only become known for your well- knownness, he suggests, in societies where there were certain social-material “underlying forces” that “composed celebrity”; he describes the forces at play in eighteenth-century London: “[F]irst, the new consumerism of eighteenth-century London, … second, the invention of the fashion industry [and] third, the coming of the mass circulation newspaper” with “its gossip columns” (Inglis 9). Robert van Krieken agrees with this interpretation: he states that several social-economic tendencies in modernizing societies, such as individualism, the rise of the mass media, and democratization are needed for a phenomenon as celebrity to appear (Van Krieken 16).

7 To emphasize the importance of socio-economic conditions, Van Krieken proposes exchanging the metaphor of a “celebrity culture” for that of a “celebrity society.” The concept of culture, he claims, is “generally not very adept at capturing issues or concerns that go beyond values, mores, attitudes, forms of behaviour, cognitive orientations and ways of life, to understand the social, political and economic structures as well as the institutional foundations of what we experience as ‘celebrity’” (Van Krieken 2). The term celebrity society still does not guarantee a reliable measurement of celebrity in a specific community, but it does serve as an apt warning that gaining a better insight into celebrity requires us to look further than individual mentions in (high) literary culture: we should also take the author’s popularity, the general developments in media, and the socio-political situation into account. That is why I will follow Van Krieken’s use of the term.

2.1. Stowe’s Celebrity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the US

8 The first half of the nineteenth century saw the introduction of radically new printing technologies in the US and in Britain. In 1814, The Times was the first newspaper to be printed on steam-driven presses, and the introduction of the rotary printing press in the US in 1833 sped up the printing processes for newspapers, magazines, and books spectacularly (Van Krieken 40).

9 Soon after its first printing, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became particularly associated with the new, unparalleled printing possibilities of the Industrial Age. In 1852 and 1853, many journalists repeated the story that multiple modern presses had to run day and night to meet the incredible demand for the book. One typical instance can be found an

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unsigned review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Putnam’s Monthly, which Marcus Wood claims was written by Charles Frederick Briggs (Wood 145-146): The book was published on the 20th of last March, and on the 1st of December there had been sold one hundred and twenty thousand sets of the edition in two volumes, fifty thousand copies of the cheaper edition in one, and three thousand copies of the costly illustrated edition. The publishers have kept four steam-presses running, night and day, Sundays only excepted, and at double the ordinary speed, being equal to sixteen presses worked ten hours a day at the usual speed. (“Uncle Tomitudes” 98)

10 According to the reviewer, Uncle Tom could only have become such a success thanks to the modern technological infrastructure of “our steam-presses, steam-ships, steam- carriages, iron roads, electric telegraphs, and universal peace among the reading nations of the earth” (98). He concluded by saying that the book’s extraordinary dissemination brought the author incredible financial success: “They have paid to the author twenty thousand three hundred dollars as her share of the profits on the actual cash sales of the first nine months” (98-99).

11 The source of these sales figures in the US was most likely the book’s American publisher, John P. Jewett, who distributed several advertisements. An early ad (The New York Independent, May 20, 1852) mentions the number of 50,000 sold copies in eight weeks, and the book jacket of the subsequent “Edition for the millions!” stated that 300,000 copies had been distributed in a year’s time.3 These figures are very hard to verify, as Claire Parfait has shown: every single number can be traced back to Jewett himself (Parfait 99-100). To this day, academic sources reproduce the figures of 300,000 American copies sold in the first year—even the story of the printers running day and night continues to be mentioned (e.g., Ammons 55).

12 Even more remarkable, and less contested, is the claim that no less than 1.5 million copies were sold in Britain in 1852. Retracing the source for this figure through references and quotations, I have found that there is a single source for this number: Sampson Low, Stowe’s British publisher. Low was quoted by Charles E. Stowe, one of Stowe’s sons, in his The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was published by Low’s company in 1889. In the book, Low is quoted saying: “After carefully analyzing these editions and weighing probabilities with ascertained facts, I am pretty confidently to say that the aggregate number of copies circulated in Great Britain and the colonies exceeds one and a half millions” (Stowe, The Life 190). The Stowes and their publishers seem to have contributed considerably to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrity this way. One of the most significant aspects of her fame in the nineteenth century, after all, was the fact that she was reputedly the bestselling author of her time. The sole source for this claim is the author’s son quoting the author’s publisher, arguably not the most neutral of sources.

13 Other family members of the author, such as her brother Henry Ward Beecher and her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe, also helped fashion her celebrity status over the course of the 1850s. In 1853, they accompanied Stowe on a tour to Britain, where she was invited by the Glasgow Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and the Glasgow Female New Association for the Abolition of Slavery (Robbins). She traveled through Scotland and England for several months and attracted huge numbers of fans. Less famous is the second part of her journey, which led through Paris, Switzerland, and Germany and during which the reception was far less enthusiastic. She did not visit the Netherlands, which was perhaps too marginal a country for such a promotional tour.

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14 During her tour, Stowe’s public reputation and political engagement had to take a backseat to the dominant social norms of the time, as it was considered inappropriate for women to speak in public (Hedrick 232-250). Her brother and husband were therefore the ones who did the talking wherever she visited. Stowe was therefore, in Amanda Adams’s words, “seen and not heard” by the large masses who came to meet her (Adams 45-46). Stowe violated this rule only once: “In the private home of the Duchess of Sutherland, Stowe did address some women in a room, separate from the men, including her own husband and brother” (51-53). Calvin and Henry, however, did contribute to her fame by responding extensively to the praise sung by her male hosts – often politicians or clergymen. All these laudations and responses were reprinted in Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854), Stowe’s account of her European journey. She used this travel memoir both to give her own interpretation of her public popularity and to reproduce influential opinions expressed by others (Robbins).

15 It is likely that Stowe did have some opportunities to present herself to the public, but that she had to do so carefully in order to not transgress the rather strict gender norms. According to Michael Newbury, Stowe’s constant emphasis on Christian martyrdom, both for herself and for Uncle Tom protagonists Tom and little Eva, is closely connected to the author’s own views on female celebrity: For Harriet Beecher Stowe, to imagine Christian martyrdom as the process of moral reformation was to imagine that martyrdom taking place on stage, whether that stage be Eva’s bedroom or the lecture halls of London.… In short, Stowe imagines in Eva the domestic celebrity as Christian martyr but, simultaneously, imagines martyrdom through (and figuratively mediates the differences between) the conditions and economics of antebellum slavery and celebrity. (Newbury 97)

16 The British feminist and sociologist Harriet Martineau described Stowe as a martyr-like figure, a role Martineau “consistently saw as the very opposite of a celebrity”: whereas Martineau considered celebrities as selfish, she thought Stowe devoted herself to the good cause (Adams 33). From this point of view, Stowe succeeded in presenting herself as a writer who was known not for her well-knownness but for the high moral standards she maintained, both for her characters and for herself. According to Blake, many journalists in the mid-1800s believed that celebrities could fulfill such exemplary societal functions (Blake 55-57).

17 Over the course of the nineteenth century, Stowe and the characters of her most famous novel found their way ever more easily into popular culture. The early 1850s saw the production of the first puzzles and card games featuring (characters from) the novel, particularly in Britain. As manufacturing techniques and (color) printing became cheaper and cheaper in subsequent decades, the production of “Tomitudes” (as these commodities were soon called) increased. Until well into the twentieth century, the Western world was awash with Uncle Tom dolls, board and card games, ash trays, porcelain figures, postcards and the like.4 This exposed a spectacularly large audience to the novel’s themes, ideas, and characters—although one wonders whether these Tomitudes increased Stowe’s celebrity. Her picture seems to have rarely been included in these commodities. I was able to find only two Tomitudes—both from the 1890s—that feature an image of Stowe herself: a “Representative Americans” calendar from 1894 includes a color illustration of Stowe; and on a poster for a stage adaptation, probably from the late 1890s, we can see Abraham Lincoln flanked by a former enslaved person and a small portrait of Stowe.5 Media innovations, better infrastructure, and commercialization definitely contributed to the making of one of the most hyped

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novels in the English language. It is debatable whether this resulted in a star status for Stowe herself: although she clearly found fame in the English-speaking world, it was her work that attracted the most attention.

2.2. Stowe’s Celebrity in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

18 Adopting a purely cultural interpretation of celebrity, we can see several signs of the existence of a general culture of fandom and celebrity in the Dutch nineteenth century as well. Rick Honings’s pioneering research into Dutch nineteenth-century celebrity authorship, for instance, has opened up a substantial amount of odes, eulogies, adaptations, and other signs of fan and fame culture in the Netherlands. However, Honings writes practically nothing about the book market, sales figures, or mentions in the mass media. The Dutch literary world he describes is a fairly small one, with a core of a few dozen male writers, clergymen, politicians, and scholars—not exactly the mass- medial world we can see in Britain and the US in the same period.

19 In the slipstream of the 1853 translation of Unce Tom’s Cabin (infamously titled De negerhut, which can be literally translated as The Negro Hut), several other international Tom-related works were translated into Dutch. Among these, there was a children’s adaptation, A Peep into Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Aunt Mary, 1853; translated the same year), John Passmore Edwards and Frederick Douglass’s Uncle Tom’s Companions: Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction (1852; translated 1854), and the French dramatic adaptation La Case de l’oncle Tom by Dumanoir and d’Ennery (1853; translated 1854). There were also original Dutch political pamphlets, with titles that referred to Stowe’s novel to attract attention. Examples include J. Wolbers’s De slavernij in Suriname, of Dezelfde gruwelen der slavernij, die in de ‘Negerhut’ geschetst zijn, bestaan ook in onze West-Indische koloniën! (“Slavery in Surinam, or: Those Same Horrors of Slavery Depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin Also Exist in Our West-Indies Colonies!,” 1853).

20 These were publications in the margins of literary culture, but Uncle Tom was also mentioned, praised, and adapted by respected writers. In 1854, Dutch poet Bernard ter Haar published a poetic re-interpretation of a well-known Uncle Tom scene: Eliza’s flight over the ice. Twelve years later, he lauded Stowe in a poem. Stowe was called a celebriteit (a very literal and highly unusual translation of “celebrity”) in Elise van Calcar’s novel Kinderen der eeuw (1872-1873). Uncle Tom was mentioned in several key Dutch novels of the period, such as Jacob van Lennep’s Klaasje Zevenster (1866), Cécile de Jong van Beek en Donk’s feminist classic Hilda van Suylenburg (1897), and—famously— Multatuli’s absolutely canonical Max Havelaar (1860), which was clearly inspired by Stowe’s engaged sentimentalism (Ham). An engraving of Stowe’s portrait has been preserved in the collection of Multatuli’s books and objects.6 From a cultural vantage point, we might assume that all these references and instances of praise are indicative of Stowe’s celebrity in the Netherlands, and of the bestseller status of her best-known novel. However, all Dutch adaptations and literary works mentioning Stowe or Uncle Tom are from fellow (literary) authors, meaning that they cannot provide us with any insight into the mass-medial dissemination of representations of either the writer or the novel.

21 For a better understanding of the reception of Stowe in the Netherlands, it seems necessary to reckon with the institutional and medial boundaries of the time. A massive, centralized book distribution may have been hampered by the fact that Dutch

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was an official language in three culturally and institutionally distinct geographic regions: the Netherlands, Flanders, and the Dutch East Indies.7 In the mid-1800s, these regions did not engage in particularly intense cultural exchange, as is attested to by the fact that between 1852 and 1855, each of these areas published its own translation of Uncle Tom. Another important aspect curbing the development of a Dutch mass-media landscape was the fact that the average novel appeared in an edition of a mere 300 copies. Uncle Tom’s Cabin managed to surpass this average in spectacular fashion, selling 18,000 copies in four years (Huisman 60-61), but this was highly unusual. Books were mainly bought by well-to-do readers: modern steam presses were still relatively rare in the Netherlands of the 1850s, making books and newspapers quite expensive. The first edition of the 1853 De negerhut translation, for instance, cost almost 8 guilders (about 95 dollars today), compelling a disappointed journalist to write: “We regret that the price is once again so high that common people will surely not get hold of this book” (Van der Meulen 136).

3.1. Dutch Media Discourse (I): Newspapers on Stowe’s 1853 European Tour

22 We have seen that the Dutch book market did not facilitate a smooth distribution of Stowe’s works to broad layers of society, and when we take a closer look at the newspaper coverage of Stowe’s 1853 European tour, it becomes clear that Dutch media did not further the creation of a Stowe cult in the Netherlands either. Dutch newspapers did cover the tour rather extensively, but the articles differed from the reports in British and American publications in interesting ways. Newspapers in Britain and the US provided many detailed reports on Stowe’s public performances, and not always in a respectful tone. The popular—and sometimes populist—New York Herald, for instance, published several reports that were decidedly ironic. Stowe’s visit to the London Almack’s Assembly social club was portrayed with a jibe: the anonymous correspondent wrote rather mockingly about the pompous lectures by the well-known abolitionist Joseph Sturge and Stowe’s husband Calvin, and about the large mass of curious people who had gathered to take a peek at Stowe in real life. Stowe herself is pictured in a rather stereotypical way as well: In exterior manner and deportment, Mrs. Stowe bore with becoming modesty and propriety the show made of her. She is much better looking than the daguerreotypes and engravings in the shop windows represent her to be. In her pictures it is a figure of a coarse, fat, vulgar, brazen-faced woman; but she is quite the reverse in fact, and in paleness and elegance of figure, joined with ease and self- possession of deportment, quite an American lady. What, however, her inward emotions must have been at seeing all this Uncle-Tom foolery—how all this unmeaning, silly incense and insincere flattery worked upon her vanity—can be known to no human being. She at all events had the skill and the tact to conceal every emotion. (“Affairs in Europe”)

23 It must be noted that although such articles were far from flattering, they did include elaborate reflections on Stowe’s lectures and on the craze that surrounded her. The same holds for the British reception: British newspapers provided their readers with detailed reports of Stowe’s European tour, and they discussed Stowe’s authorial position in long, sometimes critical reviews (Fisch 102-107; Robbins 77). The 1853 tour is also often covered by Dutch national and regional newspapers, but the number, tone,

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and content of the Dutch pieces are quite different from the British and American ones. 8

24 The first Dutch article that mentions Stowe’s European tour is probably a very brief text appearing in the Rotterdamsche Courant newspaper of January 11, 1853: “The Boston Traveller reports that Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, the world-famous author of the splendid work Uncle Tom’s Cabin, will shortly be arriving in Liverpool, accompanied by her husband.” This message is somewhat puzzling, since Stowe only started her journey to Europe on the first of April of 1853 (Hedrick 232). The Rotterdamsche Courant seems to rely on inaccurate information that it took from another paper. When we scrutinize other Dutch news articles on Stowe’s tour, we find more such confusing or inaccurate reports.

25 Dutch journalism was not very professional at the time. News taxes that made papers expensive and thereby exclusive meant that there were relatively few readers. In the mid-1850s, after the formal declaration of the freedom of press in 1848, this tax system impeded the professionalization and growth of a modern press in the Netherlands, a situation that could only improve after the system was abandoned in 1869 (Janse 211-249). In the 1850s, Dutch newspapers did not have the time or the money to send reporters to Britain, let alone to the US, making journalists completely dependent on foreign news sources when it came to international stories about events such as Stowe’s European tour. Whenever Dutch newspapers in 1853 actually refer to their sources, these sources are (usually unspecified) letters or international news media. This tendency can be discerned both in the larger newspapers produced in the bigger cities (the Amsterdam Algemeen Handelsblad, the Rotterdam Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant), and in smaller regional papers: The famous writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, will shortly be expected in London, according to a letter she has written herself. (Groningen Courant, February 8, 1853)

Letters from the United States report that Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, will set off with the steamship Glasgow for the journey to England from New York on the 26th this month. (De Nederlander, March 14, 1853)

A letter from New York announces that Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, lies severely ill in that city. (Arnhemsche Courant, April 9, 1853)

26 Not only are these messages often strikingly contradictory, they are mostly utterly incorrect as well: for example, the steamship she traveled with is inaccurately called Glasgow instead of Canada (Hedrick 233). Moreover, the constant repetition of commonplace catchphrases such as “author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is telling: it suggests that Dutch readers were not so acquainted with Stowe that they were expected to immediately recognize her name. The labels that newspaper use are also generally superficial and unoriginal. Stowe is constantly called “famous” or “celebrated” (Leeuwarder Courant, February 8, 1853; Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, March 7, 1853), and her tour is described as a “great success” or a “victory march” (Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, April 30, 1853; Provinciale Drentsche en Asser Courant, April 30, 1853). The practical problems that seemed to afflict the Dutch news structure even led to several contradictory articles being published in the same newspaper, and to an already rectified rumor about Stowe’s death being reproduced two months later in a Dutch Indies newspaper.9

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27 All in all, Dutch news articles about Stowe’s 1850s tours suffered from many flaws: the information was contradictory, second-hand, and often blatantly wrong because of the lack of money and possibilities for original research, although there was little improvement to these issues when Dutch journalism slowly started to grow and professionalize in later decades.

3.2. Dutch Media Discourse (II): Magazines on Stowe’s Celebrity Status

28 One would expect the situation in literary and cultural magazines to be better: as they were less dependent on quick results, authors in such magazines could be expected to have had more opportunities to produce more profound articles. In some respects, the discourse on Stowe’s celebrity status in literary and cultural magazines is similar to how Dutch newspapers write about the author. The same commonplaces are repeated again and again: “the honored author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (“De Slavernij” 761); “the famous author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (“De Meibloem” 700); “Mrs Beecker [sic] Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whose star is currently rising” (YY 94). But since these texts are quite long compared to the very brief newspaper articles, they also give journalists and reviewers a chance to somewhat expound upon Stowe’s authorship and her popularity—making such sources far more informative with regards to Stowe’s celebrity status in the mid-nineteenth century Netherlands. In addition, an investigation of these magazines shows us that Stowe’s authorial status in the Netherlands was rather problematic in an ideological sense as well: not only her popularity (as a female writer), but also her overt Christianity led to all kinds of discussions and controversies.

29 What stands out in the magazine articles is the constant emphasis on Stowe’s work as an emotional (as opposed to a rational-rhetorical) effort. In the literary magazine De Gids, J. C. Zimmerman writes: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that, in spite of its shortcomings, has created more sympathy for the emancipation of slaves than the hundreds of more or less erudite treatises and pamphlets, philosophical and philanthropical, that have been published about this topic before.

30 Would this result not be due to the fact that Mrs Stowe rightly pulled the string of feeling, instead of invoking reason? (Zimmerman 141; emphasis LH)

31 In the somewhat sentimental Dutch literary culture of the nineteenth century, an appeal to emotions was not remarkable in itself, but the direct political effects of Stowe’s use of sentimental fiction were observed with admiration. Quite often, magazine articles directly linked this emotional character to Stowe’s gender or to her Christian conviction, such as in an article by the pseudonymous author Spiritus Asper en Lenis in the Christian magazine De Tijdspiegel (1853). This text presented Uncle Tom to Dutch audiences very early, discussing the novel before the Dutch translation was even published. The review frames the novel as an international success by mentioning several of the book’s international versions: “La Cabane de l’oncle Tom. / La Case du père Tom. / De Negerhut. / Onkel Toms Hütte.” The article’s motto is a Virgil quote, resolutely positioning the novel in a classical fame culture: “Fama…. / Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo. / Parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras.” (Translation: “Fame… by exerting her agility grows more active, and acquires new strength by

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progressive motion: small at first through fear, soon she shoots up into the skies” (Virgil 16)). This quote would at first seem to suggest that Stowe would grow ever more comfortable in her celebrity role, but Spiritus focuses on something else: As can be assumed from what we know about the author’s biographical circumstances, it must not have been her main purpose to ‘be a hit’ or to ‘cause an uproar.’—She surely wished in the first place to arouse the sympathy, the compassion of her compatriots, and to more indirectly affect the pending slavery question. If we are correct, this Christian and therefore humble woman shall first be surprised, then astonished, later shy and somewhat downcast by the amazing impression her scenes have made; first in the West, then in the East, and now already up North. (Spiritus Lenis en Asper 184; italics in original)

32 One the one hand, Stowe is taken very seriously here: she is not only connected to Virgil, but also to Julius Caesar: “[W]e may say about [her] what a thousand times has been said about Julius Caesar—: he came—she came—he saw—she wrote—and conquered” (185). But at the same time, a lot of emphasis is put on her social position as a “modest clergyman’s wife” and “a female preacher for the oppressed people” (186-187). Stowe is permitted to act as a benevolent celebrity, but many Dutch reviewers suggest that she can only do so when she respects the gender norms of modesty and piety.

33 These gender norms are made explicit by J. J. van Oosterzee, a highly popular preacher and author at that time, in an 1867 lecture: “The Woman and the New Literature.” Oosterzee mentions four successful women writers: “George Sand, the talent without conscience; Harriet Beecher Stowe, moral liberator of the slaves; Frederika Bremer, good genius of domestic life; and Mrs Bosboom Toussaint, Christian historical novelist of the Netherlands.” The fact that George Sand, the least religious of these authors, is called a “talent without conscience,” is illustrative of Oosterzee’s moral and social stance on women as writers: “She should never sacrifice her feminine duties for her authorship.” According to Oosterzee, women writers would do better not to interfere in the public domain, but should restrict themselves to “the subjective field” of the domestic domain. They should at all times be “truly feminine, truly patriotic, and truly pious” (“Binnenland”).

34 For many journalists of Christian and conservative magazines of the mid-1850s, Stowe matches this description perfectly: her emotional appeal to the Christian sympathy of her readers is praised and considered a prime example of good female authorship. Soon after 1853 (the publication year of the Dutch translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), however, liberal authors in a magazine such as De Gids start satirizing Stowe’s popularity: journalists mock both Stowe herself and the many adaptations and imitations of her most famous work, because these are said to present the issue of slavery in an exaggerated and insincere way.

35 In one of the first De Gids articles on Uncle Tom, H. J. Schimmel suggests that the novel is far from perfect in an aesthetic sense, but that the lack of organization gives the work a “virginal freshness” that lets the reader forget the literary flaws. Schimmel bonds with his liberal reader by suggesting that this reader—just like himself—is untouched by the “excessive” honor conferred upon Stowe: “[Y]ou do not agree with the thousands of people, who sing her praises; … you may feel only disapproval for the passionate adoration that she receives” (Schimmel, “Blikken” 28). In the following years, De Gids publishes increasingly critical reactions to Stowe’s popularity. Schimmel for instance writes that his fellow author J. J. ten Kate “seems like so many people to idolize

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[Stowe’s] work—it has become fashionable to shed tears of sympathy over the black slave” (Schimmel, “Holland” 137). By the end of the 1850s, conservative magazines such as Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen also start criticizing Stowe’s popularity, mainly because of the endless uninspired Uncle Tom imitations: Since Mrs BEECHER STOWE, with her ideal-type negro, managed to win the sympathy of white people for the poor race that they have oppressed so long and so violently, and that they, notwithstanding this sympathy, kept oppressing just as hard;—slaves have become the favorite subject of novels and stories and dramas, in poetry and prose. (“Schaduwbeelden uit Suriname” 223)

36 Although articles like these illustrate not so much an aversion to the figure of Stowe herself as a disapproval of her imitators, it becomes clear that these authors sometimes consider Stowe herself a part of the problem. One article explicitly connects Stowe to a “typically American,” overzealous cultural tradition of female writers (the text mentions Stowe, Elizabeth Wetherell, and Amy Lothrop) who adopt a “pathological pietism” as a reaction to America’s “abundant pressure of material development, material demands and worries” (Carpentier 642). Carpentier seems to interpret both materialism (and perhaps celebrity, although he does not make this explicit) and devout piety as “extreme,” utterly un-Dutch phenomena.

37 Some liberal authors go further in their disapproval of Stowe’s explicitly Christian authorship. A cynical “ode” to Stowe by the pseudonymous author Leo points up the possible perverse results of Stowe’s social critique, with its (according to him) racist undertones: Virtuous Mistress Stowe, who tells us so touchingly how the simple godless heathen Tom proudly stands up against the tyrant, who torments him, and how the converted Tom, the patient Christian Tom, bends his back in pious, god-fearing humility for his master and lets himself be tortured to death in quiet resignation to God’s will! Virtuous Mistress Stowe, tender-hearted housewife, who with one hand delivers blows to your compatriots, and with the other hand holds a cookie out to them to numb the pain:—who with one hand chastises the slave owners and traders and then, compassionately, rubs salve on the wound, by showing them the way to get patient, pious, resigning slaves who will work themselves to death, by the use of an unfailing household remedy: by conversion, by teaching them Christianity! (Leo 102)

38 This stinging criticism shows that Dutch reactions to Stowe’s work may have been influenced by ideological controversies. Where many authors in conservative and Christian magazines such as De Tijdspiegel and Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen accepted Stowe’s popularity exactly to the extent that it was related to her religious convictions (and as long as she did not violate the gender rules), liberal authors felt provoked by those very same convictions.

39 Of course, Stowe was also the center of much controversy in the US: the large production of anti-Tom novels in the American South indicates the deep ideological fault lines that would culminate in the Civil War ten years later. One might say that the commercial, depoliticized manifestation of Stowe and Uncle Tom—symbolized in the 1850s European tours by the highly effective book campaigns by Stowe’s American publisher Jewett, and the Tomitudes—was her only uncontroversial manifestation in the English-speaking world. In the Netherlands, Tomitudes seem to have been absent, and although Uncle Tom was indeed a huge success, there was no massive and effective book campaign such as Jewett’s. And when Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands was translated into Dutch, the introduction was left out, meaning that all laudations by

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clergymen and the responses by Stowe’s brother and husband were unavailable to Dutch readers (Stowe, Herinneringen).

4. Conclusion

40 The above findings and analyses provide us with a plethora of reasons to doubt the existence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrity status in the Netherlands. Institutionally and materially, the Netherlands did not develop a somewhat modern press or book market until in the late nineteenth century. This situation was not favorable to the development of a “celebrity society,” to use Robert van Krieken’s terminology. Compared to other Dutch and American writers, Stowe was discussed in the Dutch media fairly often, but always either in a superficial or in a negative way. The longer magazine articles, which were all published in media outlets with distinct ideological positions, were not consistent in their praise for Stowe’s work or for her as an authorial figure. In the Christian milieu, she was uncontroversial and respected, although journalists in this group were not generally positive about female celebrities challenging gender norms. Liberal authors mocked and criticized Stowe’s explicit Christian positioning soon after her work was introduced to the Dutch literary world. It is important to realize that antifandom is not necessarily contradictory to celebrity (Claessens and Van den Bulk): in Britain and the US, Stowe’s media coverage was far from univocally positive as well, but this did not hamper the formation of a Stowe cult. In the Netherlands, however, the culture as a whole seemed suspicious of the phenomenon of (female) celebrity.

41 With this in mind, it becomes quite problematic to continue to adhere to the label of a nineteenth-century “transatlantic celebrity” if any definition of it is to include non- English-speaking countries such as the Netherlands. The possibilities for celebrity societies arising in other European countries, such as Germany, France, or Spain, are likely to have been utterly different wherever one looks, affected by different social, cultural, economic, and technological forces. The focus on US-Britain interactions that has dominated the field up until now has skewed our notions on the topic, and it might therefore be time to open up the study of transatlanticism to new horizons to gain a better understanding of the exchanges between the continents.

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Z[immerman], Johan C. “Nieuwe Schetsen en Verhalen van Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, schrijfster van de Negerhut en de Meibloem.” De Gids 18 (1854): 141-142. Web. 2 March 2018.

NOTES

1. All ten books in the Ashgate Series in Nineteenth Century Transatlantic Studies focus virtually entirely on cultural phenomena in Britain and the US (Adams; Buchanan; Clark; DeSpain; Dzelzainis and Livesey; Hutchings and Miller; Manning and Cogliano; Maudlin and Peel; Mentz and Rojas; Phegley, Barton, and Huston). 2. Lueck, Bailey, and Damon-Bach is unique in consequently distinguishing “Britain” from “Europe.” 3. Jewett & Co. “Advertisement.” The New York Independent. May 20, 1852. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/reviews/read12at.html. Jewett & Co., “[Advertisement in back pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin].” Boston: John P. Jewett, 1852. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/reviews/rehp.html 4. For examples, see http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/tomituds/tohp.html. 5. The calendar can be found at http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/tomituds/toadsf.html; the poster is depicted in Gossett (no page numbers). The association of Stowe with Lincoln is a well-known trope from around the 1890s: in 1896, the year of Stowe’s death, Atlantic Monthly was the first to spread the apocryphal and evidently inaccurate anecdote that Lincoln in 1862, in the midst of the

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American Civil War, would have said to Stowe: “Is this the little woman who made the great war?” (Vollaro). 6. The engraving is part of the Multatuli Collection, in the University of Amsterdam library collection (code Hs. XLV E AM 1059 a). It is difficult to compare the dissemination of visual portraits of Stowe in the Netherlands and in the English-speaking world. It seems that in the UK, portraits were already included in the earliest ‘people’s editions’ in 1853 (Helms 81). The first Dutch edition of 1853, which was fairly expensive, did include a portrait of the author, but it is hard to reconstruct in what numbers pictures of Stowe were circulating in 1850s Holland. 7. The West Indies (Surinam and the Dutch Antilles) constituted a fourth region, though considerably smaller in the number of readers. 8. All Dutch newspaper sources in this chapter were consulted using http:// www.delpher.nl, a large electronic media archive. 9. De Tijd, March 27, 1872 (rumor); Algemeen Handelsblad, March 30, 1872 (rectification); De locomotief, May 15, 1872 (rumor). The news media in the Indies may have extracted news facts from Dutch sources, which took weeks or months to arrive.

ABSTRACTS

This article questions the supposed pervasive celebrity of the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe in the nineteenth century, and investigates her authorial status in the Netherlands in the mid-1850s. To what extent could she be considered a celebrity in the Netherlands in this period? The article pays attention both to the institutional and to the ideological situation, which can either facilitate or hinder the development of a so-called “celebrity society,” and shows that textual representations of Stowe did indeed circulate, but that this circulation did not take on the massive scale that seems necessary for a celebrity status. Whereas Uncle Tom’s Cabin was, by Dutch standards, an incredible success, journalists were only marginally aware of the authorial figure of Stowe herself. This was in part a result of the lack of a professional literary and journalistic infrastructure in the Netherlands. From an ideological point of view, the phenomenon of literary celebrity was a controversial one in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, hampering the emergence of a celebrity society. Together, these findings help us to consider the existence of a possible “transatlantic” Stowe cult in a different light: in the peripheral Netherlands, such a cult did not emerge easily.

INDEX

Schlüsselwörter: celebrity authorship, transatlanticism, history of institutions, media history, literary reception, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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AUTHOR

LAURENS HAM Laurens Ham is Assistant Professor in Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In 2015, he published a book, based on his PhD research, about Dutch writers between 1820-1970 combining an “autonomous” self-presentation with political critique. Currently, he works on a cultural history of Dutch literary policy since the 1960s, focusing on the ways in which authors have shaped and influenced the policy climate.

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“If You Could Die…”: Hart Crane’s “Accursed Share” in Mexico

Beatrice Pire

1 Born in the Midwest and living in New York City, Hart Crane is less known for his connections with the South, his travels to Florida, Cuba and the Isle of Pines in his family estate. A poet in the Machine Age, he was also familiar with a wilder nature, hurricanes, beaches of white sand or palms metaphorized into the 18 poems of the collection entitled Key West. The working title Crane had in mind was “East of Yucatan” and by the end of his life, Mexico rose as this further eastern horizon that he planned to explore—a South of another kind, stranger than the Caribbean, and that eventually proved a place of no return. Many American writers and artists of the Modernist decades settled in Mexico, such as photographers Edward Weston, Tina Modotti and Paul Strand, painter Marsden Hartley, writers Katherine Anne Porter and Waldo Frank. Most of them found inspiration in the culture and landscape of the country and created significant works, though their appreciation of Mexico may have changed and sometimes turned from exultation to dejection. Hart Crane followed a slightly different path. Taken to Mexico City in 1931 by a Guggenheim travel grant, he never wrote a single line of the epic poem he had in mind, a poetic drama composed in blank verse focusing on the moment of contact between the Spanish and the indigenous populations, featuring Cortez and Montezuma. In addition to his painful difficulty to complete the Mexican project on the Conquest, Crane put an end to his life on his way back to New York City in April 1932. He had already attempted to commit suicide a few months before by swallowing a bottle of Mercurochrome. Jumping off a ship in the Gulf of Mexico definitely closed his writing career. Among the foreign lands he visited in the course of his short life, whether France or the Caribbean, Mexico seems to have been “a place of brokenness” instead of being a creative location.1 He not only “broke ranks with the brotherhood” as he confessed in a letter to Wilbur Underwood, meaning that he slept for the first time in his life with a woman, Peggy Cowley, his friend Malcolm Cowley’s ex-wife.2 He was also destroyed by a country he initially wanted to absorb and write about, a broken man leaving only one last notable literary achievement during his Mexico year, “The Broken Tower.”

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2 There, he followed in the steps of D.H. Lawrence and, like him, wanted to discover primitive Mexico, the world that had existed before the coming of the white man, and to fathom the descendants of the Aztecs and the older Indian civilization. Under the influence of the New York avant-gardes, Alfred Stieglitz and his circle of Modern Primitives, Crane first took interest in Indian civilization when he was writing The Bridge. Although it opens and closes in New York on a vision of the Brooklyn Bridge, the epic poem includes references to Native American culture, specifically in the second section entitled “Powhatan’s Daughter.” In the poem on Indian dancing “The Dance,” Princess Pocahontas appears side by side with a medicine-man called Maquokeeta, shaped after a New York cabdriver Crane met one night. But except for him, he never came into direct contact with Indians and had to imagine them through an ersatz American history.3 In Mexico however, he became more acquainted with the native people and fully embraced the Aztec theme of the work he wanted to write. With a young Irish American archeologist from Wisconsin by the name of Milton Rourke who was studying at the University of Mexico, he dug in the neighborhood of his house and even found “chips and pieces of true Aztec pottery.” I have had the pleasure to meet a young archeologist… who thinks he has discovered a buried Aztec pyramid right in the vicinity of my house. Yesterday we took pick and shovel and worked our heads off digging into the side of a small hill…. We also ran across some incredibly sharp fragments of obsidian, part of a knife blade used either to carve stone and other materials or human flesh. (Unterecker 689)

3 Together they visited the ancient town of Tepotzlan, sixty miles south of Mexico City on the day of the Feast of Tepoztecatl, the ancient Aztec god of pulque, corn liquor, and found several fragments of Aztec idols. In Taxco Crane met the American silversmith and artist Bill Spartling who showed him his collection of Pre-Columbian silver art. His other notions on the Conquest were taken from W.H. Prescott’s The History of the Conquest of Mexico.4

1. “A Bloody Eccentricity”

4 Crane only wrote one poem on the Pre-Conquest theme he was planning to compose during his year in Mexico. Entitled “The Circumstance” (1932) the piece is dedicated to Xochipilli, the god of art, beauty, dance, flowers, love, maize and song5. His name means “flower prince” and he was one of the gods that presided over the ballgame. The anointed stone, the coruscated crown— The drastic throne, the Desperate sweet eyepit-basins of a bloody foreign clown— Couched on bloody basins floating bone Of a dismounted people…

If you could buy the stones, Display the stumbling bones Urging your unsuspecting Shins, sus- Taining nothing in time but more and more of Time, Mercurially might add but would Substract and concentrate… If you Could drink the sun as did and does Xochipilli,—and they who’ve

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Gone have done, as they Who’ve done… A god of flowers in statued Stone… of love—

If you could die, then starve, who live Thereafter, stronger than death smiles in flowering stone;— You could stop time, give florescent Time a longer answer back (shave lightning, Possess in halo full the winds of time) A longer answer force, more enduring answer As they did—and have done… (Crane 203)

5 The poem refers to two different fields of responsibility generally attributed to the God: love (“stone of love”) and flowers (“god of flowers,” “flowering stone,” “florescent”). Two other realms are also suggested though not specified: poetry, identical to flower in Aztec mythology, and sacrifice as the images of “bloody basins” and “floating bone” seem to infer. Human sacrifice was often featured in the ritual events of ballgames. The bouncing ball symbolized the movement of the sun and the death of the ballgame player, slave or captive, at the end of the game represented the death of the sun that would then be reborn. Sacrifice ensured fertility, the renewal of nature and pulque (“drink the sun”). Confronting two sets of opponents, the game appeared as a battle between night and day, or as a struggle between life and the underworld. As in the ballgame, the battle between life and death appears in the poem in the opposition of two recurring words, “time” and “Time,” as if the temporality of existence fought against the Eternity of death. Other contrasting attitudes or feelings take part in the contest: life and death (“die” and “live”), changeability and steadfastness (“mercurially” and “enduring”), pain and joy (“desperate” and “smile”), plenty and dearth (“drink” and “starve”), emptiness and fullness (“nothing” and “more and more”), past and present (“did” and “does”), loss and gain (“substract” and “add”). The unnamed personal pronoun “you” can thus be understood as self-reflective, not only as the deity the speaker addresses, but as the poet himself reflecting on his own creative power: his power to stop time, to substract and concentrate it into Eternity, to write a poem competing with a Pre-Conquest and nonetheless everlasting statue. The verbs carry the tension further in line 13 where past and present are connected (“as did and does Xochipilli”) or in the ending line where the preterit-tense verb “did” turns into a present perfect form (“have done”). The answer repeated three times in the last stanza metaphorizes the poem itself conceived as a modern reply to primitive art: circumstantial lines growing eternal, “longer, more enduring.”

6 However, Crane also points out to the chaotic aspect of human sacrifice, as suggested in lines 4 and 7 (“bloody basins floating bone”; “stumbling bone”). Decapitation and bloodletting associated to the ballgame, seem to contaminate the very body of the poem, especially in the second stanza. “Taining” looks deprived or “beheaded” from its prefix “sus,” as were the captains of the losing teams (there has even been speculation that heads and skulls were not only cut off but used as balls in the game). Dashes and dots signify missing parts in the dismembered lines. The verbs “add,” “substract,” and “concentrate” are not clearly related to one specific subject or agent, and line 21 is interrupted or incomplete.

7 Crane is not the only Modernist who took interest in Pre-Columbian art and rituals of sacrifice.6 Max Weber published his first poem entitled “To Xochipilli, Lord of Flowers” in the January 1911 issue of Stieglitz’s review Camera Work that Crane may have been

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familiar with, before he wrote his own tribute. But strangely enough, as there is no evidence that he ever read him, Crane offers a vision that shows striking resemblance to Georges Bataille’s understanding of Aztec religion. Bataille was involved in the first Pre-Columbian art exhibit in France and wrote an essay entitled “L’Amerique disparue” in Cahiers de la République des Lettres, des Sciences et des Arts (1928) where he acknowledges his reading of Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, shows his fascination for the religion of the Aztecs and describes their frenzy of human sacrifice: The life of civilized peoples in Pre-Columbian America is a source of wonder to us, not only in its discovery and instantaneous disappearance, but also because of its bloody eccentricity, surely the most extreme ever conceived by an aberrant mind. Continuous crime committed in broad daylight for the mere satisfaction of deified nightmares, terrifying phantasms, priests’ cannibalistic meals, ceremonial corpses, and streams of blood[.]7 (3)

8 For Bataille, the sacred is a domain of terror, horror, disjunction and disorder that, he admits, exercises a strong power of attraction on him: “No matter; of the various American Indians, the Aztec people… was nonetheless the liveliest, the most seductive, even in its mad violence, its trancelike development” (“Extinct America” 5). It embraces all the emotions that rational humanity rejects as incompatible with its values of survival, reason and order. Likewise, Crane conflates the horrible with the sacred and relates Xochipilli to images of bloodshed, incoherence and chaos (“a dismounted people”). Both thinker and poet see primitive religion as a place of change whereby the horrible or the loathing (“bleeding,” “dying,” “starving”) is transformed into the pure, attractive sacred (“a god of flowers,” “live,” “smiles”). Bataille reminds that “Mexico City was not only the streaming slaughter-house; it was also a city… with flower gardens of extreme beauty. Flowers… decorated the altars” (“Extinct America” 7). A comparison even comes to Bataille’s mind: the French decadent novel Torture Garden (1899) designated by its author Octave Mirbeau, on the dedication page, as “pages of Murder and Blood.” Lastly, Crane and Bataille also account for the entertaining, even humorous dimension of the ritual. Crane compares the Aztec god to a “clown” and sees “smiles” in death while Bataille finds an expression of black humor in human slaughter: “their religion included a sentiment of horror, of terror, joined to a sort of black humor more frightful still.… They wished to serve as ‘spectacle’ and ‘theater,’ to ‘serve for amusement,’ for their ‘distraction’” (7, 9).

2. The Economy of Sacrifice

9 The second stanza of Crane’s poem even coincides with Bataille’s reflection on the nature of sacrifice upon which his overall conception of general economy in La Part Maudite (The Accursed Share) will later be based.8 Bataille indeed conceives sacrifice as an alternative to the rationalistic calculation of capitalistic production and exchange, hence as truly human, passionate and emotional. Aztec civilization with its ritual destruction of war captives is considered as removed from the process of growth and expansion, unsubordinated to the demands of useful production. In the chapter entitled “Sacrifices and Wars of the Aztecs,” Bataille analyzes Mexican civilization as a society of warriors but different from “a truly military society” implying “a development of power, an orderly progression of empire” and excluding “these squanderings of wealth” (The Accursed Share 54, 55).9 The annihilation of any surplus energy, “the accursed share” or excess resources frees it from the demands of utility

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and usefulness, hence from any orientation towards the future. This society of profitless expenditure is only occupied with the present and is identical to the sun that it venerates, all giving without return. “The sun himself was in their eyes the expression of sacrifice” (46).10 Likewise, Crane’s poem prohibits economic exchange (“if you could buy the stones”) and growth (“sustaining nothing”) and annihilates any addition by the opposite operation of substraction. This freedom from the realm of the object allows the subject to seize the moment (“Time”) and reach an atemporal or immanent state instead of dissolving in the forward progression of humanity in time. The focus is on the potentiality of the instant or on an eternal return, as the repetition of the sentence”—as they who’ve / Gone have done, as they/Who’ve done…” signifies and even makes us visualize.

10 Imbued with Aztec religion and its rituals of sacrifice, Crane’s poem is also influenced by Pre-Columbian art, thus balancing the evocation of horrible dismemberment and severance with a purer and more formally aestheticized sacred. The description of the god in the opening stanza was probably modeled on a statue unearthed on the side of the volcano Popocatapetl near Tlalmanalco and housed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The statue is a single figure sitting upon an altar. Both the body of the statue and the temple-like base upon which it is seated are decorated with carvings of flowers and psychoactive plants including mushrooms, tobacco, morning glory and one unidentified flower. The figure is seated cross-legged on the base, head lifted up, eyes and mouth open, arms slightly raised to the heavens. The statue is an archetype of lithic (or stone) art displaying contrasting qualities: both refined stylized and ornamental carvings but also a rougher and heavier shape with which the poem resonates. Harmonious at times through the repetitions of sounds such as “stone,” “throne,” “bone” and the rimes “crown” and “clown,” the lines also convey violent sound effects with the echoing plosives /p /, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/ (“coruscated,” “crown,” “couched,” “basins,” “bloody”; “drastic,” “desperate,” “dismounted”) as well as a sense of heaviness. The many adjectives or verbs (“die then starve,” “stop,” “give,” “shave,” “possess”) with the hammering presence of answer (“a longer answer back,” “a longer answer force, more enduring answer”) overload the poem, thick as the bulky stone statue, and close to Prescott’s description of Mexican gods, quoted by Bataille in “Extinct America” (5), a description Crane may himself have read: “one is stuck with the grotesque caricatures it exhibits of the human figure; monstrous, overgrown heads on puny misshapen bodies which are themselves hard and angular in their outlines… a rude attempt to delineate nature” (Prescott 56).

11 For Crane and for most Modernist writers and artists, primitive art, whether native American or Pre-Columbian, is attractive in two ways: formally and ideologically. For the city poet living in the Machine Age, the Indian is the quintessential other, closer to Nature, the soil and the primitive sources of energy buried by civilization. When Crane went to Mexico, he tried to recover the living elements of an archaic way of life and became acquainted with Indians who were, as he wrote, “stuck to their ancient rites, despite all the oppression of the Spaniards over nearly 400 years” (Unterecker 692). He found them wiser than “our mad, rushing crowd up north” (Unterecker 686). For Crane, the North is too cerebral, analyzing, sorting things out, searching meaning. The South is after being, unthought, basic, in contact with the earth. Digging into the ancient layers of modern America, he also aimed at recapturing the unconscious sources of his own being, his hidden energies and primal features. But the difference between Crane

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and other writers is that he did not only mean to study Mexican culture, but touch it and live its instinctive roots. One day he had an argument with an American historian studying Mexican culture, Lesley Simpson about what he was trying to do in Mexico. And when Simpson explained to Crane that his ideas about the Conquest were too “naïve” and gave him a long reading list, Crane replied that writing poetry was about absorbing the culture, living the life and letting the traditions of a country soak into one’s blood, and not about reading books (Unterecker 695)—a choice that ultimately proved sterile (Susanne Hall’s interpretation of Crane’s inability to write) or dangerous (Simpson would later say: “Mexico killed Hart, I think”; Unterecker 760). Crane did not as Charles Olson would do, two decades later in The Kingfishers (1949) “hunt among stones” and work among Mayan ruins to reinstate lost links. “The Circumstance” is a ruin itself, the remnant of what should have been a larger piece but that eventually remained disconnected from anything else. The essence of destruction is “to consume profitless whatever might remain in the progression of useful works. Sacrifice destroys that which it consecrates” (Bataille, Accursed Share 58). Loss, missing links seemed to have been the aims, as well as instincts. Bataille understands the cruel rites of Aztec religion as a “search of a lost intimacy” (57) and equates intimacy to “immoderation,” “madness” and “drunkenness” (58). Identifying himself with the Indians and their ancient rites of human sacrifice, Crane also became acquainted with his own chaotic and sacrificial self who died in the Gulf of Mexico a few months later. Meaning to leave behind a “mad, rushing crowd up north,” he unconsciously recovered an even sicker South. “Mexico was a sick country” he would admit to his friend Waldo Frank, who must have been the agent of Crane’s interest for Mexico and most feared for him when he left: “He had read my America Hispana, and wanted to do something on Montezuma. … And I was afraid. I knew Mexico very well, and I knew how strong the death wish was in Mexico. I knew there was a dark side to all that had come out of the Aztec civilization” (Unterecker 650, 664).11

3. Aztec Tower

12 In The Bridge, Crane chose the Brooklyn Bridge to reach back into the American experience and make contact with the spirit of the Native American Maquokeeta. But the building he selected in Mexico was a ruin, a broken tower that silenced poetic language since, Crane theorizes, “language has [always] built towers and bridges” and vice versa.12 This broken tower, that reminds of Aztec pyramids at the top of which priests killed their victims, never spanned the two civilizations, Montezuma’s Aztecs and Cortez’s Spaniards, that Crane meant to confront in his drama on the Conquest.13 It is the last poem he wrote in Mexico, a poetic masterpiece equally discussed in several decades of criticism as The Bridge, and as I will argue, a proleptic scenario in verse and in the Aztec manner of his real and sacrificial demise a few months later. Crane started writing it in Taxco, the day after a Christmas night he spent listening to the bells of church towers and sleeping with Peggy Cowley—a woman—for the first time in his life. The poem also resonates with the four-day trip to Tepoztlan he took with Milton Rourke, for the yearly feast of the ancient Aztec god, Tepoztecatl. Several letters describe the place, the god’s temple “partially destroyed at the top of a surrounding palisade and the fiesta by the town’s cathedral,” “the ringing of the cathedral bells,” “the sextons r[inging] the call of the Cross,” the music of an “ancient Aztec drum”

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Crane was invited to play: “I beat the exact rhythm with all due accents…. You can’t imagine how exciting it was to be actually part of their ritual” (Unterecker 691-693). The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day—to wander the cathedral lawn From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.

Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway Antiphonal carillons launched before The stars are caught and hived in the sun’s ray?

The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower; And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score Of broken intervals… And I, their sexton slave!

Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain! Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles outleaping— O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!…

And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

My word I poured. But it was cognate, scored Of that tribunal monarch of the air Whose thigh embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word In wounds pledged once to hope—cleft to despair?

The steep encroachments of my blood left me No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower As flings the question true?)—or is it she Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?— And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes My veins recall and add, revived and sure The angelus of wars my chest evokes:What I hold healed, original now, and pure…

And builds, within, a tower that is not stone (Not stone can jacket heaven)—but slip Of pebbles,—visible wings of silence sown In azure circles, widening as they dip

The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower… The commodious, tall decorum of that sky Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower. (Crane 160) The poetic “I” stands on a metaphorical place between God and Hell, trying to reshape the strands that resolved in the former vision of The Bridge. But here, in stanza 3, the building collapses, broken down by the bell strokes. The image of a demolished tower figures out a poem disrupted by the speaking voice’s tongue and turned into a “long- scattered score” of silences and blanks. The lines describe their self-destruction in images of slain voices, exhausted echoes or indirect references to death (“corps” and

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“engrave”). The poem is emptying itself out, going through what Harold Bloom would call a kenotic process. Yet, this destructive force is meant to build again campaniles or pagodas when the dead would be rising and awakening from their sleep (“with reveilles outleaping”). Shedding his poetic word like his blood (“my word I poured”), the poet portrays himself as the double of a dead Christ, bleeding and sacrificed. Katherine Anne Porter, who was also a Guggenheim fellow in Mexico the same year as Crane, recalls that he spoke daily of suicide and, when he was drunk, would shout that he was Christ (Unterecker 659)… Christ or a slave slaughtered on the altar of Aztec gods to feed them with his blood, enliven them, revive the setting sun and ensure its ongoing course. The blood imagery is particularly repetitive in the lines: “wounds,” “steep encroachments of my blood,” “blood hold such a lofty tower,” “pulse,” “my veins,” “my chest” and eventually “Heart” that sounds like the poet’s name, Hart. In Aztec sacrifice, blood was offered to the god, but sometimes hearts or eyes could also be torn out. A plate of sacrifice by tearing out of the heart is reproduced in Bataille’s “Extinct America” and the torture is again described in The Accursed Share as following: “The priests would tear out the still-beating heart and raise it to the sun” (49). The world of Christianity furnishes Crane with a style for expressing his own death wish and craving for transcendence: “the cathedral,” “the choir,” “the bell tower,” “the sexton and the crucifix,” Christ’s passion on the Cross before renewal and rebirth. This Christian imagery does not come in contradiction with Aztec religion but rather bears resemblance to it. In “Extinct America,” Bataille—like the authors he quotes, Prescott or Spanish missionary Bernadino de Sahagun (1499-1590)—recognizes similarities between Aztec sacrifices and the rituals and doctrine of the Catholic church: “the Christian representation of the devil” compares to the “Mexican representation of the gods” and “the sculptured demons of European churches are to some degree comparable” to Aztec figures (6, 7). In “The Broken Tower,” Aztec religion is also viable in the theme of solar movement (“gathers God at dawn,” “the sun’s ray”) and the images of fertility (“matrix,” “swell,” “shower”) as human sacrifice represented the death of the sun which would then rise again: a rite that Crane himself, “too much in the sun” like melancholy Hamlet, seems both to depict and prepare for. In his various writings on the spirit of sacrifice, Bataille does not only relate Aztec religion to Christianity, but also to the figure of the mutilated and suicidal artist. In “Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Van Gogh,” Bataille argues that Van Gogh is the “paradigm of the artist as sacrificer” and that “he has found what the Aztec priests had in regard to the sun”14: “he tore from within himself rather than an ear, nothing less than a SUN” (“Van Gogh as Prometheus” 59)—a sun that he would then paint on his most radiant and flaming sunflower canvases before committing suicide a year and a half later.

13 Following these readings, Crane’s suicide after one year spent in Mexico may compare to Van Gogh’s sacrifice. Though Crane never wrote a single line of his epic on Cortez and Montezuma, “The Broken Tower” however demonstrates and performs the strong link between art and sacrifice that Crane may have better understood and embraced in a country still permeated by Pre-Conquest Aztec religion. Another Guggenheim recipient, painter Marsden Hartley who arrived in Mexico a month before Crane left, and was deeply shaken by his suicide, believed the country to be primarily responsible for it. Gradually exhausted by Mexico, he later believed it to be “the one place I shall always think of as wrong for me... It is a place... [where] the light will wear you down, the air will fatigue, height will oppress.... Perhaps you can learn the secret of all the

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dark living but you will change your whole being to do it.”15 But Crane did change. Under the influence of D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent, he came to recover past traces of the mysterious Aztec culture, and finding it, may have let this violent and sacred world of Bataillean “expenditure” come through him. When one reads “The Circumstance,” “The Broken Tower” and looks at the last photographs of Crane taken in the gardens of Mexico two months before his death on the Easter Sunday of 1932, April 27, one can only be struck by their resemblance to Sahagun’s description of a sacrificed young man in Aztec rites, referred by Bataille in the Accursed Share: Around ‘Easter Time,’ they undertook the sacrificial slaying of a young man of irreproachable beauty. He was chosen from among the captives the previous year, and from that moment he lived like a great lord. ‘He went through the whole town, very well dressed, with flowers in his hand… he would play the flute at night or in the daytime…. On the day of the festival when he was to die, … he mounted the steps by himself and on each of these he broke one of the flutes he had played during the year…. The priest who had the stone knife buried it in the victim’s breast and… tore out the heart which he had once offered to the sun.’ (49, 50)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bataille, Georges. Œuvres complètes. Tome I. Tome VII. Paris: Gallimard. Print.

---. “Extinct America.” October 36 (Spring 1986): 3-9. Print.

---. “Sacrifice.” October 36 (Spring 1986): 61-74. Print.

---. “Van Gogh as Prometheus.” October 36 (Spring 1986): 58-60. Print.

---. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Print.

Braun, Barbara. Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World. Ancient American Sources of Modern Art. New York: Harry N. Adams, 1993. Print.

Crane, Hart. Complete Poems. New York: Liveright, 1993. Print.

---. The Letters of Hart Crane (1916-1932). New York: Hermitage House, 1952. Print.

---. Complete Poems and Selected Letters. Ed. Langdon Hammer. Library of America, 2006. Print.

Fourny, Jean-Marie. Introduction à la lecture de Georges Bataille. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. Print.

Hall, Susanne E. “Hart Crane in Mexico: The End of a New World Poetics.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 46.1 (2013): 135-149. Print.

Hamano, Koichiro. Georges Bataille, la perte, le don et l’écriture. Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2004. Print.

Hegarty, Paul. George Bataille: Core Cultural Theorist. London: Sage, 2000. Print.

Mariani, Paul. The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane. New York: Norton, 1999. Print.

May, Stephen. “Searching for the Sublime: Marsden Hartley in New Mexico and Mexico.” Southwest Art 28.8 (1999): 57. Print.

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Park, Stephen M. “Mesoamerican Modernism: William Carlos Williams and the Archaeological Imagination.” Journal of Modern Literature 34.4 (Summer 2011): 21-47. Print.

Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Mexico. New York: Modern Library, 1843. Print.

Unterecker, John. Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane. New York: Farrar, 1969. Print.

NOTES

1. Biographical accounts of Hart Crane’s Mexican year are detailed in Unterecker 685-742. See also Mariani 381-421. 2. The Letters of Hart Crane 1916-1932. Ed. Brom Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 138. 3. Susanne Hall argues that Crane’s nationalistic and imperialist poetics of the Indian in The Bridge were annihilated by his transnational experience in Mexico: “because his visionary poetics hinged on ‘the making of Americans by the unmaking of Indians,’ his extensive contact with contemporary Mexicans of indigenous descent contributed significantly to an inability to write more than a few lines of his epic poem of the Spanish conquest” (142). 4. William Spratling (1900-1967) graduated in architecture. While teaching in Tulane University in New Orleans and sharing a house with William Faulkner, he wrote a satire on the French Quarter entitled Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles (1921). In 1929 he moved to Mexico and sponsored the work of Diego Riviera in New York City. In Taxco, a site of silver mines, he started designing silver works based on Pre-columbian motifs. American historian (1796-1859), William H. Prescott published in 1843 his History of the Conquest of Mexico, a work based on his researches in archives in Spain. 5. The poem is dedicated to Xochipilli, who may also be the poem’s addressee (Clive Fisher explicitly calls “The Circumstance” “a poem addressed to Xochipilli”); still, the phrase “as did and does / Xochipilli” renders such a reading debatable. 6. Barbara Braun examines the attraction of ballgame on Modernists. Among them Henry Moore modeled his “Heads” on mysterious axe-shaped sculptures associated to the ballgame and called “hachas” ; 296. 7. “[Cette] sanglante excentricité a été conçue par la démence humaine: crimes continuels commis en plein soleil pour la seule satisfaction de cauchemars déifiés, phantasmes terrifiants! Des repas cannibales des prêtres, des cérémonies à cadavres et à ruisseaux de sang.” Œuvres complètes Tome 1, 152. Trans. Annette Michelson. “Extinct America,” October 36 (Spring 1986): 3. 8. La part maudite. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1949. Trans. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books, 1988. 9. See also Fourny’s analysis of Bataille’s reflection on Aztec civilization in La part maudite: “La civilization mexicaine est un monde dément bloqué au stade de la société guerrière (‘l’ordre militaire’), où le passage à ‘l’Empire’ n’a pas eu lieu.… La dilapidation des hommes et des biens a interdit le passage à la société marchande, rendu l’accumulation impossible” (132-133). 10. “Dans la croyance primitive des Aztèques, la représentation du Soleil exprime la combustion ou le sacrifice c’est-à-dire la dilapidation irraisonable et gratuite de soi.… La dépense improductive est le ‘geste de qui donne sans recevoir’.… Les adorateurs du soleil sont analogues au ‘soleil qui donne sans jamais recevoir” (Hamano 64).

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11. William Carlos Williams who published in Broom “The Destruction of Tenochtitlan,” an essay on Cortez and Montezuma (1923) and proclaimed in 1925 that “the New World is Montezuma” (In the American Grain 24) must have been another agent of Crane’s interest. On Williams’ fascination with Mayan culture, the “Mayan revival” in the 1920s and the Maya-themed issue of Broom magazine in which Crane also published “The Springs of Guilty Song,” see Park 21-47. 12. “General Aims and Theories,” in The Complete Poems, Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane 223. 13. A pyramid of Aztec human sacrifice is reproduced in “Sacrifice” by Bataille (63) and in Roger Hervé, “Sacrifices humains du Centre-Amérique.” Documents, no. 4 (1930). Plate 13. Codex Magliabechiano. 14. Hegarty 134. 15. Quoted in May 57.

ABSTRACTS

This article explores the “spirit of sacrifice” and the influence of Aztec religion, as analyzed by Georges Bataille in various writings, on two poems written by Hart Crane in Mexico shortly before his suicide.

INDEX

Keywords: Hart Crane, Georges Bataille, Mexico, Aztec religion, sacrifice

AUTHOR

BEATRICE PIRE Beatrice Pire is Associate Professor of American Literature at University of Sorbonne-Nouvelle in Paris. She is the author of Hart Crane, l'Ame extravagante (Belin, 2003), David Foster Wallace: Presences of the Other(ed.) (Sussex Academic Press, 2017), Figures de la décomposition familiale dans le roman américain contemporain (Houdiard, 2018), articles on contemporary American fiction (Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace) and numerous book reviews in the French press (Le Monde, Le Magazine littéraire).

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Preaching Prophets: Upton Sinclair and The Moslem Sunrise

Steven Bembridge

1. MUFTI MUHAMMAD SADIQ AND THE MOSLEM SUNRISE

1 The relationship between Islam and America is an important political and social issue. The rise of Islamophobia is an alarming feature of a society in which misunderstanding and misinformation can sometimes dominate good sense. The conflicting opinions of Barack Obama—who recognised America’s long association with Islam—and Donald Trump—who called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States—capture the extremity of viewpoints that have recently manifested in America (Obama; Trump). In the history of American Islam, the turn of the twentieth century saw a significant number of Muslims arrive in the United States. Census data is unreliable to provide an exact figure, but an estimate of around sixty thousand does appear in the literature (GhaneaBassiri 136). We do know, though, that peoples from Albania, Bosnia, Syria, Turkey, and India—each with significant Muslim populations—all chose to settle in America (137).

2 We also know that in February 1920, an Islamic missionary called Mufti Muhammad Sadiq arrived in New York. Philadelphia’s Evening Public Ledger reported that Sadiq was “here to teach the doctrine of Ahmadi, a reformed Mohammedanism” (Evening Public Ledger). Sadiq would return to India in September 1923 after converting over seven hundred Americans to Islam (Turner 130). Ahmadiyya Islam’s first contact with the United States, though, had actually occurred a few years earlier through the work of Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb (1846-1916)—America’s first Anglo-American convert to Islam and representative for Islam at the World’s Parliament of Religions of 1893, Chicago (Turner 121). Webb had even established a relationship with Sadiq before Sadiq arrived in America (Abd-Allah 60; Green 217). Both Webb and Sadiq preached a variation of Islam derived from the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), the Ahmadi spiritual leader. Unlike orthodox Muslims—who believe that Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah (570-632) was the final messenger of God—Ahmadi Muslims believe that

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Ahmad (1835-1908) fulfilled this role. Ahmad even went as far as to view himself as a likeness of the Messiah, just as Jesus had purported himself to be.

3 Sadiq initially went to America to bring the message of Islam to all, but he soon found that white middle-class America—amongst whom Webb had previously worked—was not as willing to entertain the idea of Islam as he first thought (Turner 124). Sadiq began to find an affinity in the experiences of African Americans because he regarded Islam as an “antiracist religion” (Howell 53). The work of Sadiq resonated closely with the work of the Muslim, pan-Africanist, Duse Mohammed Ali (1866-1945)—who worked with Marcus Garvey’s (1887-1940) Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) (Turner 81). Through his own association with the UNIA, Sadiq began to see his version of Islam—which itself challenged Christianity in British-ruled Punjab—as a solution to the inequalities that affected black Americans (GhaneaBassiri 208, 211). An important legacy of Sadiq’s mission was his founding of the The Moslem Sunrise in 1921. Its aim was to communicate the message of Islam to prospective converts and to America’s growing Muslim community.1 It also became a means through which to attack misrepresentations of Islam that appeared in America’s media (Turner 121). The Southern Herald, for example, had previously written of the “Amazing Spread of Islam” in language that was clearly meant to unsettle its readers. Phrases such as “militant followers,” “fanatic zeal,” and “blind fanatics” sit uncomfortably with a detailed exposition of the Islamic world (Southern Herald). Webb even stated that “there is no system that has been so wilfully and persistently misrepresented as Islam, both by writers of so-called history and by the newspapers and press” (996).

4 In October 1922, The Moslem Sunrise included a brief review of Upton Sinclair’s short story “They Call Me Carpenter,” which appeared in serialized form in Hearst’s International from July to October of that year. “They Call Me Carpenter” begins in Western City, a thinly veiled Los Angeles. Billy, a member of high society and war-hero, receives a beating at the hands of a mob of nationalists and ex-servicemen. He seeks refugee in St. Bartholomew’s Church, and, while he shelters there, Jesus—the titular Carpenter—descends from a stained-glass window to heal him and to seek his assistance in the modern world. The twentieth century has such a profound effect on Carpenter that he ultimately abandons the redemptive death that sits at the core of Christianity: “I meant to die for this people! But now - let them die for themselves!” he derides (“Carpenter,” Oct. 140). The story closes with the image of Carpenter running back to the church screaming “Let me go back where I was - where I do not see, where I do not hear, where I do not think! Let me go back to the church!” (“Carpenter,” Oct 140).

5 The review article that appeared in The Moslem Sunrise was entitled “Jesus and the Modern Christians,” and it opened with the following: A new serial story from the pen of the famous novelist, Upton Sinclair, is appearing in Hearst’s International. It is the story of Jesus in the modern life and illustrates what Jesus will say to the Christians of the day if he appears among them and how will the Christians treat him. We give below a few sample lines out of it. It is only a fiction but well shows which way the wind blows. (TMS “Modern Christians” 137)

6 The article concentrated on two themes: Christ and society and Christ and the Church. Under the heading “what the modern Christians say of Jesus among them,” The Moslem Sunrise argued that society would view Jesus as a threat to its very structure if he should return to contemporary America (TMS “Modern Christians” 137). Two quotes

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that they included explicate this theme well. The first was “we shall be mistaken if the order-loving and patriotic people of our Christian community do not find a way to stamp their heel upon this vile viper [Carpenter] before its venom shall have poisoned the air we breathe” (“Carpenter,” Sept. 40). The second quote was “[Carpenter is] an anarchist plotting to let loose the torch of red revolution over this fair land” (Carpenter,” Sept. 39). Under the heading “what Jesus says to modern Christians (especially Christian ministers),” The Moslem Sunrise turned its attention to the relationship between Christ and the modern Church with the following words of Carpenter: first, “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. He that steals little is called a pickpocket, but he that steals much is called a pillar of the Church” (Carpenter,” Sept. 41); and second, “the theologians and scholars and pious laymen fill the leisure class churches” (Carpenter,” Sept. 43).

7 At first sight, the choice of The Moslem Sunrise to include Sinclair’s work may seem a little conspicuous. Hearst’s International—which would merge with Cosmopolitan— certainly contrasted with the clear Islamic message of The Moslem Sunrise. In the November issue of 1922, one article entitled “Clouds in the East” even warned of the “militant religion” of Muslims and the threat of an “Islamic bloc” (Clouds,” Nov. 7). However, a closer look at Sinclair’s life and literary legacy begins to elucidate an affinity that The Moslem Sunrise found in the work of Sinclair. Turner suggests that by 1921, Sadiq had become an “angry opponent of white mainstream Christianity” in America (123), so, too had Upton Sinclair. He is one of American Literary naturalism’s most important figures. Naturalism emerged in the late nineteenth century, and recent critical approaches to the genre regard it as a literary response to “the tension between older, traditional belief systems and the new science of the post-Darwinian nineteenth century” (Link 2). Mark Knight and Thomas Woodman have recently argued that supposedly secular novels “may well address quite technical matters of religious doctrine”—writers apparently disassociated from religious themes often “explore the specifics of theology” (3). Sinclair is one such author. He left the Church at age sixteen after growing unease and undergoing struggles with Christological concepts that lead him to question Christian dogma (Arthur 10). And yet, in A Personal Jesus (1954), Sinclair states that “I have never left Jesus” (viii). He wrote the work as an expression of his life- long devotion to the historical figure of Christ. Jesus for Sinclair was not the divine Son of God common to American evangelicalism; he was a human whose teachings were responsible for “molding” Sinclair’s own “revolutionary attitude towards the world” (“What Life Means to Me” 592). Sinclair was, of course, an ardent socialist.

8 The Jungle (1906) is perhaps Sinclair’s greatest literary legacy that expresses his socialism. It charts the life of the Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and his family who fall victim to the forces of capitalism in Chicago’s meatpacking factories. It is also a novel that reveals Sinclair’s relationship with Christ and his contemporary Church. Sinclair writes of “the stygian midnight of American evangelicalism” and the “final death struggle” between socialism and the Church (398). Christ becomes a “class- conscious workingman,” a “union carpenter,” an “agitator,” a “law-breaker,” and an “anarchist” (399). A few years later, Sinclair would write Samuel the Seeker (1910), which is an allegorical novel that exposes a naïve farm boy to capitalist America. Sinclair again refers to Christ and writes that “what has this money scramble to do with the teaching of Jesus?” (247). He argues that Jesus “was a man, like you and me! He was a poor man, who suffered and starved! And the rich men of His time despised Him and

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crucified Him!” (263). Early in his career, then, Sinclair presents Christ as a human, socialist rebel who existed in a state of conflict with established orthodoxy.

9 Sinclair was important to The Moslem Sunrise because here was a white, socialist of Christian heritage—a “famous novelist”—who shared a very real grievance against the Christian Church and the Christ that they taught. Through him, The Moslem Sunrise could bring greater legitimacy to their own interpretation of Islam, as they sought to spread its message across America. Remember, too, that the Ahmadi Islam that Sadiq knew had a built-in expectation of prophetic continuation, which is an important theme for understanding “They Call Me Carpenter.” Works like the The Jungle revealed that Sinclair was interested in the plight of immigrants and that he also wrote about a Christ who was unafraid to challenge American society. As we shall see, Sinclair’s concept of Christ was also part of a much larger cultural conversation that centred upon Christ’s masculinity and ethnicity and which The Moslem Sunrise and Sinclair both addressed in their work. Stephen Prothero and Richard Fox demonstrate the importance that the figure of Jesus has had in the development of American culture. Indeed, the subtitles of both their works provide a clear sense of the cultural importance of Jesus—Fox describes him as a “Cultural, National Obsession” (24), and Prothero refers to him as a “National Icon” (16). The processes that lead to the affinity that The Moslem Sunrise found in Sinclair were different, but they each contributed to the cultural legacy of Christ with a cultural purpose that created a moment of unity.

2. THE PROPHET JESUS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA

10 In order to understand the spirit of unification that Upton Sinclair and The Moslem Sunrise shared, it is first necessary to understand the historical context of just who Jesus was for both Muslims associated with The Moslem Sunrise and Sinclair himself— thereby revealing the first major theme of why The Moslem Sunrise turned its gaze towards Sinclair. The Qur’an’s Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:285 lays out Islam’s understanding of Jesus. It states that he was no different from other messengers of God, or prophets, who had gone before him. Jesus for Muslims is not God; he is a human prophet. America had long had a close relationship to the notion that Jesus may not have been the divine son of God that stretches back to the Enlightenment and to the First Great Awakening (1730–1755). New England Deists and Unitarians, for example, actively rejected orthodox teachings that Jesus was the Son of God. In 1813, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) retold the Gospels in The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, or the Jefferson Bible. He removed all references to the supernatural aspects of the life of Jesus, and he closed the work with “there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed”—a human end for a human prophet (Jefferson 132).

11 William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)—a leading figure of the American Unitarians—also laid out in the “Baltimore Sermon” the cornerstones of Unitarian beliefs and practices. He protested “against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity” and regarded the nontrinitarian viewpoint as a closer reflection of “primitive Christianity” (9). Arguing that “there is one God, even the father,” Channing rejected the notion that Jesus was God and believed that “the father alone is God” (9). The legacy of the enlightenment was alive and well in early twentieth-century America. Robert Ingersoll (1833–1899)—a celebrity orator who regularly attacked religious orthodoxy—would write that “when Paine was born, the world was religious, the pulpit was the real

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throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the brain the idea that it had the right to think” (Ingersoll 138).

12 The Moslem Sunrise also referred to America’s religious heritage to explicate its own theology to Americans in a way that they could understand, or, at the least in a way that would be familiar to some of them. The July 1922 issue included an article entitled “Muhammadan Faith Explained.” It stated that “the Moslems do not worship Muhammad. Muhammad is only a man and messenger of God. We worship God alone. One God like the Jews and Unitarian Christians believe” (TMS "Faith" 118). However, it also included articles that unfairly condemned Paine and Ingersoll for their perceived opposition to all forms of religious expression. For example, C. F. Sievwright, or Muhammad Abdul Haqq—an Australian convert to Ahmadi Islam—wrote that “atheism is rather in the lip than in the head or heart of Man even as Bob Ingersoll, Tom Paine, Voltaire and others alone knew full well” (Sievwright “We Must Co-Operate” 145).

13 Jefferson and Channing, then, shared with Islam a similar understanding that Jesus was a human prophet, but they were not Muslims. Jefferson saw in Unitarianism and Deism a close affinity with Islam, but his own relationship to the Islamic faith fluctuated between public admonishment and occasional private sympathy (Spellberg 236–237). Channing had also described what he regarded to be the falsity of Islam (Infidelity 26). As the nineteenth century developed so, too, did the theological culture that would impact Sinclair’s conception of Christ and which also continued to resonate with an Islamic understanding of Jesus. Higher biblical criticism was one such force. It refers to the method of viewing the Bible as an historical artefact in terms of its authorship, chronology and origin (Soulen and Soulen 154). Two individuals elevated its widespread influence in the United States: David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) and Ernest Renan (1823-1892). Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (1835) did not deny the existence of Jesus, but it did separate the life of Jesus from the centuries of tradition that surround it. Strauss’s Jesus is not God; he is a human being devoid of any divine support or supernatural mission (780). A quarter of a century later the French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan published the best-selling La Vie de Jésus (1863), The Life of Jesus. Renan clearly stated that Jesus was not God, writing that “Jesus never dreamed of making himself pass as an incarnation of God” (154). Muslim scholars of the nineteenth century were certainly familiar with the work of Strauss and Renan, and they would incorporate it into their own exploration of Christianity (Jung 25).

14 Moreover, the very foundations of Ahmadi Islam resonate with an alternative understanding of Jesus that resonates with the work of Strauss and Renan. Ahmad preached that Jesus did not die upon the cross but survived. Jesus would then travel to Kashmir where he spent the remainder of his life teaching until he died at the age of 120 years old (Jung 25). In July 1922, The Moslem Sunrise itself published a review of literature concerning theories surrounding the death, or apparent death, of Jesus upon the cross. They concluded that “he could not have died,—hence he underwent a condition of suspended animation or merely swooned” (TMS "Jesus Was Crucified" 118). Look to Strauss and Renan, and the same uncertainty about Jesus’ death and resurrection exits. The examples below first show Strauss’s repudiation of Christ’s death upon the cross and then Renan’s interpretation of Christ’s resurrection as a product of Mary Magdalen’s imagination: The short time that Jesus hung on the cross, together with the otherwise ascertained tardiness of death by crucifixion, and the uncertain nature and effects of the wound from the spear, appeared to render the reality of the death doubtful.

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(Strauss 737) In the absence of contradictory documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that the strong imagination of Mary Magdalen played an important part in the matter. Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God! (Renan 272)

15 Sinclair was undoubtedly aware of Strauss and Renan’s influence upon the landscape of America’s theological history. In The Cry For Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest (1915)—an edited collection of writings from a number of different sources— Sinclair includes a chapter devoted to Jesus that draws from Renan’s La Vie de Jésus (350). In A Personal Jesus—itself a culmination of Sinclair’s exploration of the historical Christ—he includes a passage that resonates with the spirit of Strauss’s earlier higher biblical criticism. Sinclair writes that “all that we have is a set of records, put down long afterwards, based upon tradition. The texts are highly suspect, and every statement must be critically examined, every word must be studied with care” (81). Both Ahmadi Muslims and Upton Sinclair, therefore, each approached the historical Jesus with alternative understandings based on their own respective religious orthodoxies.

16 Neither The Moslem Sunrise nor Upton Sinclair would have viewed the other as representing their own theological position per se, but there certainly did exist between them a homogeneous understanding of the humanity of Christ. Although Sinclair does not concentrate upon Jesus’ humanity in “They Call Me Carpenter” to such an extent, the very human characteristics that Carpenter shows at the end of the work are suggestive of this much broader theme common to Sinclair’s body of work—Carpenter’s face becomes “contorted with fury,” as he shakes the dust off his feet upon those that deny him (“Carpenter,” Oct. 140). Moreover, in the novel They Call Me Carpenter, Sinclair, like Strauss, even questions supernatural explanations of miracles. He prefers instead to view them as a piece of “stage management” (110–111). That being said, the choice of The Moslem Sunrise to include a review of “They Call Me Carpenter” starts to make a little more sense if we view both Sinclair and The Moslem Sunrise as sharing a common Christology—albeit a Christology that emerges from quite different sources.

3. SOCIAL ACTIVISIM AND THE TEACHINGS OF CHRIST

17 The work of Renan also influenced the way in which Sinclair thought about the relationship of Christ’s teachings to society. American socialists often interpreted Renan’s work as “devoted to the cause of the disaffected and the dispossessed” (Burns 15). For them, Renan’s Jesus was the leader of the first socialist party, and they would cite the following text to substantiate their position: The founders of the kingdom of God are the simple. Not the rich, not the learned, not priests; but women, common folk, the humble, and the young. The great sign of the Messiah’s coming is that “the poor have the good tidings preached to them.” It was the idyllic and gentle nature of Jesus that here resumed the upper hand. A great social revolution, in which distinctions of rank would be dissolved, in which all authority in this world would be humiliated, was his dream. (Renan 82)

18 Sinclair’s incorporation of Renan into The Cry For Justice—which appears in a chapter entitled “Jesus”—refers to Jesus as a member of the working classes who held no sway with the political elite (350; Renan 117–118). Other chapter titles such as “Toil,” “Mammon,” and “Socialism,” also define the tone of the collection (37, 485, 783). Sinclair’s association with an often quite radical socialism—which he targeted against

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the Christian Church—establishes the second sympathy that The Moslem Sunrise found in his work. The Socialist Party of American (SPA) that Upton Sinclair joined in 1904 was a hotbed of theological discussion; it almost became a religious movement in its own right (McKanan 751). At the time of Sinclair’s membership, the SPA’s leading light was Eugene V. Debs—who helped found the Party in 1901. His socialism had a profound influence upon Sinclair, who would even play the role of Debs in the film of socialist propaganda, The Appeal to Reason (1914) (Arthur 156). In Labor and Freedom (1916), a collection of his own writings, Debs revealed the close affinity between the SPA and the conception that Jesus was not divine. He claimed that “Jesus was not divine because he was less than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason he was supremely human” (23). Debs viewed Christ’s teachings through the socio-political culture of America and concluded that “pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ” (26).

19 Consequently, Sinclair’s rendering of Christ in “They Call Me Carpenter” portrays the figure of a socialist agitator. Carpenter preaches that “if a man pile up food while others starve, is not this evil?” (Carpenter,” Aug. 128). Preaching in the streets, Carpenter cries out “Woe unto you, doctors of divinity,” as he attacks “the leisure class churches” who should practice the teachings of Christ rather than loading “the backs of the working-classes with crushing burdens” (“Carpenter,” Sept. 43). Upon Carpenter’s arrest towards the end of the story, an angry crowd also labels him the “Red Prophet” (“Carpenter,” Oct. 140). In the version of They Call Me Carpenter (1922) that became the novel, Sinclair extends the abuse that Carpenter receives to include such terms as “the Bolsheviki prophet,” “goddam Arnychist,” and “I won’t work! I won’t work!”—which was a common derogatory sobriquet for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (214). The IWW was a labour union that Eugene Debs helped found in 1905. In the appendix, Sinclair even refers to The Call Me Carpenter as “a literal translation of the life of the world’s greatest revolutionary martyr, the founder of the world’s first proletarian party” (224). The Moslem Sunrise could not have failed to notice that Sinclair was an author with very a real grievance against the Church’s teachings of Christ.

20 Indeed, GhaneaBassiri states that, during the 1920s, Muslims became increasingly political, and they began to found associations to “meet the religious and social needs” of their communities (172). In April 1922, under the banner “Significant Sayings of the Famous Men of the Day”—which was a regular feature—The Moslem Sunrise cited an interview of Arthur Conan Doyle that the Chicago Daily Tribune undertook. Doyle stated that “the bishops and deans—the lot of them—ought to wear a sackcloth and ashes, because they represent an organization that has failed” (qtd. in TMS “Significant,” Apr. 97). Doyle was actually promoting Spiritualism as a religion that “will sweep the earth,” but The Moslem Sunrise clearly found an affinity in his blatant attack upon the clergy (Chicago Daily Tribune). It also included part of a report from The Detroit Free Press in which one Rev. B.[W.] Pullinger—who was addressing an automotive union meeting— claimed that “we’ve got to live for others” (“Church Has Failed, Says Rev. Pullinger” 2). Pullinger wrote that “the church has failed to touch the average man; it has catered to class and sentimentalized too much” (qtd. in TMS “Significant,” Apr. 98; “Church Has Failed, Says Rev. Pullinger” 2).

21 An inclusion from Louis E. Rowley—biographer of Mary C. Spencer (1842-1923), Librarian at Michigan State Library—demonstrated these same concerns further.

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Rowley claimed that “the church has been the militarist government’s most powerful recruiting agency ever since it became an organized social force in the state” (qtd. in TMS “Significant,” Apr. 97). Sinclair’s socialism and The Moslem Sunrise’s attacks upon the Church and its leaders, therefore, demonstrate a sympathy between both parties. They each viewed the relationship between the Church and the society to which it ministered as fractured and in need of reform, but the means of that reform were quite different. Sadiq aimed to convert Christians to Islam, but Sinclair aimed for a greater manifestation of political purpose.

4. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL AND HUMAN BROTHERHOOD

22 Perhaps a more significant clue as to why The Moslem Sunrise included the work of Sinclair emerges from the work of the Social Gospel. It purported that the least able in society were becoming increasingly disempowered in the organism-like cities of Chicago and New York—the very context from which naturalism emerged. It sought— through the leadership of such key figures as Washington Gladden (1836–1918) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918)—to apply the teachings of Christ to society. The Social Gospel became known for its promotion of the “Fatherhood of God” and the “Brotherhood of Man.” These concepts encapsulated the notion that humanity must abandon individualism and work together for the betterment of society (McLoughlin 160). Rauschenbusch himself clearly stressed the importance of brotherhood and its redefinition within the bounds of both Christianity and socialism. He claimed that: It would be no betrayal of the Christian spirit to enter into a working alliance with this great tendency toward the creation of cooperative and communistic social institutions based on the broad principle of the brotherhood of men and the solidarity of their interests. (Rauschenbusch 400)

23 Sinclair explored the link between American socialism and the Social Gospel in The Cry for Justice through the incorporation of Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907). He included an analysis of Christ’s teaching that regarded service to others as being more important to God than service to oneself (346). The spirit of the Social Gospel emerges in “They Call Me Carpenter.” Billy defends the actions of Carpenter to a reporter by claiming that “Mr. Carpenter is not a radical; he is a lover of man … how came it that phrases of brotherhood and love have come to be tainted with radicalism? … he teaches brotherhood” (Carpenter,” Aug. 29). The spirit of brotherhood was just as important for The Moslem Sunrise. The Qur’an’s Surah Al-Hujurat (The Chambers) 49:10 stresses the importance of a brotherhood of believers within Islam, and Sadiq married the concept with an oppositional relationship to Christianity. He wrote that “Christianity cannot bring real brotherhood to the nations … join Islam, the real faith of Universal Brotherhood which at once does away with all distinctions of race, color and creed” (TMS “True Salvation” 267).

24 Numerous other articles appear throughout the Moslem Sunrise that refer to the concept. One Henry S. Wilcox wrote to Sadiq and thanked him for creating a “worldwide human brotherhood” (TMS “Some Appreciations” 19). The journalist Qazi A. Latif also referred to Islam as having “every virtue of Socialism … Islam preaches equality and brotherhood” (TMS “America” 122). Sinclair’s “They Call Me Carpenter,” therefore, certainly resonates with the notion of brotherhood common to Islam. True, the concept for The Moslem Sunrise and Sinclair are distinct, but Latif’s conflation of socialism and Islam goes some way to explain a commonality of spirit that The Moslem

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Sunrise found in Sinclair’s work. That being said, Sinclair’s ideas of Brotherhood were often tainted with prejudice, particularly against certain immigrant communities, as was American socialism (Leinenweber). Indeed, Turner has also noted that Sadiq himself demonstrated an inconsistent view of equality with regards to racism within the Muslim world (122).

25 Sinclair wrote in an America that was in the process of exploring a more pluralist approach to immigration. Horace Kallen (1882–1974) called for a “symphony of civalization” (220), and Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) rejected “Americanization” in favour of a “trans-nationalism” (96). Sinclair may well have treated the experiences of Lithuanian immigrants in The Jungle with a sensitivity that appears to reject nativism, but critics have also noted his use of pejorative language to describe immigrant communities such as Greeks, Romanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks (Elliot 42). Katrina Irving reads Sinclair’s The Jungle as a work that represents “anxieties about America’s racial future” (50). She also extends her analysis to naturalism more broadly and criticises Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), and Frank Norris’s (1870–1902) McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) for a “nativist perception [of] immigrant women” as an “active agent of racial degeneration” (6).

26 Moreover, Sinclair’s casting Russians, Mexicans, and Irish immigrants as Carpenter’s disciples, does not actually ennoble them. It almost exploits them as exemplars of low status members of society from which Christ would have drawn his followers. The language that Sinclair uses to describe Mexicans and Italians in They Call Me Carpenter is also troubling, even if the words are the narrative voice of the novel’s protagonist (73). Billy refers to an immigrant neighbourhood as a “crowded slum quarters, swarming with Mexicans and Italians and other foreigners” (68). It is worth noting, too, that this same passage does not appear in “They Call Me Carpenter,” so we cannot be sure if The Moslem Sunrise was aware of Sinclair’s ambiguous relationship to immigrants (Carpenter,” Aug. 24).

27 Sadiq, though, was certainly aware of the effects of discrimination because he himself had become a victim of the Immigration Act of 1917. It prohibited certain classes of people from entering the United States, including alcoholics, criminals, and the sick (U.S. Department of Labor). Sadiq was initially refused entry to the United States when he arrived there in 1920 (Turner 115). In April 1922—in the issue preceding the review of Sinclair’s work—The Moslem Sunrise responded to Sadiq’s treatment with an article entitled “If Jesus Comes to America” (TMS “America” 85). The title of the article also demonstrated that The Moslem Sunrise was willing to explore American popular culture if it served the greater purposes of Sadiq’s Islamic mission. Emerging from the Social Gospel—which was most influential between 1880 and 1920 (Dorrien 187)—William Stead’s If Jesus Christ Came to Chicago (1894) and Edward E. Hale’s If Jesus Came to Boston (1895) show a clear titular similarity. Stead imagined the direct application of the teachings of Jesus in modern times and described how the novel attempted “to illustrate how a living faith in the Citizen Christ would lead directly to the civic and social regeneration of Chicago” (xiv). Hale built upon the work of Stead and provided a similar rendered in a new location (Higgs 252). The Moslem Sunrise extended the work of the Stead and Hale, however, to speak directly to the experience of immigrant communities.

28 “If Jesus Comes to America” opens with the following challenge: “if the blessed Jesus, whose body rests in peace in Sirinagar … had been alive in these days and had fancied

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over to America, how would he have been treated by the immigration department?” (TMS "America" 85). Having just arrived in America, then, Jesus faces an immigration interview, but he is refused entry. Both referring to and satirising the 1917 Act, Jesus cannot enter the United States because “he comes from a land which is out of the permitted zone,” “he is not decently dressed,” “he believes in practising the Law of Moses which allows Polygamy [sic]” (TMS "America" 86). Jesus’ last words are “I shake off the dust of my feet and go back to the charming land of Hindustan” (86).

29 The Moslem Sunrise, then, used the figure of Jesus returned to comment upon the unfair treatment of immigrants, but the very nature of the narrative demonstrates just why they would have found “They Call Me Carpenter” so relevant when they learned of its publication—it, too, explored the ‘immigration’ of Christ of America. The climaxes of the article and Sinclair’s work are also remarkably similar: Jesus leaves the America that he discovers, although only in Sinclair’s story does he take agency upon himself to do so. The Ogden Standard-Examiner caught the implication of “If Jesus Comes to America” and included it in a larger article about Sadiq. They concluded that The Moslem Sunrise contains “numerous articles comparing Mohammedanism with Christianity, and always, of course, to the great disparagement of the latter” (“Trying to Make Christian America Mohammedan” 8). It is not hard to see why The Moslem Sunrise would have found Sinclair’s willingness to incorporate immigrant communities into his fiction laudable—but, as we shall see, the issue of race for Sadiq and Sinclair is challenging and even relates to the figure of Christ himself.

5. MASCULINITY, THE CHURCH, AND JESUS

30 Closely related to the notion of brotherhood was the Social Gospel’s relationship to muscular Christianity. It contributed to a concerted effort to masculinise the image of the feminized Church that Ann Douglas explored in her seminal work (Douglas). Clifford Putney argues that “the issue of unmanliness in religion” was central to the Social Gospel in its adoption of muscular Christianity (42)—a trans-denominational movement that “hoped to energize the churches and to counteract the supposedly enervating effects of urban living” (1). Young men found that the feminized version of Christianity in the churches that they attended and in the literature that they read was no longer viable for the demands of an industrialized and individualist society (Douglas 115). Existing in a complementary relationship to the manliness of Christ’s followers was the masculinity of Christ himself as seen in artistic representations.

31 In Moby Dick (1851), for example, Herman Melville alluded to common nineteenth- century representations of the feminised Christ that had become entrenched in American culture and against which the Social Gospel reacted. Melville wrote that whenever artists attempted to represent “the divine love in the Son,” they naturally painted “the soft, curled, hermaphroditical [Christ of] Italian pictures” (418; Prothero 91). Kate P. Hampton, writing for The Outlook in 1899, even surveyed the clergy in response to her question “does the face of Christ, as depicted in ancient and modern art, realize your idea of a strong face?” (735). The responses were telling. The Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall of the Union Theological Seminary stated that “the great artistic types of the Christ face constantly disappoint me by the lines of weakness and morbid emotionalism” (qtd. in Hampton 744). The Unitarian minister, Rev. John W. Chadwick of Brooklyn, was more adamant. He stated that “I could answer the question in one word, “No”” (qtd. in Hampton 736).

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32 The Moslem Sunrise also understood the perceived crisis of masculinity that was playing out in the Christian Church. It capitalised on the crisis as a means of establishing what it believed to be the superiority of Islam over Christianity. In October 1922, it included a news item from a British vicar—Rev. B. G. Bourchier—who claimed that the Church’s “masculine following is decreasingly rapidly” and that the fault must lie with the clergy with “their weak and feeble personalities” (qtd. in TMS “Significant,” Oct. 152). In contrast to the perceived effeminacy of Christianity, The Moslem Sunrise reprinted an article that first appeared in The Negro World—the mouthpiece of the UNIA—which stressed that Islam was a religion that taught its “followers to be manly, self- respecting, charitable, [and] ambitious”—which was “unlike his Christian brother” (TMS “Crescent or Cross?” 263). The Rev. Pullinger’s address to the Detroit auto workers also captured the spirit of the masculine Christ. He pleaded “for a stronger type of Christian man, a man more like the strong, virile, fine man that Christ was” (“Church Has Failed, Says Rev. Pullinger” 1).

33 The relationship between masculinity and naturalism is also a well-researched area. John Dudley explores the “masculinist discourse of the Progressive Era” as an “essential element in the formation of American literary naturalism” (Dudley 14). Dudley refers to a number of manifestations of male resistance to a culture of aesthetics—one of which, he argues—was muscular Christianity (9). Donna Campbell also refers to naturalists such as Stephen Crane and Frank Norris as instigating a “backlash against what was perceived as feminine domination of audience and literature” (47). Derrick Scott has even approached The Jungle as an exemplar of a naturalist paradox: it defends against female power whilst also creating it (94), and it also depicts “male disintegration … to generate new forms of confining masculine power” (98). Sinclair’s adoption of the journalistic mode in The Jungle could even be viewed as an act of bringing greater masculinity to the profession of writing for a living (Dudley 7; Wilson 114). Sinclair, then, was certainly willing to explore the masculinist discourses of his generation.

34 In “They Call Me Carpenter,” though, he directly responds to the issue of perceived unmanliness in both members of the Church and Christ himself through the characterisation of James—who in the Bible is the brother of Jesus. The reader learns that James wears the “clothes of a working-man … he was something of an agitator” (Carpenter,” Aug. 30). “I am a Christian,” he states, “one of the kind that speak out against injustice … I can show you Bible texts for it … I can prove it by the word of God” (30). The characterisation of James would not seem so out of place in The Jungle—he resembles the socialist agitators that Jurgis meets in the final stages of the novel. James belongs to no church, but he does belong to the brotherhood of workers—a church in which he can participate. James also bears “a striking resemblance to carpenter” (Carpenter,” Aug. 30), and Sinclair refers to him as “James, the carpenter” on a number of occasions (Carpenter,” Oct. 32). James is “the carpenter with a religious streak” (Carpenter,” Aug. 127), and Sinclair opposes Carpenter’s “soft and silky brown beard” with James’s “skinny Adam’s apple that worked up and down” (Carpenter,” Aug. 30). Indeed, Carpenter would feel quite at home in such influential novels as Joseph Holt Ingraham’s The Prince of the House of David (1856) and Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880)—both of which were enormously successful and which also depicted the feminised Christ (Gutjahr 159; Theisen 35).

35 Ingraham describes Jesus as a man with hair that flows over a “high forehead,” which makes him “unlike other men” (98, 296). Wallace similarly writes that Christ possesses

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a “tearful” and “woman-like face” (523). The film star Mary Magna, Sinclair’s incarnation of Mary Magdalene, even describes Carpenter as “a close up from … “Ben- Hur”” (34). The Rev. John W. Chadwick—in his response to Kate Hampton—also argued that images of Christ were “almost as lackadaisical and gelatinous as the literary Christ in General Wallace’s “Ben-Hur”” (qtd. in Hampton 744). Lucius Wolcott Hitchcock’s (1868-1942) illustrations that accompany Sinclair’s work, moreover, perfectly capture the feminized Carpenter, whom Sinclair presents as “a man in long robes, white, with purple and gold; with a brown beard, and a gentle, sad face” (“Carpenter,” Jul. 10). That Sinclair chooses to draw a similarity between James and Carpenter is significant. James obviously cannot be a Christ figure in the novel, but he can be a figure that demonstrates Sinclair’s awareness of literary efforts to masculinise Christ.

36 Thomas De Witt Talmage’s From Manger to Throne (1890), for example, highlighted the workingman Jesus by drawing attention to “The boy Carpenter! The boy wagon maker! The boy housebuilder” (Talmage 190). Harry Emerson Fosdick—himself so instrumental in challenging religious fundamentalism in the 1920s—also referred to Jesus as appealing to “all that is strongest and most military in you” (161), and Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows (1925) revealed a muscle-bound Jesus whose “muscles were so strong that when He drove the moneychangers out, nobody dared oppose Him!” (Barton 12). Look forward a generation, and perhaps John Steinbeck does create in men like James the figure of Christ. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) sees Jim Casy take on the role of Christ (Han; Shockley). Casy, like James, is an overall-wearing, working man who possesses “a long head, bony; tight of skin, and set on a neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk” (23). He believes that humanity can return again to holiness when “they’re all workin’ together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella harnessed to the whole shebang” (89).

37 Sinclair, therefore, does not create in Carpenter a masculinised figure, but I argue that this was a deliberate satirical conception to juxtapose the legacy of the image of the feminised Christ with words and actions that incite violence against him. In the figure of Carpenter, then, Sinclair creates the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing: he may look like the iconic Son of God of the nineteenth century, but he preaches a message through which Sinclair challenges the established Church, and this is exactly why The Moslem Sunrise found “They Call Me Carpenter” so relevant for their own purposes in America.

38 The era of the Great Depression was yet to come, but Sinclair also wrote in a socially transformative era, The Jazz Age, or the Roaring Twenties. It saw the arrival of greater social liberalism and sexual freedoms that challenged the conventions of a previous generation. Sinclair reflects this social transformation through the sexualisation of the feminized Christ of the nineteenth century. Carpenter takes on a sexual allure in the later novel They Call Me Carpenter—“this man will make a hit with the ladies … like the swamis, with their soft brown skins and their large, dark, cow-like eyes!” Sinclair writes (22). If this sexualized interpretation of Jesus had appeared in the serialized story in Hearst’s International, then perhaps The Moslem Sunrise would have thought twice about including a review of Sinclair’s work. But I propose that Sinclair also became aware that he needed to represent a truer picture of Los Angeles’s cultural diversity. Sinclair’s additional material in They Call Me Carpenter includes a description of Western City as a city that “brings strange visitors to dwell here; we have Hindoo swamis in yellow silk” (15). Sinclair probably incorporates the legacy of Swami

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Vivekananda (1863-1902) here—a Hindu monk who visited Los Angeles during his tour of America—but the passage could equally represent Sinclair’s misunderstanding of cultures. Edward E. Curtis, for example, suggests that, in the context of Los Angeles, “many sources from the late 19th and early 20th centuries did not distinguish among Muslim, Hindi, and Sikh Punjabis” (345). Perhaps Sinclair was guilty of the same misunderstanding and was actually thinking of men like Sadiq in his generalization of “the strange visitors” of Los Angeles (22).

39 Indeed, Ahmadi Muslims were certainly active in the Los Angeles that Sinclair represented in “They Call Me Carpenter.” Each cover of The Moslem Sunrise depicted a map of the United States with sites for mission clearly marked; Los Angeles was one such target. C. F. Sievwright described “the advent in America of Mufti Muhammad Sadiq” and his own work to spread the message of Islam in what he describes as “the DIS-UNITED STATES” (Sievwright “We Must Co-Operate” 144). Sievwright wrote a number of articles for The Moslem Sunrise for which he cited location as Los Angeles (Sievwright “Detroit” 69–70), (Sievwright “Extracts” 192), (Sievwright “Expressions” 226). The Los Angeles Examiner also reported on Sievwright and incorporated him into a larger piece that explored the significance of Ramadan for Muslims (qtd. in TMS “Press Notices” 193). Although no clear evidence exists that Sinclair incorporated Muslims into “They Call Me Carpenter,” his description of Christ and associated femininity resembles an article in The Chicago Defender of August 1922 that reported Sadiq’s mission work in Chicago. It described Sadiq as looking the part of a prophet because of his “slender mold, with sideburns that grow into a flowing beard of gospel likeness” (Didier 5). Turner even suggests that Sadiq’s resemblance to a “biblical prophet” found favour with African Americans (124), but The Chicago Defender was also, I argue, projecting onto Sadiq the feminized Jesus that Sinclair satirized in his rendering of Carpenter—thus revealing a larger cultural connection that is not immediately obvious.

6. ETHNICITY AND FIGURE OF JESUS

40 Perhaps a more pressing issue than Jesus’ femininity was his ethnicity. Until the turn of the twentieth century, Jesus was overwhelmingly associated with an Anglo-Saxon identity. First, Catholic immigrants brought with them images of Christ that were derived from the Renaissance; and second, the European marketplace fuelled a national appetite for images of Christ (Blum and Harvey 139–151). Joseph Tissot’s The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ (1899) assuaged this appetite, and it became a national success owing to a promotional tour of the United States throughout 1897 (Tissot). Tissot’s work clearly represented an Anglo-Saxon and feminized Christ, but his Christ bore no real resemblance to the realistic representations of other biblical figures, for example St. Matthew, whom Tissot represented as short-haired, masculine, and of more obviously Middle Eastern appearance (Blum and Harvey 62, 114). Opposition to the white Christ began to gather pace from within America’s churches (Blum and Harvey 150). As already alluded to above, “They Call Me Carpenter” was part of a much larger religious literary heritage of the nineteenth century that focussed on the figure of Christ—these works also represented the white Christ. Ingraham’s The Prince of the House of David describes Jesus as a “pale and sad” man with eyes “richly brown in hue, and darkly shaded by sable lashes” (296). Wallace’s Ben-Hur highlights Jesus’ “locks of yellowish bright chestnut hair” and “a face lighted by dark-blue eyes, at the time so soft, so appealing, so full of love” (130).

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41 Just as Sinclair had provided a satirical interpretation of Christ’s femininity, he also engages with the whiteness of Christ with the same satiric effect. American literary naturalism has an uneasy relationship with race. Jack London’s (1876–1916) writings include language that is unquestionably racist (Reesman), and Frank Norris’s anti- Semitism in McTeague cannot be ignored (Pizer). Mark Noon has also addressed Sinclair’s blatant racism against African American strikers in The Jungle (430–431), and we saw Sinclair employing similar language against Mexicans in “They Call Me Carpenter.” That being said, Sinclair’s relationship with race—rather like Jack London’s —is often contradictory. He also protested against the rise of nativism during the First World War that manifested in a resurgence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. It saw itself as a protector of American values in its war against those elements that it deemed to be un-American (Lewis and Serbu 144).

42 In the October issue of Hearst’s International, Sinclair uses the Klan to stage a successful rescue of Carpenter from an angry mob who are determined to kill him—thus reimagining Christ’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 18:3). Billy and others dress up as members of the Klan to carry out their plan. Sinclair alludes to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) in a sequence of narrative that sees Billy and Mary acquire the costumes of “a very dull feature picture” that shows “the salvation of our country by the Ku Klux Klan” (Carpenter (Oct. 34). The Birth of a Nation presented the Klan as saviours of American society in their overthrowing of a black militia and its white sympathizers in post-war South Carolina. Indeed, Tom Rice argues that the Klan “utilized The Birth of a Nation … to define and promote itself within American society” (1–2). The Klan also adopted the image of the white Christ to add legitimacy to their actions as they reacted against non-whites, socialists, communists and immigrants (Blum and Harvey 141). This Christ becomes manifest at the climax of The Birth of a Nation when, with a note of eschatological premillennialism, Christ returns to bless the Klan’s victory. Sinclair’s incorporation of the Klan into “They Call Me Carpenter” is significant because here the Klan is cleansing America from the very image of Christ that they used to justify their own actions. The tensions and fears of a society suffering from a crisis of post-war xenophobia that targeted those deemed un-American emerge in narrative. ““Death to all traitors!” … “Death to all agitators! Death to all enemies of the Ku Klux Klan!”” cry Billy and Mary as they save Carpenter (“Carpenter,” Oct. 136).

43 True, Sinclair does not explicitly argue that Jesus was non-white, but he clearly challenged conceptions of his whiteness throughout a satirical attack upon the protectors of the image of the white Christ. It is through this challenge, I argue, that The Moslem Sunrise found an affinity in Sinclair’s work because of its own anti-racist stance (Howell 53). The Moslem Sunrise was certainly aware of the violence that the Klan inflicted upon African Americans. In July 1922, they included a review article of Dr. Frank Crane’s (1861-1928)—Presbyterian minister and editor of Current Opinion—in which Crane stated that “the West keep on lynching the black man, while it spoke of universal brotherhood and humanity” (TMS "Awakening" 119). Preceding the review of “They Call Me Carpenter,” The Moslem Sunrise also included the following article entitled “Christian Toleration!” in which they highlighted the hypocrisy of the Klan. They reasoned that if the Klan could exist, then there must be an inherent flaw in the way the Church was teaching the message of Jesus, which is exactly the same context from which I argued Sinclair’s work emerged. Thirty lynchings of Negroes by white Christians were recorded in the United States during the first half of 1922. Some burnt at stake, others put to death. These are the

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wonderful acts of the meek lambs of Jesus. After all a tree is known by its fruits. (TMS “Toleration” 136)

44 In October 1921—in the article “I Am a Moslem”—The Moslem Sunrise even turned to the figure of Christ himself and argued that “Jesus was a Moslem” (41). True, “Jesus was a Moslem” probably refers to Jesus as surrendering to the will of Allah—the meaning of the word Islam itself—but in a society charged with nativism, another implication was that Jesus was not white. Being Muslim is obviously not synonymous with being non- white—as converts like Webb demonstrated—but in the early twentieth-century, the Muslim Jesus would certainly have held this implication. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad himself was of Indian appearance, and his viewing himself as a manifestation of the Messiah also linked him to the notion that Christ-like figures do not have to be portrayed as white males. However, The Moslem Sunrise was also operating within a wider literary and socio-political context. Marcus Garvey—himself connected to Sadiq and The Moslem Sunrise—created in Jesus a colourless figure but non-the-less viewed him through the lens of African American heritage (Turner 81). He wrote that “we Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost” (Garvey 44).

45 A generation earlier, the civil rights activist Albion Tourgée attacked the whiteness of Christ in the novel Pactolus Prime (1890). Tourgée wrote that “the ‘white’ Christ is man’s distortion … I believe the ‘white’ Christ will continue to dominate the Christian thought, and consequently to mould the public sentiment, of this country” (297–298). Look forward a little further and that same spirit emerged in work of el-Hajj Malik el- Shabazz (1925–1965), Malcolm X. He argued that black Americans were “taught to worship an alien God having the same blond hair, pale skin and blue eyes as the slavemaster” (257). Referring to the time he spent incarcerated as a young man, Malcolm X argued that “I don’t care how tough the convict, be he brainwashed black Christian, or a ‘devil’ white Christian, neither of them is ready to hear anybody saying Jesus wasn’t white” (286).

7. PREACHING PROPHETS

46 Both Malcolm X and Upton Sinclair, then, were not afraid to challenge cultural orthodoxy, and this same spirit played out in “They Call Me Carpenter.” Sinclair’s work ends with the reader realising that Billy’s experiences had only been a dream, but the cultural history surrounding the story was far from imaginary, particularly to Sadiq and The Moslem Sunrise. In 1922, the work of Upton Sinclair—America’s preeminent muckraking author who is often associated with literary naturalism—appealed to a Punjabi missionary who had just brought Ahmadi Islam to America. Through Sinclair’s representation of Jesus, Ahmadi Muslims recognised a cultural affinity with an author who had already done so much—through the publication of The Jungle—to challenge the American economic and social order. They each saw in Jesus a human prophet who fought on the side of the dispossessed, who rejected the contemporaneous Christian Church, who stressed human brotherhood, and who challenged those who held power in society.

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NOTES

1. The Moslem Sunrise was and continues to be published every quarter, and—apart from a brief period in the late 1920s—remains in publication. This paper, however, only refers to The Moslem Sunrise at its conception in the early twentieth century. It does not refer to The Muslim Sunrise today or the present Ahmadi community in America.

ABSTRACTS

In 1920, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq (1872–1957) arrived in America to spread the message of Islam. Two years later, he founded The Moslem Sunrise. The October 1922 issue included a review of Upton Sinclair’s (1878–1968) serialized story “They Call Me Carpenter.” In Sinclair’s work, Jesus, or Carpenter, returns to live amongst modern Americans. This article explores the theological and cultural contexts that led The Moslem Sunrise to find an affinity in Sinclair’s work. It explores how and why The Moslem Sunrise and Sinclair each addressed the Christology of a human Jesus, the perceived failure of the Church to teach his social gospel, the concept of human brotherhood, and the perceived need to masculinise religion—and even Jesus himself and his associated ethnicity. It reveals a previously unacknowledged relationship between Islam and Sinclair and demonstrates how quite different processes can sometimes lead to unity and to a shared direction.

INDEX

Keywords: American Islam, American Christianity, Early twentieth-century literature, American Literary Naturalism, Jesus of Nazareth, Upton Sinclair, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, The Moslem Sunrise

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Tonal Poetry, Bop Aesthetics, and Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard

James J. Donahue

1 1956 was a remarkable year for American jazz. The Modern Jazz Quartet1 released their album Django; Ella Fitzgerald released three albums, including Ella and Louis with Louis Armstrong; and Miles Davis released six—yes, six!—albums including the debut record of the new Miles Davis Quintet, his first recording with John Coltrane. And in the midst of the prolific output of some of the giants of jazz’s bop era, Charles Mingus released his 10th album, Pithecanthropus Erectus, the album that many critics consider to be Mingus’s first great album as a composer and not just as a bandleader.

2 The literary scene in the United States was no less vibrant. In poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks released Bronzeville Boys and Girls, the fourth book documenting the lives of those living in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago; John Ashbery released Some Trees, for which he won the Yale Younger Poets Prize; and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems was published as the fourth volume of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s new Pocket Poets Series. And in fiction, James Baldwin published Giovanni’s Room, his controversial novel exploring homosexuality; Saul Bellow published his influential novel Seize the Day; and Pearl S. Buck published Imperial Woman, her fictionalized biography of Tzu Hsi. Meanwhile, Jack Kerouac was composing his touching and personal novel about his brother, Visions of Gerard (which would not be published until 1963).

3 The Beat Movement’s interest in jazz is, of course, already well-trodden ground. And Kerouac’s jazz poetics has been explored by a number of scholars. To give just a few note-worthy examples, in his 1999 article “‘Jazz America’: Jazz and African American Culture in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road,” Douglas Malcolm reads Kerouac’s most notorious novel “in light of the various generic rules that distinguish jazz from other types of music” in order to identify the music’s “ideological, behavioral, and semiotic implications” for the novel (85). In the same year, James Campbell wrote about Kerouac’s problematic use of African American culture and how “the black word beat turned white” (363) in his article “Kerouac’s Blues.” And in 2004, Richard Quinn published a book chapter comparing Jack Kerouac’s improvisational method to Charlie Parker’s, outlining Kerouac’s “engaging with the openness of bebop and extending its

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improvisational practices into language” (153) while highlighting “the improvisation experience in reading Beat writing” (154).

4 Extending the work done to this point, and perhaps moving a step further in commenting upon the connection between jazz and the fiction the Beat movement, I believe that not as much attention has been explicitly paid to appreciating the aural components of Beat fiction, to reading Beat novels as bop soundscapes. What I hope to do with this article is show how Kerouac’s novel is, in short, a jazz tone poem. But if this is merely a question of genre, so what? Just call it poetry and move on. However, this is not simply about classification, or about where to shelve Kerouac’s novels in bookstores. Far too often prose, even literary prose, is not considered to be an aural art, not valued for its tonal qualities, not appreciated (except perhaps during a live reading, and then only obliquely) for its sonic components. Most fiction—even the fiction produced by authors like Kerouac, who are known not only for drawing compositional methods from music but also for having acutely sensitive ears for language—is primarily read as textual narrative.2 Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard in particular—and, I would argue, much of Kerouac’s fiction generally3—can and should be read as a musical composition; and reading it with an ear attuned to Mingus’s great work helps us to highlight the novel’s aural compositional qualities.

5 It’s lucky for me, then, that Mingus’s album was released in 1956, the year Kerouac composed Visions of Gerard, as this coincidence allows me to connect the two compositions, using the one to properly frame the other. I also focus on Pithecanthropus Erectus because Mingus himself, in the album’s original liner notes, calls the piece “a jazz tone poem.” Mingus refers to his composition as a work of literature, in part to emphasize its narrative development: “because it depicts musically [his] conception of the modern counterpart of the first man to stand erect.”4 Similarly, he notes that “[t]he first movements are played in ABAC form by the group,” using notation that is also commonly used when teaching students about poetic rhyme schemes (Mingus, “Liner Notes”). Mingus clearly had literary artistry in mind both when he was composing this piece, and later when he was reflecting on it.

6 Just as importantly, Mingus consciously composed this piece on what he called “mental score paper,” meaning that he did not write the parts down for his band but rather “la[id] out the compositions part by part to the musicians” (qtd. in Nicholson). In other words, Mingus did not present copies of the score to his band, but rather played them the parts, and asked them to learn the charts by ear. This relatively uncommon method allowed Mingus to “keep [his] own compositional flavor in the pieces and yet… allow the musicians more individual freedom in the creation of their group lines and solos” (Mingus). (We see a similar approach on The Modern Jazz Quartet’s Django; “La Ronde Suite”—a version of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Two Bass Hit”—was arranged to highlight specific contributions from the individual musicians.) Even though it is common for jazz musicians to interpret the written score individually—especially at this moment, as performers are already experimenting with what we might call the performative freedoms that will later characterize free jazz—the written score generally provides a common text that holds the composition together, and to which each musician is held. Such a master text does not exist for this album, or rather did not at the time; one can go out and purchase the charts for Pithecanthropus Erectus, which are a transcription of the music that was recorded on the album.

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7 Mingus himself admits that he has “often been accused of being ‘way out’ compositionally” (Mingus), which is also a fair—if overly general—way of characterizing Beat writing, and Kerouac’s writing especially, given the various compositions and thematic experimentations he attempted over the course of his career in works like Dr. Sax, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, and much of his poetry. And Kerouac’s indebtedness to jazz for his compositional philosophy is well known. In “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose,” the 7th item on his “List of Essentials” is “Blow as deep as you want to blow” (483). Although this can be taken in a variety of ways, certainly one of them is as an invitation to use the work to develop one’s own artistic needs, not unlike how Mingus’s band mates use the song as a platform from which to explore their own contributions to the overall soundscape. Kerouac made a similar statement in “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” where he suggested that the art of writing is “sketching language [as] undisturbed flow from the mind,” which he likened to “blowing (as per jazz musician)” (484), who should “blow!—now! Your way is your only way” (485).

8 Nor was Kerouac the only Beat writer who drew from jazz as a compositional as well as a thematic model, or concerned with the aural component of literary composition. In “Notes Written on Finally Recording Howl” (written in 1959) Allen Ginsberg remarks on “the whole first section typed out madly in one afternoon” that he had in mind “long saxophone-like chorus lines I knew Kerouac would hear the sound of—taking off from his own inspired prose line really a new poetry” (229). Ginsberg also noted, in his essay “Some Metamorphoses of Personal Prosody” (written in 1966), the importance of developing a “new ear,” which is “not dead because it’s not only for eye-page, it’s connected with a voice improvising, with hesitancies aloud, a living musician’s ear” (259, emphasis added). And of course, Ginsberg’s emphasis on breathing in his own performances (either in terms of when he draws his breath or how he constructs what has often been called his “breath line”) can be understood in terms familiar to singers (not to mention brass and woodwind players). In short, many aspects of Beat literary composition—not just for poetry but also for prose—can be understood as directly drawn from the compositional and performative models of jazz in the 1950s and 1960s, and focused on the aural components of literary practice.

9 Kerouac’s aural composition can likely best be appreciated by listening to his poetry, particularly when he read it with musical accompaniment. Kerouac’s recordings with Steve Allen—or better yet, those with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims—clearly demonstrate the call-and-response techniques that are familiar to jazz audiences. The Jack Kerouac Collection—a 3 CD set released in 1990—includes two CDs with readings most likely recorded in 1958, featuring Kerouac reading with musical accompaniment. On “Poetry for the Beat Generation,” Kerouac reads poetry over Steve Allen’s piano. And on “Blues and Haikus,” he reads his haiku in a call-and-response format against Al Cohn and Zoot Sims taking turns improvising saxophone replies to the poetry. In the latter recording, one can clearly hear all three performers playing off of each other, as Kerouac will shift the tone of his voice to approximate what he hears from the saxophones, and the musicians play short lines that often mimic Kerouac’s vocal rhythms. And in his essay accompanying the music, Lowell Sun correspondent David Perry noted that this recording is “the more musical” of the two, even while “it maintains the one-take feel of the first with chuckles, the rustle of papers and even someone calling out a chord change” (5). In other words, we have here a version of Kerouac “la[ying] out the

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compositions part by part to the musicians,” who are replying to Kerouac based on what they hear, as opposed to anything written down.

10 Of course, an aural appreciation of Kerouac’s work isn’t necessarily new. In her recent biography The Voice is All, Joyce Johnson tells us about Kerouac that “nothing gave him more pleasure, as he wrote to Neal Cassady… than writing down everything that occurred to him ‘with all sorts of silly little remarks and noises’” (249). We see plenty of examples of this in his poetry. For example, as Michael McClure reminds us, portions of the 1959 poem Old Angel Midnight are little more than transcriptions of what was happening outside his window, such as the excerpt that “was written while millions of birds were ‘yakking’ and ‘barking’” [xv].) Similarly, Johnson writes of Kerouac’s “new poetic approach to language” (336) in her discussion of On the Road, focusing explicitly on “the deliberate alliterative repetitions of the melancholy sound of the long o” (335) in the passage recounting Red Moultrie’s night in jail, and especially in the passage where he “listened to the silence,” aurally connecting a “sea-roar” to the word “rumorous,” for instance (336).

11 And while Johnson does a good job of noting Kerouac’s appreciation of sound in his fiction, I think that with respect to Kerouac’s writing, there is a deliberate effort not only at aural appreciation, but aural composition. And while this has become a commonplace observation regarding his poetry, I argue that we should consider it as foundational in the composition of his prose, as well. Such an approach may well be indebted to—or at the very least works parallel to—the compositional practices of jazz musicians of the period. For instance, we know that Kerouac and his circle were enthusiastic fans of Thelonious Monk’s music, which has often been hailed by critics for its improvisational strengths. In a 1953 letter to Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Kerouac includes Monk in the list of “musical geniuses” alongside “Bud Powell, Bird, Billy Holiday, Lester Young, [and] Jerry Mulligan” (Letters 197). In a 1957 letter to John Clellon Holmes, Kerouac notes having just attended one of Monk’s performances with Gilbert Millstein (Selected Letters 91). And in 1958, Ginsberg wrote to Kerouac of the pleasure of “hours of anonymous Thelonious Monk” (403). It cannot be too far a stretch, then, to connect the Beat writers to other improvisational and experimental jazz performers and composers of the period. And in particular, I believe that we have compelling comparative evidence to suggest that Jack Kerouac was listening to—and perhaps even inspired by—the music of Charles Mingus, who was consciously developing his unique compositional methods during the 1950s, and which are featured on the album Pithecanthropus Erectus. The album is important in this context both as a “jazz tone poem” and as an expression of Mingus’s aurally-based style of band leading. And given Kerouac’s conscious focus during this time on poetry as an exploration of sound as opposed to a repository for meaning, I think we would do well to attend to the overall soundscape of his novel Visions of Gerard, which was written during this period of aural exploration highlighted by numerous jazz performers noted from their improvisational technique.

12 To begin, Visions of Gerard may be Kerouac’s most French novel, regularly incorporating snippets of the joual5 that the Kerouac family spoke in the home. In her biography, Johnson spends much time writing about Kerouac’s French-Canadian background and its affect on his writing. And referring to the sensitive ear that earned Kerouac the nickname Memory Babe, Johnson also notes that he “had been born with an incredible ear,” and that at the age of four, “Jack caught the doleful underlying sound of their

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lamentations” (37). In other words, from his earliest years, Kerouac was clearly—if not exactly consciously—sensitive to his aural environment, which he would attempt to mimic first in his speech and later in his prose. And there are moments where Kerouac shares that environment with his reader, such as when he explains to his reader how to pronounce the French words he uses: “Passes were the name Gerard had invented for when you run your bread over gravy, and mother’d do the soaking and throw the passes all around the table.… But because of our semi-Iroquoian French-Canadian accent passe was pronounced PAUSS so I can still hear the lugubrious sound of it and comfort-a- suppers of it, M’ué’n pauss” (14). But Kerouac is doing more here than simply explaining to readers how to pronounce the words. He is also sharing with his audience the sadness associated with even his pleasant memories of Gerard; for while these moments contain “comfort-a-suppers” and recall moments when his family were still together, the very sound is also “lugubrious,” a wonderfully onomatopoetic word connoting sustained sadness in its multiple long, low vowel sounds.

13 In a similar vein, Kerouac writes of the young boy “Plourdes,” who possesses “[a] Canadian name containing in it for me all the despair, raw gricky hopelessness, cold and chapped sorrow of Lowell—Like the abandoned howl of a dog and no one to open the door” (5). This name6— the similarly lugubrious sound of the name, and not its etymology or the family that bears it—conjures up a great deal of meaning for Kerouac, recalling not just the person but the emotions associated with his time in Lowell. And to help invoke this environment for his readers—particularly those who are hearing the sounds of the words—he employs a word that, because it does not have a dictionary definition, only carries meaning based on its sound. I can’t define “gricky,” but I suspect that Kerouac heard in it something similar to what Dr. Seuss—another author who valued the aurality of his written compositions—likely heard in the “grickle grass” that grows at the far end of town in the world of The Lorax, where the “wind smells slow and sour when it blows” (The Lorax); the short vowel sound paired with the unvoiced consonant cluster of “ick” helps to evoke what makes Lowell, for Kerouac, undesirable. We see many such moments in Kerouac’s novel, such as his use of “glooping” (Gerard 111) to describe a dream he had, a gloomy dream where he was snooping around Gerard’s coffin.

14 All that said, I believe we should also spend more time reading Kerouac’s prose for the various ways it creates sonic developments and progressions to create meaning, to move the action forward, or to enhance the emotional depth of a scene. In other words, we should devote more time and attention to reading Kerouac’s fiction—and perhaps Beat fiction more generally—as tonal poetry that performs a kind of bop aesthetics. For instance, there are numerous instances throughout Visions of Gerard where Kerouac concatenates phrases in ways that resemble musicians repeating riffs. These phrases are often repetitions of the same idea. However, when read aloud, these passages also reflect a rhythmic as well as a semantic connection, using the musicality of the phrases as a form of emphasis. Early on in the novel, Kerouac compares Gerard to those who do not have his sweet sensibility, when Gerard feels empathy for a mouse caught in a trap and the other “Canucks of Lowell” scoff at his concern. Kerouac writes, “I dont [sic] count Gerard in that seedy lot, that crew of bulls” (9, emphasis mine). The italicized phrases, both serving to negatively characterize the men, are rhythmically identical, with a spondee (two stressed syllables) followed by an iamb (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).7 The musicality of these phrases—referring to the men but in a way designed to highlight Gerard—is heard when read against the

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comparatively unstructured rhythm of their characterization as “Pot-boys, bone- carriers, funeral directors, glove-wearers, fog-breathers, shit-betiders, pissers, befoulers, stenchers, fat calf converters, utter blots & scabs on the face of the earth” (9). This passage is a list, and structured without any coherent rhythmic patterning, as opposed to the earlier passage which is a conscious repetition, rhythmically as well as semantically.

15 We see another example of rhythmic repetition even earlier in the novel, which should be noted because Kerouac translates a passage from the joual he spoke as a child into the English he writes in as an adult, and does so while keeping the same number of words with the same syllabic pattern. He translates his father’s “Mon pauvre ti Loup” as “me poor lil wolf.”8 Often, Kerouac will translate the joual for his readers, many of whom will not be familiar with the language he grew up with, and which he eschews for most of his writing. However, that language is what was spoken in the home, and so its use helps to set the scene of his childhood. Kerouac is here not merely describing his childhood but aurally representing it for his audience. Further, the ungrammatical “me poor lil wolf” reflects his father’s comparatively poor skills with English.9 As such, the translation helps to flesh out the character of “Emil Duluoz.” In my reading, the use of “me” for “my,” and the shortening of “little” to “lil” serve an additional purpose; while drawing attention to Emil’s English, they also de-emphasize the syllabic stress carried by those words. In my reading, “me” is unstressed, where “my” would be stressed in order to emphasize possession; similarly, “little” is a trochee, where “lil” can serve as the unstressed part of an iambic foot with “wolf.” Therefore, this passage contains a musical quality: each phrase can be read as iambic tetrameter, and so the translation can be read as a means of preserving not just the meaning of the first phrase but the speech pattern of the speaker. In this regard, we can read a speaker moving from one language to another as not unlike a musician moving from one key to another, while preserving the rhythm of the passage in addition to the melody. (If we were so inclined, we could read Emil’s whole quoted passage musically: “Mon pauvre ti Loup, me poor lil wolf, you were born to suffer” employs a pair of phrases in iambic tetrameter, followed by a line in trochaic hexameter, which reverses the syllabic stress. We can thus read the break after the repeated phrases as a kind of chiasmus, altering the rhythm of the sentence while maintaining the same emotional quality. This is not unlike musical instruments playing polyrhythmically in the same measure.)

16 Kerouac will also often go on short runs where he strings words together connected by their sounds as well as their semantic value. For instance, he described the Virgin Mary —particularly as she speaks through Gerard—as “Beauteous beyond bounds and belief” (52), employing alliteration to emphasize the value of this description, particularly to the very devout Gerard. Throughout the novel, Kerouac will employ short, alliterative riffs that appear to demonstrate a conversational patter as much as they describe the subject at hand, such as his father, who was a “proficient persuader” (86), so described using a pair of three-syllable alliterating words; his father will later be described by a friend as a “perfect person” (101), using the same alliterative sounds (albeit with a different rhythmic pattern). Of course, readers of his poetry will be familiar with such riffs, such as in the various choruses of Mexico City Blues (written in 1955, one year before Visions of Gerard10) where Kerouac engages in sound-based wordplay, even if he slips into the nonsensical, as in the “82nd Chorus” when he writes of “Fracons, acons, & beggs” (82) or in the “94th Chorus” where he describes his time spent “talkin and gossipin / lockin and rossipin” (94). However, unlike these and other examples from his

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verse, the use of alliteration in his fiction serves a semantic purpose beyond mere wordplay. The above examples all serve to highlight the importance of the subjects, who themselves are important figures in Gerard’s life: the holy mother he prayed to, the loving father who tended to him. And once noted, the reader will surely discover other examples throughout the novel, particularly in those long, run-on sentences that Kerouac surely composed aurally.

17 I would like to suggest that the various aurally-based compositional moments scattered throughout the novel serve to set the reader up for the narrative’s climactic moment, when Kerouac finally comes to accept the death of his brother. Because Gerard’s death was noted in the novel’s opening sentence, even those readers unfamiliar with Kerouac’s biography learn immediately about Gerard’s fate. Rather, the novel’s climax comes when Kerouac himself openly addresses the various conflicting emotions that this memory raises for him, and which he has been sharing with his readers in such moments as those noted above. In other words, Kerouac has been slowly introducing these various moments, not unlike the way a bandleader would have his fellow musicians come in one at a time, each adding a different piece of the overall soundscape before moving on to the musical climax.

18 Thus, arguably the most significant musical passage of Visions of Gerard comes near the end of the novel, when Kerouac is attempting to come to terms with his brother’s death. While clearly traumatized by this event (remember that Jack was only four at the time of Gerard’s death), Kerouac is just as clearly also trying to remember and record the beauty that he (and others) saw in his brother. These conflicting emotions— love for his brother but grief for his passing—as well as his conflicting impulses—to sing his brother’s praises while lamenting his death—can be heard in the musicality of his comments on the funeral, particularly at the end of the seemingly meandering 2-page sentence building up to his acceptance of Gerard’s death: of emptiness, of pure light, of imagination, of mind, mind-only, madness, mental woe, the strivings of mind pain, the working at thinking which is all this imagined death & false life, phantasmal beings, phantoms finagling in the gloom, goopy poor figures haranguing and failing with lack-hands in a fallen-angel world of shadows and glore, the central entire essence of which is dazzling radiant blissful ecstasy unending, the unbelievable Truth that cracks open in my head like an oyster and I see it, the house disappears in her Swarm of Snow, Gerard is dead and the soul is dead and the world is dead and dead is dead (111).

19 To begin, this is the longest of the many run-on sentences in the novel, and should be read not just as a “solo piece,” but also in light of the run-on sentence Allen Ginsberg employed in the first section of his 1955 poem “Howl,” given that both are painful laments uttered by distraught speakers. This sentence demonstrates Kerouac’s inability to rein himself in, or give syntactic form to the emotions he needs to express. But that does not mean that this passage is “formless,” or without an organizing principle. When heard rather than merely read, the formal qualities based on sound can be better appreciated.

20 We can hear in this short passage the way that Kerouac uses the continuous (and, as such, a kind of “run-on”) bilabial nasal consonant “m” to connect a host of ideas and images, and does so by moving through the successive stages of alliteration, internal rhyme, and end rhyme, drawing the reader through mind, madness, and mental woe to the imagined and the phantasmal, bringing this musical line to a close with the phantoms and the gloom. The reader is here then taken through Kerouac’s own inner

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development, beginning with his mind and his mental anguish (presumably, the pain that comes from thinking about these events), moving through that which he imagines (perhaps the book he is writing and the characters he is creating, who may be read as phantom versions of his family?), and ending on the general mood, felt by him but also shared by all present at the funeral (and likely the novel’s audience as well). As such, Kerouac is subtly but decisively using alliteration to suggest a narratological development, moving from the author, through the characters, and finally to the readers. Then at the end of this aural connection, we hear that gloom is connected through strict alliteration to the goopy and the glore, two words that may at first blush appear to be nonsensical, but are granted meaning through the poetic effect of alliteration (as well as any lingering rhyme-based aural connections the readers may make, performing the same work that Dr. Suess’s reader performs in understanding the role of “grickle grass” as well as possibly connecting back to the other “lugubrious” tones employed throughout the novel). In other words, Kerouac is creating meaning for these words based on a consciously aural method of composition.

21 Kerouac also uses alliteration in the “Swarm of Snow”—which he capitalizes in the text, perhaps to draw visual attention to his aural play—to move from the voiceless, sibilant, fricative sound of the s to the voiced alveolar stop of the d in a consonantal progression from “Swarm of Snow” to “soul is dead” to “dead is dead.” One could certainly read this move from the voiceless to the voiced, paired with the move from the sibilant to the alveolar, as an aural representation of Kerouac’s own emotional turmoil. Pairing the voiced with the voiceless here suggests the paradox of Gerard’s death along with his continued life in Kerouac’s fiction. We may see a narrative version of this in the time Kerouac gave to Gerard’s own voice, quoting him directly throughout the novel (and certainly more so than any of the other characters in the book), knowing that he cannot speak any more. The novel is both a representation of his voice as well as a reminder of its absence. Further, the continuation of a sibilant sound paired with the stop of the alveolar sound could thus suggest a conscious use of consonantal sound qualities to further address the paradox of Gerard’s simultaneous presence and absence, a living on after his death. Here, perhaps, Kerouac is composing a poetic chiasmus to aurally reflect his emotional state.

22 And finally, we can hear in the final repetition a rhythmic pattern that alludes to what may be the most painful aspect of this funeral. The phrase “Gerard is dead” has four syllables (employing iambic tetrameter yet again), a rhythm repeated in “the soul is dead” and “the world is dead,” before coming to the shortened “dead is dead.” After three four-syllable phrases, this final phrase will no doubt sound shortened, removing the first unstressed syllable11 in what may sound like a quickening of the pace. Syllabically, we come to a very quick end, mimicking the painful loss of a life cut too short. And while I highly doubt that this was on Kerouac’s mind as he composed the line, his use of a cretic metrical foot (two stressed syllables on either side of an unstressed syllable) was employed by classical Greek poets in paeans, or songs of praise. Certainly, the mood of the novel—and this passage in particular—is one of devastation; that said, this novel is also a celebration of Gerard’s life and his continued impact on Kerouac into his adulthood. There may be no joy in this moment, but there is much about Gerard to celebrate, as I have addressed elsewhere.12

23 Obviously, space does not permit more than a cursory reading of this one novel, albeit a novel composed during a period that witnessed exciting aural advancements in both

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literary and musical composition. By reading the bop prosody of Jack Kerouac’s prose in terms the compositional methods of Charles Mingus’ tonal poetry, I hope to have hinted toward a richer, more nuanced reading of Kerouac’s novel, if not Beat fiction more generally, while also alluding to perhaps a better understanding of the sonic landscape of the avant-garde art of mid-century America. And just as obviously, I am not suggesting that the entirety of Visions of Gerard can be read as a “tonal poem,” that aesthetically rewards the reader at all points with the continuous musicality of the prose, unlike Pithecanthropus Erectus which does so reward its audience (although the novel certainly is aesthetically rewarding throughout due to other factors). Rather, Kerouac employs a more musical prose at various points for emphasis, as well as a reward for those readers who approach his prose with the same appreciation for jazz that he brought to its writing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, James. “Kerouac’s Blues.” Antioch Review 57.3 (Summer 1999): 363-370. Print.

Donahue, James J. “Visions of Gerard and Jack Kerouac’s Complicated Hagiography.” The Midwest Quarterly 51.1 (Autumn 2009): 26-44. Print.

Dr. Seuss. The Lorax. New York: Random House, 1971. Print.

Ginsberg, Allen. Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. Foreword by Edward Sanders. Ed. Bill Morgan. New York: Perennial, 2001. Print.

---. “Notes Written on Finally Recording Howl.” Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. Foreword by Edward Sanders. Ed. Bill Morgan. New York: Perennial, 2001. 229-232. Print.

---. “Some Metamorphoses of Personal Prosody.” Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. Foreword by Edward Sanders. Ed. Bill Morgan. New York: Perennial, 2001. 258-260. Print.

Johnson, Joyce. The Voice is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. New York: Viking, 2012. Print.

Kerouac, Jack. “Belief & Technique in Modern Prose.” The Portable Jack Kerouac. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Viking, 1995. 483-484. Print.

---. “Blues and Haikus.” The Jack Kerouac Collection. Disc 2. Liner notes by Gilbert Millstein. 1990.

---. Desolation Angels. New York: Riverhead Books, 1965. Print.

---. “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose.” The Portable Jack Kerouac. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Viking, 1995. 484-485. Print.

---. Mexico City Blues. New York: Grove Press, 1959. Print.

---. Old Angel Midnight. 1959. Prefaces by Ann Charters and Michael McClure. Ed. Donald Allen. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1993. Print.

---. Selected Letters: 1957-1969. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Print.

---. Visions of Gerard. 1963. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Print.

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Kerouac, Jack, and Allen Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters. Ed. Bill Morgan and David Stanford. New York: Penguin, 2010. Print.

Malcolm, Douglas. “‘Jazz America’: Jazz and African American Culture in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.” Contemporary Literature 40.1 (Spring 1999): 85-110. Print.

Mingus, Charles. Pithecanthropus Erectus. Atlantic Recording Corp. 1956. Original Liner Notes. (Atlantic Masters Reissue, liner notes by Stuart Nicholson.)

Perry, David. Introduction to The Jack Kerouac Collection: 3 CD Set. Burbank, CA: Rhino Records, 1990. 2-7.

Quinn, Richard. “Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, and the Poetics of Beat Improvisation.” Reconstructing the Beats. Ed. Jennie Skerl. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 151-167. Print.

NOTES

1. Proper Names: Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Miles Davis Quintet, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Ashbury, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Pearl S. Buck, Tzu Hsi, Jack Kerouac, Douglas Malcolm, James Campbell, Richard Quinn, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Allen, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, David Perry, Joyce Johnson, Neal Cassady, Michael McClure, Red Moultrie, William Burroughs, Bud Powell, Billy Holiday, Lester Young, Jerry Mulligan, John Clellon Holmes, Gilbert Millstein, Plourdes, Dr. Seuss, Emil Duluoz, Virgin Mary. 2. Although pedagogy is not my primary focus with this article, what follows can certainly be developed into a means to teach Beat fiction. In my own teaching, I find that students are more comfortable reading poetry out loud than they are reading prose out loud, both in the classroom and when doing their reading at home. Helping students to hear the aural components of fiction could very well encourage them to read fiction aloud more often. In particular, I know that I am not alone in insisting that Kerouac’s novels demand to be heard as well as read. 3. Of course, some of Kerouac’s prose will resist such a reading. For instance, chapter 37 of Desolation Angels contains material that cannot be read aloud. However, those passages are few and far between in Kerouac’s prose, and can productively be considered as foils highlighting those passages that do operate as aural artistry. Much of the “Desolation in Solitude” section, in fact, is composed of language that is drawn from the radio conversations Kerouac was having while atop Desolation, and could productively be read according to the methodology I use in my reading of Visions of Gerard, particularly his various descriptions of “Hozomeen, Hozomeen, most beautiful mountain I ever seen” (4). 4. Given the complicated relationship Kerouac had with race, especially with African American culture (as James Campbell and others have addressed), I should note here that Mingus’s title certainly has racial overtones, as pithecanthropus erectus has often been translated as “upright ape-man.” Given the long history of referring to African Americans as apes, Mingus surely intended the racial overtones to ring out as clearly as the reference to the upright bass that he played. This multi-layered signification is not uncommon in jazz, and may well have been part of the Beat writers’ interest in jazz culture. Respecting the multiplicity of interpretive possibilities is at the heart of jazz improvisation, as well as literary interpretation. 5. Joual is a sociolect of Québécois commonly associated with working class populations, and is characterized by the incorporation of loan words and phrases from English. 6. Many of the names Kerouac uses employ long, low vowel sounds: “Fournier” (35), “Bolduc” (63), and “Caribou” (73) being just a few of them.

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7. I should note, however, that reading for stress – especially in prose – can be subjective. One could just as easily read these phrases as iambic tetrameter (though I feel that Kerouac is placing emphasis on “that,” to mark the group to which Gerard is being compared. Either way, there is a distinct rhythm and meter to these phrases. 8. Although the whole passage is presented as a direct quotation, Kerouac’s readers know not to assume that quoted material is an accurate reflection of what was spoken. As biographical as his fiction is, it should not be read as unfiltered history, particularly in scenes from his childhood. In fact, we have every reason to believe that the artistry displayed in passages such as this one belong to Kerouac, and reflect the bop aesthetics of his approach to language. 9. Although Leo Kerouac had, as Joyce Johnson reminds us, “learned English well enough to be taken on as a printer’s apprentice at the Telegraph, Nashua’s English-speaking newspaper,” he was much more comfortable with French, eventually working for the French-language papers L’Impartial and L’Etoile, the latter of which brought him to Lowell (32). 10. Given the proximity of their composition, it should come as no surprise that Gerard, and Kerouac’s childhood more generally, are treated in a number of the choruses. And of course, the “choruses” themselves are meant to evoke the musical influences he was drawing from at the time. 11. I am not including the concatenating “and” as part of these phrases. 12. See my article “Visions of Gerard and Jack Kerouac’s Complicated Hagiography,” The Midwest Quarterly 51.1 (Autumn 2009): 26-44.

ABSTRACTS

In the following article, I will attempt to outline a new reading methodology for Beat fiction, based on some of the principles of bop aesthetics. This reading understands fiction—especially Beat fiction—as an aural art, as opposed to merely a textual phenomenon (and so considers fiction in much the same way that poetry and music are often considered). Jack Kerouac composed his novel Visions of Gerard in 1956 (released in 1963), the same year Charles Mingus released his classic album Pithecanthropus Erectus. I contend that by reading Kerouac’s novel in terms of Mingus’s methods of composition as recorded on that album, we can more clearly hear the influence of jazz music on Kerouac’s prose; as such, we can better understand the means by which jazz music became important as a compositional method and not just as a theme for Kerouac’s novels. Further, becoming more attuned to the means by which Kerouac composed his fiction as an aural soundscape—how he was sensitive not just to the words themselves but to the sounds that comprise those words and their relationships—we can better appreciate the various ways that Kerouac imbued his novels with aural qualities that emphasized the ideas and emotions raised and/or engaged by the narratives.

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INDEX

Keywords: jazz, Django, Ella and Louis, Pithecanthropus Erectus, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, Some Trees, Howl and Other Poems, Giovanni’s Room, Seize the Day, Imperial Woman, Visions of Gerard, Beat Movement, jazz poetics, bebop, bop soundscape, jazz tone poem, free jazz, Dr. Sax, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, ” “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose, ” “Notes Written on Finally Composing Howl, ” “Some Metamorphoses of Personal Prosody, ” The Jack Kerouac Collection, Lowell Sun, The Voice is All, Old Angel Midnight, On the Road, joual, Memory Babe, Gerard Kerouac, Lowell, The Lorax, spondee, iamb, trochee, Mexico City Blues, bop prosody.

AUTHOR

JAMES J. DONAHUE James J. Donahue is Associate Professor and Director of the graduate program in English & Communication at The State University of New York, College at Potsdam. He is the author of two books: Failed Frontiersmen: White Men and Myth in the Post-Sixties American Historical Romance (University of Virginia Press, 2015) and Contemporary Native Fiction: Toward a Narrative Poetics of Survivance (Routledge, under contract); with Jennifer Ann Ho and Shaun Morgan, he is the editor of Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (Ohio State University Press, 2017), and with Derek Maus he is the editor of Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights (University of Mississippi Press, 2014). In addition to the European Journal of American Studies, his articles on American literature and culture have appeared in such journals as: JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, The Midwest Quarterly, and SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures.

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The Visible Aspect of Things: Towards a Synchronic Reading of Donald Barthelme1

Surya Bowyer

Fragments are the only forms I trust. (Barthelme, “See the Moon?”; Sixty 91)

‘Fragments are the only form I trust.’ This from a writer of arguable genius, whose works reflect the anxiety he himself must feel, in book after book, that his brain is all fragments... (Oates, “Whose” para. 14 of 19)

The fragment ‘See the Moon?’ deserves note because it is one of the most clearly autobiographical of Barthelme’s fragments and because it contains the line ‘Fragments are the only form I trust,’ which has become a commonplace in nearly all of Barthelme’s criticism. (Warde 53)

1 Donald Barthelme’s phrase, above, has become a critical shortcut in discussions of his work. Both Oates and Warde read the line as autobiographical, yet both refuse to justify this claim. Warde declares that the story it comes from, “See the Moon?,” is “clearly” autobiographical, whilst Oates makes an unhelpful comment about what Barthelme “must feel.” Part of the reason the phrase has been picked up repeatedly is its formal neatness. In its original context, the sentence is set off in its own paragraph, leading to the impression that it is important. Metrically, too, it is enticing: an acephalous variation of five iambic feet. It employs the familiarity of iambic pentameter and yet turns it into an almost—a fragment.

2 This reductionist approach to the line annoyed Barthelme. In an interview with Jerome Klinkowitz carried out between 1971 and 1972, Barthelme himself poses a question on which to end: KLINKOWITZ: In your story ‘See the Moon’ one of the characters has the line, ‘Fragments are the only forms I trust.’ This has been quoted as a statement of your aesthetic. Is it? BARTHELME: No. It’s a statement by the character… that particular line has been richly misunderstood so often (most recently by my colleague J. C. Oates in the

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Times) I have thought of making a public recantation. I can see the story in, say, Women’s Wear Daily. (Barthelme, Not-Knowing 205-6)

3 Oates may be forgiven, as her comments appear before Barthelme’s own rejection of the line’s autobiographic value. Warde, on the other hand, has thirteen years to digest Barthelme’s revocation, yet still chooses to maintain an autobiographical interpretation of the line. This fact grows all the more frustrating given that Warde, only a few sentences further into his essay, quotes Barthelme’s interview answer. Rather than pick it apart, he proceeds to move immediately on to another story.

4 But Barthelme does not actually issue a “public recantation” of the phrase. The hypothetical is key here: “I have thought” and “I can see the story in, say” (my emphasis). Rather than recant the phrase, Barthelme affirms that it has been “richly misunderstood.” The suggestion is that the line has value if one understands it. Barthelme’s explicit reference to the Times piece is notable due to Oates’s misquotation: “form,” as opposed to Barthelme’s use of the plural, “forms.” Warde maintains this misquote. It is not clear whether this repeated mistake is the result of a chain of misquotation or an intentional rephrasing.

5 What is clear is that this modification of “forms” affects the line’s interpretation. A fragment is a “part broken off or otherwise detached from the whole” (OED: sense 1, n.). Form, when used in the context of literature, refers to “the arrangement and order of the different parts of the whole” (OED: sense 9, n.). The misquote is less knotty than Barthelme’s original phrasing, as it negates the key opposition: a fragment is predicated on its detachment from a whole, whilst the concept of form relies on the presence of an ordered whole. This negation of the quote’s complexity allows Oates and Warde to focus instead on word order—the prioritization of the “stern healthy noun” over the “weak” subject (Oates, “Whose” para. 14). Warde phrases it with less flourish: “the subordinate ‘I’ and the dominant ‘Fragments’” (54). Barthelme’s decision to begin the sentence with “Fragments” and place the first person “I” into an unstressed syllabic position is striking, yet by focusing on it Oates and Warde bypass a key knot. By figuring the plural “fragments” as combining to create a singular “form,” their misquote makes the fragments parts of the whole. In doing so it denies their defining feature—that they are “detached from the whole.” The misquote unmakes the “Fragments” into non-fragments. Barthelme’s formulation, with both “Fragments” and “forms” in the plural, instead proposes that each fragment is, in itself, a form. These forms are thus predicated on incompleteness.

6 The one aspect of the line which has remained critically unexplored is the final word —“trust.” Oates, in stating that the line “concludes with the weak ‘I’,” not only ignores “trust” but actively redacts it. If this final word had been merely a truism, this lack of attention may have been understandable. But it is not, and deserves further consideration.

7 What would it mean to “trust” forms? Turning back to the OED, trust is defined as “To have faith or confidence in a person, quality, or thing; to rely on.” (sense 1, v.) Given that the forms Barthelme speaks of are fragments, and as discussions of form refer to the “visible aspect of a thing” (OED: sense 1a, n.), to trust forms may be provisionally unpacked as: to rely on the visible aspects of fragments. A key focus of this essay will be to show that Barthelme is an unusually visually-minded writer.

8 A text’s visible aspects are not usually the objects of readers’ focus. Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception of the diachronic and the synchronic, originally applied within

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the context of linguistics, provides a useful framework with which to approach different methods of reading. Saussure uses two perpendicular axes, the axis of simultaneity (AB) and the axis of succession (CD). The diachronic study of language operates on the CD axis, and the synchronic operates on the AB axis (80-83). Conventional reading methods generally approach texts as creating a narrative, with events and utterances occurring within a lattice of causal logic. Succession is the chief principle used to analyze a text, and thus these forms of reading may be termed diachronic. Conversely, methods that do not focus on the lattice of causal logic but instead examine “relations from which the passage of time is entirely excluded” (to borrow from Saussure; 80) may be termed synchronic. Focusing on a text’s visible aspects falls into this latter category. This focus is key: not only to the above quote from “See the Moon?,” but to Barthelme’s work more widely.

9 Throughout his career, Barthelme sets diachronic forms of reading against synchronic forms of reading, and in doing so places an emphasis on the visual which has not yet been explored satisfactorily. By exploring how Barthelme uses dashes and lists, I will show that he deploys them as entities which make readers consider texts visually. Then on a more granular level, I will show that Barthelme approaches the hyphen within compound words as a textual interstice that forms a site of non-diachronic interplay. I will contend that this recurrent focus on synchronic forms of reading raises implications regarding causality, disorder, and the place of written texts within contemporary culture.

1. Mapping a lacuna

10 Critical responses to Barthelme have largely simplified him into little more than a literary rebel. Alfred Kazin, in his 1974 overview of twentieth-century American fiction, reduces Barthelme to an “antinovelist” who “operates by countermeasures only” (273). Paul Maltby enacts a similarly reductionist approach by placing Barthelme among a host of “dissident” writers. Joyce Carol Oates includes Barthelme in her survey The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, whilst leaving out Maltby’s other dissidents. Yet Oates’s view of Barthelme is not dissimilar to Maltby’s and Kazin’s. She chooses, by her own admission, an “atypical” Barthelme story for the collection: “The School.” To justify this bizarre decision, she asserts her editorial emphasis is on “storytelling” and not “literary experimentation.” In doing so, she discounts Barthelme’s typical work as being dissident and antinovelist (insofar as novels predicate themselves on storytelling). Oates openly acknowledges that Barthelme is the only “meta-fictionalist” she includes in the collection (556). This acknowledgement places Barthelme into the dissident group, and suggests he only makes it into the Oxford Book due to the existence of “The School.” The predominant view of Barthelme within the context of American fiction is that he operates in a nihilistic manner—that he is experimental merely for its own sake.

11 This fashioning of Barthelme into a nihilist underpins Jerome Klinkowitz’s Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. The book remains perhaps the most far-reaching work on Barthelme, yet lacks a central thesis beyond trying to prove The Dead Father is Barthelme’s masterpiece. Klinkowitz justifies this lack by asserting Barthelme “knows that probing for something behind a sign is a waste of time” (17). Larry McCaffery, another critic who has written extensively on Barthelme, similarly argues that he

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develops “metafictional strategies” to express the “overwhelming sense that ‘la vie quotidienne’ is not nearly as satisfying as we had hoped” (“Metafictional” 75, 78, 82). Klinkowitz and McCaffery thus place Barthelme into the same reductionist category as Oates, whilst also stressing the nihilistic motivations behind his work.

12 A nihilistic disappointment in the world also underpins much analysis of Barthelme’s use of fragments. McCaffery himself suggests: “we can say that the ambiguous, fragmented, discontinuous structure of his fiction mirrors a condition which exists in society at large, and within many of its individual members” (“Meaning” 70). McCaffery argues that Barthelme’s first novel, Snow White (1967), extends this mirroring further, by integrating society into its construction. He argues the novel is “created out of the trashy, too-familiar words we have around us every day” (“Trash” 31). Criticism exploring fragmentation and collage generally focuses on Snow White as the pre- eminent example within Barthelme’s oeuvre, with Zuzanna Ładyga recently proposing a shift away from reading the novel’s fragmentary style as a direct reflection of society and towards an understanding of it as corresponding to Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of the there is. Rachele Dini proposes a shift in a different direction; by transmuting the analogy of fragments as verbal waste, she proposes a literal reading of waste in Snow White.

13 Due to this fixation on showing how Barthelme’s fragments mirror the wider world, there has been little investigation into the way Barthelme’s fragments operate on a granular level. Nicholas Sloboda, in reading Snow White in terms of both Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia and W. J. T. Mitchell’s notion of the visual text, would appear to come close. Yet he directs his essay towards positing fragments as a reflection of the world: “Barthelme devises a "mirror" that reflects his at once distinctly playful and postmodern view of the subject, the word, and world” (121). Thus there is a distinct lacuna in Barthelme criticism—one this essay seeks to address. The lacuna is comprised of two dimensions. First, there is a scarcity of analysis of fragments in works apart from Snow White. Second, almost no attention has been paid to the formal intricacies of Barthelme’s fragments, nor to why their visible aspects might be significant.

2. Disruptive dashes

14 In his 1987 essay “Not-Knowing,” Barthelme expresses a distaste for a particular punctuation mark: “Let me be plain: the semicolon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly. I pinch them out of my prose” (Not-Knowing 22). Such pinching is clear from the rarity of a semicolon appearance in Barthelme’s work. Yet rather than “plain,” this justification seems characteristically facetious. Given a fondness for the dash and ellipsis evident throughout his work, a distaste for semicolons signals a distaste for the explicit linking of clauses. Barthelme prefers to leave the act of linking separate units of meaning to the reader. A moment in “The Genius” typifies this preference: His mind is filled with ideas for a new– But at this moment a policeman approaches him. ‘Beg pardon, sir. Aren’t you— ‘Yes,’ the genius says, smiling.… Tyranny of the gifted over the group, while bringing some advances in the short run, inevitably produces a set of conditions which— The genius smokes thoughtfully. (Barthelme, Forty 10)

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15 The dashes produce interruption, a concept centrally opposed to the effect of the semicolon. Semicolons place two independent clauses consecutively after one another due to their being linked, whilst the dash clashes the two units into one another in a seemingly arbitrary, and moreover unexpected, manner.

16 What, then, separates the dash from the ellipsis—…? After all, the ellipsis also places two units together in an unexpected manner, through the first unit being apparently incomplete. In their influential usage guide The King’s English, brothers Henry Watson and Francis George Fowler state that “a dash implies some sort of break,” and thus affirm its ability to express interruption. Yet they go on to state it can also imply a “change of intention” (269). This is not a helpful statement when considering the interruptive dash. Whilst the dash and ellipsis “were originally equivalent versions of the same mark,” the ellipsis, not the interruptive dash, has become tied to intention (Toner 3). It indicates an intended end: the speaker has chosen to trail off.

17 Barthelme evidently viewed the ellipsis in these terms. In a section of his story “Views of My Father Weeping” (1970), the ellipsis indicates points at which the speaker trails off in the hope his father will respond: “Father, please! … look at me, Father … who has insulted you? …” (Sixty 115). It is an intended trailing off. In “The President” (1968), the ellipsis is again used to signify an intended trailing off, this time to intentionally create ambiguity: When he has finished speaking I can never remember what he has said. There remains only an impression of strangeness, darkness … […] One hears only cadences. Newspaper accounts of his speeches always say only that he ‘touched on a number of matters in the realm of …’ (Sixty 53)

18 The trailing off of “in the realm of…” is used to illustrate that the President intentionally creates speeches of “only cadences” so he can avoid disclosing actual content—a common ability among politicians. The ellipsis creates the sense of incompleteness without the utterance actually being uncompleted. The dash, conversely, indicates a stopping dead mid-utterance due to an unforeseen interruption. It cuts short an utterance, leaving it uncompleted.

19 This is not the only way the dash can be used, nor the only way Barthelme uses it. Another sentence in “The Genius” reads: “He takes long walks through the city streets, noting architectural details—particularly old ironwork” (Forty 9-10). Here the dash operates much like a colon. Rather than interrupting, it offsets and emphasizes the dependent clause at the end of the sentence. Lynne Truss argues that the dash has become popular in contemporary writing “because it is hard to use wrongly” (Truss 157). This multivalence creates problems, as outlined by the Fowlers: we doubt whether a full stop is ever allowed to stand in the middle of a dash parenthesis, as it of course may in a bracket parenthesis. The reason for the distinction is clear. When we have had a left-hand bracket we know for certain that a right-hand one is due, full stops or no full stops; but when we have had a dash, we very seldom know for certain that it is one of a pair; and the appearance of a full stop would be too severe a trial of our faith. (272)

20 Due to its wide range of uses, the dash has an unpredictable character—its function in a passage may only become clear retrospectively. In her examination of that most prolific of American dash-users, Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe argues that “Dashes drew liberty of interruption inside the structure of each poem,” yet must also acknowledge that their presence means “only Mutability certain” (23). The dash is not

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solely an interruptive element; rather, it introduces a disruptive unpredictability to a text.

21 Yet the “faith” the Fowlers speak of is predicated on a diachronic form of reading. That a punctuation mark could be “due” means reading a text, on a grammatical level, as being based on a linear logical progression. The first, left-hand bracket sets up a time- based expectation that a second, right-hand bracket is not far off. This understanding of a text is based on causality. The dash is only disruptively unpredictable because it throws this logic of causality into flux—when one dash appears, we cannot be certain whether it is the first of a pair or a standalone mark. What would it mean to read a dash not diachronically but synchronically?

22 Barthelme’s story “RIF” provides a useful case-study. It is important first to understand the story’s origin—or rather, to understand that we may never have this understanding. Within the final decade of Barthelme’s life, two anthologies of his work were published: Sixty Stories (1981) and Forty Stories (1987). Barthelme had some level of influence in the collection process; for instance, we know he signed off the title of the earlier collection.2 Yet whilst the two anthologies’ titles mirror one another, their layouts diverge. Sixty Stories’ contents page lists stories under headings that group them chronologically by the collection in which they first appeared. Works which have not previously been collected, having instead generally appeared in The New Yorker, are grouped at the end, without a heading but clearly separated from the preceding headings. Forty Stories does not do this. Its contents page is devoid of headings—a monolithic block of story titles greets readers. Works from previous collections are interspersed with works that have not been collected before, in a non-chronological order and without any information of where the story was first published or collected. If one were to read Sixty Stories from cover to cover, the overarching narrative would consist of a chronological review of Barthelme’s literary career. If one were to do the same with Forty Stories, a similar narrative would not emerge. The two anthologies thus promote two different forms of reading. Sixty Stories promotes a diachronic approach, with stories progressing through Barthelme in a temporally logical manner. Forty Stories, with its achronological approach and lack of contextual information accompanying its stories, promotes a synchronic approach where each story should be focused on for its own qualities, rather than the role it plays in any overarching narrative.

23 This synchronic approach hides the peculiarity of “RIF.” Of the previously uncollected works in Forty Stories, it is the only one not to have appeared in The New Yorker. Its provenance remains unintelligible. Where did it come from? Why was it not published before 1987? Was it rejected from The New Yorker? If it was, how did it find its way into an anthology of Barthelme’s work? But perhaps to ask these questions is to miss the point. Given the way Forty Stories presents its stories, trying to assess “RIF” diachronically in relation to Barthelme’s career progression seems erroneous. The anthology asks us to assess each story without this contextual information.

24 “RIF” takes the form of a dialogue, yet this is not immediately obvious. It opens: Let me tell you something. New people have moved into the apartment below me and their furniture is, shockingly, identical to mine, the camelback sofa in camel- colored tweed is there as are the two wrong-side-of-the-blanket sons of the Wassily chair and the black enamel near-Mackintosh chairs, they have the pink-and-purple dhurries and the brass quasi-Eames torchères as well as the fake Ettore Sottsass faux-marble coffee table with cannonball legs. I’m shocked, in a state of shock—

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—I taught you that. Overstatement. You’re shocked. You reel, you fall, you collapse in Rodrigo’s arms, complaining of stress. He slowly begins loosening your stays, stay by stay, singing the great Ah, je vois le jour, ah, Dieu, and the second act is over. —You taught me that, Rhoda. You, my mentor in all things. —You were apt Hettie very apt. (Forty 40)

25 The first sentence makes sense as a line of dialogue, but its position here—opening a short story—presents it not as one character talking to another, but as the narrator addressing the reader. A diachronic approach to reading this opening creates expectations that the story is formed of a single speaker addressing the reader. When this first paragraph is interrupted, the logical progression of the story is thrown into flux. Within three words of speaking, this second speaker solidifies the presence of two characters in the story: “I” and “you.” Long, rambling clauses are replaced with short, clipped ones—akin to conversational speech. There is a shift, as the misdirection of the opening gives way to a clear dialogue form.

26 Given this opening, the dashes seem at first a method of obfuscating the characters’ names. But this explanation of the dashes is inadequate, as the obfuscation is counteracted almost immediately. By the third paragraph we know one speaker is called Rhoda, and by the fourth we know the other is called Hettie. Given that the dashes continue to be used as speech prefixes after this point, their purpose cannot be merely to obfuscate. What else do they do?

27 In attempting to answer this question, it is important to note that the first dash speech prefix is not the first dash in the story. There is one immediately before the switch in speakers—one that we take to signify interruption. This syntactic reading of the dash is diachronic, as syntactic analysis is necessarily time-based. Guy Davenport motions towards approaching Barthelme in a different manner: “Sometimes we can locate all the layers, sometimes not: Barthelme clearly wanted us to remain in the interstices: that’s where his poetry is” (72). There is a contradiction here. For if we cannot locate all the layers within Barthelme’s work, positioning ourselves in between them—in the “interstices”—would be an impossible task. The negative space of the interstices can only become completely defined once all the layers have been located. Nonetheless, if we overlook this contradiction, as well as the unhelpfully vague term “poetry,” Davenport’s basic suggestion is intriguing: that the interstices of Barthelme’s work are worthy of exploration. If we take the dialogue form to be predicated on a back and forth of segments—ABABAB etc.—the two consecutive dashes that fall on either side of the first paragraph break in “RIF” visually demarcate the border between the first A and B sections of the story. They form visible interstices. Beginning each new section also with a dash visually inscribes borders between each of the utterances on the page itself. Reading the dash thus, not as a feature of syntax but primarily a visual feature of the text, is a synchronic form of reading in that it is not time-based. This synchronic approach drives the focus of reading away from the story’s temporal progression and towards the story’s visual properties: composition takes precedence over narrative. Whilst the dash exists within the temporality of the story (i.e. in the time between utterances), its meaning is not derived from a time-based analysis of it. Rather, its spatial position is crucial in understanding its purpose to demarcate utterances. Its visible aspect is key.

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3. Vertical organization

28 This interest in exploring a text’s visible aspects is approached in a different way in “See the Moon?” (1968). In it, we are told of the siblings of a character named Henry Harding III: Under ‘Sibs’ on the membership roll they listed his, by age: 26 25 23 20 19 15 10 9 8 6 (Sixty 97)

29 Or are we? We end up learning very little: we cannot even name them. That the list’s heading is “Sibs” and not “Sibs’ age” suggests the list should provide us not only with their ages but also their names. Each entry in the list is missing key contextualizing material. Maria Konnikova, writing in Barthelme’s favourite haunt The New Yorker, affirms that lists are usually used to communicate information in a manner whereby “conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption… And there’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data” (para. 2 of 7). By forming it out of impenetrable fragments, Barthelme does not create this list to afford the reader “effortlessly acquired data.” So why does he create it? It is here useful to return to Konnikova, who argues a list is “inherently captivating” partially due to the fact it “spatially organizes the information” (para. 2 of 7). As the information itself within the “Sibs” list is so slight (and so impenetrable), the list primarily emphasizes the very possibility of spatial organization within a text. By breaking from the left-to-right motion reading conventionally employs, the list calls attention to the possibilities of the visual within written texts.

30 “The Indian Uprising,” another story that originally appeared in Barthelme’s 1968 collection Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, uses a list in an analogous manner: ‘The only form of discourse of which I approve,’ Miss R. said in her dry, tense voice, ‘is the litany. I believe our masters and teachers as well as plain citizens should confine themselves to what can safely be said. Thus when I hear the words pewter, snake, tea, Fad #6 sherry, serviette, fenestration, crown, blue coming from the mouth of some public official, or some raw youth, I am not disappointed. Vertical organization is also possible,’ Miss R. said, ‘as in pewter snake tea Fad #6 sherry serviette fenestration crown blue.’ (Sixty 106)

31 Presumably the two different presentations of the litany sound the same, even though they are different visually. In some sense, the humor of the passage comes from how

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“[v]ertical organization” is not possible vocally. In making the joke, Barthelme again uses a list to call attention to the possibility of the visual within written texts.

4. Visible interstices

32 If the appearance of these two lists in their respective stories marks moments in which Barthelme explores visual expression, “Will You Tell Me?” takes the method of presenting utterances used in “RIF” and fashions it, too, into a moment of visual expression: Dialogue between Paul and Ann: —You say anything that crawls into your head, Paul, Ann objected. —Go peddle your hyacinths, Hyacinth Girl. It is a portrait, Hubert said, composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development. (Sixty 38)

33 The dashes clearly demarcate the voices within this “Dialogue.” This moment is the only time the dash is used to inscribe the borders between utterances. Generally, the story shifts abruptly from scene to scene without the use of dashes.3 The reference to Ann as the “Hyacinth Girl” is a reference to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: ‘You gave me the hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’ (56; ll. 35-6)

34 There is a clear semblance in the way The Waste Land and “Will You Tell Me?” approach the presentation of voices: namely, both texts are happy presenting different voices as visually undemarcated from one another. The hyacinth moment in Eliot’s poem is one of a number of instances in which an utterance is demarcated, as the two lines are presented within speech marks. Barthelme’s allusion thus operates on two levels. First, it aligns “Will You Tell Me?” with The Waste Land, insofar as each text handles polyphony similarly by often refusing to demarcate different voices. Second, it aligns specific moments in both texts where voices are demarcated. The alignment of the two texts’ general projects of undemarcation contrasts, and thus emphasizes, this more minute alignment of two moments of demarcation.

35 In demarcating the beginning of a new utterance, the dash effectively figures the separation of Paul and Ann in the physical inscription of the horizontal line. To occur, dialogues require two defined speakers, and thus this separation is a prerequisite of the form. Yet the demarcation the dash provides is significant not only to the “Dialogue” itself, but is significant also to the way Barthelme enacts the next shift in scene. Chris Power suggests the story has “something of the quality of a film watched in fast forward, the familiar connective tissue of plot and commentary almost entirely jettisoned” (para. 4 of 8), yet does not explore how this lack of “connective tissue” affects the form of the story. The reader knows this next shift has occurred even before the narrative discloses that it is now Hubert who is speaking: the lack of a dash before the utterance signifies that this voice is not within the “Dialogue.” The dash thus not only demarcates voices within the “Dialogue,” but also demarcates the “Dialogue” from the rest of the narrative which envelopes it. The dash, in forming a visible interstice which signals disruptive shifts in voice and scene, serves as a sort of disconnective tissue. Before the narrative has told us that the scene has shifted, the dash has visually shown us that it has. Synchronic forms of reading are prioritized over diachronic forms.

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36 Barthelme is fascinated by the visible interstice more widely. In his catalogue introduction for an exhibition of Sherrie Levine’s work, he writes: “A picture on top of a picture. What happens in the space between the two” (Not-Knowing 191). The introduction takes the form of a collection of fragments. The above forms an entire fragment—Barthelme focuses in on this image of the interstice and the interplay which occurs within it. He speaks in explicitly visual terms: about seeing photos on top of one another.

37 During a 1976 symposium on fiction, this same preoccupation crops up in verbal terms. At one point, Barthelme suggests we “Take mothball and vagina and put them together and see if they mean anything together” (Not-Knowing 73). He explores this approach also in a 1981 Paris Review interview, in which he peculiarly again gives “mothballs” as an example. He further explains: “I’m talking about a pointillist technique, where what you get is not adjacent dots of yellow and blue, which optically merge to give you green, but merged meanings, whether from words placed side by side in a seemingly arbitrary way or phrases similarly arrayed” (Not-Knowing 283). The interstices are where the interplay of color/meaning occurs. They form the negative space that is integral to pointillism—a space which Barthelme affirms as integral to the putting together of words. To Barthelme, the combinatorial processes within collage, pointillism, and his texts all operate visually.

38 A moment in Snow White enacts this word-to-word pointillism, not with mothball-vagina, but with a different pairing: “There is a river of girls and women in our streets.… We voted to try the river in the next town. They have a girl-river there they don’t use much” (21). Robert Coover’s assessment of Barthelme—“Donald was laconic”—is particularly apt here (Provan para. 3 of 7), for he takes his initial metaphoric image “river of girls” and condenses it into a compound.4 In Sloboda’s view, “the word ‘river’ overshadows ‘girl’, which it is meant to modify” (112). This assessment is syntactic in approach, in that what underlies it is the concept that the latter word should modify the earlier word. Sloboda’s issue with the line—that the latter word “overshadows” the former—stems from the fact that the compound resists his diachronic method of reading it. But Barthelme’s formulation of how compounds work—“words placed side by side” to create “merged meanings”—is not reliant on time: “a compound noun (such as ‘bone-head’) or compound adjective, that is, a word placed on top of another word. The first (the one on top) modifies, changes the second. Like a photograph of a photograph” (Not-Knowing 192). Barthelme figures the first word as on top of the second. Sloboda argues the opposite—that the latter word, in his example “river,” should modify the first, “girl.” In doing so, Sloboda reads the compound diachronically, with the words’ temporal progression being fundamental to their interplay. Ładyga, in her Levinasian reading of Barthelme, argues similarly that Barthelme’s work suggests that “collage is governed by a specific temporal logic” (2). Barthelme’s reversal of temporality in his formulation of “bone” and “head” undermines this diachronic method of reading his work. For if “bone” is on top of “head,” as in Barthelme’s formulation, the compound is akin to a visual collage piece turned on its side—one encounters the topmost layer before delving into the layers below. The compound must not be approached diachronically.

39 But there is a problem with approaching compounds as visual collages: the hyphen. Whilst Theodor Adorno argues “inconspicuousness is what punctuation lives by,” Truss argues that part of the reason the dash has become so pervasive is due to it being “easy

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to see” compared to other punctuation marks (Adorno 305; Truss 157). This observation, when applied to the shorter but visually comparable hyphen, reveals that in this example of “girl-river” the interstice is not a negative space (unlike in pointillism or collage). The words are not simply “side by side” nor “on top of” one another; rather, the horizontal line of the hyphen visibly figures the site of interplay between the two words. Much like the dashes that demarcate utterances in “RIF” and “Will You Tell Me?’, the horizontal line here visually inscribes the borders between units of meaning on the page.

5. Challenging causality

40 Barthelme’s recurring focus on synchronic forms of reading raise wider issues regarding causality. For if we are to focus on the visible aspects of his texts over and above the temporal progression of them, the logic of causality which underlies conceptions of narrative is undermined. David Lodge’s influential anthology of essays The Art of Fiction uses the opening of “Will You Tell Me?” as the case-study in its section on duration. Lodge rightly notes that within Barthelme’s work “causality, continuity, cohesion, consistency in point of view… are also discarded or disrupted” (187). Yet Lodge paradoxically reads Barthelme in terms of one of the things he argues is discarded or disrupted—causality. He argues: “Barthelme implies that people do not act on rational motives, but in response to whim, chance and unconscious drives” (187, my emphasis). The chain of causality, of utterances and actions being in response to previous utterances and actions, is maintained by Lodge. As a result, Lodge overlooks a problematic sentence from the story. The sentence documents the growth of a character named Hilda: “To begin with, she was just a baby, then a four-year-old, then twelve years passed and she was Paul’s age, sixteen” (Sixty 37). Lodge’s assessment is that “Her growth from infancy to adolescence is summarized in a single sentence of stunning obviousness” (188). Like much of “Will You Tell Me?,” the sentence avoids subordination, creating a simplistic tone which feeds into Lodge’s dismissal. Yet the sentence handles time curiously, stating that Hilda and Paul’s ages match only once twelve years has passed. We would expect Paul and Hilda’s ages to roughly correspond throughout their lives—this is how we usually conceptualize the passage of time. The temporal reality of Barthelme’s text handles time in a non-continuous, non-linear manner. The lattice of causality—the logic underlining the progression of a text’s events—is thrown into flux.

41 Barthelme’s final story, “January” (1987), begins as an interview with fictive journalist turned theologian Thomas Brecker, but progresses into directly engaging with these questions regarding the importance of causality. The general layout of the story is thus. After an introductory paragraph, which contextualizes the location of the interview and Brecker’s career and works, the story shifts into a question and answer format: the unnamed Interviewer asks a question, Brecker provides an answer. “January” was first published in The New Yorker, and their online archive entry for it notes that “Towards the end of the interview, the interviewer seems to have disappeared and Brecker is talking without being questioned.” This shift occurs when the Interviewer is interrupted mid-question: INTERVIEWER On the question of—

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BRECKER Remember that I was the opposite of a charismatic figure, not a leader, not even a preacher. (Forty 245)

42 But the reader does not yet notice the change, as nothing is discernibly different at this point. Only when the next paragraph of dialogue is attributed to Brecker, and not the Interviewer, is it apparent that the Interviewer has disappeared: BRECKER I think about my own death quite a bit, mostly in the way of noticing possible symptoms – a biting in the chest – and wondering, Is this it? (Forty 245)

43 Whilst the interruption is the point at which the Interviewer disappears, we only notice the disappearance later. These two moments locate the two speakers in vastly different ways to accommodate for this. At the moment of interruption, the speakers maintain the dialogic form of the interview: the Interviewer specifically refers to his/her own “question,” and the first word of Brecker’s response is an imperative directed at the Interviewer. We are thus reminded of the Interviewer’s purpose, and also reminded of his/her position as in dialogue with Brecker. In the latter moment, the first where the Interviewer’s disappearance becomes apparent, Brecker turns inward: the first word, rather than locate and remind us of the presence of the Interviewer, focuses on Brecker himself. This continues with “my own,” the focus on “symptoms” and therefore on Brecker’s bodily existence, and the solipsistic “wondering.”

44 Yet even with the disappearance of the Interviewer and Brecker’s turn inward, the story refuses to depart from the interview form. The basic principle of speech-prefix followed by segment of speech is maintained in what would otherwise appear to be a monologue. The repeated reminder that it is now only Brecker who is speaking is a comical method of emphasising the disappearance of the Interviewer. For, if we were instead given an unexpectedly long, monolithic section of speech, the Interviewer’s disappearance would not be clear—they would look patient, not absent.

45 Maintaining this form produces other effects. Separating Brecker’s musings into compartmentalized sections implies an act of editing has occurred: why do some sentences require a new speech prefix, whilst others do not? As a result, although only Brecker remains speaking, the things he says are figured in dialogue with themselves— akin to the words that form Barthelme’s compounds. The clear demarcation of different segments is key, as a singular, monolithic section of speech would preclude this dialogic interplay.

46 This latter part of Brecker’s speech is visually homogenous to his previous speech, in that each section is compartmentalized—a clear parallel is drawn between his answers to the Interviewer and the monologue-like speech after the Interviewer’s disappearance. The monologue segments are presented as answers without questions. Usually, the question-answer form typifies the logic of causal progression which underscores conceptions of narrative: answers come into existence as utterances only because they are prompted by the questions which precede them in the lattice of causal logic. By detaching the later answers in “January” from any preceding questions, Barthelme suggests not only that the relationship between question and answer is not linear or stable, but that a diachronic understanding of utterances—that they are created by and located within a temporal lattice of causal logic—is irrelevant. A given utterance’s cause is never certain.

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6. Reading-watching

47 In the 1981 Paris Review interview, J. D. O’Hara addresses the “foreign voices, fragmentation” which this essay has taken as its focus. He asks: “What about the moral responsibility of the artist?… Where in all this evasion of the straightforward does responsibility display itself?” Barthelme responds: “I believe that my every sentence trembles with morality in that each attempts to engage the problematic rather than to present a proposition to which all reasonable men must agree. The engagement might be very small, a word modifying another word” (Not-Knowing 284). Barthelme justifies his interest in the interplay of entities, whether on the “very small level” of compounds (“a word modifying another word”) or on a larger level, as a moral attempt to “engage the problematic.” But “morality” is a hazy concept, and Barthelme uses O’Hara’s question to push the discussion towards a more specific rumination on the place of art: I think the paraphrasable content in art is rather slight — ‘tiny,’ as de Kooning puts it. The way things are done is crucial, as the inflection of a voice is crucial. The change of emphasis from the what to the how seems to me to be the major impulse in art since Flaubert, and it’s not merely formalism, it’s not at all superficial, it’s an attempt to reach truth, and a very rigorous one. You don’t get, following this path, a moral universe set out in ten propositions, but we already have that. And the attempt is sufficiently skeptical about itself. In this century there’s been much stress placed not upon what we know but on knowing that our methods are themselves questionable—our Song of Songs is the Uncertainty Principle. (Not- Knowing 284-5)

48 The most readily paraphrasable content of a short story is its narrative. Barthelme not only thinks of this aspect of a work as “slight,” he quotes a visual artist and thus betrays the visual lens with which he views all art, including his own. The “way things are done” takes precedence over the narrative. Insofar as diachronic forms of reading rely on an underlying lattice of causal, temporal progression—a structure of underlying order—Barthelme’s rejection of an ordered universe “set out in ten propositions” may be extended to a rejection of diachronic forms of reading. Barthelme is not only aware of the disorder which results from this, but embraces it as part of the modern human condition—that we know “our methods are themselves questionable,” and that “Uncertainty” prevails.

49 Yet for all these theoretical ruminations on the position of the artist in the modern world, there remains a more pragmatic aspect to Barthelme’s emphasis on reading synchronically. In 1972 Barthelme won the National Book Award for Children’s Literature for the only children’s book he ever wrote, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. In his acceptance speech, he spoke of his daughter: “I asked my child once what her mother was doing, at a particular moment, and she replied that mother was ‘watching a book.’ The difficulty is to manage a book worth watching” (Not-Knowing 55). We do not, conventionally, “watch” books. The act of watching something—the television, perhaps —demands a focus on the visible aspects of the thing in a way that conventional (i.e. diachronic) forms of reading do not. Barthelme was writing at a time when written texts were being displaced by visual ones. Prominent American cultural critics such as Neil Postman and E. D. Hirsch both document how the increasing appeal of television in the second half of the twentieth century weakened interest in printed media. Watching usurped reading. Barthelme takes unremarkable forms—dashes, hyphens, lists, speech prefixes—and deploys them in a remarkable manner: rather than their meaning

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primarily stemming from their place within a lattice of causal progression, their purpose is defined by their atemporal, visual aspects. To read Barthelme is to shift the very act of reading away from its diachronic conventions and towards a synchronic approach, for Barthelme creates texts that—much like television—demand to be watched.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W. “Punctuation Marks.” Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Antioch Review 48.3 (Summer 1990): 300-305. Print.

Barthelme, Donald. Forty Stories. Intr. Dave Eggers. London: Penguin, 2005. Print

---. “January.” New Yorker. 6 Apr 1987. Online archive entry information accompanying story. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/04/06/january-2

---. Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme. Ed. Kim Herzinger. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1997. Print.

---. Sixty Stories. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.

---. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, or The Hithering Thithering Djinn. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 2006. Print.

---. Snow White. New York, NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1996. Print.

Davenport, Guy. “Style as Protagonist in Donald Barthelme.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 11.2. (Summer 1991): 69-74. Print. de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. London: Duckworth, 1983. Print.

Dini, Rachele. “The Writing of “Dreck”: Consumerism, Waste and Re-use in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White.” European Journal of American Studies 11.2 (Summer 2016): 1-17. EJAS.revue.com. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.11588

Eliot, T. S. The Poems of T. S. Eliot. Vol. I, ed. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. London: Faber and Faber, 2015. Print.

Fowler, H. W., and F. G. Fowler. The King’s English. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908. Print.

“form, n.,” sense 1a. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dec 2016. Web. 17 August 2017. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/73421

“form, n.,” sense 9. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dec 2016. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/73421

“fragment, n.,” sense 1. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dec 2016. Web. 17 Aug 2017.

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http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74114

Hirsch, E. D. Cultural Legacy: What Every American Needs to Know. New York, NY: Random House, 1988. Print.

Howe, Susan. My Emily Dickinson. New York: New Directions, 2007. Print.

Kazin, Alfred. Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Notre Dame, IN and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974. Print.

Klinkowitz, Jerome. Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1991. Print.

Konnikova, Maria. “A List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists.” New Yorker, 2 Dec 2013. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-list-of-reasons-why-our-brains-love-lists

Ładyga, Zuzanna. “Fatigue, Indolence and The There Is, Or, The Temporal Logic of Collage in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White.” European Journal of American Studies 5.3 (Summer 2010): 1-22. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.8732

Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. London: Vintage, 2011. Print.

Maltby, Paul. Dissident Postmodernists: Barthelme, Coover, Pynchon. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Print.

McCaffery, Larry. “Barthelme’s Snow White: The Aesthetics of Trash.” Critique 16.3 (January 1975): 19-32. Print.

---. “Donald Barthelme and the Metafictional Muse.” SubStance 9.2.27 (1980). Print.

---. “Meaning and Non-Meaning in Barthelme’s Fictions.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 13.1 (January 1979): 69-79. Print.

Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.

---. “Whose Side Are You On?—The Guest Word.” New York Times Book Review 4 June 1972: 63. Print.

O’Hara, J. D. “Donald Barthelme, The Art of Fiction No. 66.” Paris Review 80 (1981). Web. 17 Aug 2017. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3228/donald-barthelme-the-art-of-fiction-no-66- donald-barthelme

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. London and New York, NY: Penguin, 1985. Print.

Power, Chris. “A brief survey of the short story part 16: Donald Barthelme.” The Guardian 1 Apr 2009. Web. 17 Aug 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/apr/01/donald-barthelme-short- story#comments

Provan, Alexander. “Review: Flying to America.” Stop Smiling, 34 (2008). Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=988

Sloboda, Nicholas. “Heteroglossia and Collage: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White.” Mosaic 30.4 (December 1997): 109-213. Print.

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Toner, Anne. Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. Print.

Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham Books, 2004. Print.

“trust, v.,” sense 1. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dec 2016. Web. 17 Aug 2017. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/207006

Warde, William B. “A Collage Approach: Donald Barthelme’s Literary Fragments.” Journal of American Culture 8.1 (1985): 51-56. Print.

NOTES

1. I would like to thank James Cetkovski, whose inimitable guidance was vital to the production of this essay. 2. David Gates attests to this in his introduction to Sixty Stories (Barthelme ix). 3. There is one other dash in the story, coming in the first line of a letter one character writes to another: ‘Dear Ann—’ (Sixty 42). 4. Coover’s comment originally appeared in issue 24 of McSweeney’s (2007), in a large section devoted to Barthelme. Several writers contributed opinions on Barthelme; wittily, these three words formed the entirety of Coover’s contribution. The issue is out of print.

ABSTRACTS

This essay seeks to address a distinct lacuna in criticism regarding the American author Donald Barthelme, one comprised of two dimensions. First, there is a scarcity of analysis of fragments in works apart from Snow White. Second, almost no attention has been paid to the formal intricacies of Barthelme’s fragments, nor to why their visible aspects might be significant. Arguing that Barthelme is an unusually visually-minded writer, this essay examines the use of fragments in a range of his short stories. A Saussurean framework is used to argue that Barthelme’s writing demands we shift the act of reading away from its diachronic conventions and towards a synchronic approach. I analyze such apparently unremarkable textual aspects as dashes, hyphens, and lists, showing that they are used by Barthelme in a way that demands a visual mode of reading. In questioning the significance of causality, this mode of reading has wider implications insofar as it challenges the typical view that the short story should be approached as a form that is driven by narrative.

INDEX

Keywords: Donald Barthelme, form, visual, visible, synchrony, diachrony, reading, dashes, lists, Ferdinand de Saussure, fragments, interruption, meta-fiction, short story, grammar, punctuation, ellipsis

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AUTHOR

SURYA BOWYER Surya Bowyer received his BA in English Language and Literature from Keble College, Oxford, and is currently studying for an MA in European Culture and Thought at University College London’s Center for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry. Interrogating vision often forms the point of convergence in his research interests, with recent work on Foucauldian developments in advertising, the form of Chronique d’un été, and the unstable spectator in film. In September he will take up a lecteur post at Paris IV (The Sorbonne). A selection of his shorter form work is available at: http://suryabowyer.com/.

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Fetishism and Form: Advertising and Ironic Distance in Don DeLillo’s White Noise

Adam Szetela

The function of this new industry would be to recruit the best creative talent of the society and to create a culture in which desire and identity would be fused with commodities to make the dead world of things come alive with human and social possibilities. And indeed, there has never been a propaganda effort to match the effort of advertising in the 20th-century. – Sut Jhally, Advertising and the End of the World 1997

Through products and advertising people attain impersonal identity. I’ve written about the power of the image in earlier books. It’s as if fantasies and dreams could become realized with the help of the entire consumer imagination that surrounds us, a form of self-realization through products. – Don DeLillo, “An Interview with Don DeLillo” 1993

1. Introduction

1 Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) remains central to periodizing postmodern literature and novelistic innovation in the late twentieth-century.1 Working from the theoretical framework of the critique of advertising in media studies—ranging from the writings of Michael Schudson to Guy Debord, with a special debt to Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products and Images of Well-Being by William Leiss, Stephen Klein, and Sut Jhally—this essay extends this conversation by examining late twentieth-century advertising as a historical frame for reading DeLillo’s novel.

2 Specifically, this project explores the way that protagonist Jack Gladney’s self- conceptions are represented in terms of three non-utility advertising approaches used prominently throughout the 1970s and 1980s: product symbol, personalization, and lifestyle association. In examining Jack through this lens, I suggest that DeLillo impedes Jack’s development as a literary character to highlight the forestalled self-actualization brought on by advertising in late capitalist society. Through such a portrayal, DeLillo

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creates ironic distance between himself and Jack, as he calls attention to the problems of the commodity logic that his narrator lives by.

3 Given DeLillo’s prior career as a copywriter for Ogilvy & Mather, as well as a large body of scholarship that analyzes his novels in relationship to issues of political-economy and American culture, this essay seeks to not only deepen an understanding of the historical issues that surround DeLillo’s work, but also the political implications of his writing. What is at stake in this project is the treatment of White Noise, not only as a realistic “view of life in contemporary America” on par with Jean Baudrillard’s America (Wilcox 3246), but as a rebuke of the commodity fetishism central to the capitalist mode of production.

2. Symbolism and the Death of Utility

4 In the advertising-laden world of White Noise, where characters recite advertisements as they sleep, there is no sense of ontological Being independent of the marketplace. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously put it, in the novel the medium is the commodity form and the message is who you are. Yet, as Marx is so keen to observe, what a product is in a capitalist economy is always concealed by its fetish. Exploited human beings, factories on the verge of collapse, and ecological devastation are not the signifieds of signifiers like De Beers diamonds, Volkswagen automobiles, and Nike. Instead, diamonds represent eternal love, a VW Beetle embodies peace and the counterculture, and a swoosh equals athleticism. In America, the hegemony of the fetishized signifier leaves little space for the unmediated reality of the hidden abode of production and the expression of human needs through non-commodified forms.

5 In White Noise, Jack views himself and his world in terms of the demands that capitalism fosters towards the constant sale of its immense accumulation of commodities. Instead of having Jack define himself through what psychologists from Abraham Maslow to Martin Seligman regard as self-actualizing activities—for example, his teaching and service to his students, or his role as a husband and father—DeLillo fashions a narrator whose self-conceptions are expressed through purchasable goods. He achieves this characterization by employing what Leiss, Kline, and Jhally term advertising’s product symbol approach (334), in which use goods, like their real-world counterparts, are reimagined as signifiers divorced from utilitarian functions and their means of production.2

6 For example, throughout the novel, Jack construes his black designer eyeglasses— which he removes, at one point, to see better (102)—and academic gown as material signifiers of his professional identity. His commodity logic is apparent when he rationalizes the secrecy of his German lessons. He explains, “because I’d achieved high professional standing, because my lectures were well attended and my articles printed in the major journals, because I wore an academic gown and dark glasses day and night whenever I was on campus... I knew my German lessons would have to be secret” (31-32). In this passage, Jack groups his glasses and gown with other signifiers of his professional role, as if they are equally pertinent to his identity as a professor. In a similar scene, Jack reveals that he adopted his glasses and gown the same year he invented Hitler studies and became a department head (16-17).

7 In both passages, Jack perceives his items as what Fred Hirsch terms “positional goods”—objects in a society that allow us to recognize distinguished social status (Leiss,

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Kline, and Jhally 298). This conception of commodities illustrates Fred Inglis’s point that through advertising people “see objects as symbols of their own prestige and promotion” (116). Jack’s thinking alludes to the rise of status appeal advertising during the years preceding White Noise’s publication (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 270) and the influence it had on the copywriter-turned-novelist’s representation of the cognitive aspects of consumer life in the industrialized west.

8 The way that Jack interprets the person-product relationships around him reinforces the connection that DeLillo establishes between Jack’s self-conceptions and the commodity form. While talking to his colleague Murray Siskind he remarks, “there was something touching about the fact that Murray was dressed almost entirely in corduroy. I had the feeling that since the age of eleven in his crowded plot of concrete he’d associated this sturdy fabric with higher learning in some impossibly distant and tree-shaded place” (11). Similar to the way Jack associates his glasses with his professional identity, Jack feels Murray does the same thing with his corduroy jacket. In a similar passage, Jack notices his daughter Steffie’s green visor and interprets it as an object that offers her “wholeness and identity” (37).

9 By recognizing advertising’s product symbol appeal as a pervading logic underlying Jack’s views, this analysis extends Frank Lentricchia’s observation that “brand names creep into the syntax of [Jack’s] perceptions” (105). In White Noise, DeLillo writes in reference to the language of advertising, not just specific products or brands, as he represents his protagonist’s view of the world in terms of what communications scholar Michael Schudson describes as the “schemata that advertising has made salient” (Schudson 210). By fusing Jack’s notion of identity to goods, DeLillo transforms Jack’s sense of self into the sum of his possessions (Weekes 300).

10 For Jack, it is not enough to be a professor and a department head; instead, he must continually validate this characterization through the symbolic attributes of the commodity form. As Sut Jhally observes: The commodity image-system... provides a particular vision of the world—a particular mode of self-validation that is integrally connected with what one has rather than what one is—a distinction often referred to as one between ‘having’ and ‘being,’ with the latter now being defined through the former. (“Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture” 252)

11 In such a view, where “being” transitions to “having,” a person ceases to be when they cease to have. DeLillo depicts this failure of the commodity ideal when Jack is confronted by his colleague Eric Massingale in a department store. In this scene, Jack is not wearing his glasses, which prompts Eric to tell him that he is a “different person altogether” (83). If Jack’s relationship with his glasses had been conceived in terms of utility, rather than symbolism, the comment would be trivial. But because DeLillo fuses Jack’s self-perceptions to his glasses, Eric’s comment momentarily dismantles Jack’s sense of self. The result is a trip to the Mid-Village Mall, where Jack attempts to reestablish his identity through commodities that might recover his sense of self. He admits, “the encounter put me in the mood to shop” (83).

12 As a critic, DeLillo uses sensationalized language to satirize Jack’s moment of “self- actualization” while shopping at the mall. As he puts items in his shopping cart, Jack explains, “I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I’d forgotten existed. Brightness settled around me... I was bigger than these sums. These sums poured off my skin like so much rain. These sums in fact came back to me in the

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form of existential credit” (84). Jack’s marketplace experience parodies commercials in which shopping remedies problems of identity and self-esteem. Thus, instead of confirming Jack’s “existential” experience, DeLillo’s exaggerated prose refuses his narrator’s perceived self-growth. Through this ironic distance, DeLillo renders Jack’s moment of modernist epiphany in which he experiences “profound imaginative perception” (Wilcox 349) as a postmodern delusion of “hallucinogenic intensity” (Jameson 27-28).

13 By impeding Jack’s development as a literary character, DeLillo mimics the cultural climate of a late capitalist society permeated by advertising. As William Leiss expounds in The Limits to Satisfaction: In [late capitalist societies] extensive market exchanges involving a great variety of commodities provide the organized framework for the satisfaction of needs. Maslow suggests that this level of activity should be transcended... in order to arrive at the level of self-actualizing activities, which are not related to the exchange of goods. But the actual behavioral tendencies in high-intensity market settings are far different. The sphere of material exchange is not transcended, but rather is extended even more deeply into the psychological domain. The needs for self-esteem and self-actualization are expressed and pursued through the purchase of commodities, which are not simply material objects but things that have a complex set of meanings or ‘messages’ associated with them. (57)

14 Like the consumers discussed by Leiss and leading late twentieth-century market researchers,3 Jack fails to transcend the realm of commodity exchange, and the more he “recognizes his own needs in the images of need proposed by the dominant system [capitalism], the less he understands his own existence and his own desires” (Debord 23). Consequently, Jack’s identity insecurity endures and he remains stagnant as a literary character. In this manner, DeLillo alludes to the cultural concerns raised by his contemporary Leiss, as he “employs Jack’s views in his criticism of society” (Jacobsen 23).

3. Personalization and Black Magic

15 DeLillo’s construction of Jack’s consciousness through advertising’s personalization approach accentuates his protagonist’s inability to self-actualize and evolve as a literary character. In this advertising format, products are not only signifiers but objects of self-transformation and improved social interactions (Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 283). Through this method of representation, DeLillo illuminates the way that late capitalism and advertising orient “all aspects of an individual’s striving for personal satisfaction toward the realm of commodities” (Leiss 14).4 For example, although Jack purchases his glasses as a signifier of his emerging status as a Hitler scholar, he also actively uses the glasses to “grow into” and “develop toward” Hitler (17). The incredible transformative nature of the glasses is discernible when Babette asks Jack to stop wearing them and he responds, “I’ve built a career... I may not understand all the elements involved but this is all the more reason not to tamper” (221). Here, the glasses are part of the career that Jack has built, but they are also an element of future aspirations, which is why there is “all the more reason not to tamper” by removing them (221). For Jack, the glasses are not material objects, but “psychological things... symbolic of personal attributes and goals” (Levy 433). This representation of consciousness highlights the way that DeLillo excludes possibilities for self-

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actualization and character development that exist outside the world of goods. In doing so, he restricts his narrator’s thinking to the assumptions of the commodity ideal and the horizon of meaning propagated by advertising.

16 Jack’s daily use of his goods further evinces this ad-induced conception of the world. For example, instead of developing his teaching craft over the course of the novel and finding a sense of self through his academic work, Jack relies on purchasable goods to validate and transform his professional identity. This commodity fetishism is evident when Jack prepares to enter Murray’s classroom. Before he enters, he reveals that he first composed his face and put on his dark glasses (70). In this scene, Jack believes that the glasses will resolve his tendency “to make a feeble presentation of self,” and they will allow him to be “taken seriously” as a Hitler scholar (16-17). The interpersonal dimension of his transformation is that he thinks the glasses will enable him to lecture with the same influence and charisma as Hitler (Keesey n.p.). Here, DeLillo employs what Leiss, Klein, and Jhally term advertising’s “black magic”: the purported ability of a commodity to improve interpersonal relations (274). Like the pseudonym “J. A. K. Gladney,” which Jack refers to as “a tag I wore like a borrowed suit,” the glasses are an element of Jack’s professional persona that he feels allows him to flourish in the social setting of the College-on-the-Hill (16). In an especially revealing passage, he admits: “I can’t teach Hitler without them” (221).

17 To better understand the logic of the personalization advertising format, black magic, and how DeLillo employs these motifs from advertising to link Jack’s conception of his glasses to social power, one needs to look no further than the iconic 1984 Sferoflex eyewear ad featuring bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno. In semiological terms, the former Incredible Hulk is a signifier of potency and strength (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 205). In this ad, Sferoflex positions him with their glasses so that his strength is transferred to the frames that he is holding (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 205). As a result, their glasses turn into a signifier, and what is signified is the message that Sferoflex means “years and years of ‘incredible’ strength” (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 206). The social dimension of the glasses is represented by the woman’s hands wrapped around Ferrigno’s chest (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 205). Like Sferoflex, Jack does not explicitly state that his glasses transform his “feeble presentation of self” (DeLillo 17). Instead, they are an element of a more powerful self-image and desirable social relations. As he explains, “Some people carry a gun. Some people put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer. It’s in this area that my obsessions dwell” (63).

18 Although Jack believes that his glasses transform his professional identity and his social life, DeLillo’s narrative harmonizes with Raymond Williams’ argument that advertising’s “magic is always an unsuccessful attempt to provide meanings and values” (189).5 This ironic distance between DeLillo and Jack is salient when Jack attempts to use black magic at the Hitler conference. In this scene, Jack attempts to use his glasses and robe to reconcile the fact that he is a Hitler studies department chair who cannot speak German. Yet, these objects fail to provide the social and personal meanings promised in advertisements like those for Sferoflex eyewear. He remarks, “even in my black gown and dark glasses, with my name in Nazi typeface over my heart, I felt feeble in their presence.... I spent a lot of time in my office, hiding” (DeLillo 274). In this passage, Jack is let down by advertising’s magic system as his goods fail to ameliorate his social relations and lack of self-esteem. The result is a professional

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identity in shambles, an academic alienated from his peers, and a literary character who remains in the same state of identity insecurity in which he began the novel.

19 Similar to the characters at the Hitler conference, DeLillo’s audience is not persuaded by Jack’s “self-transformation” and the fantastic symbolic dimensions that he attaches to his goods. Readers do not see the glasses and gown as symbols of a powerful narrator. On the contrary, they see blemished objects that fail to conceal Jack’s “washed-out eyes and aging body” (Keesey n.p.). This disjunction between Jack’s conception of his goods and the audiences’ interpretation of his goods illustrates the way that White Noise ironically refutes the advertising logic its protagonist lives by. In doing so, the novel criticizes the commodity ideal as well as the advertising approaches used to sustain the continual sale and consumption of commodities in late capitalist society.

20 This criticism of advertising is accessible to White Noise’s readers through the self- referential manner in which DeLillo employs popular advertising motifs from the 1970s and 1980s. For example, although Jack’s stream of consciousness narrative is represented through three dominant advertising appeals from the period, DeLillo recurrently breaks this narrative structure by inserting unquoted “consumerist mantras” (Moses 64) that have no identifiable source: “Mastercard, Visa, American Express,” “Dristan Ultra, Dristan Ultra,” “Cloret, Velamints, Freedent” (45, 75, 103). For Joseph Dewey, “such commercial breaks reflect how television has permeated Gladney's thoughts, becoming part of the logic of his narrative processes” (qtd. in Wiese n.p.). However, Annjeanette Wiese claims that these interruptions “also have meaning on a more formal level, one that supports the contradistinction between narrative and nonnarrative form. These ‘breaks’ serve as distractions without cause, and thus as formal metaliterary interruptions that both break readers out of the narrative and make them more aware of it” (n.p.).

21 Ultimately, both critics are right. The commercial messages allude to the ways that advertising governs Jack’s thinking. Yet, they also function novelistically as metaliterary interruptions in Jack’s narrative, which make readers more aware of advertising’s presence in DeLillo’s narrative. By making his audience conscious of advertising’s influence, DeLillo enables his reader to recognize the self-reflective irony that underlies his use of advertising’s methods of representation, as part of his satirical engagement of the “schemata that advertising has made salient” (Schudson 210).

4. The Lifestyle Appeal

22 DeLillo’s critique of late capitalism, and the advertising industry on which it depends, is augmented by the way that he uses advertising’s lifestyle association appeal to represent Jack’s self-conceptions of his paternal identity. In this ad format, the other advertising approaches of symbolism and personalization are synthesized under the sign of the group and consumption is turned into a public enterprise (Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 344). In White Noise, the group DeLillo conceives is the Gladney family and together they engage in public consumption throughout the novel. The first example of this is when Jack, Babette, Steffie, Denise, and Wilder take a trip to the supermarket (35). While inside the store, the Gladneys move together from aisle to aisle surveying the mass of goods. Even six-year-old Wilder takes part in the activity as he sits in his shopping cart snatching items from shelves (35). On the surface, it may seem like the

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lifestyle approach has united the Gladney family and allowed DeLillo to resolve Jack’s insecurities as a husband and father. However, as the scene continues, it is clear that this is not the case. Jack and Babette lose Wilder while shopping, and Denise disappears with her friends (37-39). Here, the supermarket, its products, and the lifestyle appeal of goods are represented as alienating forces that disrupt the self-esteem and identitarian security that Jack desires.

23 In a subsequent passage, DeLillo again unites the Gladneys in the marketplace. This scene takes place at the Mid-Village Mall and includes all six members of Jack’s family. Like the scene at the supermarket, consumption is a public event that takes place under the sign of the group. As Jack explains: Babette and the kids followed me into the elevator, into the shops set along the tiers, through the emporiums and department stores, puzzled but excited by my desire to buy. When I could not decide between two shirts they encouraged me to buy both. When I said I was hungry, they fed me pretzels, beer, souvlaki.... My family gloried in the event. I was one of them, shopping, at last. (83)

24 Here, goods are portrayed as emblems for the social collective of Jack’s family.6 Consequently, Jack’s relationship with his family, assumes, in his eyes, “the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Marx 165). As Thomas Ferraro observes, “by shopping with his family [Jack] becomes ‘one’ with his family, which in turn achieves its ‘oneness’ through the activity of shopping” (21-22). This desire to fit in, and its relationship to consumption, underscores the historical context of DeLillo’s novel and the “belonger” mindset which pervaded America in the 1970s and 1980s (Mitchell 9; Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 305). For belongers, shopping patterns reflect a yearning for group acceptance. Leiss, Klein, and Jhally point out: The response to consumption seems to be less concerned with the nature of satisfaction than with its social meaning—the way it integrates the individual into a consumption tribe. Meaning here focuses on questions like, who is the person I become in the process of consumption? Who are the other consumers like me? What does the product mean in terms of the type of person I am and how I relate to others? (281-282)

25 In White Noise, Jack’s tribe is his family and the person he thinks he becomes in the process of consumption is a provider for his wife and kids. He posits, “I was the benefactor, the one who dispenses gifts, bonuses, bribes, baksheesh” (84).

26 Although Jack believes that he realizes his paternal identity through the marketplace, DeLillo refuses this belief, as he portrays it as another postmodern delusion. Unlike the warm family relationships that permeate lifestyle advertisements, the Gladneys are left distanced from one another as they leave the mall. Jack remarks, “we drove home in silence. We went to our respective rooms, wishing to be alone” (84). In this passage, the novel’s plot concurs with Jhally’s critique that “what's real about advertising is its appeals [and] what’s false about advertising is the answers it provides to those appeals” (Jhally and Twitchell n.p.). At the same time, the passage refuses the logic that underpins advertising’s commercialized world of “capitalist realism,” where any personal and social problem is resolved with a commodity or style of life (Schudson 215). Instead of resolving Jack’s insecurities as a husband and father, the lifestyle appeal of goods contributes to Jack’s identity crisis and inhibits him from having a genuine moment of self-actualization. The “modernist epiphany” (Wilcox 349) that would break Jack’s attachment to marketplace self-fashioning never occurs, as his

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notion of himself remains shaped and hindered by the constant white noise of advertising’s seductive appeals.

27 When reflecting on the consumption lifestyle of the Gladney family, it is essential to recognize the importance of setting in White Noise. In both scenes, the Gladneys’ group activity occurs in the marketplace, first the supermarket then the Mid-Village Mall. This union of characters, products, and setting is also present in DeLillo’s representation of Jack’s professional identity. As a professor, Jack’s group is his cohort of department heads and their group emblem is the academic robe. Like the Gladney family, they conduct their activities in a specific setting: the College-on-the-Hill. Outside of campus the academic robe embodies little social or cultural capital, as the symbolic value of goods depends on everyone sharing the same notion of what the product means (Campbell 342). Similar to the emphasis on setting in lifestyle ads (Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 264, 281), products in White Noise are intertwined with places and the act of consumption routinely occurs within a social context.

28 When persons, commodities, and settings are fused together the use of commodities transforms into a spectacle (Leiss, Klein, and Jhally 344). This is evident in the Gladneys’ lavish shopping sprees. It is also evident in Jack’s daily use of his commodities. As he explains: Department heads wear academic robes at the College-on-the-Hill. Not grand sweeping full-length affairs but sleeveless tunics puckered at the shoulders. I like the idea. I like clearing my arm from the folds of the garment to look at my watch. The simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish.... Idling students may see time itself as a complex embellishment, a romance of human consciousness, as they witness the chairman walking across campus, crook’d arm emerging from his medieval robe, the digital watch blinking in late summer dusk. (9)

29 DeLillo portrays the act of checking time as a visually striking public display. Students do not see Jack looking at his watch; instead, they are witness to his “crook’d arm emerging from his medieval robe, the digital watch blinking in late summer dusk.” This emphasis on imagery and a pastiche of historical fragments within the image, so characteristic of postmodern aesthetics (Jameson; Harvey), mimics the transition from utility to spectacle in late twentieth-century advertising. The medieval robe and modern watch are not presented as clothing and a timepiece, but as historical pieces comprising an image, “a complex embellishment, a romance of human consciousness.” As Varda Leymore points out, “in consuming certain products, one buys not only a ‘thing’ but also an image” (x). In White Noise, the image Jack buys is a professional identity: a combination of himself, his products, and the College-on-the-Hill campus.

30 A consequence of the person-product-setting spectacle is what Debord describes as a transition from “having” to “appearing” (16), an extension of the transition that Jhally observes from “being” to “having” (“Image-Based Culture” 252). When Jack discusses his presence on campus, he emphasizes not who he is or what he owns, but how he appears to idling students (DeLillo 9). Here, Jack views himself in the third-person, exemplified by the way he shifts narrative perspective, referring to himself not as “I,” but as “the chairman” (9). This change from first-person narrative to third-person narrative illustrates “the interconnection between the formal and thematic function of the narrative structure” in DeLillo’s novel (Wiese n.p.), as it mimics the most damaging effect of the commodity image-system: a person’s alienation from themselves.

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31 According to Jerry Mander, “by its expropriation of inner experience, advertising makes the human into a spectator of his or her own life” (131). Instead of validating Jack’s self-conception as a professor, DeLillo’s employment of advertising’s lifestyle appeal forces Jack to conceive his “lived” professional identity as a third-person “representation” (Debord 12). Through this method of characterization, DeLillo simultaneously speaks to the concerns regarding alienation raised by his contemporaries Debord and Mander, while exemplifying the influence of advertising on first-person, stream of consciousness narratives at the end of the 20th-century.

5. Conclusion

32 The failure of the commodity ideal and Jack’s self-alienation occurs on page three of White Noise, yet Jack’s search for identity through commodities continues until the end of the novel. This formal quality alludes to advertising’s purpose, which is “to preserve the consumption ideal from criticism inexorably made of it by experience” (Williams 188). As Jhally explains: People know their real-life experiences. They buy stuff and they get home and it doesn’t work the way it is supposed to work. It doesn’t give them the same kind of pleasure that it’s supposed to give. Advertising is like a drug dealer in that way. It’s the pusher on the street. We know products are not particularly good for us, but every time we try to break this, advertising is there offering us another hit. ‘This will make you really happy. Look at what this product will deliver.’ (“Advertising, Cultural Criticism & Pedagogy”)

33 Jack knows that products are not particularly good for him. Early on, he confesses that “there is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content” (6). Yet, he is unable to resist the “hit” that advertising continually offers him. Throughout the novel, he uses his glasses and robe to reconcile problems that do not have commodities as their answers. DeLillo takes this satire to the extreme when Jack even tries to remedy his fear of death—the ultimate erasure of the self—by putting his dark eyeglasses on after he is diagnosed with a terminal disease and, again, after his wife asks him how he feels (64, 96).

34 As a consequence, Jacks remains stuck in a perpetual search for a sense of self, purpose, and happiness throughout the novel. This search is characterized by the lens that advertising propagates, the marketplace and its never-ending supply of commodities, and perpetual disappointment. In this manner, DeLillo employs Jack in his critique of market society (Jacobsen 23), as he continues an ongoing “dialogue with contemporary cultural institutions [that] respects their power but criticizes their dangerous consequences” (Osteen 3). For DeLillo, advertising is the white noise that restrains Jack’s development as a literary character.

35 Ultimately, Jack’s struggle for selfhood, self-esteem, and flourishing social relations is never resolved, or comes to resolutions that are ironically presented, thereby refuting conventional narrative lines that involve equilibrium of the protagonist’s internal conflicts. Through this anti-narrative narrative, DeLillo provides a valuable text for examining characterization and novelistic innovation in the postmodern period. In addition, DeLillo establishes a vantage point for exploring the critique of capitalism and advertising in late twentieth-century American literature,7 and the relationship

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between this literary critique and prevailing criticism in media and cultural studies. Similar to Raymond Williams, Guy Debord, Sut Jhally, and others, DeLillo is not just a keen observer of late capitalism’s landscape, but a moralist whose writing illuminates the system’s failures. Through satire, DeLillo points his readers toward the ridiculousness of a person and a system that endows consumption and commodities with fantastical meanings. More importantly, he urges his audience to think critically about a market society that pushes its citizens to live in a way that may never be able to provide genuine satisfaction or happiness.

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Williams, Raymond. “Advertising: The Magic System.” Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London: Verso, 1980. 170-196. Print.

NOTES

1. See Wilcox, “Baudrillard, DeLillo’s White Noise, and the End of the Heroic Narrative,” and Wiese, “Rethinking Postmodern Narrativity: Narrative Construction and Identity Formation in Don DeLillo's White Noise.” 2. For a textbook example of the product symbol format, see the 1985 Tatung Company advertisement entitled “Tatung and Chic” (Tatung Company). In this billboard ad, the utility value of the television set is removed, and it is advertised as a symbol of modernity and upper class social status. The “destruction of utility,” as Baudrillard would describe it (125), is evidenced by the fact that the television set is turned off and the woman is looking away from it. 3. In The Century of the Self, America’s foremost market researcher Daniel Yankelovich discusses the ways that he and other advertisers incorporated Freud’s psychoanalytic work during the 1970s to connect the American counterculture’s interest in self-growth and self-actualization to consumer goods. 4. Leiss’s observation concurs with Fredric Jameson’s analysis that late capitalism is “the purest form of capital yet to have emerged, a prodigious expansion of capital into hitherto uncommodified areas” (35). Jameson, like Leiss, connects this period of capitalism, and its postmodern “cultural logic,” to the advertising industry. 5. Williams describes modern advertising as a technologically advanced system of “magic” which confers personal and social meanings on goods to which they have no reference (184-196). 6. During the 1970s and 1980s, Salem Spirit repeatedly employed the lifestyle association appeal in a similar manner to DeLillo. In their magazine ads (Salem Spirit Life) and billboard ads (Salem Spirit Billboard) they intertwine cigarettes with group activity and flourishing social relations. 7. The employment of ironic distance in the critique of late-capitalist advertising is a recurring motif in American fiction at the end of the century; though, no scholars periodize this literary technique of historical satire as far back as White Noise. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) are often written about in the same vein as this essay, but without a nod to DeLillo. See, for example, “Consumer Ideology and the Violent Subject: The Murderous Consequences of 1980s Advertising in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho” by Adam

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Szetela and, for a more encompassing study, Aggressive Fictions: Reading the Contemporary Novel by Kathryn Hume.

ABSTRACTS

This essay uses the historical framework of late twentieth-century advertising to understand issues of characterization in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise. Given DeLillo’s prior career as a copywriter for Ogilvy & Mather, as well as a large body of scholarship that analyzes his novels in relationship to issues of political economy and American culture, this essay seeks to not only deepen an understanding of the historical issues that surround DeLillo’s work, but also the political implications of his writing. What is at stake in this project is the treatment of White Noise not only as a realistic “view of life in contemporary America” on par with Jean Baudrillard’s America (Wilcox 3246), but as a rebuke of the commodity fetishism central to the capitalist mode of production.

INDEX

Keywords: Keywords: Don DeLillo, capitalism, identity, advertising, individuality, consumption

AUTHOR

ADAM SZETELA Adam Szetela is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. His recent work appears in The Journal of American Culture, The Journal of Popular Culture, and elsewhere.

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“Nothing could stop it, nothing”: The Burden of Postsouthern History in Barry Hannah’s “Uncle High Lonesome”

Clare Chadd

1 Barry Hannah’s “Uncle High Lonesome” (1996), a remarkable short story from High Lonesome, lends itself to analysis as a creative contemporary inflection of the “southern burden” paradigm most commonly associated with southern modernist writing. Like much of Hannah’s fiction this story grapples directly with themes of inherited historical memory, haunting and trauma, phenomena the author stages as distinctly regional, suggesting that the burden of southern history endures in contemporary literary constructions of the South. Matthew Guinn among others argues that contemporary southern fiction after modernism has departed from the southern- burden trope as a modernist ideology. In this proposed shift, literary dramatizations of the South’s historical legacy, bearing more heavily on its subjects than the “lighter” North’s, is eschewed in favor of a postmodern dismantling of historicity (Guinn 162). However, Hannah’s typically complicated attitude to both historicity and regionalism resists drawing rigid conceptual distinctions between modernist and postsouthern literary cultures. In Hannah’s fiction, the burden of southern history and the problem of authenticity paradoxically coexist.

2 The following interpretations identify a series of moments which propose a dynamic relationship between modernist/postmodernist formulations of southern-burden. Reading Hannah’s stories closely implies no simple historical rupture between southern and postsouthern, but rather a process, a sense of how the critical discourses of different historical moments can be mutually informative, even retrospectively. Hannah’s postsouthern writing offers a window on a series of important ideas about “inherited” burden as a form of (white) cultural guilt, ideas that extend beyond considerations of American regional culture. While distinctions between modern and postmodern, southern and postsouthern are hardly ones on which critics agree,

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Hannah’s contemporary dramatization of what might be called “postsouthern burden” certainly encourages our critical reengagement with these terms, suggesting the persistence of the regional after the so-called “postsouthern turn” in contemporary southern fiction (Bone, Perspectives xiv).

3 The title of this paper derives from Comer Vann Woodward’s influential The Burden of Southern History (1960). Written in the face of growing nationalization and globalization, his study makes a case for continued regional exceptionalism after modernism, due to the defeated and dispossessed South’s radical distinction from its national counterpart. In fact, Woodward’s study had simply attached this new lexis of historical burden to pre-existing (Agrarian) formulations of the historically preoccupied South in the 1920s and 1930s, ideas which contributed greatly to the so-called Southern Renascence. Indeed, one of the most memorable modernist literary encapsulations of the southern- burden trope comes from Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun (1951), when Gavin Stevens reproaches Temple Drake’s declaration of the death of her past with “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (85).

4 Benjamin Widiss summarizes Faulkner’s writing as having a “perennial preoccupation with inheritance, guilt, and other determinations bequeathed by the past,” and he attributes Faulkner’s strong literary influence to “the continuing project of bringing literature to bear on the haunting burden of historical violence and dispossession” (149)—a project that resonates far beyond contemplations of the South. Allen Tate had already prefigured this sense of the dependency of regional identity on narrative when he acknowledged “The Southern legend … of defeat and heroic frustration was taken over by a dozen or so first-rate writers and converted into a universal myth” (592). Ideas about the sudden gothic resurfacing of past traumas that refuse to be buried are certainly rife within Hannah’s stories, further protracting a sense that southernness is a quality used and created by writers who convert it into an accepted mythology. If southern burden was from its earliest conceptions beholden to narrative and performance, then this does not detract from its centrality to constructions of the South. As Woodward argues, the mythology of a distinctive South endures in both regional and national imaginaries despite the contingency of the regional-national distinction.

5 Hannah’s “Uncle High Lonesome” both dramatizes and revises aspects of Agrarian and modernist narratives about the “fallen” white South, its inhabitants burdened by guilt from past sins. The story is a compelling dramatization of the theme of historical determinism subsuming individual possibilities for agency in an environment where defeat and the passive acceptance of fate seem inevitable, captured (in my title) by another High Lonesome character, Tiger Bandini, who describes southern history as a case of “Nothing could stop it, nothing” (“The Agony of T. Bandini” 136). In a dramatic enactment of this phenomenon, the title figure of “Uncle High Lonesome,” Uncle Peter Howard, is intermittently struck by what the narrator, Howard’s nephew, calls “the high lonesomes”—compulsive bouts of depressed alcoholism that result from an unpunished historical crime (murder), eventually culminating in the man’s death: “he seemed to be intent on destroying himself in episode after episode when, as he would only say afterwards, the high lonesomes struck him” (226). Robert Brinkmeyer explores the association of mobility with freedom in America’s national imaginary (14-15), a mythology from which the South, as a region of imagined stasis and backwardness has been excluded. In parallel, Uncle Peter’s shameful past carves a path of self-destruction

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that proves finally impossible to deflect: “he seemed unable to reroute the high lonesomes that came on him” (226). The high lonesomes, therefore, serve as a fitting trope for the difficulty of dealing with historical guilt and trauma, portrayed as a distinct cultural problem that endures in the South.

6 The contemporary merit of Woodward’s southern-burden model had, however, come under radical scrutiny by the late twentieth century. New postregional criticism from Fred Hobson, Scott Romine and Martyn Bone questioned the very idea of regional authenticity or “southernness” in its various forms, emphasizing its contingency on texts, mediation and performance. Towards the end of Hannah’s career, globalization and the rise of a media-driven culture was also affecting regional studies beyond the South. Consider for example William Handley and Nathaniel Lewis’ study True West (2004), a critical exploration of the elusive “authentic” West whose title closely anticipates Romine’s The Real South (2008). If regionalism in general, and southern burden in particular, were always in a sense performative, i.e. underpinned by mythological discourses as much as real events, then authenticity and performativity cannot be conceived of in neat binary opposition. These are the tensions at the heart of Hannah’s metafictional writing—his are stories about the telling of the South—from which its remarkable energy and critical value derives.

7 Recent years have witnessed a further series of challenges to conceptualizations of the South, after the “transnational turn” (Jay 1) into the so-named “new” southern studies in 2001. In 2010 for example, Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino responded to the question, “Has the time come to declare the end of southern history?” with a collection of essays provocatively entitled, The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism. Similarly, Martyn Bone, Brian Ward and William Link’s Creating and Consuming the American South (2015) more radically questions the survival of southern burden as part of a now outdated southern distinctiveness paradigm, in the context of rigorous contemporary disputes over what “southern” can mean when the South is embedded in a broader global framework, encompassing a plurality of hybrid souths within the region. In this culture, can the South be conceived of as distinct enough to deserve continued critical attention using terms like “southern burden,” without subscribing to essentialism as Jon Smith and Leigh Anne Duck (among others) have argued?

8 Aside from the encroachments of late-twentieth-century postregional criticism on the very concept of “southern,” amplified by more recent apprehensions of an increasingly globalized and hybridized South, Woodward’s paradigm was also being challenged in the wake of the increasing historical distance from the singular formative event of black and white regional history alike, the Civil War. Because the South’s “burden” was thought to derive from the effects of the so-called Lost Cause, the temporal elapse from this definitive event seemed to be annulling the efficacy of southern burden as a means of understanding contemporary regional identity. As Jefferson Humphries puts it, most modern southerners “may lack the powerful sense of southern history that came from [their] elders from temporal proximity to the Civil War, and that was so essential for their strong sense of southern identity” (ix). While Humphries replaces the immediate influence of the Civil War with that of civil rights, this idea that the South’s historical burdens simply diminish in the absence of temporal proximity to events makes for a reductive interpretation of Woodward’s view of memory as a complicated i.e. nonlinear process, which does not necessarily diminish in intensity with the passing of time.

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9 Houston Baker pointed to the nonlinear intensity of memory in 2001, when he declared with Dana Nelson, “I live in a haunted place” (31). Again, this refutes Humphries’ proposition of the South’s diminishing burden with the demise of living memory. Surely the legacy of slavery and racism is far more problematical, entrenched and indeed, far more current than such a model allows. Arguably, had the legacy of the Old South and the Lost Cause simply died out with first-hand experience, then the rise of civil rights in the region would have occurred long before it did. Similarly, it seems unlikely that the South—or western cultures in general—should forget the cultural implications of the early civil rights movements even as its immediate bystanders diminish, because in many ways the problems, divisions and injustices these movements sought to abolish more than half a century ago remain unresolved today.

10 Brinkmeyer rightly chastises Humphries for ignoring the vanguard of new southern writers including Barry Hannah, Frederick Barthelme or Josephine Humphreys (Brinkmeyer 373)—despite Humphries’ claim to bring the field into a more up-to-date dialogue with a post-Rubin generation. Guinn’s more recent study of contemporary southern fiction, however, concurs that the literary period “after southern modernism” (Guinn’s title) has produced very little on the Civil War and its attendant mythology of historical haunting, because contemporary writers have no living access to what Lewis Simpson called the “resource of memory” (qtd. in Guinn 162). According to Guinn, the trend of historical retrospection Widiss discerned as a central preoccupation of Faulkner’s writing was becoming increasingly scarce in southern fiction after modernism, recalling Simpson’s infamous declaration of “The closure of history in a postsouthern America” (268).

11 The concern with the supposed decline of historical burden, regionalism, and therefore “the South” is not only psychological, which is to say concerned with southern identity, but also aesthetic, regarding the political status and cultural merit of contemporary southern art. For some, the weakening of first-hand memory of the South’s determinative historical events generated nostalgia for a prior time when “southern” had meaning as a cultural collective, and could be discerned, moreover, in regional literature. Echoing Richard Gray’s characterization of Faulkner and his contemporaries’ writing as “the literature of memory,” Lewis Simpson writes of the “southern aesthetic of memory” (67-71) developed by the modernists, which he believed was being menaced with the inevitable onset of time: The literary imagination cannot remedy the fact that the southern writer born in the 1960s has had to find out about Gettysburg from a textbook rather than from the memory of an uncle. … At best by the 1960s personal links with the memory of the Civil War had become insubstantial. (251-252)

12 Words and phrases like “cannot remedy,” “at best” and “insubstantial” convey a distinctively nostalgic sense, not only of a regional identity but also a literary culture in a state of decline in the face of cultural amnesia. Simpson’s pessimistic diagnosis reveals how the perceived waning of historical-burden literature signaled a concomitant decline in its value. As Simpson put it bluntly: “The epiphany of the southern literary artist will not be repeated. The Southern Renascence will not come again” (268-269). Likewise, Fred Hobson compares Hannah’s generation of writers to the lost Southern Renascence and declares it “Lacking the tragic sense, devoid of Faulkner’s high seriousness and social consciousness” (34), and exhibiting “a relative want of power” (10). For Hobson or Simpson, the supposed deterioration of historical

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memory after southern modernism had impacted unfavorably on postsouthern art, which was left both historically detached and aesthetically depleted.

13 In recent years, critics have corroborated that Faulknerian themes of deterministic historical inheritance have begun to fade from contemporary southern writing. Several new southern writers have self-consciously shunned Faulkner’s influence by placing their fictional settings at a decisive distance from the South, to the extent that Brinkmeyer identifies “The diminishment of place … in the [post-modernist] literary imagination” (26). This is evinced in those who have “gone West” including Doris Betts, Cormac McCarthy, Madison Smartt Bell, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Offutt, Frederick Barthelme, and Clyde Edgerton (Brinkmeyer 2). Hannah’s fiction however (excepting the “Western” Never Die) is placed decisively in the South. It frequently explores themes of cultural stasis and entrapment, typically dramatized in formal patterns of temporal circularity or in odd transpositions of youth and age. This is not to suggest that to be designated “southern,” fiction must choose the South as its fictional locale. Hannah’s texts, in keeping with late twentieth century postregionalism, upset simple demarcations of the regional anyway. But it is certainly worth acknowledging the author’s choice to continue placing his stories firmly in America’s southern states at a time when postsouthern writing is supposed to be self-consciously sidestepping the concepts of history and region.

14 As much as the conspicuously postmodern dimensions of Hannah’s writing appear dedicated to undermining the concepts of historicity, authentic cultural memory and even chronological time itself, the southern-burden trope, and an attendant imagined southernness, are by no means abandoned in his writing. Guinn argues that southern writers after modernism choose to symbolize history as an “open field,” as a “triumphant reply” to claustrophobic modernist images like Faulkner’s of the burdened South (Guinn 176). While Faulkner and the modernists asserted the past is not past, Guinn argues Hannah and his contemporaries ask, “but what is the past?” (179). These words echo David Noble’s characterization of Hannah’s unique style: “not only is there no conventional narrative flow, there is no regard for time, much less chronology” (Noble 43). However, rather than testifying to Hannah’s shunning of the southern-burden model, the antilinear temporal reworkings in Hannah’s narratives suggest in fact that his fictional characters, like Faulkner’s, feel the palpable presence of the past. They are often haunted by memories of private fall-from-grace moments to which they return compulsively, in a manner strongly redolent of the “peculiarly heightened consciousness” and habitual “backward glance” that Tate identified as characteristic of southern modernist literature (Tate 292). This is caught by the retrospective narrator of Hannah’s short story “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis,” who declares of a pivotal moment in his past, “I would return and return to it the rest of my life” (51). Explicit textual parallels suggest this story shares a narrator with “Uncle High Lonesome” and therefore offers a conceptual foil; indeed, the narrator’s promised regressive return is fulfilled by the circular aesthetic of Hannah’s collection at large, which returns in its last story’s last scene to this formative adolescent memory of coming-of-age in the old Bay St. Louis.

15 Hannah’s male protagonists often fall from grace in ways related to their inheritance or memory of the Civil War. The War is central to constructions of white southern masculinity in much of Hannah’s work, as Ruth Weston, Melanie Benson Taylor, Thomas Bjerre, James Potts, and Martyn Bone have pointed out. However, by focusing

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on those Hannah stories in which the Civil War is not a direct concern, we can better appreciate how the South’s social and military history continues to bear on contemporary formulations of southernness, even where direct proximity to the War has vanished, contrary to the contentions of Humphries, Simpson and Hobson. This is evinced in Hannah’s Boomerang (1989), whose narrator proclaims that with “All the generations of … dead guys behind us … there’s barely room for the living down here” (137-138). One of Boomerang’s core themes, the sense of past actions returning to haunt or reward, is symbolized by its title, and it is illustrated similarly in the creative titles of several Hannah works: “Return to Return,” “Dragged Fighting from His Tomb,” Never Die (1991), or Bats Out of Hell (1993). The eponymous protagonist of Hannah’s short novel Ray (1980) perfectly encapsulates the stubborn perseverance of southern memory in the declarations “I live in so many centuries. Everybody is still alive” (41), and “There is no forgetting with me” (51). Directly evoking those of Faulkner’s Gavin Stevens (“The past is never dead”), Ray’s words speak to Hannah’s attitude towards southern history in much of his writing, implying not the amnesiac lack of historical consciousness in the so-called post-South, but its crippling abundance.

16 Although some have questioned the force of history (or memory) and region in contemporary southern writing, several recent critics have championed the persistence of the past in keeping with Woodward’s model. Much recent scholarship continues to engage with and reformulate Woodward’s ideas, extending their relevance to current discussions of regional identity politics in the twenty-first century. This is caught by the title of Angie Maxwell, Todd Shields and Jeannie Whayne’s The Ongoing Burden of Southern History (2012), a study in which ongoing burden is figured both as a political consideration and ethical imperative. This recalls Maxwell’s acknowledgment of Woodward’s “private goal” as a self-professed “activist historian”: namely, to expand the definition of southern identity and “refocus southern whites on elements of their identity that did not rely solely on the maintenance of white supremacy and segregation” (Maxwell, “Introduction” 79). Larry Griffin’s “Southern Distinctiveness, Yet Again, or, Why America Still Needs the South” (2000) constitutes a similar attempt to rework Woodward’s model in accordance with twenty-first century discourses that problematize modernist conceptions of southern distinctiveness framed in regional historicist terms. While Griffin points out the obvious political tensions inherent in proposing that all southerners are burdened by historical guilt, he argues for the continued usefulness of Woodward’s model of southern historical haunting. This model accounts for the South’s turbulent political history while providing a framework for thinking about how “southern” burden might have broader resonance in both national and global cultures.

17 Here, ideas about historical haunting directly recall contemporary explorations of the historical transference of guilt or trauma at the heart of much psychoanalytic and literary theory, which incorporates thinking about second-generation trauma and the inheritance of historical burdens not experienced first-hand. Cathy Caruth, for instance, explores the relationship of trauma, history and representation, and argues that while immediate traumatic memory remains unspeakable or beyond representation, “belated” representations of collective historical trauma have the capacity to transform past ethical failings (Caruth calls this “the failure to have seen at the time”) with the “imperative of a speaking that awakens others” (18). If contemporary representations of historical traumas help commemorate those traumas in ways that hopefully prevent their repetition in the future, then in the context of the

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South’s past ethical failings, new formulations of the South’s ongoing burden can exist as an insurance against silence and forgetting.

18 This concept of the ethics of historical memory is key to interpreting “Uncle High Lonesome” because Uncle Peter’s high lonesomes are the manifestation of guilt from a past crime that has not been atoned for. As a young man, he killed another man but was never punished for it. As the story unfolds, we learn that this formative historical event was the result of hurt pride following a lost game of poker and fight with a stranger in a bar. Having been publicly humiliated in both respects, Uncle Peter returned in a rage to kill the man who “shamed [him] real bad” (220), astonishingly proceeding to escape (capital) punishment, because in this small town in the deep South, it is the “out-of- towner” victim who “was sentenced to remain dead,” while homegrown killer “Peter was let go” (230). The story suggests he was spared because he acted according to a locally accepted code of southern honor that was operative “back in the ‘20s” (230).

19 Discussing issues of southern masculine identity and the ways in which “Hannah’s [male] characters are driven by inherited ideas about honor, shame, and vengeance” (46), Ruth Weston draws on the work of historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown, who argued that shame and honor cannot be understood apart from … [each] other. [A southerner] was expected to have a healthy sense of shame, that is, a sense of his own honor. Shamelessness signified a disregard for both honor and disgrace. When shame was imposed by others, honor was stripped away. (viii, qtd. in Weston 46)

20 These arguments certainly appear to corroborate the events in Hannah’s story, when we consider Uncle Peter’s vengeance was the result of a humiliation. Further, having reacted violently to the initial humiliation as a young man, the older man’s high lonesomes represent a retrospective acceptance that his youthful reaction was disgraceful. Subsequently, Uncle Peter’s self-imposed shame in the form of the high lonesomes signals a redoubling of “southern” shame, and as such, a paradoxical recuperation of lost (old) honor from a kind of defeat.

21 Perhaps because of this paradox, Uncle Peter is described recurrently by his nephew as exhibiting “a savage grace” (214), unlike the man’s own rather innocent brother, the narrator’s father. Compared to Uncle Peter, “the man who could do things” (214), the narrator repeatedly describes his father as well-meaning but “childlike” (222), “an infant at a number of tasks” (216), and a man who “didn’t know how to do things. He had no grace” (222). Persistently, the father’s naïve ineptitude is offset against his brother’s mature wisdom and proficiency at masculine “tasks,” and it is the narrator’s uncle rather than father who facilitates the boy’s passage into adulthood: “He taught me to fish, to hunt, to handle dogs, and horses” (218). This seeming incongruity, in that Uncle Peter, a murderer, should be the one not only who acts as a role model for the narrator, but who is described as living in a condition of prelapsarian grace, can be better understood, then, when placed in the context of the inherited “primal honor code” Weston describes above (Weston 46). Here, individual masculinities and personal histories are subsumed in a mythologized ideal of heroic southernness, where “innocence” and “grace” are not coterminous concepts.

22 In this vision of southern masculinity, there is the sense that proper coming of age, and even a paradoxical state of attendant grace, is inherent in the fall, as part of the South’s unique historical legacy. If southern masculinity has its origins in sinfulness, then perhaps it is unsurprising that Hannah’s narrator should profess he has inherited

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his uncle’s sin (not his father’s) in his own white male coming of age. Uncle Peter provides the proper textual father in this story, which interrogates the ways oedipal narratives have gone awry in the South. Here then, the sense of the uncle as ersatz father in “Uncle High Lonesome” transposes onto a much more generalized concept of inherited burden, of the sins of historical fathers visited on future generations of southern sons. This theme circulates widely in Hannah’s broader canon and finds its most obvious expression in High Lonesome’s lead story, “Get Some Young.” Thus, Hannah continues to engage with established mythologies about southern masculinity and historical determinism, adapting ideas about inherited sinfulness and shame such as we would find (for example) in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942).

23 In the effort to understand his high lonesome uncle by telling the man’s sorry tale, “Uncle High Lonesome” is written from the perspective of a middle-aged author who has gained posthumous insight into his uncle’s dark past: “When he was dead I discovered that he was also a killer and not a valiant one” (214). It is the unearthing of this gothic family legend which drives the narrator’s storytelling. As in “A Creature in the Bay,” the narrative is structured around revisiting the formative scenes of its narrator’s childhood and adolescence, to try to comprehend his uncle’s more extreme loss of innocence. In telling the story, the nostalgic adult narrator attempts to make retrospective sense of this beloved but elusive figure from the past, performing a backward excavation of his family history in the light of the recent revelation of “the whole truth of where he [Uncle Peter] had come from, … That night [of the murder]. From there” (217). The narrator seeks recourse to this explanatory point of historical origin, posited as a singular, fall-from-grace moment that he imagines would aid a better understanding of the shame at the core of his uncle’s and then, strangely but seemingly inevitably, his own life. It is this search which motivates his storytelling.

24 However, if in excavating his uncle’s history we accept the narrator is performing a version of the modernists’ backward glance, then his method becomes distinctly postmodern when that search becomes tricky and ultimately futile. The more the narrator attempts to approach the focal point of his story, the mysterious Uncle Peter, the more this focal point becomes a vanishing point of historical reference that remains unknowable or unexplainable. Much of the narrator’s retrospective narrative preserves the innocent perspective of his child-self (acting as a surrogate for the naïve reader), even while it purports to be written by the adult self. Because the narrative operates simultaneously on both levels, many of the problems of interpreting the story generate from the formal interplay between these dual perspectives competing in a single narrative voice. Typically of Hannah, it is in these interpretative challenges— what Weston called the “unsettling shifts, gaps, and disavowals of [the stories’] own truths” (47)—that his texts’ remarkable subtleties reside.

25 In performing his storied excavation of his uncle’s history via a series of remembered scenes and images, Hannah’s narrator foregrounds some distinctly postmodern ideas about reality, textuality, and performance. Due to the proliferation of conflicting images, and the sustained incomprehensibility of certain memories of the past, the narrator fails to piece together some coherent, explanatory narrative wrought from the illuminating knowledge of the posthumously-unearthed “truth” about Uncle Peter’s history. Instead, the story’s title figure is described only in a series of isolated “scenes” or “episodes” (226; 218), and in keeping with this lexis of performance, he inhabits various theatrical guises, which prove noticeably incompatible with one another. For

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example, we learn sometimes Uncle Peter would resemble “the criminal writer Jean Genet, merry and Byzantine in the darks of his eyes” (214); sometimes he would “survey” the land in a manner redolent of “Napoleon” (218), or “he could also look, with his ears out, a bit common, like a Russian in the gate of the last Cold War mob; thick in the shoulders [and] with a belligerence like Krushchev’s [sic]” (214). He dresses dramatically and performs a set of chameleon costume-changes, for example wearing polo boots, a necktie and fedora and later, “dressing up … for [his nephew’s] puppet shows” (226), and finally, the language of Hollywood accompanies many descriptions of the man: “his face was spreading and reddening, almost as in a fiend movie” (219). After each high lonesome episode, the melodrama of Peter’s appearance is temporarily quietened but the contrivance remains, as he dresses plainly in the style of an ashen- faced, humble deacon (221). At the end, we are told incongruously that he “now looked somewhat like Versace, the Italian designer” (227), and “in the last curious scene when I recall him whole” (226) the narrator imagines his uncle “was enduring a sea change” (227), his reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest intensifying this sense of the man’s volatility or foreignness.

26 These descriptive recollections produce no single, coherent picture of the man, a character whom the narrator describes, ironically, as having come from a bygone era when “You got what you saw more … and there was a plainer language, then” (222). On one hand, Uncle Peter, a performer, is presented as a spectacle to behold, a proliferating succession of wildly mismatched and protean images that combine in their diversity to render him a fundamentally impenetrable signifier. On the other hand, his various attempts to reinvent himself in the image of other men (Genet, Khrushchev, Versace)—who he can imitate or be “like,” but never truly be—prove ultimately unsuccessful, and his true self prevails: “He remained the same, and [it] killed him” (226). The suggestion is that Uncle Peter cannot escape his crime, which has shaped his history irrevocably; the violent visitation of the past on the present results ultimately in his own death, as if in rightful reparation for the stranger’s life he took. The ability to perform different roles only provides temporary escape, therefore, because this “modern” character possesses a real, tangible link to the historical trauma which defines him. Indeed, it was Uncle Peter’s enactment of what Hannah elsewhere calls a “true old-timey” honor code (“The Ice Storm” 190) which catalyzed the murder, precisely that which has caused the man to assume these different personae subsequently. Where Uncle Peter’s theatrical mutability signals an attempt to release himself from a distinctly regional sense of shame, therefore, the character resists neat categorization as either “modern” (southern) or “postmodern” (postsouthern).

27 Equally problematically, even the simple notion previously posited, that Uncle Peter’s heroic masculinity results (paradoxically) from his shameful past, is offset against the narrator’s early charge that his uncle was not a “valiant” killer (214). This begins to trouble any easy application of an old honor-code paradigm to Hannah’s story, even while it implies such a code is still operative in the South. On close inspection, sudden declarations of hermeneutical uncertainty frequently invade the narrative, with the adult narrative voice cutting through the childish perspective which dominates much of the story and ultimately corroborating, rather than alleviating, the child’s sense of interpretative ignorance. These include: “I did not know there were women involved in the [high lonesome] benders, but there were” (221); “I … could not decide what the man, my uncle, wanted from this episode” (218), and, most significantly, “I don’t know if the dead man in his past urged him towards the final DT’s and heart attack, nor will I

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ever know how much this crime dictated his life” (226, my emphasis). Self-reflexive attempts to draw out our collusion in reading for putative authenticity (where perhaps there is none) pepper the narrative (“You could see him—couldn’t you?” [228]), betraying the narrator’s continued incomprehension and powerlessness to know this phantom from the past. This belies the implicit objective behind the narrator’s act of storytelling, to get to “the whole truth” (217) of Uncle Peter’s shadowy history and determine the extent to which he was burdened by it, to know “how much this crime dictated his life.”

28 In parallel to the narrator’s retrospective mining of his own coming-of-age memories, each “high lonesome” episodes compulsively repeats the trauma of Uncle Peter’s pivotal loss-of-innocence when he killed the man. Notably, both pursuits have a temporally regressive element characteristic of Southern Renascence fiction—Tate called it “a literature conscious of the past in the present” (qtd. in Young ix)—whose characters (and authors) are compelled to revisit the past. Here, it is worth pausing briefly on some marked similarities between Hannah’s writing and other contemporary works of southern fiction which return to the past in order, paradoxically, to move forward.

29 Hannah’s writing foreshadows fellow Mississippian Jesmyn Ward’s more recent dramatization of a similar theme in Men We Reaped: A Memoir (2013). Narrated in reverse-time, Ward’s is an etiological inquest into the seeming pathology of the impoverished Mississippi and its wasting of young black lives in an “epidemic” (Ward 8) of relentless violence. It is an attempt to comprehend the present (and imagine a tacit alternative future) by reflecting on the past, writing about it to break the silence and learn, perhaps, from the articulated trauma. However, because the trauma Ward describes is one that has its origins in the antebellum South (and before that, in global colonialism); Ward’s title comes from escaped-slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s own Civil War memoir, the suggestion is that cultural trauma extends beyond generations and is in some ways timeless.

30 Both texts are also perceptibly reminiscent of Kentuckian Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country (1985), which reworks distinctly modernist ground in its exploration of how we make sense of the present (or not) by gaining an understanding of the past. Alison Johnson and Lisa Hinrichsen have each interpreted Mason’s novel according to the historical transference of trauma. Mason’s protagonist, Sam Hughes, believes the “stress of the Vietnam War ... was her inheritance” (Mason 89) because the War killed her father, even though this event transpired before her own birth. Like Uncle Peter’s nephew-narrator, Sam seeks posthumous recourse to her father’s history, a similarly parasitical attempt to write herself into an all-male war narrative from which she has been excluded. The novel culminates in a performative act of historical appropriation, with Sam finding “her” name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Richard Gray interprets this climax as a successful act of historical recuperation that places Sam “on the threshold of knowing the past—and starting … to accept [it]” (Southern Aberrations 365). Elsewhere Gray argues that in this moment Sam becomes “inscribed in history,” having “come into reality, out of hyperreality” (“Afterword” 223-224). Yet for others including Hinrichsen (246) and Kenneth Millard (53), the strong sense of textual duplicity inherent in this putative epiphany reveals the character’s imaginative inclusion in American history is a reflection on a misreading where texts continue to occlude reality, thus resisting any simple historical resolution.

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31 In “Uncle High Lonesome,” the re-examination of the past creates a tension between the (imagined) “truth” of Uncle Peter’s dark past, and the narrator’s naïve recollections of the man he adored. The story cannot be understood as a contemporary recycling of a traditional southern modernist trope, what Guinn terms “the familiar formula of understanding the present through the past” (162). That is to say, while the mature narrator’s newly gained knowledge has called for a revisiting of the past, the act of historical revival (as with Ward and Mason) does not encourage resolution in the familiar modernist way. Nevertheless, the compulsion to revisit the putative historical origin remains, in a manner that retains a distinct echo of Guinn’s southern modernist formula and suggests that contemporary southern history might not be such an “open field” (Guinn’s term) after all.

32 Uncle Peter’s historical fall, the speculative origin of the high lonesomes, offers an interpretative lens through which other losses-of-innocence in the narrative are filtered, augmenting the dramatic sense of ongoing historical burden. Persistently, the trauma of the uncle’s shame impinges on his nephew’s childhood, imbuing a series of the narrator’s remembered boyhood experiences with an incongruent heaviness. Crucially, none of these episodes in themselves denote the boy-narrator’s lost innocence, but in each the biblical language of original sin resounds, with childish innocence replaced with sinfulness and shame at the exact moment at which Uncle Peter’s watchful gaze is acknowledged (225; 226; 227). Mediated by the high lonesome uncle, each otherwise benign episode evokes the man’s more violent historical fall, in a succinct dramatization of the past intruding on the present.

33 “[T]he last curious scene” (226) the narrator recalls of his uncle extends this sense of postsouthern burden. The scene occurs at Bay St. Louis Beach, after the narrator (who has just turned thirteen) falls prey to a stinging verbal assault by a “street-mouthed” New Orleans girl (of similar age), who screams “Hey Cracker, eat me!” at him as he plays in the water (228). Observing the encounter, Uncle Peter flies into a disproportionate rage, instilling an epiphany of sorts in the boy-narrator who suddenly “understood there was a huge tragedy in my uncle, regardless of anything” (229). Then, the mature adult-narrator offers a retrospective explanation for the man’s odd behavior, interpreting it as an instance of historical foresight: “Could it be … That he saw my fate coming to me in my teens as his had, when he killed the man?” (229-230). It is no coincidence that the story’s narrator, Peter Howard Jr. or “Little Pete,” is the namesake of his double: symbolically, the elder’s shameful inheritance is conferred to its successor, as if to suggest the boy’s own fall-from-grace has already been predetermined, his own fate coming to him just like his uncle’s. When the narrator himself pronounces the New Orleans youth “Already deep into sin, weathered like a slut at a bingo table, from a neighborhood that smelled like whisky on a hot bus exhaust” (229), a moment of transference occurs, with Uncle Peter’s darkened perception of the girl’s sinfulness transposed onto his now-grown nephew. Thus, southern historical entrapment is dramatized in Hannah’s creative deployment of the gothic convention of textual doppelgängers.

34 The concept of the passive inheritance of second-generational guilt is best dramatized in the climax of “Uncle High Lonesome.” It ends with an extraordinary confession from its narrator, corroborating the sense of oedipal predictability above, who professes to have inherited a strong and tangibly felt guilt for Uncle Peter’s crime, as if he himself committed the murder: “For years now I have dreamed I killed somebody. The body has

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been hidden, but certain people know I am guilty…and I know, deep within” (230). Then, and equally mysteriously, Uncle Peter’s shameful legacy is bequeathed in turn to the narrator’s own nephew: “My nephew was nodding the whole while I was telling him this. He has dreamed this very thing, for years” (230). Many Hannah stories may be read as articulations of original sin, and indeed, quite fittingly “Uncle High Lonesome” comes full circle when the certainty of historical recurrence is realized in its closing lines, these nephews apparently fated to inherit guilt from a prior generation’s crime. Providing a neat analogy for the shame of both the antebellum and pre-civil rights South for subsequent generations, white male coming-of-age in Hannah’s fictional family is therefore microcosmic of the South’s public mythology; its present inhabitants bound inescapably to repeat or inherit the shame of the past, even if they are not related to it directly.

35 Caruth’s work on historical transference pertains again to discussion here, in line with a body of contemporary scholarship on the passing-down of trauma onto subsequent generations. Marita Grimwood, for example, explains her broad conception of the term “second generation” (a term gaining purchase in America following Helen Epstein’s Children of the Holocaust [1979]) to encompass “the consciousness of later generations and communities” (3), not necessarily ancestrally related but including children, grandchildren, and those living in close proximity to Holocaust survivors, who “tend to address the issue of growing up with the profound sense that their [predecessors’] experiences are inescapable and somehow their own” (8). While thinking about the inherited trauma of the violence experienced by Holocaust survivors most aptly applies to the victims of racism in the South, the notion of second-generation bequeathing of “inescapable” historical burdens might also be applied to Hannah’s white characters, who expressly dramatize the second-hand inheritance of historical guilt. Indeed, I want to argue that these ideas within contemporary trauma and memory studies are in keeping with the modernists’ understanding that the burdens of the past can never be quelled. The ending of “Uncle High Lonesome” confirms that history does not simply “die” with its living memories. It is kept alive by historical transference and by the stories and mythologies (familial and cultural) that have been borne from its events.

36 If we accept that historical trauma need not always be experienced personally for its pressures to be felt, then the sort of amnesiac historical rupture some have identified after southern modernism is a misconception. The postsouthern protagonists discussed in this paper feel the weight of the past as much as their elders, although their direct experiences are not the same, because the South’s historical narratives—from both sides of the racial divide—are not easy to escape or reroute. Further, because historical memory is often indistinguishable from story in narratives such as these, the burden of history retains its usefulness as a formula for thinking about certain kinds of cultural identity, even in a contemporary moment which questions the very notion of authentic cultural history or identity as distinct from its representations. Hannah’s postsouthern aesthetic seems bent, therefore, on muddling oppositional distinctions between the “haunted” modernist South, and the “amnesiac” postmodernist one, in ways that complicate some of the more straightforward arguments of this paper’s opening pages.

37 Within this self-consciously “southern” paradigm of historical entrapment, indeed a further twist is added in Hannah’s story, a distinction between old and new ideas about how the burden of history functions in contemporary formulations of southernness. This is based on a concept of performativity that appears almost uniformly in Hannah’s

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fiction, gaining significant traction in this last collection. Here, the author’s vision of postsouthern-burden reveals its true complexity. When we compare Uncle Peter’s historical burden to his nephew’s, it becomes clear that if the older generation’s guilt is real (insofar as Uncle Peter’s guilt comes from an actual crime he committed), then the younger generation’s is only imagined or dreamed, removed from what we might term the authentic historical event; twice-removed in the case of the Uncle Peter’s great- nephew. While he was never physically imprisoned, Uncle Peter exists in a state of literal and figurative stasis, quite unable to leave his hometown and, psychologically, to forget “the dead man in his past” (226). Meanwhile, his nephews’ final confessions of their own felt culpability may seem authentic enough “(I know, deep within”), but of course we know that neither one actually has committed the historical crime of murder outside the fantasy realm. The second-generation’s guilt has become increasingly detached from its origin, the scene of actual historical guilt. Nevertheless, they seem to gain a historical agency, committing the crime by proxy as it were, because of the performative freedom this detachment from the actual crime has afforded. Occurring only at the level of performance, it is the narrator’s creative enactment of southern burden which recovers a sense of agency which at first would seem incongruous, given its basis in previously established ideas about historical determinism and the passive acceptance of fate.

38 It is this performative aspect of postsouthern burden which lends Hannah’s fiction its distinct currency amid debates about the contemporary efficacy of regional studies. In parallel to the nephews’ professed burden as a creative adaptation of the past, we can appreciate the performative aspect of Hannah’s own creative modification of modernist southern burden. The narrator’s guilt may be purely textual in Hannah’s story. But, while it is freed from the (authentic?) guilt of the uncle which is truly debilitating and imprisoning, the concept of southern burden remains, regardless. Like Sam Hughes’ questionable epiphany at the end of In Country, Hannah’s narrator’s guilt is phony, but it is felt authentically enough. Playing with our expectations and with the modernists’ formula in this way, Hannah’s new take on a familiar trope defies us to distinguish, finally or fully, between what is authentic and what is purely performative. This suggests that the concepts of authenticity (southern) and performativity (postmodern) have always been as essentially symbiotic as “Uncle High Lonesome” suggests, though it is perhaps only more recently that the critical language to articulate this phenomenon has emerged.

39 This vital sense of freedom inherent in the capacity to perform distinguishes Uncle Peter’s original historical burden from its subsequent “copies,” and it can explain Hannah’s visible sidestepping of traditional oedipal narratives by way of uncles and nephews (not fathers and sons). The narrator has inherited something from his namesake, but it is not his guilt so much as his dedication to performance. This is implicit in such narrative revelations as “I was not the same person … after that afternoon” (225), or “These were my teen years when I was altogether a different person” (226). The relative mutability of these two male characters is a seemingly minor detail in the story, but here it proves crucial to its author’s creative inflection of the modernists’ theme. Unlike his nephew, Uncle Peter cannot escape historical burden because he cannot invest the roles he plays with the semblance of authenticity. Thus, Hannah explores the potential for individual human agency to reside, however ironically, in the mutability of historical fact, in performance, and in the phony image.

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40 In “Uncle High Lonesome,” this is captured succinctly in a scene where the narrator recalls his uncle being oddly captivated by the puppet-show plays, inspired by the children’s TV show Howdy Doody, he would perform as a boy. The scene’s unique significance is revealed when we recall that its memory continues to trouble our adult narrator long after Uncle Peter has died: “I still don’t know what the hell went on with him and the puppets, the way he watched them, then me” (226). Like the fishing episode (224), the scene is described in a curiously biblical language of enraptured witness, with childish innocence replaced with sinfulness and shame: The puppets seemed to worry him … He looked at me as if I were magic, operating these little people and speaking for them. He had the stare of an intense confused infant. When I’d raise my eyes to him, he’d look a bit ashamed, as if he’d been seduced into thinking these toys were living creatures. He watched my mouth when I spoke in a falsetto for them (226).

41 When we frame this scene in terms of Hannah’s exposition of the relative agency in performance available to uncle and nephew, we can appreciate how the special appeal of these shows lies in the child’s successful execution of a persuasive performance, symbolized by his ability to conjure these inanimate toys to life. While our narrator gains masculine power from a convincingly enacted performance (momently, the roles are reversed and the adult becomes the “infant”), history excludes his uncle from such possibility; as a man from an older world he remains unable to carry off a truly cogent performance. This is captured concisely in the narrator’s declaration that, watching the puppets, “You’d have thought he [Uncle Peter] was staring into a world he never even considered possible, somewhere on another planet, something he’d missed out on and was very anxious about” (226).

42 This level of alienated (high lonesome?) detachment from authentic history, achieved by the postsouthern generation, can be further explained by recalling how Hannah’s second-generation characters have inherited a mythology of southern experience in place of the experience itself. Creatively appropriating elements of southern regional discourse in a manner that in this sense is entirely textual, phony or contrived, they are simply staging a stereotypical aspect of what Lassiter and Crespino called “the myth of southern exceptionalism” (their title). Within Hannah’s imaginative reworking of the southern backward glance is the possibility that newer generations’ experiences are merely the textual echoes of their forerunners, coming only from stories or texts rather than real events. Indeed, the narrator’s story is reliant upon the family legend he has only become privy to as an adult, meaning not only is his story parasitic upon the lifeblood of a previous generation’s authentic historical experience, but it is also underwritten by story or text. Storytelling therefore becomes an acquisitive act, appropriating the secondary tale of another man’s fallenness, gleaned from the partial accounts of other family members in the absence of any direct account from the man himself. This reduces the narrator’s own story to a mediation on a mediation, rather than what we might term “the real thing”; which by this point has become a distinctly elusive concept.

43 This notion of the vicarious appropriation of stories is evinced variously in Hannah’s writing, most memorably in “Evening of the Yarp: A Report by Roonswent Dover,” and “A Creature in the Bay.” Both are told by young narrators who have grown up in a community of (tall) tale-telling, and both confess their desire to become a similarly storied figure, “to have a story like that about me” (“Creature” 48). Each narrator triumphs in gaining his longed-for story, but not without feeding off and exaggerating

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the elders’ (possibly) more authentic tales. This is echoed by the narrator of “Two Gone Over,” who in an effort to recover a sense of masculinity compromised by an effeminizing sexual encounter with a Tallahasseean girl half his age, confesses: “I tried to attach a profound narrative to myself” based on his own uncle, a Second World War pilot described as an “athletic monument of a man” (173). Words like “narrative” and “monument” imply the narrator’s dependence not on any real sense of his uncle, but rather on the terms of the retrospective mythology that has superseded him—much as the South itself has become a myth or commoditized image which in many respects bears little resemblance to the reality. Matthew Shipe indicts this phenomenon of the South’s often-romanticized view of its own history via the words of Hannah’s narrator Homer in Hey Jack! (1987), who, in an apposite metaphor suggests that “the South has been pickled in the juice of its own image” (20, qtd. in Shipe 109). It is narrative and images that are vital in each case, evoking the sense that masculinity in the South is anxiously contingent not simply upon the actions of men in the past—heroic or sinful, real or mythologized—but on the subsequent stories that have been bred from them. In a paradoxical way, each generation’s performative appropriation of the tales of his forebears proves oddly enabling in terms of his own white southern masculinity.

44 In “Uncle High Lonesome,” the narrator’s imaginative but essentially ersatz appropriation of Uncle Peter’s real history, the “true” story, is epitomized in the scene in which the nephew describes his imagined account of “That night” (217), with Uncle Peter awaiting his fate in the cells having killed the man. A change in lexis marks a visible turn in the narrative, whose retrospective voice is brought sharply into present tense, conveying a sense of urgency and panic with a visible lack of punctuation amid a rapid succession of thoughts and images. The episode is described as if it were the narrator’s own first-hand experience, or as if Uncle Peter’s authentic historical voice were being ventriloquized through his conduit nephew: the chair legs he ground in your face all over you, and the crashing truth of your sorriness in gambling and drink so loud in your head they might be practicing the trapdoor for the noose over and over right outside the door. That night. From there. (217)

45 Something complex and intriguing occurs here, regarding the symbiotic relationship between authenticity and performance. The narrator’s insistent use of “you” and “your” establishes a bond between performer and audience, the implied “you,” as if to suggest that if we readers are seduced into believing the performance (as Uncle Peter with the puppets), it is paradoxically authenticated, no matter that of course we know this purportedly first-hand historical account is entirely speculative and constructed. At the meta level, the boy’s puppeteering anticipates the grown-narrator’s performance of the story itself. As the implied author of the story he intends his audience, “you” readers, be similarly persuaded of the authenticity of his tale. The significance of the puppets, then, is in dramatizing how a performance depends on the belief of a consuming audience (a trope deployed widely in recent southern studies), to testify both to its historical authenticity (which is created not inherent), and aesthetic worth.

46 Hannah’s writing is not simply postregional in the way Hobson’s 1991 study implies. It retains a keen interest in southern history while suggesting history (and region) is a kind of myth, or performance; it is from this tension that its “power” (Hobson’s word) derives. On one hand, the stand-out language of the scene above, with its direct address and emphasis on sensory descriptions, evokes a tangible sense of immediacy, perhaps

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to legitimize the younger generation’s claim to have inherited a genuine sense of guilt from its elders’ crimes. Ostensibly, this neatly corroborates the notion of the inherited burden of cultural guilt in the white South, derived from a dark and violent past both personal and public. On the other hand, we have seen how obstinately Hannah blurs distinctions between modernist and postmodernist formulations of southern-burden, thereby forcing us to question whether there ever was a time when the South was not “postmodern” in the ways that we conceive of that term today. Hannah’s metafictional stories demand that we question the extent that the mediated or “secondary” nature of contemporary historical experience is simply a postmodern concept, and to what extent it has always inhabited writing from the metafictional or “storied” South. Of course this is not to reduce the realities of southern history (including slavery and segregation) to mere narrative or text, but rather (as Woodward similarly intended) to expand the boundaries of our thinking about southern-burden beyond discussions of the waning of authentic historical memory, regional distinction, or of historicity per se.

47 Michael Kreyling was one of the first to indict modern southern literary studies in favor of a “new” southern studies which critically rejects a “South” that functions outside its discursive constructions. In the provocatively-named The South That Wasn’t There (2010), Kreyling seeks to trouble rigid distinctions between “history” and “memory,” ultimately positing that the “future” of “southern memory” resides in “simulacra” or the forms of its textual mediations (194). Kreyling’s title formulation denotes his interest in “place/time narratives” in postsouthern writing “when the author has (as yet) no firsthand experience of being there: no ground literally” (121). These words expressly evoke contemporary thinking about historical transference as dramatized in Hannah’s postsouthern narratives, and they also offer an apt summary of what Uncle Peter’s nephew-narrator is doing in the scene above, as with his story more broadly.

48 In “Uncle High Lonesome,” it is crucial that the sense of historical transference discussed, where the cultural memory of guilt is felt from a “groundless” position, is achieved only at the level of the aesthetic performance. The memory described is not the narrator’s own, however urgent or paradoxically grounded or first-hand it appears to be. On first impression, this move from the real to the textual appears to invoke Simpson’s earlier argument, for a supposedly fading sense of authentic historical memory in the South impacting detrimentally on post-1960s regional and literary culture, which can mine only “textbooks” rather than direct memorial accounts for its reference. However, applying Kreyling’s above theory of the fluidity between “grounded” (real) and imagined (mythologized) forms of historical memory suggests that Hannah’s stories cannot simply dramatize a sense of historical reality being replaced by textuality. Instead, his texts posit that “southern” is and has always been inextricable from its forms of historical adaptation and performance, with imagination and myths not only blurring but actively constituting the concepts of regional and historical authenticity in literature about the South.

49 Here we should note Woodward’s own acknowledgement, amplified in significant additions to his original text in 1968 and 1993, that southern history and identity never were intended to be understood as foundational or essential concepts in his formulation of southern-burden, but rather, as a complex and sometimes paradoxical set of (evolving) interactions between stories and lived experience. If we conceive of cultural identity as a dynamic synthesis of diverse and hybrid components, real and

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imagined, then Woodward’s theory can be brought into accordance with contemporary (and post-structuralist) explorations of what constitutes regional authenticity in a postregional moment. Reading Hannah in this way suggests that these arguments within the new southern studies need not simply break with “traditional” understandings of the burden of (post)southern history.

50 Once more, the trickiness of distinguishing “real history” from memory in Hannah’s fiction (both here and elsewhere) problematizes Simpson’s charge that waning first- hand memory would incrementally lessen the impact of historical events on contemporary southern literature, because one generation’s historical memory cannot be accessed any more authentically than any other’s. As such, in “Uncle High Lonesome,” we readers also become complicit in the guilt: not of the actual crime (Uncle Peter’s), but in having been seduced by its storied account as presented by our narrator (the “puppeteer”). By drawing the reading audience into complicity in this way, more subtly, the metafictional author’s true guilt is revealed to have stemmed from the recognition of his own “crime” of storytelling, a feat that has been indistinguishable from lying from its very first instance in “A Creature in the Bay,” where “I even worked in the lie more” (51). Here then is the narrator’s imagined crime —and indeed, the corruption of all writing from the metafictional perspective (Hutcheon 49)—and it stems from the narrator’s self-reflexive cognizance of his story’s inability to represent truthfully or mimetically.

51 This metafictional acknowledgement of authorial guilt sheds subtle light on some of the complexities of the story’s curious ending, enriching our interpretation of the narrator’s final strange confession of inherited culpability. As a foil for Hannah’s authorial self-reflexivity about his own writing (or telling) about the South, this characteristically metafictional aspect of the story is integral to its value. It offers a vital means of mitigating a major contemporary tension between “traditional” and the so-called new southern studies, because it reconceptualizes the South as something that is simultaneously both material and discursive. Such writing is informed by a palpable sense that regional history continues to burden contemporary subjects in mysterious ways, even while it is self-reflexive about acknowledging how “southern- burden” is a mythology and a performance. This is the sophisticated duality of Hannah’s writing: when a story which appears to present an apparently straightforward disquisition on southern historical haunting reveals that the inherited burden, at the metafictional level, is that of the storyteller-liar’s acknowledgement of his act of false performance; as well as the performativity of southern burden itself.

52 This reading of “Uncle High Lonesome” conspicuously subverts oppositional notions of being and performance, with both freedom and authenticity resting in simulation or performance rather than in some metaphysical idea of the real. This is caught by the sense of fluidity established between dreams and reality at the story’s close, between real historical events, memories and stories which Hannah’s writing persistently blurs. By attaching this concept of performance to the idea of southern-burden in the late twentieth century, Hannah reveals his postmodern reworking of an established modernist trope. This is the world Uncle Peter never considered possible, one where the narrator’s postmodern staging of historical burden happens at a crucial historical distance. It is precisely this imagined detachment, this removal from more rigid understandings of southern-burden, which enables performative appropriations of

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historical discourses which can be vitally liberating. And this is even more remarkable when the appropriated narratives appear to articulate oppression and entrapment.

53 Hannah’s writing challenges ideas about the South and authentic southern history based on a stable set of binaries between real and imagined, authentic and performative, old and new, modern and postmodern. As metafictional texts, his stories are profoundly self-conscious about the staged or simulated nature of southern-burden as one particular element of a southernness that is as constructed as it is authentic. I have argued that in Hannah’s texts, subjective agency can be recovered in the postmodern moment through regenerative acts of performance, staging one’s historical entrapment as part of a self-consciously imagined regionalism. And this, paradoxically, is only made possible in the absence of more rigid notions of authentic history and place. Hannah’s stories posit that there may be more creative freedom inherent in a post-South that is less beholden to foundational ideas about its own regional identity and historical discourses, comprised of textual constructions such as the “backward-looking” South or “the burden of southern history”—which are simultaneously both dramatized and challenged in Hannah’s extraordinary writing.

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---. “Two Gone Over.” High Lonesome. New York: Grove Press, 1996. 167-184. Print.

---. “Uncle High Lonesome.” High Lonesome. New York: Grove Press, 1996. 211-230. Print.

Hinrichsen, Lisa. “‘I can’t believe it was really real’: Violence, Vietnam, and Bringing War Home in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.” Southern Literary Journal 40.2 (2008): 232-248. Print.

Hobson, Fred. The Southern Writer in the Postmodern World. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1991. Print.

Humphries, Jefferson, ed. Southern Literature and Theory. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1990. Print.

Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. New York: Methuen, 1984. Print.

Jay, Paul. Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. Print.

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Johnson, Alison. “Sam Hughes as Second Generation Trauma Victim in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.” War, Literature & The Arts 26 (2014): 1-15. Print.

Kreyling, Michael. The South That Wasn’t There: Postsouthern Memory and History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2010. Print.

Lassiter, Matthew and Joseph Crespino, eds. The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

Lees, Ruth. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. Print.

Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country. New York: Harper and Row, 1993. Print.

Maxwell, Angie. “Introduction: Impact of C. Vann Woodward’s The Burden of Southern History.” American Review of Politics 32 (2011): 79-81. Print.

Maxwell, Angie, Todd Shields, and Jeannie Whayne, eds. The Ongoing Burden of Southern History: Politics and Identity in the Twenty-First Century South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2012. Print.

Noble, David. “‘Tragic and Meaningful to an Insane Degree’: Barry Hannah.” Southern Literary Journal 15.1 (1982): 37-44. Print.

Potts, James. “The Shade of Faulkner’s Horse: Cavalier Heroism and Archetypal Immortality in Barry Hannah’s Postmodern South.” Perspectives on Barry Hannah, ed. Martyn Bone. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2010. 65-84. Print.

Romine, Scott. The Real South: Southern Narrative in the Age of Cultural Reproduction.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008. Print.

Roth, Michael. Memory, Trauma, and History: Essays on Living with the Past. New York: Columbia UP, 2012. Print.

Rubin, Louis. Southern Renascence: The Literature of the Modern South. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins UP, 1953. Print.

Simpson, Lewis. The Brazen Face of History: Studies in the Literary Consciousness of

America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980. Print.

Shipe, Matthew. “Accountability, Community and Redemption in Hey Jack! and Boomerang.” Perspectives on Barry Hannah, ed. Martyn Bone. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2010. 102-119. Print.

Smith, Jon. “What the New Southern Studies Does Now.” Journal of American Studies 49.4 (2015): 861-870. Print.

Tate, Allen. Collected Essays. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1959. Print.

Ward, Jesmyn. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. Print.

Weston, Ruth. Barry Hannah: Postmodern Romantic. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1998. Print.

Widiss, Benjamin. “They Endured: The Faulknerian Novel and Post-45 American Fiction.”

Matthews, John, ed. The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. 148-163. Print.

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ABSTRACTS

This paper considers Barry Hannah’s short story “Uncle High Lonesome” (1996) as a postsouthern reworking of the modernist “southern burden” paradigm. Close readings of Hannah’s work reveal conspicuously “southern” narratives of historical haunting, trauma and guilt, implying that the burden of history remains a useful means of understanding late twentieth century regional fiction. This paper argues for Hannah’s unique currency in ongoing critical debates, both in the new southern studies and in southern literary studies more broadly, about the future of “South” and the concept of inherited historical memory in a post-regional and post-historical culture. In proposing that Hannah’s story is tenaciously southern even while it highlights the ways in which the South is mediated and performed, this paper argues that the story offers a creative response to the notion that the regional and the postmodern exist in simple opposition.

INDEX

Keywords: Authenticity, burden, history, South, southern, post-South, postsouthern, regional, postregional, postmodern

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Good Work and Good Works: Work and the Postsecular in George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

Brian Jansen and Hollie Adams

1 Given his status as arguably the most critically celebrated practitioner of the short story today, it seems unusual the extent to which George Saunders’s short fictions (particularly those of his earliest two collections, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline [1996] and Pastoralia [2000]) return, again and again, to the same thematic territory, the same motifs, even the same plots. A typical early George Saunders story, with variations, runs thusly: a down-on-his-luck narrator (usually male) in a vaguely dystopian American present slaves away at a cartoonish blue-collar job for little satisfaction and less financial reward. Said narrator, robbed of agency by the social conditions of his world, is forced to make some difficult choice, the act of which (and the outcome of which) leads invariably to an ethically compromised position. The jobs change—from historical theme park “verisimilitude inspector” (“CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”) to professional caveman (“Pastoralia”) to rodential pest exterminator (“The 400-Pound CEO”), “drive-through hand job” facilitator (“Bounty”) to male stripper complete with oversized “Penile Stimulator” (“Sea Oak”)—and the source of ethical compromise shifts, too, though the locust is often the protagonist’s complicity in the death of another human being, usually a child, and often the hero is doubly compromised by the economic hardships of providing for a family (as the narrator of “CivilWarLand” reflects, “Is this the life I envisioned for myself? My God no. I wanted to be a high jumper. But I have two of the sweetest children ever born” [9]). As one representative review, published on the blog io9 puts it, in Saunders’s stories personal humiliation is linked to cooperation in a morally bereft system. . . . [Saunders’s characters] are people who participate in their own destruction, or who attempt to keep their heads above water even if that means pushing others underneath. The main constant, as always, is a sense of absurdity and its near neighbor, futility. (Anders)

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2 And Saunders stories tend to end similarly, too, in a way that offers little practical resolution but lots of moralism. The wisdom of his work is often the same wisdom that he himself articulated in a now-widely anthologized 2013 Commencement Address, to “err in the direction of kindness” (qtd. in Lovell, emphasis in original)—a responsibility we have, both he and his stories suggest, even in a world that has robbed us of agency.1

3 Yet for all this sameness, for all this similarity, Saunders remains, as mentioned above, among the most celebrated American writers of our contemporary moment, and was long before the release of his debut novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) saw him feted in mainstream media news sources and on late night television, attaining a kind of literary celebrity arguably not seen since the likes of Norman Mailer or James Baldwin.2 Even before Bardo, Saunders had under his belt a MacArthur Fellowship (2006), four National Magazine Awards (1994, 1996, 2000, 2004), and a PEN/Malamud Award (2013), having also been a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award (1996), the O. Henry Award (1997), and the National Book Award (2013). He is, as another review puts it, “just about as famous and rhapsodized as an American fiction writer can get without triggering a [Jonathan] Franzenesque backlash” (Harvilla). And Saunders’s commercial and critical success, we posit, might be read in part as prelude to what Kasia Boddy and others have observed as a return to “work” in American literature—a return, particularly in the wake of the recent American financial crisis, to thinking about class, money, and the exigencies of labour, whether manual or intellectual (2).3 Ralph Clare’s monograph Fictions Inc. specifically notes a shift from “Cold War-era neuroses about political ideology to contemporary worries about economic power” (1), arguing particularly that the proliferation of corporate entities in contemporary literary texts speaks to “the vast and ungraspable enterprise of late capitalism” (3), attempting to “resist, reassess, and reimagine an economic system that, even after the ascent of the ‘new economy,’ is clearly failing” (4). To Saunders’s version of corporate toil, Boddy adds works like Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask (2010), David Foster Wallace’s posthumous The Pale King (2011),4 and Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End (2007), and to this list we might in turn add myriad more. The turn to literatures of work has been crystallized, even, in university classes dedicated to the intersection of labour and the literary (such as Evergreen State College’s “Odd Jobs and Labors of Love”) and anthologies like Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work (2011), edited and introduced by Richard Ford.

4 Ford observes, in his introduction to Blue Collar, “that unless [he] could say . . . what an important character did for a living, then that character didn’t achieve the kind of persuasiveness [he] needed, the kind to make ‘him’ or ‘her’ ‘real’ . . . so that the character could carry moral weight, create consequence, transport the reader, be ‘round’” (ix). Saunders has agreed, noting in an interview that “it’s the dominant thing in American life. It’s [something] almost all people do, and we do so much of it, too much of it maybe, and most always for someone else’s improvement than our own. . . . Most of us start working early and keep on working forever, and so I guess it would seem weird to me if work wasn’t the dominant thing in my fiction” (“Between the Poles” 87). But, he goes on, “if you look at work, or write about work, and you are living in a capitalist society, then you are de facto looking at issues of sisterhood and brotherhood . . . about the nature of our responsibilities towards one another” (87). In another interview, he notes something similar, that he “was never able to think of morality and a workplace separately because they were always impinging on one another” (“Crazy Elements”). Saunders’s argument here echoes the language of Studs

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Terkel’s oral history Working and the search it identifies “for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying” (xi).5

5 Work carries moral and ethical freight, a claim made clear by the slippage in its very definitions. The idea of work “as a means of making one’s living or earning money” (n., 4a) arises, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, roughly contemporaneously with the sense of “an act or deed expressive of a particular moral quality or purpose” (n., 1d) and “A good or moral act or deed considered in relation to justification before God” (n., 1c). So too does the compound “good work,” that is, “a morally commendable or virtuous act; an act of kindness, good will, or charity; esp. (in religious and theological contexts) an act of piety, regarded as carried out in obedience to the commandments, or as the product of faith or grace” (“good work,” n.). At least one Saunders narrator is, indeed, aware of this slippage, distinguishing his 9-to-5 work from what he calls his “real job, [his] penance, [his] albatross” (“Offloading” 69)—that is, caring for an elderly neighbor.

6 It is with this link between “work” (in its various senses) and “good work” that we begin this line of thought, in tandem with an observation of a tendency toward religiosity (particularly Christian religiosity) in many of Saunders’s short stories. That religiosity plays out in ways both sincere and parodic: on the one hand, many Saunders characters pray quite earnestly, while others offer religiously-grounded advice that the narratives seem to endorse (however tentatively). On the other hand, religious inclination is often rendered absurd, or heavily corporatized, from the “Center for Wayward Nuns” in “The Wavemaker Falters” to overpriced “Chill’n’Pray” coolers adorned with images of religious figures in “The 400-Pound CEO” (56), from Bibles filled with “fallacious pro-slavery sayings of Christ” (“Bounty” 178) to an employer who swears on a Bible that he’ll “never hire a crazed maniac to perform an important security function again” (“CivilWarLand” 22). It is worth mentioning, too, that David Rando labels “Sea Oak’s” Christian elements as the “theological grotesque” (452-53).

7 As much as Saunders seems drawn to Christian (particularly Catholic) religiosity,6 however, and as much as Saunders views the Catholic church as “in the world, on its feet and sort of activist” (“Real as Hell”), there is a hesitancy when it comes to the faith’s precepts, perhaps traceable to what Saunders calls his interest in individual human “tendencies” rather than “systems” (“Between the Poles” 92). This interest in tendencies rather than systems perhaps explains the double-edgedness of his characters’ relation with Christian faith: it is crucial to Saunders’s critique of the power structures of post-industrial, late-capitalist life, and yet ultimately prone, in its institutionalized forms, to cooptation by those very same power structures. To wit, we offer the evangelical magazine Christianity Today’s critique of what it calls Saunders’s “misguided theology of kindness”: “To make kindness into an ultimate virtue is to insist that our most important moral obligations are those we owe to our fellow human beings” (Pollock Michel), the article declares as though that were a bad thing, as though the First Commandment absolves Christians of any further obligations in the material world. That article posits instead that the most important commitment is not to one another but to the Christian God, an argument that the Ten Commandments must be read through the lens of what they take to be the First: “Do not put any other Gods in place of me” (Exodus 20:3, NIV).

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8 Rather than reading Saunders’s fictions as straightforwardly (or even ambivalently) Christian, then, we want to pivot and engage Saunders as being a member of what John McClure, in Partial Faiths, identifies as a baby boomer “generation of seekers” who have sought to satisfy a relentless spirituality in evangelical teaching—but also mysticism, Eastern religion, Goddess worship, and New Age movements (8; Roof 4). For McClure, Saunders—a self-identified Tibetan Buddhist who has said that he doesn’t “see Christianity and Buddhism as separate; in fact, . . . one pick[s] up where the other left off” (“A Conversation With”), and who has suggested writing as a tertiary way of spiritual engagement7—certainly fits the mould of seekers who bring habits of “critical thinking and progressive political ideas” (8) to spiritualism, one of a group of “[r]eligiously unhoused but spiritually hungry . . . people increasingly negotiat[ing] among competing glimpses of the sacred, seeking partial knowledge and practical wisdom” (8). Religiously speaking, then, we want to position Saunders (through a close reading, particularly, of his short story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”) in the tradition of literary postsecularism, that “mode of being and seeing that is at once critical of secular constructions of reality and dogmatic religiosity”—“tell[ing] stories about new forms of religiously inflected seeing and being” that are nevertheless “dramatically partial and open-ended” (McClure ix).

9 We acknowledge here that the risk of a “postsecular reading” is in the way (as has been argued by Fessenden, Coviello and Hickman, Hungerford, and others) it neatly cleaves categories. In the words of Zhange Ni, the postsecular “implies that religion and the secular can be conceptualized as neatly bounded and easily separable entities, or even consecutive stages on an evolutionary ladder” (51). And, as Tracy Fessenden argues, “[t]o consider the career of secularization in American culture is . . . also necessarily to consider the consolidation of a Protestant ideology that has grown more entrenched and controlling even as its manifestations have often become less visibly religious” (5) —that, in other words, the idea of secularity itself is deeply tied up in religious, particularly Protestant, contexts. Nevertheless, we view Saunders’s fictions as consistent with what McClure identifies as the hallmarks of the postsecular literary tradition, its narratives lead[ing] into zones where the characters must learn to reconcile important secular and religious intuitions and where they receive ‘limited gift[s]’ . . . of the spirit. These characters are transformed and steadied, as it were, by the sense that the world is seamed with mystery and benignity, by awakened impulses to reverence, wonder, self-forgetfulness, and care, and by coming into company with others. These gifts make life more bearable, but they fall short of the gifts of absolute conviction or revival. (6)

10 Saunders’s subjects and narrators are, quite often “strand[ed] . . . in the ideologically mixed and confusing middle zones of the conventional conversion narrative” (McClure 4), his narratives again and again identifying “spiritualities [that] arise in the cracks of the social order, among the anonymous and the excluded” (McClure 20).

11 As McClure notes, in these sorts of texts, “other realms become visible but either partially and fleetingly or in bizarre superabundance” (4); the latter is certainly the case in the eponymous story of Saunders’s debut collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, which features an unnamed narrator in a dystopic present who labours at a Civil War- themed amusement park and who must struggle amongst competing impulses: his hatred for his job, his commitment to his children, his desire to please his dissatisfied wife and the desire to do good, and the actual requirements of his job as Verisimilitude

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Inspector, which necessitates firing subordinates, hiring war criminals, and covering for said war criminals’ bloody crimes. The narrator frequently imagines quitting but is stalled by “[his] last degrading batch of résumés. Two hundred send-outs and no nibbles. . . . [He] think[s] of his car payment” (4). He thinks of his children, Marcus and Howie, and how deeply they love a playhouse the narrator is still paying off. Elsewhere, he’s reminded of the “droves of unemployed huddled in front of Personnel every morning” (18); positioned thusly as a kind of slave, the narrator struggles with his complicity in the war criminal, Samuel’s, actions (namely disfiguring and murdering a teenager who has stolen some penny candy—the narrator is later forced to bury the teenager’s dismembered hand). Metaphorically, the story thus enacts a tension not unlike that between the language of Colossians, and particularly St. Paul’s advice to slaves: “Work at everything you do with all your heart. Work as if you were working for the Lord, not for human masters. Work because you know that you will finally receive as a reward what the Lord wants you to have” (23-24, NIV), and the language of Corinthians: “Each one of us will be judged for what we do while in our bodies” (2 Cor 5:10, NIV).

12 Complicating the narrative are the myriad ghosts inhabiting the world of CivilWarLand, particularly the McKinnons (1860s homesteaders who lived and died on the land now occupied by the theme park) and—later—the ghost of the teenage thief whose hand the narrator has buried. These figures appear, in the language of McClure, “with the vulgar exuberance of a tabloid headline” (17), but their presence is difficult to explain. Though the narrator speculates that they wander the grounds because “something must have happened to them” (12), and it is ultimately revealed that the family is restless-after- death because they were murdered by Mr. McKinnon in a fit of what we might diagnose today as PTSD-induced rage (24-25), it is not quite clear, for instance, who can and cannot see the McKinnons (or why). They are, again via McClure, “visitations suggest[ing] that the laws of nature may be contingent,” but they do not provide any clearly demarcated alternative to those laws of nature (4), a point further emphasized by the fact that the narrator speculates he will be sent to the “nut-hut” (20) if he admits to seeing the McKinnons, and the fact that the story’s various ghosts seem to operate differently in terms of their knowledge. As the narrator points out, the McKinnons seem largely unaware of their ghostly status—“they don’t realize we’re chronologically slumming, they just think the valley’s prospering” (12)—whereas the slain teenager and the narrator himself (in death) seem to possess deeper insight, what the narrator himself calls “perfect knowledge” (26) of both the past and future. And what’s remarkable about the McKinnons, in particular, is the fact that despite their incomplete knowledge and their fundamentally flawed nature (they are certainly not god-like), their diagnoses of the narrator are astute: it is not technically true, as Mr. McKinnon observes, that a fire in the park is “divine retribution for [the narrator’s] slovenly moral state” (13), but metaphorically it may be so (and it is, moreover, prophetic of another fire soon to come later in the narrative). Similarly, Mr. McKinnon’s observation that “even the heavens have fallen into disrepair” (13) has a kind of metaphorical truth value (even as the narrator ironically notes that he is resisting the urge to explain smog to the ghost), recalling Saunders’s own observations about the power of metaphor and symbol in his Catholic childhood (“Real as Hell”; “A Conversation”).8

13 Mr. McKinnon’s ghostly metaphorical insight extends, too, to his status as literary parallel—both to the narrator and the mercenary amusement park employee Samuel.

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The former connection is made explicit in the text: after the McKinnons wander too close to the site of their deaths and begin—compelled by something beyond explanation—to act out their deaths over-and-over (“the Mr.” mimes hacking them to death with a scythe [24]), Mr. McKinnon finally “sits down in the dirt and starts weeping” (25), seeking to “pitifully . . . explain” his behaviour in much the same way as the narrator has to his interlocutor. As the family breaks the cycle of these re- enactments and departs down the hill, Mr. McKinnon follows, “shouting for forgiveness. He’s shouting that he’s just a man. He’s shouting that hatred and war made him nuts” (25). Tellingly, the narrator follows, echoing Mr. McKinnon’s pleas: “I start running down the hill agreeing with him” (25). Thus the narrator seeks forgiveness from a world beyond his own, but he is doing so to those who can offer no such forgiveness, and he is nevertheless wrenched back into the profane, material world, reminded of his corporeal status by the fact that he—unlike the McKinnons, who simply pass through obstacles—“keep[s] clipping trees with [his] shoulders and falling down” (25).

14 But in his resemblance also to the mercenary Samuel, Mr. McKinnon actually links the three characters as inextricable, a kind of tripartite (an unholy trinity), McKinnon’s service in the Civil War (he was at Antietam [13]) a distant historical echo of Samuel’s military service: Samuel was “kicked out of Vietnam for participating in a bloodbath” [14]). Where the story could play Samuel as villain, however, he too is humanized, the narrator coming only in death to understand the source of Samuel’s pain, even as the narrator (and the story more generally) refuses to use that pain as justification or excuse: “I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he has yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three” (26). The reader is perhaps meant to note the unfairness of this fate, that an unrepentant murderer should die relatively peacefully in old age, but of course the broader point may be the fact that life being unfair—even random—does not absolve us of our responsibilities to one another, moment-to- moment.

15 “CivilWarLand” concludes with the narrator’s ethical quandary coming to a head, confronted by the ghost of the teen whose hand he has buried before he is, in turn, murdered by the war criminal who killed the teen in the first place. Samuel has to cover his tracks, and his reassurances, “Don’t take this too personal” (26), might be read in light of the narrator’s unwillingness to take things “personal,” his detachment from his potentially harmful actions. Previous to this moment, the narrator debates the virtue of his actions repeatedly, invoking both religious and legal precedent—“It doesn’t say anywhere thou shalt not bury some guy’s hand,” he claims, before admitting that legally he is “an accomplice and obstructor of justice” (20). But his ultimate, flaccid defense to the disfigured teenage ghost, that the mercenary Samuel “wasn’t my friend” (25) is not enough, for “[h]e wasn’t [the narrator’s] enemy” (25), either (impersonality, in other words, might be part of the problem), and the ghost makes clear that the narrator must live because he has “amends to make” (25). The implication here is that said amends cannot be made in the/an afterlife: the story explicitly rejects the narrator’s earlier decision, fearing for the well-being of his boys, that he will “take [his] lumps in the afterlife” (20). The narrator’s subsequent death at the hands of Samuel makes this point heartbreakingly clear, as the (now himself ghostly) narrator seeks futilely to correct the wrongs he has done—he “sweep[s] through Sam’s body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling only hate and

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hate, solid as stone” (26). The lesson is that it is not what happens after death that counts but what we do in our lives: we are, returning to Corinthians “judged for what we do while in our bodies” (2 Cor 5:10, NIV), and it is telling the sheer simplicity of the wish the narrator dies with, that he had loved his wife better, in spite of her flaws. The narrator’s failure is a failure—to return to Saunders’s oft-stated non-fictional thesis—of kindness, a failure of empathy on both a local and a grand stage. As Layne Neeper has argued in his account of Saunders’s satirical dimension, a story like “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” “identifies vice and folly with withering exactitude; [Saunders] does so in wildly imaginative and dramatic fictional worlds, but, rather than stories ending with the emergence of some amorphous sense of correction, Saunders’s stories intend only one development: the empathetic improvement of his audience” (284-85).

16 In his emphasis on this brand of kindness, Boddy identifies Saunders’s work, via Rachel Greenwald Smith, as a kind of “neoliberal fiction.” Boddy argues that Saunders’s own religious impulse to connect “inner and outer work” (10) and his sense that “we must change ourselves in order to change the world” (Kraft, qtd. in Boddy 10) might also be read through the neoliberal suggestion that “attachments beyond the self” can offer some chance at “self-development” (Smith, qtd. in Boddy 10). Boddy is critical, for example, of the way that Saunders’s work embodies principles of self-betterment/self- culture even as it mocks the conventions of the traditional self-help genre; she is critical, too, of Saunders’s aforementioned emphasis on “tendencies” rather than “systems” (Saunders, “Between the Poles” 92) and his keenness on “remain[ing] permanently confused” (Saunders, qtd. in Boddy 10)—his refusal to see corporations, government, and media as actively hostile, exploitive oppressors rather than simply as manifestations of qualities existing in all of us.

17 There is, we think, some merit in this critique. Though Saunders has spoken of his sense that “Christianity did a lot of urging one to be good but didn’t tell one much about how to accomplish that” while Buddhism “offered real practices that a person could do every day” “to change . . . to convert one’s way of thinking and being in the world” (“A Conversation”), these real practices do not seem to appear often in Saunders’s short stories, which tend instead toward that aforementioned generalizable character of simple kindness. As Neeper has pointed out, “any reader who approaches [Saunders’s stories] will be hard-pressed to identify, let alone name, any proposed normative correction, or what cautions are intended or even possible” (285), at least beyond “a new or renewed attentiveness to unironic empathy” (285).

18 But, even bypassing Saunders’s claims that his stated aim is the “erasure of self and acceptance of the conditionality of all things” (“A Conversation”), Boddy’s criticism nevertheless strikes us as somewhat ungenerous. If, as the old saw (variously attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek) goes, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism” (Fisher 2)—and, as some of Saunders’s dystopic stories, particularly “Bounty” suggest, even the apparent end-of-the-world as we know it fails to lend us such a glimpse—then it does not seem constructive to castigate an author for not having all the answers. This is particularly true given that Saunders’s stories seek to guide readers, at the very least, away from an alternative, almost certainly more unhelpful reaction to the state of the world: a radical, ascetic interiority embodied in Saunders’s depiction (in “Bounty”) of the “Church of Appropriate Humility” (122). The “Guilters” (122), as they are colloquially called, are a radical sect that believes in quantifying pain (measured in units called Victors, with

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each Victor seen as a step toward salvation), its members utterly lost in semantic debates about what does and does not merit these pain points—misdirecting someone seeking directions, for example, merits Victors “[i]f you feel really bad about it, to the point where you can’t sleep” (123). But “[o]n the other hand . . . if you’re now experiencing any pleasure thinking of your future Victors, that could mean you have to apply anti-Victors to your running total” (123). The same unhelpful, inward turn is found in “CivilWarLand,” in the tertiary character Melvin (proprietor of Melvin’s Pasta Lair), whose religious zealotry (his advice to simply “stop whining and count [your] blessings” [23], his castigation that men are “incapable of coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty” [23]) is both wildly unhelpful for the situation-at- hand and leads him to scorch the pizza he is preparing. The problem occurs, too, in “The Wavemaker Falters,” which opens with the “Center for Wayward Nuns, full of sisters and other religious personnel who’ve become doubtful” (34). The Center’s nuns (whose “conditional singing” “never exactly knocks your socks off. . . probably because of all the doubt” [34]) are given free passes to the waterpark where the narrator labours. The pass appears to help one such nun, Sister Viv (the stream seems to have reminded her of her Idaho roots, her embodied existence in this world rather than her commitments to a world beyond she has come to doubt), until she attempts suicide and is rescued by the narrator (himself dealing with the guilt of having killed a child on the job), at which point a revealing conversation takes place—two characters struggling with the same kind of doubt and pain but addressing it differently: “she . . . spits in my face and says I couldn’t possibly know the darkness of her heart. Try me, I say” (35). In classic Saunders fashion, of course, the narrator is punished for having saved Sister Viv —“[a] week later she runs amok in the nun eating hall and stabs a cafeteria worker to death” (35)—though Saunders’s stories disavow the consequentialist argument that outcome determines the worth of an action.9

19 We conclude by observing that Saunders’s approach to the problems of our capitalist society, however provisional,10 nevertheless echoes the thesis of Mark Fisher’s slim volume Capitalist Realism, particularly the observation that “people suffer from . . . being trapped within themselves” (Curtis, qtd. in Fisher 74) as well as Fisher’s call for “a new struggle over work and who controls it; an assertion of worker autonomy (as opposed to control by management) together with a rejection of certain kinds of labor (such as the excessive auditing which has become [a] so central feature of work)” (79). The work in Saunders’s works—the slippage between definitions of what work means— gestures, in some small way, to what Fisher discusses. Saunders’s short stories are only one voice, calling readers out of themselves, tentatively so—perhaps because that is the nature of partial faiths—but, as Fisher argues, “even glimmers of alternative possibilities . . . can have a disproportionately great effect” (80). Or, in Saunders’s own words, you “take . . . baby steps” (“A Conversation”). A short story, a poem, or a novel may not singlehandedly defeat evil, but—as Saunders has written, his phrasing loaded with same generalizable yet essential spiritual freight—“what good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It’s good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth” (“Mr. Vonnegut” 82). There is, he adds, “something sacred” about a good literary work, “even if nothing changes but what’s going on inside our minds. We leave such a book restored, if only briefly, to a proper relation with the truth, reminded of what is what, temporarily undeluded, our better nature set back on its feet” (83).

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20 It remains to be seen, in the final analysis, whether Saunders’s semi-spiritual vision for literature offers a way out of the problems of our capitalist moment, or whether that spirituality is only a secondary symptom of that same moment, trapping the author himself in the logic of neoliberalism and dooming him to the same fate—ethical compromise, guilt, repentance, repeat—as so many of his characters.11 But for Saunders, at least, if not for his critics, the link between literature’s spiritual freight and the possibility for action is evidenced by one of the few directly prescriptive moments in Saunders’s oeuvre—the unpublished Seussian poem “Trump L’Oeil,” posted to his Facebook account in February 2017, in which Saunders not-so-subtly ties imagination and direct action. “[G]oodness, peace, and decency / Were never heaven- sent” (65-66), the poem acknowledges, while still recognizing the power of that aforementioned “irrational truth.” He writes: “Speak out, rise up, correct and shout, / Be stubborn and satirical” (57), before going on, specifically calling on his readers to be not just but “positive” but “lyrical” (60).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anders, Charlie Jane. “George Saunders’ New Book Shows Just How Terrible First World Problems Can Be.” io9, 5 February 2013, io9.gizmodo.com/5981861/george-saunders-new-book-shows-just- how-terrible-first-world-problems-can-be. Accessed 30 May 2017.

Blakeslee, Steve and Sarah Ryan. “Odd Jobs and Labors of Love: Literature, Work, and Power.” Evergreen State College, 2018, www.evergreen.edu/catalog/offering/odd-jobs-and-labors-love- literature-work-and-power-16357. Accessed 19 June 2018.

Boddy, Kasia. “‘A Job to Do’: George Saunders on, and at, Work.” George Saunders: Critical Essays, edited by Philip Coleman and Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 1-22.

Bowe, John, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, editors. Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. Three Rivers, 2001.

Christian, Scott. “The Novel is Dead, Long Live the Chipotle Cup.” GQ, 15 May 2014, www.gq.com/ story/jonathan-safran-foer-chipotle-cup-stories. Accessed 2 June 2017.

Clare, Ralph. Fictions, Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture. Rutgers UP, 2014.

Coviello, Peter and Jared Hickman. “Introduction: After the Postsecular.” American Literature, vol. 86, no. 4, 2014, pp. 645-54.

Dorson, James. “The Neoliberal Machine in the Bureaucratic Garden: Pastoral States of Mind in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.” Rereading the Machine in the Garden: Nature and Technology in American Culture, edited by E. Erbacher, N. Marus-Schroder, F. Sedlmeier, Campus Verlag, 2014, pp. 211-30.

Felch, Susan M. “Ethics.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion, edited by Susan M. Felch, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 71-83.

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---. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion, edited by Susan M. Felch, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 1-17.

Ferris, Joshua. “Nine to Five.” The Guardian, 21 April 2007, www.theguardian.com/books/2007/ apr/21/featuresreviews.guardianreview2. Accessed 19 June 2018.

---. Then We Came to the End. Little, Brown, 2007.

Fessenden, Tracy. “The Problem of the Postsecular.” American Literary History, vol. 26, no. 1, 2014, pp.154-67.

Ford, Richard. “Introduction.” Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work, edited by Richard Ford, Harper Perennial, 2011, pp. vii-xiv.

“George Saunders: The Photocopier Guy Makes Good.” The Independent, 10 June 2006, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/george-saunders-the-photocopier- guy-makes-good-6098574.html. Accessed 1 June 2017.

“Good work.” Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed., 2004.

Greenwald Smith, Rachel. Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism. Cambridge UP, 2015.

Harvilla, Rob. “The Cold Comfort of George Saunders.” The Ringer. 14 Feb 2017, theringer.com/ george-saunders-lincoln-in-the-bardo-75c7d40de784. Accessed 1 June 2017.

Hayes-Brady, Clare. The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace: Language, Identity, and Resistance. Bloomsbury, 2016.

Hungerford, Amy. Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960. Princeton UP, 2010.

Hutchens, B. C. Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2004.

Jackson, Edward and Joel Nicholson-Roberts. “White Guys: Questioning Infinite Jest’s New Sincerity.” Orbit, vol. 5, no. 1, 2017, DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.182

Jansen, Brian. “The Fiction Factory: A Novel.” Dissertation, University of Calgary, 2018.

Kelly, Adam. “David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction.” Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays, edited by David Haring, Sideshow, 2010, pp. 131-46.

Lipsyte, Sam. The Ask. FSG, 2010.

Lovell, Joel. “George Saunders’s Advice to Graduates.” New York Times, 3 July 2013, 6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/. Accessed 30 May 2017.

Mason, Tom and Sarah Klein. “George Saunders Explains How to Tell a Good Story.” The Atlantic, 8 Dec 2015, www.theatlantic.com/video/index/419391/george-saunders-on-story/. Accessed 1 June 2017.

“A Master at Work: George Saunders Orders One Mousetrap Over the Phone.” ClickHole, 26 April 2017, www.clickhole.com/video/master-work-george-saunders-orders-one-mousetrap-o-5970. Accessed 31 May 2017.

McClure, John A. Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison. U of George P, 2007.

McMahon, Julie. “SU Professor George Saunders ‘Quite Possibly’ Stephen Colbert’s Favorite Living Author.” Syracuse.com. 16 Feb 2017, www.syracuse.com/schools/index.ssf/2017/02/

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su_professor_george_saunders_quite_possibly_stephen_colberts_favorite_living_aut.html. Accessed 31 May 2017.

Miller, Laura. “The Beautiful World.” Review of Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, Slate, 6 Feb 2017, www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/02/ george_saunders_lincoln_in_the_bardo_reviewed.html. Accessed 1 June 2017.

Neeper, Layne. “‘To Soften the Heart’: George Saunders, Postmodern Satire, and Empathy.” Studies in American Humor, ser. 4, vol. 2, no. 2, 2016, pp. 280-99.

Ni, Zhange. “Postsecular Reading.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion, edited by Susan M. Felch, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 51-67.

Pogell, Sarah. “‘The Verisimilitude Inspector’: George Saunders as the New Baudrillard.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 52, no. 4, 2011, pp. 460-78.

Pollock Michel, Jen. “The Misguided Theology of Kindness.” Christianity Today, August 2013, www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/august/misguided-theology-of-kindness.html. Accessed 29 May 2017.

Potts, Matthew. “Imagination.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion, edited by Susan M. Felch, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 103-115.

Rando, David P. “George Saunders and the Postmodern Working Class.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 53, no. 3, 2012, 437-460.

Roof, Wade. A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. HarperCollins, 1993.

Saunders, George. “The 400-Pound CEO.” 1996. Riverhead, 1997, pp. 45-64.

---. “Between the Poles of Biting & Earnest.” Interview with Derby. Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, no. 35, 2001, pp. 87-99.

---. “Bounty.” CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. 1996. Riverhead, 1997, pp. 88-197.

---. “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.” CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. 1996. Riverhead, 1997, pp.3-26.

---. “A Conversation with George Saunders.” Interview with W. Brett Wiley. Image, no. 88, n.d., imagejournal.org/article/a-conversation-with-george-saunders/. Accessed 21 May 2017.

---. “The Crazy Elements: PW Talks with George Saunders.” Interview with J. W. McCormack. Publishers Weekly, vol. 259, no. 46, 2012, p. 39.

---. “George Saunders’s Humor.” Interview with Mike Sacks. The New Yorker, 19 June 2014, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/george-saunderss-humor. Accessed 29 April 2017.

---. Lincoln in the Bardo. Random House, 2017.

---. “Mr. Vonnegut in Sumatra.” The Braindead Megaphone. Riverhead, 2007, pp. 73-83.

---. “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz.” 1996. Riverhead, 1997, pp. 65-77.

---. “Pastoralia.” Pastoralia. Riverhead, 2000, pp. 1-68.

---. “Real As Hell: A Conversation with George Saunders.” Interview with Maria Bustillos. The Awl, 19 Feb 2013, theawl.com/real-as-hell-a-conversation-with-george-saunders-83970facba09. Accessed 29 April 2017.

---. “Sea Oak.” Pastoralia. Riverhead, 2000, pp. 91-126.

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---. “Trump L’Oeil.” Facebook, 20 February 2017, www.facebook.com/GeorgeSaundersFans/posts/ 1254664397974281. Accessed 18 June 2018.

---. “The Wavemaker Falters.” CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. 1996. Riverhead, 1997, pp. 34-44.

---. “George Saunders: What Writers Really Do When They Write.” The Guardian, 4 March 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write. Accessed 2 June 2017.

Terkel, Studs. Working. 1972. The New Press, 2004.

Wallace, David Foster. The Pale King. Little Brown, 2011.

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“Work.” Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed., 2004.

NOTES

1. By way of this call to kindness, Saunders has often been identified as a practitioner of the so- called “New Sincerity” (a contested, often-maligned term [see Jackson and Nicholson-Roberts; Dorson; Williams; Hayes-Brady]) alongside figures like Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace, and Dave Eggers. Coined by critic Adam Kelly to describe writers and texts that “place . . . emphasis on intersubjective truth and communication with others” (132), the classification emerges from the phrase’s appearance in a 1993 essay by David Foster Wallace. For more on Saunders and the New Sincerity, see Pogell (478) and especially Neeper. 2. Saunders made appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (where Colbert called him “quite possibly my favorite living author” [qtd. in McMahon]) and Late Night with Seth Meyers. But perhaps his most brilliant promotional appearance was for ClickHole, sister site of the satirical news source The Onion, which mocks the conventions of clickbait content on the web. In his appearance, titled “A Master At Work,” Saunders is filmed attempting to order a single mousetrap by telephone. 3. Ferris in particular distinguishes between “way-of-life” work (as in Marlow’s trip down an African river, Quixote’s knight-errantry) and “means-to-end” work—the programmer, the project manager (“Nine to Five”). 4. Milo Burke, the hero of Lipsyte’s novel, actually works as a development officer (read: fundraiser) for a bottom-tier university, but the novel speaks to the contemporary corporatization of even the academic environment (see Jansen 25-27). Wallace’s novel, set predominately in an Internal Revenue Agency auditing centre, could be read as enacting the same sort of critique of government. 5. Another oral history, Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, updates these anxieties for the twenty-first century: “work is key to your existential circumstances,” its introduction declares: “Who am I? What do I want? What is my place in the world and my status within it? Am I useful? Am I fulfilled?” (Bowe xiii). 6. In various interviews he reports that he “loved growing up Catholic,” had “a couple of really deep experiences in church,” and characterizes the Stations of the Cross as a “profound . . . fictive exercise” (“Real as Hell”). 7. Interviewed in the Independent, Saunders observes that he “felt like [he] was a Buddhist before [he] knew it, because writing. . . . Well, what else is it? You put something down on Thursday, and if you get attached to the idea of how good it was on Thursday, then on Friday you're screwed” (qtd. in “Photocopier Guy”). Interestingly, many of Saunders’s best-known public comments (see

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Mason and Klein; Saunders, “What Writers Really Do”) have focussed on the sentence-by- sentence craft and work of writing as much or more than its moral or ethical dimension—but these very comments suggest the extent to which a story’s craft and a story’s purpose are intertwined. See Boddy (11-14) for a discussion of work in the context of Saunders’s craft and the MFA model of creative writing. 8. As discussion around his novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) suggests, Saunders’s ghosts across his oeuvre owe a debt to the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo, a “way station between incarnations in which souls prepare themselves for their next life” (Miller). In that novel, the “ghosts” that haunt a Washington, D.C. cemetery find themselves in this liminal space due to unfinished business of one kind or another. Interestingly, however, for the purpose of our argument, Laura Miller’s review of Lincoln argues that while “[t]he novel’s title, and the role of attachment in detaining the spirits in their limbolike semi-existence, suggests an underlying Buddhist cosmology[,] . . . one of the ghosts, a former reverend, claims to have glimpsed beyond this world a place of terrible judgment and punishment.” Miller speculates, then, that “it’s possible that Saunders means the afterlife to be a reflection of whatever the individual soul expects to see.” 9. It is beyond the scope of this particular essay, but Saunders’s remarks regarding the self—his personal belief that we ought to strive for a Christ- or Buddha-like “unconditional love and erasure of the self” (“A Conversation With”) might actually position him outside of any sort of normative ethics, either consequentialist or deontological. Rather, there is something almost Levinasian about this stance, supposing as it does that “[t]he relation between a self and another person is the basic context in which ethical problems must be examined” (Hutchens 8). 10. Saunders is, after all, no radical: he self describes as an “Eastern liberal” (qtd. in Boddy 11) and has had his work “published” on drinking cups at the Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle (Christian). 11. The authors are grateful to the European Journal of American Studies’ peer reviewer for articulating this tension so eloquently.

ABSTRACTS

Drawing on what American short story writer and novelist George Saunders has described as the urge toward kindness in his work, as well as its myriad allusions to Christian symbology and religiosity, this paper explores the intersection of languages of labour or “work” and religious tensions in Saunders’ oeuvre. Reading the stories of Saunders’s first collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, through the lens of postsecular literary theory and Saunders’s own comments on Catholicism, we suggest that Christianity, for Saunders, is a double-edged sword: crucial to his social critique of the power structures of post-industrial, postmodern life, and yet ultimately prone, in its institutionalized forms, to cooptation by those very same power structures. Saunders’s “Center for Wayward Nuns” is a potent metaphor in the sense that it suggests that doubt and lack of agency endemic to a fragmented postmodern world do not absolve us of our ethical responsibility, and thus the Christian overtones of Saunders’ work are engaged in a compelling kind of double-critique: both of the “un-Christian” social realities of the world in which Saunders’ working poor toil, but also of the kind of extremist, fundamentalist—even corporatized—Christianity that may emerge out of those social realities.

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INDEX

Keywords: George Saunders, John McClure, postsecular, Christianity, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, American literature, work

AUTHORS

BRIAN JANSEN Brian Jansen teaches Media Studies and Professional Communications at Red Deer College in Alberta, Canada. His work in American literatures and cultures has appeared most recently in The Journal of Popular Culture,the Journal of the Short Story in English, and ESC: English Studies in Canada.

HOLLIE ADAMS Hollie Adams teaches Composition and Literature at Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alberta. She writes and researches in the fields of American Literature, Children's Literature, and Narratology.

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The Eternal Night of Consumer Consciousness: The Metaphorical Embodiment of Darkness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Inbar Kaminsky

1 When both a visible and metaphorical darkness is cast upon the wasteland of post- apocalyptic America, it is the stoic wordlessness that brings about the sparse attributes of the void: “Barren, silent, godless” (McCarthy 2). It seems that the simplicity of the roads as contours of movement allows the two unnamed protagonists of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to regain some form of sanity in a world that has gone mad.

2 Helpless in the face of the engulfing darkness, the father and the son also represent post-consumer culture; the father is essentially the former consumer who first acknowledges both the tyranny of the darkness and the spread of wastelands in cultural and economic terms as the demise of consumer culture and possibly the demise of western civilization. While the father soon abandons his consumer consciousness, his son is a unique “product” of post-apocalyptic America. The boy is not only innocent due to his tender age; as an individual who has apparently not been exposed to the thriving American consumer culture that existed prior to the apocalypse, the boy represents a new socio-economic model—the non-consumer.

3 In addition, two seemingly mutually exclusive forces emerge throughout the novel; the first process is the re-signification of the road, culminating in the pastiche of the road narrative formula. The second is a layered mechanism that produces the process of personification of the darkness versus the disembodiment of the living. The latter process culminates in the metaphorical body of the darkness, which eventually serves as an alternative to the protagonists’ corporeality.

4 In fact, the pastiche of the road narrative formula facilitates the formation of the metaphorical body of the darkness. While the road is gradually depleted of its symbolic role of guidance by the pastiche, the symbolic role of the darkness as an omniscient

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entity increases. In other words, when the road itself is lost and is no longer in-synced with any map, actual or cultural, then both characters, but most notably the father, find themselves engulfed in the emotional and physical need to surrender to something greater than they are. In the custody of the darkness, the protagonists are both frail children who attempt to forsake their sense of body by employing as fewer activities as possible while exerting minimal effort—setting up camp for the night, starting a fire to fight off the cold, sleeping and waking up from nightmarish visions.

5 The process of personification begins with attributing god-like qualities to the darkness, aggrandizing it while portraying the helplessness of the father and the son as they face this colossal force. This progression of personification then evolves into the darkness’s metaphorical body as a living entity; its dominance over the protagonists’ corporeality become tangible and eventually results in the symbolic abandonment of the protagonists’ bodies and their identification with the metaphorical body of the darkness as a substitute for their corporeality.

6 In the case of the father, this process also leads to a physical separation from his body, followed by his death, as well as the boy’s separation from his father due to the father’s demise. Finally, the dominance of the darkness exceeds its thematic importance within the plot and infiltrates the narratological level of the novel by casting its blinding pall over it; the narratological agents are unnamed, their quotations are not formally divided by quotation marks and there are no chapter breaks.

1. Breadcrumbs in the Dark

7 The Road does not specify what type of apocalypse demolished America and presumably the rest of the world. The novel only acknowledges the violent imagery of a ravaged country and occasionally personifies the road and its surroundings: “Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind” (6). However, the road frequently marks the location of countless relics of abandoned and demolished cities: “the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste” (7). At times, the road itself becomes a relic of pre-apocalyptic America: “But the roads are still there” (44).

8 It becomes increasingly evident throughout the novel that the map the father holds and the road the father and the son travel through are incompatible on several levels. First, the gap between the map and the road is manifested by the deterioration of the map as a referent, since the “gradual disintegration of the map is a reflection of its decreasing ability to serve as a means of understanding and negotiating space” (Warde 2). Second, the gap presents itself on the linguistic level, as the novel does not include names of locations, forcing the reader to imagine a new world (Kunsa 62).

9 Third, on the level of meaning, the road becomes a form of blank slate, “a sort of tabula rasa—a landscape erased of many of its previously defining features” (Edwards 57). This is the ground zero of signification, into which the novel pours its thematic landslide; the old road has been stripped of its titles and the new road is amassed with new meaning by both the protagonists and the reader: “The characters of The Road are facing a landscape so vague it almost is not there, yet consequently also a landscape that comes to mean everything” (Graulund 60). Fourth, the map is also deteriorating on the material level, an assortment of shreds that need to be reassembled every time the

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protagonists wish to use it: “The tattered oilcompany roadmap had once been taped together but now it was just sorted into leaves” (McCarthy 43).

10 However, while some have recognized this process as the simulacra of the road (Warde 5), it is more precise to examine this process of stripping the road from its connotations and references in relation to the symbolic accumulation of two polar opposites: “no meaning” and “every meaning.” These mutually exclusive signifiers essentially cancel each other out, leaving the reader with the disenfranchised contours of what was once a road but now only serves to point out the ironic gap between pre-apocalyptic traveling and post-apocalyptic wandering—a pastiche. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson defines pastiche as a non-satiric parody, devoid of any sense of humor (17), which is the precise sentiment that the road evokes throughout the novel—an empty shell that was once an inseparable part of trade, leisure and life.

11 The issue of geography is pertinent to the analysis of this novel; it is not only that the father’s “place-memories” work “like those faint lines of text in a palimpsest that show through beneath the newer inscriptions” (Godfrey 164), but rather that these memories are part and parcel of the process that both the protagonists and the reader aimlessly roam through—the pastiche of the road narrative formula. Throughout this process, the father’s geographical memories are essentially sublimated, distilled into the pure form of echoes that haunt the father precisely because they no longer function as memories or as recollections of an Eden-like America (Edwards 57). Instead, these reverberations of the past are both rootless and even absurd in the face of the vacant territory.

12 The novel is also a clear subversion of Bakhtin’s chronotope of the road, in which events are mostly “govern by chance” (17), and the protagonists travel through “familiar territory” (18). The events in the novel are almost always emblematic of the moral, economic and physical ruin that has befallen America and possibly the world. In fact, most of the major events that take place throughout the plot emphasize this subversion, since they indicate an emplotment that strives towards redemption in an alien world, precisely the opposite of the chronotope that characterizes road narratives. Notable examples include the father’s dreams of his pre-apocalyptic existence, his encounters with drifters and relics of cannibalism, as well as the father’s death and his son’s informal adoption by a traveler.

2. Pitch Black Body

13 The personification process of the darkness is complex, shifting back and forth between indirect and direct personification. The indirect personification consists of attributions of blame and culpability to the darkness in relation to the post-apocalyptic state. Forms of direct personification consist of characterization of the darkness, as well as the attribution of God-like powers to the darkness.

14 Throughout McCarthy’s The Road, the darkness is often endowed with ominous powers: “watching the nameless dark come to enshroud them. The gray shape of the city vanished in the night's onset like an apparition” (8). The darkness is portrayed as a living entity that engulfs the post-apocalyptic world, “autistic” (14) and “bitter” (55). The amassment of violent imagery in relation to the darkness corresponds with the sense of loss, death and grief that have become tangible for the father: “The nights dead still and deader black. So cold” (292), and the scarce source of light is the

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bereaving force, lamenting the post-apocalyptic state of the world: “By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp” (32).

15 However, the correlation between the darkness and the violent imagery seems to imply, in a roundabout way of personification, that the darkness it to blame for the apocalypse: “The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn before battle” (137). The darkness is presented as both the sin and its purgatory: “the noon sky black as the cellars of hell” (188). Moreover, the night and its engulfing darkness clearly act in the service of death: “And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day” (20).

16 The father often finds himself helpless in the face of the almighty darkness: “At night when he woke coughing he’d sit up with his hand pushed over his head against the blackness. Like a man waking in a grave” (228). Blindness is evoked in order to portray human powerlessness in the face of both the physical and metaphorical darkness: “They went on in the perfect blackness, sightless as the blind” (250). The darkness is blinding since it demolishes both the natural and technological forces that can provide light, but it is also blinding because it demolishes any real sense of hope.

17 The personification of the darkness evolves to the extent that it is considered omnipotent from the father’s point of view, as the single dominating force of the post- apocalyptic world – “he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth. Darkness implacable… The crushing black vacuum of the universe” (138). Darkness consumes all and thus ultimately conquers all the natural elements: “The snow whispered down in the stillness and the sparks rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness” (101). It also controls the father and the son since the darkness is often described through verbs related to battle and the two protagonists always succumb to it: “Night overtook them on a muddy road” (92).

18 When the father turns ill, the darkness becomes a metaphor for the post-apocalyptic world as he promises his son that he “will not send you into the darkness alone” (265). In the end, the dead father becomes emblematic of the darkness, cold and frightening: “he knelt beside his father and held his cold hand and said his name over and over again” (301). While the father’s absolute separation from his body takes place during his death, he lacks any ‘real’ sense of corporeality throughout the novel.

19 In the beginning of The Road, the father is awakened from a dream in which he and the boy are “Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast” (1). This form of disembodiment, in the sense of losing control over one’s corporeality while surrendering to a greater force, is characteristic of the father, who struggles with his sense of body throughout the novel until his death. Thus, the father’s departure can be construed as the ultimate surrender to both the metaphorical and physical darkness.

20 The metaphorical body of the darkness also plays a significant role in the erosion of the father’s consumer consciousness; even the few relics of the demolished civilization are hardly visible as they are gradually masked by the darkness on the visual level and eliminated on the imaginary level due to the imminent threats to the survival of the

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father and the son. The father cannot even conjure up a consumer consciousness of currency and trade when he struggles to obtain the basic necessities.

21 The daily hardship experienced by the protagonists is amplified by the darkness— hunger is prolonged when the father and the son cannot scavenge for food during the night, the darkness brings with it a devastating cold that can only be tolerated by creating a fire and predators seem to move much more efficiently in the custody of the dark. In addition to these harsh physical conditions, the detachment of the father from his own corporeality and his evolving identification with the metaphorical body of darkness leave no room for consumer consciousness; the consumerism state of mind has to do with the illusion of plenitude and the subsequent need to purchase “it” in the hopes of grasping this obscure affluence. As the sole representative of the demolished American consumer culture, the father crosses over to the dark side in more ways than one, essentially forsaking the possibility of contemplating another world or another alternative for him and his son while he succumbs to the overwhelming darkness that surrounds him.

3. Americ(an)a

22 In his introduction to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Christopher Bigsby remarks: “In an immigrant society, which has, by definition, chosen to reject the past, faith in the future is not a matter of choice. When today fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing” (1). This “American Dream,” a term which was originally evoked to portray the collective American coping mechanism in the face of the Great Depression, has transformed since the economic expansion of Post-World War II to portray “aspirations pertaining to economic opportunity, consumer freedom, financial security, happiness, employment satisfaction, homeownership, and wealth” (Cohen 45-46) while retaining the internal tension of the “American Dream” as an “aspirational heuristic and its realization” (Cohen 46).

23 McCarthy’s dystopian tale is situated after the collapse of the “American Dream,” but it certainly engages its absence, most notably through the distinction between the consumerism of pre-apocalyptic America and the non-consumerism of the wasteland. This gap is portrayed by the inherent difference between the consumer consciousness of the father, who is portrayed at the beginning of the novel as a dreamer and a relic of American consumerism, and the son as a non-consumer, both a “pure” product of the palimpsestic wasteland and a literary allusion to anti-consumerism.

24 The transition from hyper-consumerism, which “rests on cyber-technology, its development originally issuing from US government and corporate investment, the accompanying surge of inventions changing everything everywhere” (de Grazia 81) to what many refer to as anti-consumerism, a socio-political backlash against the “pulverized global financial market at the feet of the feral shopper ‘maxed out’ on easy credit” (Humphery 3) is symbolically rendered in The Road through the use of relics of American consumer culture—the billboards, the shopping cart and the Coca-Cola can. These relics represent the fundamental process of consumerism—advertising, purchase and product—and the novel employs their distinct symbolic meaning for the father, who is also a relic of consumer culture, and his son, who experiences these relics with no sense of personal cultural context.

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25 Indeed, the novel’s implicit criticism of American consumerism can be viewed as prophetic, considering the fact that the novel preceded the financial crisis in the US, which began with the collapse of subprime mortgages in 2007, a mere year after the novel was published. But criticism of American consumer culture existed prior to the subprime crisis, most notable is Naomi Klein’s No Logo, which was first published in December 1999 and effectively ushered in the new millennium’s awareness of corporate domination. In her analysis of the brand crisis that took place in US during the 1990’s, Klein also referred to the endurance of “companies that had always understood that they were selling brands before product” (17), such as Coca Cola, which “weren’t fazed by the brand crisis, opting instead to escalate the brand war, especially since they had their eyes firmly fixed on global expansion “(17). The juxtaposition of Coca Cola’s status as an American empire seeking global domination in the 1990’s and its single relic in the novel elucidates the socioeconomic commentary that The Road offers regarding corporate hubris.

26 At the beginning of the novel, it is clear that the father still regains some of his consumer consciousness; this is particularly evident when the protagonists’ come across an abandoned gas station. During the initial encounter, the father does not see any potential in the things he finds as he rummages through the gas station. However, shortly after walking away from the gas station, his consumer consciousness enables him to conjure up possible uses for the motor oil that relate to a form of enjoyment rather than a survival instinct: A quarter mile down the road he stopped and looked back. We're not thinking, he said. We have to go back… In the service bay he dragged out the steel trashdrum and tipped it over and pawed out all the quart plastic oilbottles… Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns. You can read me a story, the boy said. Cant you, Papa? Yes he said. I can. (5-6)

27 There is also a symbolic meaning to the father’s actions that stem from a rare moment of consumer consciousness—he is literally fighting off the darkness, which he will later succumb to after his consumer consciousness will dissolve and his identification with the darkness will commence.

28 As the plot unfolds, the fragmented symbols of the American consumer culture mirror the demise of the father’s consumer consciousness. While the starving protagonists roam through deserted towns in desperate search for food, their lack of alternatives is reflected in the billboards, which were once a prominent instrument in the service of capitalism and are now used as a primitive tool of survival in post-apocalyptic America: “They passed through towns that warned people away with messages scrawled on the billboards. The billboards had been whited out with thin coats of paint in order to write on them and through the paint could be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements for goods with no longer existed” (135).

29 In addition, two main representations of American consumer culture survive the apocalypse and in turn come to symbolize the demise of this very culture—the shopping cart, in which the father and the son carry their few earthly possessions as they travel through the wasteland, and the Coca-Cola can that the father introduces to his son, who is clearly not a “product” of American consumer culture but of post- apocalyptic America—pale and frail, innocent and ignorant. But more importantly, both the shopping cart and the Coca-Cola can symbolize the demise of consumer consciousness—the absence of choice and the annihilation of abundance.

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30 Several scholars have commented on the linguistic apocalypse depicted in this novel, epitomized by such objects as the shopping cart and the map, which have been deprived of their referent (Woodson 89), and “often function as ironic registers,” as well as “psychologically embodied” to the extent of inducing “anxiety and something akin to the human sense of loss” (Wilhelm 131-2) in their absence.

31 The epiphanic moment in which the father discovers a “surviving” Coca-Cola, an iconic American symbol that has endured the demise of modern American culture, is a crucial one. Indeed, it can be said that “with the portrayal of what might well be the last Coca- Cola on earth, McCarthy does in fact touch upon a possible end of capitalism in this scene” (Schleusener 6). This discovery represents a coming of age ritual, a rite of passage for the boy who he is promptly asked by his father to transport himself from the consciousness of a choice-deprived survivor into the consciousness of a consumer: He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola. What is it, Papa? It’s a treat. For you. What is it? Here. Sit down. He slipped the boy’s knapsack straps loose and set the pack on the floor behind him and he put his thumbnail under the aluminum clip on the top of the can and opened it. He leaned his nose to the slight fizz coming from the can and then handed it to the boy. Go ahead, he said. The boy took the can. It’s bubbly, he said. Go ahead. He looked at his father and then tilted the can and drank. He sat there thinking about it. It’s really good, he said. (22-23)

32 The ritual essentially fails since the boy only consumes the product. In strict adherence to his survivor state of mind, the boy does not ask for more, a typical response among children, but rather acknowledges the experience as unique, a relic of the demolished American consumer culture: You have some, Papa. I want you to drink it. You have some. He took the can and sipped it and handed it back. You drink it, he said. Let’s just sit here. It’s because I wont ever get to drink another one, isn’t it? Ever’s a long time. Okay, the boy said. (23)

33 The failure to endow the boy with consumer consciousness is peculiar, especially when one considers the product; Coca-Cola has often been regarded as the ‘it’ product that epitomizes American consumer culture. And so, the boy’s rejection can easily be construed as inclusive – it is the rejection of an extinct culture that has no appeal for him.

34 Žižek explores Coca Cola’s use-value as he maintains that “Coke functions as a direct embodiment of IT, of the pure surplus of enjoyment over standard satisfaction, of the mysterious and elusive X we are all after in our compulsive consumption of merchandise” (“Surplus” 99). In other words, Coca-Cola’s use-value leads us directly to the “desire to desire” (Žižek, Parallax 61) by which drinking it never satisfies the consumer but rather triggers the insatiable need to drink more Coca Cola (Žižek, “Surplus” 99), thus turning the individual into a “good” consumer, one who keeps coming back for more. However, the boy’s failure to develop an insatiable need for

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Coca-Cola does not turn him into a “bad” consumer because he is, in fact, a non- consumer, an individual who cannot be tainted by capitalism since it never existed as far as he is concerned. Therefore, the need for excess cannot be instilled in the boy, regardless of the father’s efforts.

35 As Žižek points out, consumer consciousness is intrinsically linked to the imaginary plane of desire for platitude, for surplus: At the immediate level of addressing individuals, capitalism, of course, interpellates them as consumers, as subjects of desire, soliciting in them ever new perverse and excessive desires (for which it offers products to satisfy them); furthermore, it obviously also manipulates the ‘desire to desire,’ celebrating the very desire to desire ever new objects and modes of pleasure. (Parallax 61)

36 Such desires stand in stark contradiction to the state of mind of the father, whose means of escapism are no longer cultural or economic but rather corporeal, achieved through the evolving identification with the body of darkness. Yet, the father cannot utterly abandon the consumer consciousness he was raised on. Therefore, the Coca- Cola incident represents a brief moment of surplus, an almost noble attempt, in capitalistic terms, to endow his son with the desire to desire.

37 When asked in an interview about the significance of Coca-Cola in the novel, McCarthy replied: “Well, it just struck me. It’s the iconic American product.... The one thing that everybody knows about America, the one thing above cowboys and Indians, above everything else that you can think of, is Coca-Cola. You can't go to a village of 18 people in the remotest part of Africa that they don’t know about Coca-Cola” (Jurgensen, “Cola”). McCarthy’s choice is double fold; Coca-Cola is not only an inherently American product, its world-wide recognition is emblematic of the status of the U.S. as a modern- day empire and its portrayal in the novel parallels America’s demise.

38 In another interview, McCarthy discusses the value of art in the virtual age, in which quantity inevitably influences quality: Well, I don’t know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they’re really good. And there’s just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there’s going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. (Jurgensen, “Cowboy”)

39 McCarthy’s pessimistic approach regarding the future of art in the age of abundance can provide an explanation for his post-apocalyptic vision; if endless reproduction constitutes the end of civilized culture, then its absence can provide a new beginning for a culture that shall not be based on capitalistic values.

4. The Living-Dead and the Dead-Living

40 The few survivors that roam around the wasteland in search for food and shelter are often dehumanized and disembodied by the novel’s imagery and by the focalization of the father, such are the “Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland” (28), or the “Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste” (54). Even the boy is depicted through the father’s focalization by using animal analogies: “The boy so frail and thin through his coat, shivering like a dog” (69). Strangers are also analogous to beasts via the father’s focalization, as the two come

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across a man who the father sees as “an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes” (65).

41 However, when the third-person narrator depicts the father and the son, the focalization is evidently less disproportionate; the two remain in the human realm, neither glorified as gods nor dehumanized as animals: “They plodded on, thin and filthy as street addicts” (188). This gap allows the father’s focalization to stand out as a distinct and personal point of view, one which suggests that the father can no longer perceive human corporeality, whether his or other people’s, as a unifying system of meaning.

42 Upon encountering human bodies, the father’s focalization seems to conform to that of the omniscient narrator—the remains are clearly depicted as human, despite the fact that they are disfigured. While some bodies perished due to the harsh physical conditions: “A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling” (203), others were subject to cannibalism: “charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit” (212). But whether mummified by the cold or eaten by other survivors, the dead seem to be more animated then the living survivors; it is as if in death they have regained some of their lost humanity.

43 It is hardly incidental that the only split in focalization occurs when the father’s perspective differs from the perspective of the third-person narrator in relation to corporeality. Indeed, the father’s unusual observations of other living humans stems from the disassociation he experiences regarding his own body. Dead bodies no longer embody the duality that the father is struggling with as they are nothing but empty shells, while the human beings he encounters illustrate the very impossibility he attempts to escape by surrendering to the metaphorical body of the darkness.

5. The Naked Narrative

44 McCarthy’s style of writing has been shaped by the author’s continuous refusal to uphold traditional grammatical rules, most notably in relation to the lack of quotation marks to set apart dialogue from the rest of the narrative. These stylistic choices, evident throughout his body of work, “reflect a postmodern anti-hegemonic sensibility” (Synder and Synder 34). Indeed, McCarthy’s fiction is shaped by a particular stylistic aesthetics “a willingness to employ language experimentally, to carry syntax, subordination and word choice in complex and interesting directions” (Frye 153). Yet, The Road represents a stylistic departure from McCarthy’s earlier novels, “with virtually no archais vocabulary and few syntactic complexities” (Frye 156).

45 The most notable feature of absence in the novel is the fact that the two protagonists are unnamed; reduced to their elementary attributes, they are identified by the reader according to their pronouns and familial titles. The use of pronouns and familial titles instead of first names is certainly significant since it allows McCarthy to “emphasize the characters’ deeds by drawing away as little attention as possible from action verbs” (Kunsa 61). Throughout the novel, the man is most often referred to as “he” and his companion, “the boy,” often refers to the man as “papa.” As a result, the emphasis on action verbs becomes the sole means of characterization in the novel: “the characters are clearly knowable and differentiable from one another by what they do. And, in a

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world where ethical and moral distinctions matter, they can be taken to task for what they do, at least by the reader, if not by some authority within the text” (Kunsa 61).

46 The prose itself is not only sparse and lacking, it “has been returned to its rudiments and now must be re-imagined” (Kunsa 58). Once again, the encounter with the notion of tabula rasa, a blank slide, leads us back to the theme of absence. It has also been suggested that McCarthy’s minimalistic style is emblematic of the protagonists’ journey: “Physically, emotionally as morally, every choice the protagonists of The Road face as they trek across the bleak and abstract wasteland of a future America can in some way or other lead back to the ultimate question of deserta, of absence” (Graulund 58).

47 The novel certainly promotes the theme of absence on several levels. The most obvious example is on the level of plot, which displays absence through recurring pictorial imagery of a barren ashen land, lacking in both natural and technological recourses. In addition, the narratological level lacks a clear authorial voice as there are generally no clear distinctions between the third person narrator and the focalizations of the father. The stylistic level can also be characterized through the overarching theme of absence; the lack of quotation marks blurs the distinction between the third-person narration and the two protagonists.

48 Moreover, the lack of chapter breaks or titles indicate that the flow of the novel has no clear thematic direction other than the hope for redemption, which is often abstract and absurd in the face of the cruel conditions that father and son must endure. Whether a better place indeed exists is one of the novel’s great unanswered questions and constitutes another form of absence. However, it seems that at least for the father, redemption is achieved through physical absence and the separation of the corporeal from the spiritual. This thematic and structural absence certainly facilitates the emergence of the metaphorical body of the darkness. The lack of a clear authorial presence only serves to enhance the metaphorical presence of the darkness and increases the father’s level of identification with the darkness and the gradual abandonment of his own corporeality, culminating in his death.

49 In essence, The Road begins with the ineffable, the attempt to portray the unrepresenable, that which lies outside of language. In the dream sequence presented at the beginning of the plot, the father can see the internal organs of an ambiguous creature, which emerges from a lake set inside a cave that the father and the son wander into. These layered cavities, which reveal a babushka-like structure, foretell the type of narrative that is about to unfold before the reader: “This translucency signals to the reader that the narrative that is to follow will attempt to probe beyond the knowledge that language can describe to that which humans can experience beyond language” (Woodson 90). However, since the unrepresentable cannot be stretched beyond insinuations, the theme of absence takes its place throughout the novel.

6. The Temporality of the End

50 If one considers the inherently American cultural context in which this novel was written, then it seems that post-9/11 reality has made apocalyptic visions more conceivable. It is not merely the existential anxiety that no one can be trusted, which haunts the father in The Road (Jarraway 52), but rather the ominous dread that anything can happen, which forms a thematic link between post-9/11 America and McCarthy’s

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Post-apocalyptic America. Moreover, the novel’s American context also creates a sense of circular temporality, which juxtaposes the real events of 9/11 alongside McCarthy’s fictional apocalypse. This unique temporality is evident throughout The Road, as the novel’s depictions suggest that “there is no distinction between night and day. All, it seems, is an eternal middle” (Rambo 101).

51 SöZalan discusses the implicit allusion to 9/11 in The Road by making the claim that McCarthy’s novel can be seen as a thematic sequel to Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, which is set in post-9/11 New York and details the immediate and long-term aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center: “There is no reference to 9/11 in McCarthy’s dystopian tale of pilgrims in an utterly devastated world, yet its wandering characters follow from where DeLillo [in the novel Falling Man] leaves his hero practically homeless in a world which has lost its referential value” (xiii). Beyond the sense of existential homelessness, another thematic link can be drawn between Falling Man and The Road in relation to the metaphorical body—both novels portray male protagonists who survive an apocalypse but lose touch with their masculinity or any other level of identification with their physical body.

52 In a broader sense, DeLillo’s post-9/11 New York and McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic America echo a similar dissatisfaction with consumer culture and its culpability in the demise of the civilized world. DeLillo poses the Twin Towers as provocation stemming from cultural hubris and McCarthy satirizes the shopping cart and the Coca-Cola enterprise, but both commentaries are secondary in importance to the ontological crisis of the individual, who can no longer distill a sense of meaning and wholeness from his corporeal image.

53 Meaning is certainly pertinent to the conception of time in The Road since it usually grants a cultural timeline, a temporal point of reference. In the absence of any referential value, it is clear why the novel conveys the sensation of frozen time, or alternatively, of a temporal dimension caught in an endless loop. These mutually exclusive temporalities coexist in the novel, as it “recasts narrative time, with the setting of the novel at once seemingly ancient and yet also quite contemporary” (Kollin 166). Also, the barren landscape that constitutes the setting of the novel is constantly amassed with cultural allusions of various historical periods: “McCarthy places the American landscape of The Road alongside the prehistoric and the pharaonic; his environment is thus Homeric, biblical, as well as contemporary” (Kollin 166).

54 It is also important to note that the novel’s temporal dimension clashes with the Christian temporality since it offers no foreseeable sense of either redemption or resurrection: “McCarthy catches the reader in a schizophrenic, and distinctively American, post-apocalyptic crisis of meaning: between the craving for a happy ending (for resolution, for redemption) and the recognition of its impossibility (there is, in Christian terms, no resurrection ahead)” (Rambo 101). Thus, in the absence of a temporal correlation to either the lunar calendar of the natural world and the Jewish calendar or the Christian calendar of crucifixion and resurrection, the novel resorts back to the primordial time of pre-human history. The Road depicts “a world that is withdrawing to a pre-language, pre-belief, pre-cultural condition” (Hage 145), a world that has lapsed back to the prehistoric era.

55 The end of the novel links back to this ancient period using the figurative style of fairytales, alluding to the iconic phrase “once upon a time”: “Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains” (306). This marker of an unspecified past

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turning into a mythical and eternal timeline corresponds to Deleuze’s “ancient mythical present” (88), the phenomenon of circular time. This mythical present is represented most vividly by the hum that concludes the novel: “In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery” (307). As a non-verbal sound, it is in fact “a hum beyond language and human understanding” (Hage 145), granting it immortality in the face of human demise. But more importantly, this non- verbal sound is indicative of the supremacy of the soul over the body.

56 This duality, which lingers throughout the novel, is partially resolved by the metaphorical body of the darkness but is also no longer needed at the novel’s conclusion. If one considers the father as an allegorical representative of the human race, his death eliminates the innate dichotomy of mind versus matter. In McCarthy’s glimpse of the future that is already the ancient past, eternal nature will outlive humanity and the unrepresentable will hum forever.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bakhtin, M. M. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics.” Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Ed. Brian Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2002: 15-24. Print.

Bigsby, Christopher. “Introduction.” Death of a Salesman. Crome Publishing, 2016. Kindle Edition.

Cohen, Maurie J. “Collective Dissonance and the Transition to Post-Consumerism.” Futures 52 (2013): 42-51. Web.

de Grazia, Victoria. “The Crisis of Hyper-Consumerism: Capitalism’s Latest Forward Lurch.” Capitalism: The Reemergence of a Historical Concept. Ed. Jürgen Kocka and Marcel van der Linden. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. 71-106. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. London: A&C Black, 2004. Print.

Edwards, Tim. “The End of the Road: Pastoralism and the Post-Apocalyptic Waste Land of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 6.1 (2008): 55-61. Print.

Frye, Steven. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. South Carolina: South Carolina UP, 2012. Print.

Godfrey, Laura Gurber. “ ‘The World He’d Lost’: Geography and ‘Green’ Memory in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 52.2 (2011): 163-175. Print.

Graulund, Rune. “Fulcrums and Borderlands: A Desert Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Orbis Litterarum 65.1 (2010): 57–78. Print.

Hage, Erik. Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. Print.

Humphery, Kim. Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Print.

Jarraway, David R. “‘Becoming Woman’: Masculine ‘Emergency’ After 9/11 in Cormac McCarthy.” Canadian Review of American Studies 42.1 (2012): 49-64. Print.

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Jurgensen, John. “Cormac McCarthy on How Coca-Cola Ended Up In The Road, and Other Musings.” online.wsj.com. 12 Nov 2009. Web. 27 Sep 2012.

---. “Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy.” online.wsj.com. 20 Nov 2009. Web. 27 Sep 2012.

Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Vintage Books Canada, 2009. Print.

Kollin, Susan. “ ‘Barren, silent, godless’: Ecodisaster and the Post-abundant Landscape in The Road”. Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road. Ed. Sara Spurgeon. New York: Continuum, 2011. 157-171. Print.

Kunsa, Ashley. “‘Maps of the World in Its Becoming’: Post-Apocalyptic Naming in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. Journal of Modern Literature 33.1 (2009): 57-74. Print.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. 2006. London: Picador, 2007. Print.

Rambo, L. Shelley. “Beyond Redemption? Reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road After the End of the World.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 41.2 (2008): 99-120. Print.

Schleusener, Simon. “The Dialectics of Mobility: Capitalism and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” European Journal of American Studies 12.3 (2017): 1-14. Web.

Sözalan, Özden. The American Nightmare: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2011. Print.

Snyder, Phillip A., and Delys W. Snyder. “Modernism, Postmodernism, and Language: McCarthy’s Style.” The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy (2013): 27-38.Print.

Warde, Anthony. “‘Justified in the World”: Spatial Values and Sensuous Geographies in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Forum: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts10 (2010):1-13. 6 May 2010. Web. 1 Sep. 2012.

Wilhelm, Randal S. “‘Golden chalice, good to house a god’: Still Life in The Road”. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 6.1 (2008): 129-149. Print.

Woodson, Linda. “Mapping The Road in Post-Postmodernism.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 6.1 (2008): 87-99. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Surplus-Enjoyment between the Sublime and the Trash.” Lacanian Ink 15 (1999): 99-107. Print.

---. The Parallax View. Cambridge: MIT, 2006. Print.

ABSTRACTS

The essay strives to conceptualize the consumer consciousness of the father and the son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by maintaining that post-apocalyptic America has created a new socio-economic status of the non-consumer. The essay also explores the figurative role of the darkness in the novel in relation to the representation of corporeality of the characters and its role in the erosion of the father’s consumer consciousness. In addition, the essay discusses the broad significance of The Road as a post-9/11 novel and its thematic connection to Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.

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INDEX

Keywords: Cormac McCarthy, The Road, consumer culture, corporeality, Don DeLillo, Falling Man, post-9/11 fiction

AUTHOR

INBAR KAMINSKY Inbar Kaminsky holds a PhD in English Literature from Tel Aviv University. She has contributed several essays to peer-reviewed journals, including Philip Roth Studies, North WindandSymbolism. She has also contributed several chapters about science fiction narratives, film adaptation, post-9/11 fiction and Jewish-American literature to various edited collections.

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Intertextual Dialogue and Humanization in David Simon’s The Corner

Mikkel Jensen

1 From the very beginning it is clear that the HBO miniseries The Corner is a political television series. Its first scene shows its director Charles S. Dutton standing against a wall in Western Baltimore talking about the prevalence of open air drug markets across major cities in America. This is, he tells us, “the information center of the neighborhood” but also “the place of death, of addiction or the suddenness of gunshots.” In Dutton’s words, The Corner is a story about “the men, women, and children living in the midst of the drug trade” whose “voices are too rarely heard” (episode one). By presenting this miniseries as a counter narrative to a media culture that has its focus elsewhere, the show offers its raison d’être in its examination of a group of marginalized people and the circumstances under which they live. Fearing a black backlash against The Corner’s depiction of African Americans, HBO wanted Dutton to direct the show and then also wanted Dutton to do this preamble “describing his reasons for making it.” Dutton, however, refused to speak the lines written by the show’s writers and consequently wrote and shot the scene himself (Scott).

2 It seems likely that viewers who find The Corner today do so by way of David Simon’s subsequent success with The Wire, Treme etc. But while these shows are being examined thoroughly by academia,1 The Corner is often viewed as a mere “precursor” to The Wire (Nussbaum; Saner; Mendoza) due to the fact that Simon served as a showrunner on both shows and the fact that Ed Burns was involved in creating these stories.2 This article, however, holds that this show is interesting to examine in its own right, also if we are to understand the common thread running through David Simon’s oeuvre. The Corner won three Emmys (best miniseries, directing for a miniseries, writing for miniseries) and a Peabody, yet only two monographs (Vest; Bigsby) and one PhD dissertation (Sweeney) devote entire chapters to this show, while several studies on The Wire discuss it as secondary show to The Wire3 and thus this article tries to shed light on

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the series that marks the start of David Simon’s career writing and producing televisual content.4

3 The Wire caused quite a stir about how it presented Baltimore to the world and to actor/ television Mike Rowe that show, along with Homicide (1993-1999) “convinced millions of Americans that Baltimore is a fantastic place to buy drugs, find a whore, or get murdered. Better yet... all three at once!” (Rowe). Simon, of course, rebutted Rowe’s criticisms and he did so in a way that also speaks to the core ambition of what The Corner aimed to accomplish: Mr. Rowe was clearly raising an argument that I find familiar and disturbing: That an undeserving portion of Baltimore has been chronicled at the expense of a Baltimore more deserving of attention, and that the America left behind by deindustrialization, poverty and the depredations of the drug war should just quiet the fuck down while we sell more of the America that has not been so marginalize. (Simon)

4 Simon’s defense of The Wire thus aligns completely with Dutton’s account of The Corner’s mission. To tell stories of a forgotten and overlooked part of society that they see the mainstream media not taking any strong interest in. Such paratexts make it clear why the creators of The Corner and The Wire feel there is a need to humanize the marginalized inner-city dwellers who face great challenges. The Corner does this by embracing both realistic and melodramatic modes in depicting a marginalized group. Its realist impulse comes to the fore in its way of stressing that the people shown on are screen are real people, while its melodramatic element shows itself in how the series attempts to engender emotions of sympathy in the viewer. The Corner’s political ambition thus aims at making viewers recalibrate their conceptualization of the people on screen: from “merely” being inner-city drug addicts to emerging as torn and ailing human beings. This off-the-beaten-path depiction of this marginalized group is essential to The Corner.

5 Befitting to its eye-level portrayal of drug afflicted Baltimoreans, the show opens with a handheld camera backtracking to follow protagonist Gary McCullough who is heading to a corner store. This opening shows how the miniseries is comfortable with a restricted scope that aims to understand and, crucially, to humanize these ailing and struggling people. This ambition is also forwarded in the show’s title which suggests as much by conjuring a place-specific focus on a concrete, local setting (a corner), while also calling attention to a group of people who are driven into a metaphorical corner with few obvious outs. But though The Corner zooms in on a single West Baltimore corner, its attempt at humanizing its characters implicitly speaks to greater issues of how people not living in blighted inner-city neighborhoods think about “the corner.” That fact is central to its politics, which tries to show the dignity, value, and humanity of its characters.

6 However, to say that The Corner is interested in humanizing its subjects is only a starting point and, hence, this article aims to examine both more closely how this humanization is brought forth as well as how this humanization becomes a political act in itself. It does so by showing how the miniseries’ use of flashbacks offers the viewer insight into the life stories of the people in the show. In doing so, the viewer is shown how one should not take the situation on screen as a given; by presenting the current state of the characters on screen as a result of longer societal and personal backstories The Corner stresses that the current situation is a consequence of developments in the past. By showing this decline, the miniseries tries to avoid letting the viewer think that

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what s/he is seeing on screen is to be taken as a given; The Corner tries to historicize its portrayal of this Baltimore neighborhood. Gary’s descent into drug addiction affords us with a narrative understanding of his life that is different from understanding him only as the man he is in the present day of The Corner.

7 Similarly, the series engages with other depictions of the African American inner-city underclass in an intertextual dialogue. Here, this article employs intellectual historian Quentin Skinner’s “pro-intertextualist methodology” (Skinner in Pallares-Burke 236) in trying to make clear how The Corner uses intertextuality—specifically through references to John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991)—as a way of steering clear of other ways of depicting urban ills. The article also takes a look at how The Corner sustains a sense of realism by inserting its director, Charles S. Dutton, in dialogue with the fictionalized versions of the people portrayed in this miniseries. Finally, the article discusses how The Corner’s humanization is contingent on both realism and melodrama. To film scholar Linda Williams, melodrama “is the fundamental mode of popular American moving pictures” that “is structured upon the “dual recognition” of how things are and how they should be” (Williams 42 & 48) and this article argues that The Corner embraces both realism and melodrama in forwarding its societal critique.

8 The Corner follows Gary McCullough’s (T.K. Carter) insistent attempts to get enough money to buy drugs in order to sustain his addiction. Gary had studied for a year in college (Ohio State) but dropped out when he learned that his girlfriend, Fran (Khandi Alexander), had become pregnant. He nonetheless built a successful career and was able to provide for his family in a way that allowed them to move out of the city center to a middle-class suburb. He and his wife nevertheless ended up addicted to drugs in the years of the “crack epidemic” in the US (early 1980s–early 1990s). Gary’s teenage son, DeAndre (Sean Nelson), on the other hand, sells drugs while trying to get promoted to the 10th grade or get a job. DeAndre also helps his mother sustain her use of drugs. However, while Gary does get a (seasonal) job, DeAndre gets his 15-year-old girlfriend Tyreeka (Toy Connor) pregnant and tries to get and hold down a job at fast food restaurant but it is the mother of the family, Fran, who offers the positive counterpoint to this story as she, in the end, manages to go into detox and stay clean. Each episode of the miniseries is bookended by fictionalized interview sequences focusing on the person that the episode revolves around, e.g. episode two is titled “DeAndre’s Blues” and begins with an interview with DeAndre and ends with an interview with the social worker Miss Ella (Tyra Ferrell) who talks about her work with teenagers in the community. The final moments of the last episode of the series features an interview with the real people behind the characters in the series, among others Fran and DeAndre. The six-episode series ends with Gary dying from an overdose in his parents’ basement and DeAndre becoming addicted to drugs.

1. The Contingency of the Present

9 Intellectual historian Frank Beck Lassen argues that making the present strange is at the heart of the function and use of intellectual history. Seeing the present world as a result of past choices and developments and learning of the paths-not-taken in historical change can make people see the world as more contingent than they might otherwise think (13). The Corner’s liberal use of flashbacks—one of the miniseries’ more noticeable stylistic choices—mirrors this emphasis on the contingency of the present.

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The first flashback occurs just eleven minutes into its first episode where Gary McCullough is walking down a street and looks over to a store where he worked as a child. The color scheme clearly demonstrates a contrast between a bleak present and a, literally and metaphorically, more colorful past:

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A child in the present day and Gary as a child in front of the same store.

10 The contrast in colors can be interpreted both as the show signaling how things have actually deteriorated in this area since Gary was a child, but it can also be understood as Gary’s romanticization of a past whose appeal seems exaggerated in hindsight, or, as Sheamus Sweeney puts it, “suggest[s] the compensatory perfection of fading memory” (131). The viewer, of course, can understand it in either way or as both at the same time. Regardless, this establishes what Jason Mittell terms an intrinsic norm for the show as it teaches viewers how to watch the show and informs them of what to expect of subsequent episodes (168) where this technique is used to both look at Gary’s backstory as well as the bigger picture of this Western Baltimore community. Through these flashbacks, The Corner historicizes its portrayal of rampant drug use in inner-city neighborhoods and Vest argues that the direction and production design makes the viewer “viscerally” experience the contrast between past and present” (128).

11 Dutton, however, had initially been reluctant about using flashbacks, believing that only three percent of them work; “The other 97 percent don’t” as he told a journalist in 2000 (Scott). Dutton’s point here seems focused on the aesthetics of flashbacks; do they “work” or not? Regardless of whether one agrees with Dutton’s assessment, the The Corner’s political argument would be reduced if it hadn’t included the flashbacks for without those the show would be barred from showing the historical change in the neighborhood and it would only be able to show the characters in their present state. In that case, we wouldn’t learn of how Gary had once been on a better path and that this current state is the result of a catastrophic detour from the path he otherwise had been on. The contingency, in other words, of Gary’s present state would fall away without the flashbacks.

12 But while this technique offers an inkling of how far these characters have fallen from their previously well-sorted lives, it also sets up one of the pivotal scenes of the miniseries which hinges on the use of flashbacks. Because the viewer has come to expect flashbacks—as an “intrinsic norm”—this instance does not stand out as an unexpected break with the show’s overall aesthetics. The scene in question is at the very end of the series. Gary is overdosing in his parents’ basement to the tunes of The Impressions’ song “People Get Ready,” which is one of the more political songs Curtis Mayfield wrote which underlines a political undertone to Gary’s demise.

13 In the last scene of The Corner’s first episode, Gary helps DeAndre and his friend R.C. (Corey Parker Robinson) put up a basketball hoop. DeAndre and Gary do not have a lot to do with each other due to the father’s addiction, but to the viewer this potentially appears to be a rare moment of bonding between father and son. That hope, however, is immediately crushed when Ronnie (Tasha Smith), Gary’s girlfriend, shows up and offers drugs to Gary. Before this Gary had taken a single shot and talked a bit with DeAndre and R.C.. DeAndre and Gary had even agreed to play a match against each other but Gary leaves with Ronnie and does not play the game that he had just promised to play with DeAndre. In the flashback sequence, when Gary is overdosing in the basement of his parents’ house, however, the flashback shows Gary taking that one shot and through the use of longer close-ups, and a shot reverse shot that makes it look like Gary and DeAndre are looking at each other rather intensely this flashback suggests how Gary’s relationship with his son is one of the most important things in his life. This flashback is thus filled with a sense of missed opportunity and regret that Gary chose to do drugs instead of spending time with his son and, consequently, this

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scene shows how Gary failed at this point. His decision is, surely, prompted by his addiction but it is important to note that Gary does not even postpone doing drugs. When Ronnie offers him drugs he abandons DeAndre without even playing basketball with him just for a short while. So by thematizing missed opportunity and regret, this flashback thus aims at producing an emotional effect in the viewer. In that sense, The Corner both engages with Gary’s responsibility, the importance of the parent-child relationship and it does so through the sadness of Gary’s death.

14 This scene arguably features the series’ strongest use of pathos, which is underlined through editing, music, and flashbacks. The fact that “People Get Ready” is playing on the radio, however, adds a sense of tragic irony; Gary’s life is over and there is nothing to “get ready for” and by inviting the viewer to feel sympathy for Gary that song’s political layers add a political subtext to Gary’s death. But it is not only through the use of diegetic music that The Corner engages with other texts in American cultural history; intertextuality plays an important role in the way it engages in dialogue with its cultural context.

2. Interlocutors and Intertextual Dialogues

15 The Corner’s realist impulse is unmissable and although intertextuality is often associated with postmodern fictions (somewhat at odds with the mode of realism), the series uses this device to engage in a cultural dialogue with other texts. Media scholar Erlend Lavik argues that there are two traditions of discussing intertextuality; one is associated with Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva who “sought to bring to light the plurality of texts within any given text.” To Lavik, Barthes and Kristeva’s work on intertextuality “was not simply descriptive, however, but overtly political” as it “sought to ‘liberate’ readers by challenging notions of textual bounded-ness, originality and interpretive certainty.” The other tradition Lavik points out, however, sees “intertextuality as a deliberate textual strategy” which encompasses “artistic procedures like allusion and quotation” (“The Poetics and Rhetoric” 55-56). Whereas Barthes and Kristeva’s work saw intertextuality as a general state of affairs, the latter approach considers intertextuality to be a more concrete textual feature which some texts make use of and like Lavik’s examination of intertextuality in The Wire, I embrace the latter use of the term. In this vein, Anker Gemzøe usefully notes intertextual references connect specific texts to more general trends in media history (Gemzøe).

16 In the first episode, Gary is in his parents’ basement reading about chemistry while a radio call-show in the background program discusses racism in the US. A caller introduced as “James from Essex” (who sounds very much like David Simon) says: ‘Yeah, I wanna comment on what that other caller said earlier. I mean all this crap about slavery and racism and all that be responsible for people who don’t wanna work I just think that’s a bunch of junk. You know what I mean? You don’t hear Italian people or Irish people complain. And they was treated real bad when they got to this country. I mean when are we gonna stop hearing about racism? I mean slavery was more than a hundred years ago. [Indistinct due to diegetic sound effects]… nobody take no drugs. They just do that to themselves.’ (episode one)

17 This caller represents a key interlocutor for The Corner as this miniseries criticizes the dismissal of the historical record in explaining or dealing with current issues regarding race in the US. The Corner’s liberal use of flashbacks can thus be seen as being rooted in a belief in the necessity of understanding of the problems in inner-city areas in the US

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in a historical, diachronic perspective. The flashbacks explain the current situation depicted on screen as a consequence of past developments and is thus a rebuttal of the sentiment expressed by the caller on this radio show. According to sociologist William Julius Wilson, conservatives “tend to stress the importance of values, attitudes, habits, and styles in explaining different experiences, behavior, and outcomes of groups. According to this view, group differences are reflected in the culture” (Wilson xiv), and seeing how the caller directly attacks the notion that structural and historical forms of racism are adequate explanations for current social problems in American ghettos the caller expresses a traditional conservative sentiment. The Corner thus rebuts conservative ideas about inner-city residents and discourses of alleged racism.

18 Interestingly, however, the above monologue also functions as a sound bridge between the viewer seeing Gary doing drugs in the basement of his parents’ house and a long shot from outside on the street where Gary’s father is parking his taxi outside his home after what the viewer soon after learns—through dialogue between Gary and his father —was a very long shift. The Corner thus plays on one of the constitutive elements of audiovisual media, the dual information tracks of sound and visuals (Allrath et al. 2) in that the visuals and accompanying dialogue rebut the caller’s comments that the sound side offers. As Gary is shown reading chemistry books while intoxicated, the visual expression in this scene—characteristically for the whole series—argues against the caller on the radio show. In this way, the series points out a discursive context and a fictionalized interlocutor with which it engages. It is thus clear how we may understand The Corner not just as a political utterance, but a political utterance that is directed at certain interlocutors that it itself points out.

19 This aligns well with how intellectual historian Quentin Skinner argues that texts do not just mean things; they do things in their context and texts are thus seen as intervening arguments in existing debates in a cultural landscape. Skinner argues that the critic cannot understand what texts “are doing, whether they are satirizing, repudiating, ridiculing, ignoring, accepting other points of view” (Skinner in Pallares- Burke 219). Seen in this way, The Corner addresses its interlocutor and acknowledges then-current discussions in order to engage with those discussions head-on. Skinner argues that writers, or “ideologists” in his terminology, need to “march backward into battle” in order to make their criticisms credible in the political vernacular of the era that a text is produced (Skinner 295). Mikkel Thorup and Frank Lassen explain this as a balance act that the “ideologist” maintains by “using a language that respects the linguistic conventions and thus makes the issue recognizable, while the text systematically works to rework or reinterpret how this issue is evaluated” (Lassen and Thorup 33). In other words, the critical writer needs to play on the existing field even if that critic wants to change the rules of the game. This snippet of dialogue on the radio thus serves as The Corner’s way of pointing out its interlocutors that it seeks to engage with and rebut. Through Skinner’s “pro-intertextualist methodology” one can also see how The Corner engages with a certain subgenre in 1990s film history; the “hood film” and this also opens up for a contextual understanding of how The Corner tries to represent inner-city issues in a way that—while certainly sharing some features with the hood film—tries to avoid some of the choices that the hood film had embraced.

20 Seeing as The Corner was the first television serial since Roots (1977) to feature “a majority black cast” (Williams 2014, 44),5 it has something of a privileged position in terms of engaging in a cultural dialogue about how the depiction of African Americans

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on television and in film. (The Corner refers to itself as a “film.”) It engages in such a dialogue through key intertextual allusions to John Singleton’s 1991 “hood film” Boyz n the Hood. “Hood films” refer to those early 1990s African American films which featured a “strong connection to youth rap/hip hop culture (via soundtrack and rappers-turned- actors), contemporary urban settings (primarily black communities in Los Angeles or New York), and inner-city social and political issues such as poverty, crime, racism, drugs, and violence.” Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society (1993) are the most well- known and successful films in the genre (deWaard 59). The Corner thus points out one of the central films in this genre in order to engage with the cultural politics of this genre more broadly.

21 In The Corner’s third episode, DeAndre is watching this film with his girlfriend Tyreeka and in Dutton’s opening interview of episode five with DeAndre, Dutton asks DeAndre why he and his friends call their basketball team the “Crenshaw Mafia Brothers” pointing to how “Crenshaw is a boulevard in Los Angeles.” DeAndre merely replies: “Saw Boyz n the Hood. Got it from there.” Later on, this name’s acronym, CMB, also becomes the name of DeAndre’s and his friends’ “gang” when they start selling drugs, suggesting how fascinated they are with the urban setting depicted in Singleton’s film. In this way The Corner discusses how representations of inner-city ills—in an unproductive way—can be perceived as fascinating portrayals even though a film like Boyz n the Hood is overtly political and instructional in wanting to “Increase the Peace” as the film’s closing intertitle reads.

After the end of Boyz n the Hood, this message appears just before the credits start rolling.

22 The last scene of Singleton’s film features two of its main characters, Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Darrin “Doughboy” Baker (Ice Cube), sitting on a porch talking about how the news media that morning didn’t cover how Doughboy’s brother Ricky (Morris Chestnut) had been killed the day before. Doughboy says “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood. They had all this foreign shit. They didn’t have shit on my brother, man” (Boyz n the Hood). According to Andrew deWaard, the film engages in the mode of melodrama and notes that these lines are

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“the film’s key piece of dialogue” and is both an “incendiary critique and induction of pathos” (60). This scene thus parallels Charles Dutton’s opening monologue where he presents The Corner as a story about people whose “voices are too rarely heard.”6 As this miniseries is based on David Simon and Ed Burns’ experiences in Baltimore in 1993 it is fully believable that they would watch Boyz n the Hood (as that film had only come out two years before), but it does seem that The Corner opts for a different way of portraying inner-city life and the miniseries thus uses these intertextual references to engage with Singleton’s film. So while both The Corner and Boyz n the Hood sympathize with the African American underclass in inner-city neighborhoods, The Corner emphasizes that its project of humanizing this group of people is performed in a different way than was the case in the hood films of the early 1990s.

23 An important difference between The Corner and Boyz n the Hood is how shootings are portrayed. In Boyz n the Hood, shootings are placed at key dramatic junctures that imbue these shootings with a dramatic importance and gravitas. As these key dramatic scenes are scenes of violence, violence comes to stand at the center of attention of a film which otherwise wishes to forward an agenda of non-violence. The Corner features one shooting and it is interesting to note that the sense of drama that accompanies violence in Boyz n the Hood is all but absent from The Corner’s shooting scene. The Corner’s sole shooting scene is presented as being completely disorienting to the viewer in a way that avoids imbuing it with the same degree of dramatic tension and centrality that is characteristic of Boyz n the Hood and hood movies in general. It is not even clear to the viewer that somebody is really trying to shoot at DeAndre and his friends. They nevertheless run around scared and shoot guns while looking the other way. Shot and edited in a way that confuses the viewer, this scene can hardly be said to romanticize “gangster” behavior in any way but in the ensuing scene DeAndre and his friends are nevertheless standing on a corner boasting about how cool they were and how dramatic that shoot-out was to them and here the viewer sees a distinct discrepancy between how s/he experienced the confusing shooting scene and how the young boys talk about it (episode five). One could argue that they—the Crenshaw Mafia Brothers as they call themselves—see their experiences through the lens of hood films like Boyz n the Hood, and The Corner suggests that that form of thinking is not helpful in these children’s lives. The Corner wants to avoid imbuing shooting scenes with the same drama that the early 1990s hood films did. The Corner instead lingers on the pain that murder victims’ relatives feel.

24 When the community activist/social worker Miss Ella (Tyra Ferrell) is making a memorial for a citizen who had been shot the previous year, she invites DeAndre and his friends to help out. It turns out that the person who had been killed was the uncle of one of DeAndre’s friends and therefore he and one of the other friends choose to help out but it does not take long before these two friends have spelled out CMB with rocks in the dirt and start rapping “Get your guns out/Get your guns out!” They do this in a playful and childlike manner that reveals the childish nature of their fascination with gang culture and guns they know from media texts and through this scene The Corner points out how this fascination may play an unproductive point of reference for these children. Miss Ella, whom the teenagers know from a community recreation center where they spend some of their afternoons and also throw parties at, thus stands as an important counterbalance to the other influences in the children’s lives that are not as strong and positive as she is. It is later revealed that—without Miss Ella’s

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knowing—that the memorial is also to be dedicated to Miss Ella’s daughter who had been killed a few years earlier (episode six). The inclusion of Miss Ella’s storyline is thus important in relation to showing the loss that accompanies violence and killings but also in terms of representational politics; of showing the forces for good that exist in inner cities so The Corner would not be accused of painting an overly bleak picture of the situation.7

25 As The Corner’s shooting scene is devoid of the drama and suspense of the ones featured in Boyz n the Hood that it references several times, the miniseries thus uses Singleton’s debut movie as a contrastive frame of reference of how it does and does not portray an inner-city environment marked by drug dealing. One should, however, not overstate the differences between The Corner and Boyz n the Hood. They share a core ethos but The Corner discusses whether the aesthetics that Boyz n the Hood adopts is fully helpful in dealing with these issues in the most constructive way. DeAndre and Dutton discuss the situation in this West Baltimore neighborhood and DeAndre explains that “Niggers be dying.” Dutton replies “You don’t think you’re being a little melodramatic?” to which DeAndre shrugs. The fact that Dutton asks DeAndre this question is the show’s way of trying to preempt viewers’ “accusations” or reservations about the show’s alleged “melodrama.” Indeed, from the late nineteenth century there has been a tendency to see realism and melodrama as distinct categories, seeing the latter as “an outdated and embarrassingly crude approach to the problem of artistic mimesis” (Kelleter and Mayer 10). In this vein, melodrama is a pejorative concept “associated with cheap effects, quick entertainment, and distraction from weighty moral questions” but several scholars have revised the term so that it is discussed as a serious and pervasive mode of storytelling which lends itself “to enactments of socio-cultural processes of marginalization” which, in the US, often has a racial element to it (Kelleter and Mayer 7, 9). However, while scholars have revised their usage of the term, DeAndre’s shrug at Dutton’s comment about him maybe being melodramatic makes Dutton explain the concept as “overly dramatic to make a point” revealing that Dutton uses the term in its “old” usage as if the melodramatic mode undercuts DeAndre’s attempts at conveying the realities of living in his neighborhood.

26 Thomas Postlewait, however, argues that we should not see melodrama and realism in dichotomies where “melodrama distorts, realism reports; melodrama offers escapism, realism offers life; melodrama is conservative, realism is radical; melodrama delivers ideologies (as false consciousness), realism deconstructs ideologies.” To Postlewait “both melodrama and realism distort and report, conserve and criticize. And both articulate and challenge ideologies of the time” (56). Understanding The Corner’s use of realism and melodrama in this tradition is thus able to account for its dual emphasis on the reality of its subject matter and its simultaneous embrace of pathos. In this way, the show offers a form of self-aware metafictional commentary in an otherwise realist vernacular. This scene anticipates how The Corner might be received, maybe as “overly dramatic to make a point.” DeAndre, however, gets angry at Dutton saying “I’m saying niggers be thinking this a game. This shit is for real.” Read in these metafictional terms, DeAndre’s anger here is The Corner’s anger; this is The Corner objecting to the notion that its elements of emotionality and “melodrama” are textual constructs imposed on its real-life subject matter. The self-reflexiveness in the dialogue between Dutton and DeAndre thus speaks to the subject matter of the series and how that subject is presented.

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27 The Corner thus suggests that this melodramatic element is part of its realist impulse. In this sense, DeAndre’s line that “[t]his shit is for real” is a spelled-out statement of the series’ poetological approach that rejects the notion that some (viewers) might simply see the miniseries as a (textual) play/“game.” For The Corner it is important to preempt the objections that critics might raise about its depiction of the situation in Western Baltimore. Seen in the light of Skinner’s ideas of textual direction, The Corner wards off “accusations” of sentimentality which might be acutely important considering how the series has its chief interest in humanizing a marginalized and (in The Corner’s view) misrepresented group of people.

3. Humanization and Dehumanization

28 One of the clearest ways that The Corner signposts its commitment to realism is how each episode opens with an intertitle reading “True Stories” followed by a talking heads style interview that resembles journalistic television. It, however, also embraces melodrama as its politics lies in its appeal to its viewers’ sympathy for Gary and its other characters. T.K. Carter’s portrayal of Gary is highly convincing—to me, at least— and his work in the show plays a large part in fleshing out the miniseries’ ambition about humanizing drug addicts. As mentioned, Linda Williams considers melodrama to be “structured upon the “dual recognition” of how things are and how they should be” (Williams, “Melodrama Revisited” 48) which The Corner’s embraces in its portrayal of Gary and the others. In Dutton’s interview with Fran, Gary’s wife, she describes how she “first started messing with heroin when [her] sister Darlene died. She got burned up in a fire.” At her sister’s funeral, Fran was offered drugs which she accepted as a way of coping with her loss. The dealer came back the next day, but after that Fran was hooked and had to go find drugs herself (episode three). That sort of predatory behavior surely puts Fran’s addiction in a new light. Williams argues that “[i]f emotional and moral registers are sounded, if a work invites us to feel sympathy for the virtues of beset victims, if the narrative trajectory is ultimately more concerned with a retrieval and staging of innocence than with the psychological causes of motives and action, then the operative mode is melodrama” (“Melodrama Revisited” 42). Williams’ words thus explain how The Corner’s melodrama works as this scene shows how a person’s predatory behavior got to Fran in her most fragile state, making the miniseries “[invite] us to feel sympathy for” and, in turn, “judge” her less harshly. Her addiction is at least not only her own fault.

29 In the fourth episode Gary goes to see Spielberg’s 1993 historical epic Schindler’s List in a different part of Baltimore, which furthers The Corner’s discussion of how its aesthetic form of blending realism and melodrama is connected to its political ambition of humanizing its protagonists. Later that day, while shooting up with Fat Curt (Clarke Peters) and other drug addicts, Gary, clearly inspired by having seen Schindler’s List, talks about the Nazi dehumanization of the Jews during the 1930s and 1940s: “They couldn’t see them as anything better than rats or bugs,” Gary says to which Rita (Robin Michelle McClamb) responds that “That sound like a miserable-ass movie.” Gary replies, “Yeah, but it was real, all right?” suggesting that the “miserable” content of Schindler’s List (and, by extension, The Corner) is rooted in its veracity. This piece of dialogue thus furthers the miniseries’ warding off of accusations of being melodramatic (in the old/pejorative sense of the word) and emphasizes that this is (also) real(ism).

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The few scenes where Gary is in another part of Baltimore are decidedly more colorful than the present-day scenes from Western Baltimore and thus suggest how the people at the focus of this show live in a separate reality divorced from the harbor adjacent setting that looks much more hospitable. While on the east side of Baltimore, Gary is listening to The O’Jays song “Livin’ for the Weekend” on a Walkman which contains the lines “You might see me on the east side/Ha, the west side/I’m even going cross the bridge/ ‘Cause I, ‘cause I, ‘cause I hear/They really get down over there.” The visual expression and the diegetic music thus conjure the sense of a divided public space in Baltimore. This visual expression thus underscores Gary’s comments about how one group of people is separated from the thriving mainstream of American society and The Corner argues that this spatial isolation is the prerequisite for the harmful othering of the inner city drug afflicted citizens.

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Gary in sunny East Baltimore and Blue (Glenn Plummer) on his way to rehab in a less sunlit scene in West Baltimore.

30 It that sense, this scene—along with the scene where Dutton interviews DeAndre in the store—offers the miniseries’ poetological statement. Referring to the dehumanization of Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, Gary says that “it’s happening again” (episode four). It is completely suiting to Gary—a man shown to have a strong interest in abstract thought—that he utters these thoughts but one could argue that it is important that Gary makes the connection explicit. Had Gary not made the connection explicit the series might accused of being hyperbolic by merely suggesting the link between one form of dehumanization (in Germany) and another (in the US). Spelling out this comparison within the diegesis also makes clear that the dehumanization of drug addicts is the discourse that The Corner objects to and the miniseries implicitly suggests that its strategy is to humanize its characters. That is its political mission and I believe that its aesthetics underpin that ambition successfully. This also reveals how we are to understand the project of humanization in The Corner. It is a discursive phenomenon that has to do with how a lot of people perceive a certain group of people; “They couldn’t see them as anything better than rats or bugs,” as Gary says. The Corner’s chief political interest in the humanization of the drug addicted and impoverished humans living in derelict neighborhoods is thus a politics that has more to do with perceptions and sympathies rather than concrete policy measures. Erlend Lavik argues that the politics of The Wire do not come in the form of policy initiatives and concrete plans of societal change: “The Wire does not gradually present a chain of argument with well-defined premises and claims. The series rather creates a complicated network of ideologically and emotionally charged connotations without describing in any detailed fashion the important connections between them” (Lavik, The Wire 225). This is in line

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with how Williams argues that “the most crucial element of the study of melodrama” is “its capacity to generate emotion in audiences” (“Melodrama Revisited” 44).

31 That capacity, however, also has to do with the amount of screen time devoted to Gary and the other characters. For The Corner’s project of humanization relies both on what film theorist Murray Smith calls structures of sympathy and the fact that it shows drug addicts, especially Gary, to be conscientious people. Sheamus Sweeney argues that when drug addicts appeared on the television series Homicide (1993-1999) “they were lacking agency, usually witnesses to a crime and desperate for a fix” (Sweeney 122) which is a striking contrast to The Corner’s focus on Gary and his family. Gary is no bystander in a larger plotline about, say, a murder investigation which means that he and his family is the crux of the story.

32 To Murray Smith, viewers can become aligned with certain characters through either spatio-temporal attachment or subjective access (83); i.e. how much screen time is devoted to a character and how much insight viewers get through devices like voice-over etc. The large amount of screen time devoted to Gary (including interviews with him and the interviews of which he becomes the topic of conversation), aligns the viewer with him in a way you do not see in many other depictions of addicts and that textual fact opens up the possibility that the viewer does not judge Gary’s addiction right off the bat. We simply see more nuances in Gary because we see him in many different situations like when he is at work and when he muses over the callous attitudes he encounters in his community. In some cases, however, alignment can lead to allegiance, which according to Smith has to do with the viewer’s extending of his/her sympathy to characters but has to do with the moral evaluations the viewer makes of the character’s behavior and actions. (84). Smith argues that the term “identification”—for the viewer’s emotional engagement with characters—is misleading. Identification suggests that the viewer mimics what the character is feeling. Bordwell is on point: “We might pity a grieving widow, but she isn’t feeling pity, she’s feeling grief” (n.p.). Smith’s term allegiance, then, shows how viewers can sympathize with characters like Gary and Fran without suggesting that we feel what they are feeling and through this terminology we can understand how The Corner is able to align its viewers with Gary and, quite possibly, create allegiance with him. Through the time spent with him, the morality he displays, and how he is shown to be less callous than some of the people around him the viewer is invited to sympathize with Gary.8

33 This formal choice is thus directly interrelated to the politics of humanization that is at the heart of The Corner. With allegiance having to do with the viewer’s “moral evaluation of characters” it is important the viewer sees Gary trying to stop his wife’s— and, by extension, his and DeAndre’s—descent into addiction. These scenes therefore provide the viewer with important information that can well affect the viewer’s moral evaluation of him. We know how he fought and how he tried to avoid drugs for a long time. This focus on Gary is central to The Corner’s overall ambition, which, however, is further underscored by the series’ use of flashbacks and its use of interviews.

34 The Wire thus harnesses the appeal of melodrama in creating structures of sympathy with characters in certain situations, and that form of politics is also present in The Corner. Its politics lies not in saying what should be done to change the situation that it portrays but in engendering a wish for change in the viewers by arousing their indignation; it is a counter narrative to those stories in the media culture that discursively reduce the humanity of inner-city dwellers and especially drug addicts.

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Soon after its release, Janny Scott commented in The New York Times that The Corner “had shown black inner-city drug addicts as complex and startlingly human” (Scott). Her comment about drug addicts coming across as “startlingly human” surely does not come from her being surprised that people with addictions are human, but is rather motivated by how much The Corner’s portrayal of addicts veers away from the standard way of depicting addicts.

35 As The Corner is based on the real people that Simon and Burns followed around in 1993, the viewer very much has a hard time dismissing this sympathetic portrayal of Gary as a mere textual construct. Though Gary at times overlooks his own complicity in morally dubious behavior (as Vest argues), he is morally aware of the ethical and social implications of his and other people’s interactions. It is a chase for money and for drugs —but a chase that challenges Gary’s sense of ethics—even though he really does not want to see it that way. This is particularly poignant in Dutton’s opening interview with Gary in episode four. Dutton mentions the books he sees lying around: “You got a library down here I see. James Baldwin, Thoreau, Elie Wiesel. A History of God. What’s that about?” Gary: “Oh yeah, that’s Judaism, Islam, Christianity. It’s like it’s three paths to the same god” explaining that he, when high, “[tries] to educate [him]self.” This surely represents a very untraditional depiction of drug addicts in popular culture. It adds layers to the characterization of Gary and stresses the fact that his addiction does not nullify his individuality, which clearly is a representational point in itself. In episode two, Fran has kicked out DeAndre for selling drugs, which has made him move into their former (now abandoned) house. Knowing that his son is holding drugs, Gary sneaks in to steal from him but sees his son having sex with his girlfriend, Tyreeka.

Gary learning that his son is making his own life experiences.

36 The interesting thing here is how though Gary is stealing from his son we see him briefly nodding with a slight smile on his face before his face turns back to a more sad

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expression. In this short glimpse, we see the father—not the drug addict stealing from his son—being glad to learn DeAndre growing up making his own life experiences (episode two). The scene embodies the overall aim of The Corner; to see the man before seeing his addiction.

4. Exit

37 The Corner maintains a strict ethos of neither pitying nor passing judgment on its characters and though it has a chief interest in humanizing Gary, Fran, DeAndre and its other characters, the show does not shy away from showing how these fictionalized renditions of real people, especially Gary, make some poor choices in their lives. A part of the show’s humanization is to meet its characters eye to eye. It does not make excuses for them. As Vest points out, The Corner refuses the drug-addict-as-unwitting-victim trope that Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and Homicide indulge to illustrate that Gary’s problems are at least partly his own fault. The miniseries, however, refutes the drug-addict-as-unsympathetic-criminal trope that cop dramas more frequently portray to demonstrate Gary’s inherent goodness even as he commits larceny. (129)

38 Vest is not inspired by Skinner, but by noting how he argues that The Corner “refuses” and “refutes” other ways of depicting drug addicts, his understanding of textual agency aligns well with Skinner’s intertextual methodology. The point of The Corner’s evaluative depiction of Gary is that he is presented as a person before he is presented as a drug addict for, as Vest notes, it is indeed rare to see drug addicts as the core protagonists of televisual fictions and the very approach of focusing on a drug addict allows for a different portrayal of drug addicts and drug addiction compared to, say, many police procedurals where drug addicts might be cast in minor roles of victims of crimes or as witnesses to them. Indeed, one of the things that attracted Dutton to Simon’s and Mills’ script was that “it was told from the addicts’ perspective, not some glamorized dealer’s” (Scott).

39 In their 1997 book, Simon and Burns wrote that “[i]n the empty heart of our cities, the culture of drugs has created a wealth-generating structure so elemental and enduring that it can legitimately be called a social compact” (Simon and Burns 68). Such a structural critique is not very clear in the adapted miniseries which instead chose to zero in on the human consequences of this “enduring social compact” but not its economic and structural underpinnings. The Wire would later revisit that agenda of humanizing black inner-city drug addicts but would do so in a way that also ponders the structural issues that this misery exists within. Having a core interest in explaining how the war on drugs can perpetuate itself across decades, this serial was able to offer a “systemic” outlook (Kinder), revisiting some of the more structural and societal points found in Burns’ and Simon’s 1997 book. The Wire foregrounds the social reproduction of social ills and is therefore arguably a depiction of urban ills that shows that things stay the same (Jensen); in this sense The Wire is able to pick up on the “social compact” that Burns and Simon’s commented on but which fell away in the HBO miniseries. The Corner also suggests that the situation portrayed is a situation that is allowed to endure but its focus lies in its realist and melodramatic way of trying to make its viewers see Gary and the other characters as people with addictions rather than as mere addicts. And in its efforts to engage in a public dialogue about these

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issues, this miniseries points out key interlocutors and tries to engage in a public conversation about the situation in the impoverished ghettos of the US. The Corner’s humanization is thus a political act achieved through realism, melodrama and pathos.

40 Humanization is here understood as portraying drug addicts on screen as people, and not as “see them as anything better than rats or bugs” in Gary’s words. Humanization is a discursive phenomenon—directed at key interlocutors—that is employed for political purposes in an effort to not let the viewer accept a media picture of inner-city problems that diminishes the humanity of inner-city dwellers. The Corner thus rejects the hood films’ way of trying to achieve the same ends; to engender viewers’ sympathy with the characters on screen living in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods. The Corner suggests that Boyz n the Hood—and other hood films—take some aesthetic missteps in their way of trying to achieve their political purpose. In contrast, The Corner focuses on showing—through the use of flashbacks—how the then-current state of affairs is a product of a social decline and thus make the viewer understand that the situation in these blighted inner-city neighborhoods is not to be taken as a given; this situation is shown to be a resultant of a permeable historical development and The Corner thus stresses that we need the diachronic perspective to understand the current situation. As such, the flashbacks and the intertextual dialogues underscore and qualify the overall purpose of The Corner; the simultaneous application of realist and melodramatic modes needed to humanize its characters which, in turn, might make the viewer reject other media discourses that does not do any favors to the public image of dwellers of inner-city neighborhoods. This speaks to the dual purpose inherent in The Corner’s humanization which contains both a discursive and an extra-discursive dimension; i.e. one that aims at language and one that addresses social realities. To understand The Corner is to acknowledge both elements in its societal criticism as its ambition is to serve as a counter-narrative to other narratives that overlook the social realities The Corner centers on. This discursive—and pathos laden—criticism ultimately aims at addressing the untoward social conditions under which this group of people lives.

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NOTES

1. The Wire is the subject of five monographs (Vint 2013, Lavik 2014, Williams 2014, Kelleter 2014, Corkin 2017), five edited collections (Potter and Marshall 2009, Bzdak et al 2013, Dillon and Crommey 2015, Keeble and Stacy 2015, and special issues of the journals of Criticism, Critical Inquiry, and Darkmatter). Treme is the topic of one monograph (Andersen 2018), one anthology (Gendrin et al 2017), and a special issue of Television & New Media. 2. Ed Burns was one of the principal writers on The Wire but was not involved in creating The Corner, apart from the fact that the miniseries was based on the book penned by him and Simon. 3. See Vint 1, 15, 21, 43, 87; Kelleter 29, 43, 64-65; Williams, On The Wire 24-28, 38-44, 52-53, 68, 75, 241; Lavik, The Wire 87, 111, 112, 216, 225; and Corkin 5, 7, 23, 30-32, 85. 4. Simon had learned the craft of writing television drama by working on Homicide: Life on the Street which was based on Simon’s book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991). As Tom Fontana served as the showrunner on that series, however, The Corner represents the first time that Simon was a central writer and producer on a show. 5. Several television series had, of course, featured predominantly black casts, but not serials. Prominent examples include Good Times (1974-1979, CBS), The Jeffersons (1975-1985, CBS), The Cosby Show (1984-1992, NBC), Family Matters (1989-1998, ABC/CBS), Roc (1991-1994, Fox), and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996, NBC). 6. Dutton said he did not want any of the writers present for the shooting of this opening scene and according to Janny Scott “HBO asked Mr. Dutton at the last minute to film a personal preamble to the series, describing his reasons for making it. The idea worried Mr. Simon and Mr. Mills; they did not want HBO apologizing for the series in advance. They shipped a draft script to Mr. Dutton. But he sent back a message saying he would write the preamble himself” (Scott). 7. Interestingly, The Wire was since criticized for not portraying the positive work of social workers in the Baltimore communities it centers on. In Peter Dreier and John Atlas’ much cited critique of The Wire, they write that “The Wire’s unrelentingly bleak portrayal missed what’s hopeful in Baltimore and, indeed, in other major American cities” (Dreier and Atlas 330). Erlend Lavik, however, counters that critique, writing that that argument is like criticizing a fire alarm for being too noisy (Lavik, The Wire 142). There is, in other words, an argumentative purpose to The Wire’s “bleak” picture of Baltimore (Jensen). So in considering in the positive work Miss Ella does in her community, we can see that the criticism of Simon’s shows might be challenged if one looks at how his serials depict America’s urban realities in different ways. 8. Given that Murray Smith’s work in viewer engagement is based in a cognitivist interest, some might see his ideas as gelling poorly with a cultural approach such as this article’s interest in how The Corner engages in historical debates about drug addicts in inner cities. Mittell, however, argues that while the “cognitive poetic approach” excels at answering specific questions about viewer engagement, this agenda is compatible with cultural approaches that take on other research agendas (205).

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ABSTRACTS

This article presents a reading of the six-part HBO miniseries The Corner (2000) which was co- written by David Simon and David Mills and directed by Charles S. Dutton. Focusing in particular on its use of flashbacks, intertextuality, melodrama, and realism, the article argues that this series has its chief interest in humanizing a group of people—namely drug addicts—who otherwise are relegated to the margins of popular television shows. Taking a point of departure in showing how a family in an impoverished neighborhood is afflicted by drug addiction, The Corner tries to counter existing discourses about people living in blighted inner-city neighborhoods, and through intertextual dialogue with the genre of the “hood film”— exemplified by John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991)—The Corner explicitly makes a different depiction of similar subject matters than is generally found in “hood films.” The article shows how The Corner’s societal critique is embedded in both realism and melodrama as a way of insisting on the veracity of its subject matter while also using emotionality—pathos—as a core part of its appeal and political argumentation.

INDEX

Keywords: The Corner, David Simon, humanization, drug abuse, melodrama, intertextual dialogue

AUTHOR

MIKKEL JENSEN Mikkel Jensen holds an MA in English and History and is a PhD Fellow at Aalborg University, Denmark. Before starting his doctoral work on the television series of David Simon (The Wire, Show Me a Hero, The Deuce etc.), Jensen worked for a number of years and as an upper- secondary school teacher. His articles have appeared in Academic Quarter, The Explicator, and SERIES: International Journal of Television Serial Narratives.

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Writing Yourself Home: US Veterans, Creative Writing, and Social Activism

Frank Usbeck

1. Introduction

1 The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have generated a broad swath of firsthand narratives written by US military personnel. Soldiers employed the latest technological gadgets and cultural practices to stay in contact with home during their deployment and to reflect on their overseas experiences. They used the features of Web 2.0, such as Skype, blogs (the so-called “milblogs”), or social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with families, friends, and online communities. Returning veterans have written memoirs, nonfiction accounts, poetry, blogs, and short fiction based on their experiences, and many have contributed to documentary and feature films. Their texts are available in print and online collections, with many more currently underway (cf. Molin; Peebles). A wide support network has emerged for soliciting, editing, and publishing these firsthand narratives, including financial backing and training in writing and editing techniques through large institutions such as the National Endowment of the Arts and PBS (cf. Carroll; Operation), through writing centers and composition courses at college campuses, but also through a host of local and national grassroots organizations.

2 First-person war narratives have a long tradition in the US. Historians have collected diaries and letters from wars going back to the revolution (Morgan and Michalson). During the Civil War, soldiers and civilians in the war zone wrote profusely, and their private letters and diaries were often widely circulated and published (Shapiro and Humphreys 4). Henry Steele Commager finds that, in the Civil War, “[e]veryman was… his own historian” because ordinary people recorded events in great detail (qtd. in Jimerson 3–4). Samuel Hynes contextualizes historical life―and war―writing with the emergence of a large middle class, describing this group as the “great self-recording

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class that keeps diaries and journals and considers that the preservation of one’s daily life is an appropriate and interesting activity for an individual” (31–32). In this respect, US troops since the Civil War have integrated this cultural penchant for self-reflection into their military careers and vividly discussed life in the war zone, as well as their roles as citizens and soldiers in their written representations of war. The current proliferation of war narratives, then, is not a novelty; what is new is the narratives’ heterogeneity in terms of genre and medium, as well as the way in which technological telecommunication capabilities accelerate and extend the dissemination of these narratives among worldwide audiences.1

3 Yet, contemporary war writing also seems to be determined by unique circumstances, mostly tied to the sociocultural and historical context of the Vietnam War: the new generation of writers is aware of the domestic controversies that arose during Vietnam; it is aware of US society’s struggles to resolve them, and of the resulting anxieties about civil-military relationships in current public debates on war. Today’s military authors grew up immersed in cultural representations of Vietnam that reflect these anxieties and that have popularized particular images, such as the broken and traumatized veteran, and the neglectful, or even hostile, civilian home front. This new generation of veterans was the first to enter a war imbued with knowledge about psychological injuries and equipped with the lexicon of military psychology, aware of concepts such as “trauma,” “stressors,” and “breaking points” (Larkin). It is also the first military generation to become involved in major, long-term military engagements after the establishment of the professional, all-volunteer force in the aftermath of Vietnam. Soldiers experienced firsthand the resulting changes in the traditions of citizen- soldiering, as well as public debates about these changing roles and social relationships (cf. Bacevich; Thompson; Hendricks and Amara).

4 Likewise, the civilian public is also aware of these images, issues, and role changes. The outbreak of the post-9/11 wars sparked widespread public support for “the troops” (despite the controversies over the political decision for the Iraq War) and social activism has quickly evolved to tackle the social and psychological problems of veteran reintegration. Many activists in veterans’ affairs treat “[p]ost-traumatic stress [as] a medical term for a cultural problem” (Crawford). That is, they argue that war experience should not be understood as the concern of an “isolated individual among other isolated individuals, each devoted to pursuing his or her private interests” (Crawford), but of society as a whole: after all, they argue, it was society that sent the soldiers out to fight these wars.2 These activists, thus, seek to engage veterans in sharing and publicly reflecting on their experiences as a means of reintegration that is at once symbolic and tangible; they both nurture public discourse on war and pursue concrete results for individual veterans’ well-being. Hoping to bridge the perceived civil-military gap, activists employ war narratives and their public recital and dissemination as central elements to soothe anxieties about public indifference, neglect and refusal. It is no coincidence that Ken Burns’ 2017 documentary series on Vietnam rekindled the public debate about contemporary domestic struggles and US civil- military relations and that Vietnam-era veteran writers, such as Tim O’Brien and Karl Marlantes, feature prominently in the series. In combination with contemporary media technology and this sociohistorical context, then, today’s veteran generation emerges from a “multimedia confessional society” (Simon), imbued with the means and

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embedded in a receptive social environment to share and negotiate their war experiences in public.

5 This article explores the recent proliferation of veterans’ writing projects. They represent the public discourse and sense of social crisis regarding war experience, psychological injury, and civil-military relationships stemming from the Vietnam War, refueled by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than investigating the literary techniques and the generic merits of veterans’ writing, it focuses on the projects’ approach to writing and asks how their self-reflections portray the process of narrating war experience as a form of social activism to overcome the civil-military divide. The article links activists’ postulations of a social crisis in veterans’ affairs with their promotion of war writing as social therapy and explores how they seek to nurture public debate and to support civil-military reintegration. It draws on religious anthropologist Roy Rappaport’s notion of ritual who describes it as “not simply [being the] symbolic representation of social contract, but tacit social contract itself” (138). I argue that the cultural work of veterans’ writing projects lies in their frequently explicit enactment of workshops, events, and publications as civic rituals of reintegration and that they negotiate, as well as showcase, values and norms around civil-military relationships. Adapting recent theories and methods of psychology (such as narrative therapy), they seek to create dialog between veterans and civilians on veterans’ social and psychological struggles of homecoming, and they emphasize the role of civilian support therein.3

6 In the following, I will briefly sketch out some of the interrelations of trauma theory, psychology, literary theory, and war-related civic activism, to pinpoint the methodological foundation for many writing projects. I will then discuss a few projects housed at university campuses, carving out the activist drive behind their merging of academic and military culture, before detailing the work and self-portrayal of two grassroots projects, the Warrior Writers and the Veterans’ Writing Project. Both sections offer close readings of journalistic and academic texts that situate these projects in the realm of military psychology, veterans’ affairs, and social activism, as well as self-representations on “about” pages online and in editorials of the projects’ anthologies. The readings focus on how activists attribute social-therapeutic qualities to public writing, how veterans’ writing is understood as nurturing civil-military relationships, and how the projects discussed here assume role model functions in envisioning these relationships.

2. War Experience, Trauma, and Narrative in Activist Scholarship

7 Since the final decades of the twentieth century, a growing body of scholarship correlated recovery from traumatic experiences with narrative-making. In turn, academic and civic activists in veterans’ affairs have adopted this focus on narrative for their social-therapeutic approach to veterans’ writing projects. Medical researchers and humanities scholars explored how people process extreme experiences, how memory—individual as well as public―is shaped by these negotiations and what role narrative, i.e., the constructed representation of experiences, plays in people’s abilities to overcome emotional distress. These academic explorations have pursued interdisciplinary approaches from the start. Literary studies adopted ideas and theories

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from psychology and psychotherapy, particularly from the emerging field of traumatology. Both literary studies and psychology shaped their respective paradigms on related subject matter: while the medical professions constructed theirs from practical work with traumatized survivors of the Holocaust and with veterans of World War Two and Vietnam, literary studies engaged the texts that represented authors’ recollections and imaginations of these events (e.g., Wilson et al.; LaCapra; Heberle). Eventually, medical scholars and practitioners turned to literary representations of war to test and refine theories and their therapeutic applications (e.g., Hunt, Shay).

8 Literary scholars engaged traumatology to explain how traumatic experiences affect people’s capabilities to make sense of and reflect on an event. Adopting psychology’s understanding that traumatic experience, e.g., forces affected persons to compulsively relive the event and the corresponding emotions through flashbacks but leaves their minds incapable of analyzing and contextualizing them, literary scholars postulate a “crisis of witnessing” (Felman and Laub) and discuss how the “unclaimed experience” (Caruth) of trauma becomes visible through narrative reconstructions of these events. This interdisciplinary focus on trauma and narrative encompasses both individual and collective processes. Narrative therapy, pioneered by James Pennebaker, explores neurological processes set in motion when a person writes about emotional distress, and its proponents argue that writing helps order thoughts and integrates emotions and memories with the experienced event (Pennebaker and Seagal 1243). As these scholars suggest, writing provides a tool to approach the traumatic event in a controlled fashion and to engage in a process of working through, that is, of making sense and constructing meaning.

9 Medical scholars have also begun to integrate concepts and methods from literary theory and other fields in the humanities. Noting that “[n]arrative is the performance of the self in the sense of self-identity” (116), psychologist Nigel C. Hunt observes that social processes such as public discourse influence the construction of memory and self-identity (120–125). According to Hunt, psychology and therapeutic practice can learn from the humanities and social sciences, considering the constructedness of memory and identity in their efforts to ‘construct’ efficient therapies. Among others, Hunt compares selective memory―consciously or subconsciously utilizing and discarding particular aspects of experiences―to the process of narrative development, i.e., of selecting plot elements, setting, and character in writing a story (125-26). Linking narrative construction with the (re)construction of self and identity in trauma therapy in this fashion, psychologists and literary scholars have promoted narrative- making as a viable course to work through and represent extreme experiences.

10 While the principle of revisiting a traumatic event by narrating its particular aspects has long been a cornerstone of individual psychotherapeutic practice―e.g., in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)―academics and civic activists increasingly relate it to notions of social health and community relationships that pervade the discussions around veterans’ affairs. Traumatologists have noted that a traumatic event shatters the affected person’s sense of trust and critically impedes one’s ability to (re)build personal relationships (Herman 53). A growing number of medical practitioners and researchers, thus, emphasize the role of community and social relationships in trauma therapy. As Judith Herman states: “Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships, it cannot occur in isolation” (133). Similarly, Jonathan Shay argues that “recovery happens only in community [emphasis in original]” (4), adding that, ideally, the

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relationship between client and therapist is amended by the contribution of a third party, such as family and friends, to help the clients rebuild their selves and their social relationships. Scholars and activists, thus, propose diverse forms of therapy and social integration centered around making war narratives and sharing them with civilians. These practices often explicitly construct civic rituals of veteran reintegration and civilian pledges to veteran support (cf. Shay 152, 245).

11 In the US, public discourse on the sociocultural nature of war trauma is further intensified as it correlates with the controversies on civil-military relationships since Vietnam. The public memory and cultural imagination of Vietnam, manifest in countless movies, novels, and memoirs, portrays an ignorant, neglectful, even outright hostile civil society at home which compounded the returning veterans’ reintegration struggles (Leikauf 76–90). Trauma scholarship has developed concepts such as “sanctuarial traumatic stress” (Parson 250) to explain how the experience of civilian neglect impeded veterans’ reconstruction of their civilian selves. It is in this context that many medical professionals who had worked with Vietnam veterans since the 1970s, both in their academic writing and their civic engagement in veterans’ affairs, demanded that civil society as a whole be held responsible for the reintegration of veterans, regardless of individual traumatic experiences made during the war. Based on this perspective, many activists organize public events where veterans share their stories as opportunities for civil society to bear witness, to symbolically absorb psychological stress in acknowledging responsibility, and to work toward reintegration (cf. Becknell; Junger 123–24). The construction of and public discourse about firsthand war narratives, then, plays a central role in social therapy-oriented interrelations of academic and civic activism.

3. Campus Activism, Composition Courses, and Student Veterans

12 US universities have adapted to the new generation of post-9/11 war veterans in recent years, investing much energy and resources to address their specific backgrounds and needs. In the first three years after the new GI Bill passed in 2009, some nine hundred thousand veterans used benefits related to higher education. Similar to the effect of the first GI Bill after World War Two, it is expected that these veterans “will substantially transform postsecondary classroom dynamics, relationships across campus and in the community, and our understanding of the kinds of literacies students bring to our courses” (Doe and Langstraat 1-2).

13 To support and guide this transformation, many universities created veteran centers, student services, and specific programs for the student veteran population. In this context, composition courses have become critical elements for student veterans’ careers because these classes often serve first-year students and, thus, become focal points for exchanges between military and academic culture in the students’ transition to civil life. As students contribute “the values, rhetorical traditions, and communication styles they have learned in the military,” their “perspectives will likely challenge the values and beliefs of not only traditional college students but faculty as well” (Doe and Langstraat 3). While military and academic life share as a central element the dedication to hard work and discipline, entering student veterans tend to be older than most undergraduates and their military experiences set them apart from

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both civilian students and faculty (Logan). It is this environment of cultural exchange and, frequently, conflict, that social activists in academia utilize to nurture civil- military relationships and to support student veterans’ efforts toward reintegration.

14 Not surprisingly, the humanities feature very prominently in these efforts. Their representatives contribute disciplinary expertise, be it critical thinking, interpretation and comparative approaches in literature and culture, or the mechanics of writing―both academic and creative―to offer students a form of service learning tailored to their respective diverse cultural and social backgrounds. English literature programs in particular bring in a long tradition of scholarship on war narratives. They can readily provide examples and contextualization for particular issues emerging in student veterans’ writing courses. While sometimes leading to political confrontations in the classroom, as Doe and Langstraat caution above, the humanities’ large numbers of social activists among faculty and students, who are already well-versed in analyzing and discussing social issues, contribute their experience in social organization and outreach to these projects. Lastly, the recent spike in veteran-related programs on university campuses might also serve the mundane purpose of giving the humanities better access to external funding. At a time when the humanities face increasing financial pressures, the “hot” topic of veterans’ affairs helps these disciplines advertise their own social relevance.4

15 Many veterans’ writing groups on campus are embedded in general efforts to create and improve specialized student services for veterans, and often result from student veterans’ own initiatives. Travis L. Martin, veteran of two tours to Iraq, organized a veterans’ campus group at Eastern Kentucky University which lobbied for better institutional support for veterans. Working with university administrators, the group helped found a veterans’ resource center on campus that provided a meeting space as well as student services. Martin eventually created a Veteran Studies program that “introduced non-veterans to military service, allowed veterans to contextualize their experiences, and brought both groups together in scholarly analysis of veterans’ issues” (Martin). The collaboration of student veteran activists and university administration also resulted in a symposium on veteran writing in 2012 and in the emergence of publication venues, such as the Journal of Military Experience, and the website Military Experience and the Arts (“Military Experience and the Arts”). These venues present poetry, prose, and scholarship, and they serve as support sites for writing instruction, as well as for socializing. Merging campus volunteerism with student services and a veteran-related curriculum, this project seeks to enhance student veterans’ abilities to succeed in their programs, to evaluate their military- related experiences, and to create dialog with civilians. Firsthand writing and reflecting on the psychological and cultural roles of war narratives are central elements in these activities.

16 Similarly, a number of projects in the University of California system combines student services with civic activism. UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center organized a series of lectures and roundtables named “Fallout: In the Aftermath of War,” culminating in the titular symposium on “Narrative-Making” in Spring 2013, which I attended to present my research on milblogs (“Fallout”). The symposium brought together scholars who worked with war narratives in diverse contexts (e.g., literature workshops to improve awareness for patients’ special needs among military hospital personnel, and courses on war novels in English Literature departments),

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established veteran writers, and instructors and participants from writing and composition classes. All emphasized and commented on the role of firsthand war narratives in civil-military relationships and, invoking social-therapeutic approaches, discussed the therapeutic attributes of writing.

17 The symposium also informed participants about a writing workshop for student veterans at Santa Barbara, which has since been extended to include a summer writing workshop for students from the entire University of California system. These workshops pursue integrated goals. Adapting traditions of trauma theory in literature, they are supposed to help participants make sense of their experiences because it is expected that the writing process helps them “become more connected to themselves,” to “heal invisible wounds,” and to “discover new meanings in their life” (“UC Student Veterans Writing Workshop”). One participant describes the workshop as “‘liberating’ because it allowed him to write in a way that was more philosophical than what he would express verbally” (Logan). Another student states that it “allowed me to actually express and let out some of the emotions that I was feeling that have been trapped for a long time” (qtd. in Logan). Yet the workshops also serve as convergence spaces. Student veterans, who often feel isolated on campus because of their unique background, use them to share experiences and exchange ideas about their common struggles on campus, as Susan Derwin, the workshops’ organizer, explains. In addition, the workshops also help veterans to learn how to engage and share their war-related experiences with civilians. In pointing out how student veterans learn to “educate the community” (qtd. in Logan), Derwin emphasizes the social-activist thrust behind the workshop. In the same spirit, the workshop’s website refers to the civil-military experiential gap, explaining that the workshops seek to “build bridges of communication to the civilian world” (“UC Student Veterans Writing Workshop”). In addition to their concrete services for individual students, then, the workshops advertise their task to mend civil-military relationships and, thus, contribute to integration.

18 Like the group around Military Experience and the Arts and the Journal of Military Experience, the California workshop organizers have founded a journal, Instant Separation, an online venue to document the workshops’ results and to give students an opportunity to publish their work. Its title symbolizes veterans’ struggles in the two- fold transition between civilian life, the military, and back. One of the authors, Victor Orta, explains that the journal’s title refers to this transition. He invokes the image of cutting an umbilical cord that had connected the transitioning persons to their previous lives, throwing them into completely new and confusing environments (Orta, qtd. in “Instant Separation—About”). Here, too, the effort to bridge the gap between civilian and military experiences and to help civilians understand the returning veterans’ struggles of integration bespeaks the overall notion of social therapy through writing.

19 Many projects, such as the Syracuse Veterans Writing Group, founded at Syracuse University in 2010, emerge from civilian faculty’s desires to support veterans beyond curricular programs. Cofounders Eileen Schell and Ivy Kleinbart state that they wanted to help veterans “see themselves as societal witnesses to warfare” and to “make sense of their experiences” through writing (121). In this, such projects are embedded in an increasing network of writing groups and campus activities who are self-aware about the social impact of their work. As Schell and Kleinbart have it, “we see ourselves as

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part of a national movement to create spaces for veterans to speak out and represent their experiences rather than being silenced or used as tools of patriotism or pawns of war” (137). The organizers here assume a leading role as representatives of civilian society, not only by helping veterans speak out about their experiences, but also in initiating and nurturing veterans’ contact with civil society. Their self-representation in the quotation above highlights these intertwined purposes when it stresses that the veteran participants are neither “tools” nor “pawns”: it emphasizes strategies of veteran empowerment through self-expression (they are no longer “silenced”) and, in doing so, the civilian organizers clarify their own position. They seek to support the veterans’ empowerment without steering their writing through a political agenda, particularly without seeking to align veterans’ recollections with an ‘official’ master narrative about what the wars are supposed to mean to US society.

20 The course instructors provide academic and didactic expertise in writing techniques, as well as infrastructure through their university programs. Although the course is centered on campus, it is not restricted to enrolled students. It focuses on writing about veteran experience, rather than on completing a program or, generally, on success in college, and is comprised of an intergenerational cohort. The cofounders explicitly contextualize their service for the wider veteran community when they describe their work as an “acknowledgment of civilian complicity” (Schell and Kleinbart 122) in war, that is, by emphasizing―and setting examples―that civilians should acknowledge and take responsibility for veterans’ war experiences as part of the communal reintegration process. In their reference to tools and pawns above, the activists portray their work as detached from governmental, that is, ‘official’ state activities and, rather, as a bottom- up effort in civic responsibility.

21 This notion was popularized by activist psychologists such as Jonathan Shay and Edward Tick who developed their social-therapy approaches working with Vietnam-era veterans. Their theories and therapeutic projects are frequently referenced as the Syracuse group and many others reflect on the community-building attributes of public writing and on civilian-veteran dialog. Helping veterans express and make sense of their experiences, then, criticizes “the culture of denial and forgetting in which citizens blame leaders for initiating wars and veterans for fighting them and then completely disavow the consequences, or glorify those whom they believe to be heroes” (Schell and Kleinbart 122).

22 Initially anxious about their outsider role as the only non-veterans in the group, the instructors quickly learned that they not only provided the writing expertise, but also began to serve as sounding boards, as points of first intense civilian contact for the veterans who were equally anxious about sharing some of their war-related experiences with civilians. The instructors’ interaction with their participants, thus, constructs a microcosm for dialog between civilians and veterans (128) in a protected and controlled atmosphere that can, eventually, be extended by including a wider civilian audience.

23 Veteran writing projects on campus, as the above examples suggest, promote veteran reintegration on several levels. Organizers offer services to the veteran community and provide spaces for direct contact between veterans and civilians, arguing that this direct interaction nurtures dialog and social integration. In addition, the projects’ self- representation and self-reflective texts signify idealized civil-military relationships.

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Their activities at once call for such improved relationships, they enact them, and they showcase themselves as role models for society as a whole.

4. Empowerment and the Civil-Military Social Contract

24 In addition to campus-based activism, some grassroots projects merit discussion here because of their nationwide scale and because their activities and self-representation particularly illustrate the intertwined thrust of civic engagement for veterans’ personal and general social concerns. This section explores two groups, the Veterans’ Writing Project (VWP) and Warrior Writers (WW), to carve out how they use the process of writing and publishing to help veterans interpret and express their memories, to raise awareness about veterans’ issues among civil society, and to bring veterans and civilians into dialog. Both projects utilize and advertise notions of empowerment and of the civil-military social contract. Like the projects discussed above, their negotiation of values and norms regarding the roles of veterans in civil society constructs these activities as civic rituals of reintegration where narrating, sharing, and acknowledging war experiences become the central conduits for civil-military relationships.

25 The work of the Veterans’ Writing Project is closely tied to Ron Capps who served in the Army and the Foreign Service for several years, reporting and preparing advice for the US government on international conflicts and on their implications for US foreign policies (Simon). Having developed PTSD over some of the extreme personal experiences he endured during these missions, he began a personal process of working through by way of writing. Eventually, he founded VWP in collaboration with George Washington University to help other veterans come to terms with their memories (Simon; Capps, “Back from the Brink”). Operating nationwide, the group organizes workshops in creative writing (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, playwriting), mainly based on Capps’s writing manual (Writing War), and they produce the journal 0-Dark-Thirty to publish and promote their own and their course participants’ texts.

26 The project is adamant in emphasizing the integrated and mutually reinforcing functions of its three goals, that is, literary, social, and therapeutic work (Veterans Writing Project). Organizers want to cater to the generation of writers among veterans and their families, and to support their careers as authors. At the same time, they join other observers (cf. Thompson) in their warnings about a deepening social segregation of the military from civil society. The current wars are fought by the smallest proportion of the overall population in US history, that is, fewer people have firsthand experience about war than before. Finally, VWP organizers adhere to the notion that war writing is a universal tradition to express and overcome painful memories (Veterans Writing Project). In these interdependent and reinforcing goals, veteran empowerment and the social contract are prominently implied. The project diagnoses a need to enable and to support veteran voices in public discourse. Following the premise that public sharing of war experiences will have therapeutic effects on individual veterans, the group further argues that the social segregation between civilians and veterans requires social processes to nurture veterans’ reintegration, and that writing and publishing can serve as the major techniques for these processes.

27 Similarly, the Philadelphia-based group Warrior Writers anchors its activities around empowerment and social integration. The group was founded by Lovella Calica who worked with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and introduced writing workshops

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to this NGO’s portfolio in 2007. Calica states that she “wanted to inspire and empower veterans to express themselves” (Editor and Facilitator’s Notes i) but also to use writing workshops as safe spaces where veterans could support each other in exploring and challenging their war memories as well as their civilian selves. She further explains that she “recognized the need for veterans’ stories (in their own voices) to be present in a culture that often misunderstands them” (Editor and Facilitator’s Notes i). Here, too, literary, therapeutic, and social goals are explicitly intertwined. Writing serves as a device for both individual psychological self-help in a group setting and for addressing the social problems around civil-military segregation and veteran reintegration.

28 Both projects emphasize the technicalities of publishing, in addition to writing, as part of veteran empowerment. Other projects can rely on the infrastructure and financial support of large organizations to bring veterans in contact with instructors who are themselves established writers, and to publish their works. However, the protagonists within these large projects must constantly re-examine the ethics of their own role as supporters; their work is something done for the veteran participants, and―even when the activists take precautions not to steer or channel veterans’ voices during the editing process―control over editing and publishing ultimately remains with the activists and their backing institutions (cf. Carroll; Gioia). In contrast, VWP and WW (as well as the campus groups discussed above) stand exemplary for grassroots projects who not merely work to “give voice” to the veterans, but help them raise and disseminate their voices themselves, by supporting their efforts at self-publishing. In doing so, they follow longer traditions, e.g., of Vietnam veterans, who were among the first to use the Internet as a device to take control of their message (Leikauf 104-05). Karen Springsteen describes this “materiality” of writing as the “question of who has the right, privilege, position, or ability to record and circulate veterans’ words” (143). In this sense, the projects’ do-it-yourself approach to publishing not only teaches skill sets but it allows veterans to develop and retain control of their message. Civilian supporters in these NGOs bring in their expertise, compassion and commitment, but their power position in this process is restricted.

29 The notion of empowerment through group efforts in writing is intertwined with the social aspect of writing. As VWP highlight in a disclaimer on their website, they do not propose their activities as ‘therapy’ in the clinical sense and they refute the notion of therapist-client relationships in what they do: “We’re not therapists, we’re writers. If you need medical treatment, please get whatever help you need from a professional. We’ll be here when you get back” (Veterans Writing Project). In contrast to clinical “narrative therapy” as, e.g., James Pennebaker conducts it, they emphasize that course instructors are not medical professionals and that writing is not a tool within a specific form of therapy but that it should be perceived as “a process that has therapeutic value” because the course activities allow participants “to help themselves work through emotional issues… through their writing” (Capps, “Writing by Service Members” 117). This process also illustrates the NGO’s social-therapeutic and civic perspective: working as a group of like-minded people who share specific experiences and support each other in their tasks (e.g., working to become published authors) removes them from a self-perception as ‘patients’ while, at the same time, offering the safe space of intra-group activity for controlled integration and interaction with the civilian world.

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30 In addition, the high level of metatextual self-reflection in the groups’ editorials and “about” pages bespeaks their thrust toward integration and social therapy. These texts often explicitly reveal the projects’ ritualistic outline. Since, as Rappaport argues, ritual not only affirms and symbolically represents but enacts and, therefore, “is tacit social contract itself” (138), these projects’ work can be understood as civic rituals when they affirm and enact the idea of veterans’ social integration. In some cases, their texts function as meta-ritualistic markers, that is, they discuss their own role as rituals, and they often use ritualized language to enforce this message. Ronald Grimes observes that human activity in general is subject to varying degrees of ritualization: “An action that is merely repeated is less ritualized than an act that is both repeated and stylized. If an action is repeated, stylized, prescribed, and sacralized, it becomes more ritualistic” (Grimes 13). The language used in the projects’ self-representations frequently utilizes such elements, such as repetition and cadence, playfully mirroring the style of the veteran contributions but also increasing the degree of ritualization of these introductory texts.

31 These meta-ritualistic elements become evident in the editorials to the series of WW publications, in the way they invoke the creativity of writing and the sacredness of sharing experience, how they formally address the reader, and in how they adopt the style conventions of poetry to identify with their veteran authors and to amplify their message. First, the editorials of the collections WW published since 2007 dichotomize war experience and civil life in emphasizing the creativity of the writing process as a counterweight to war’s loss and destruction: “There is a deep necessity to create when so much has been shattered and stolen―a profound sense of hope comes from the ability to rebuild” (Calica, Editor’s Notes, Re-Making 3). Similarly, the introduction to the collection Move, Shoot, and Communicate states that “we can create beauty and life from our fears and pain” (Calica, Introduction, Move v). Turning painful experience into “beauty” through the creative process of writing is explicitly denoted as “sacred” (e.g., Calica, Editor’s Notes, Re-Making 3) because the group processes are built around an atmosphere of nonjudgmental criticism of each other’s work and mutual support, building a “spiritual connection” (Calica, Introduction, Move v) among the participants. The veterans’ return to civil life by way of writing is, thus, portrayed as a ritual to reinstate the entire community.

32 Second, the editorials directly call upon their readers to become involved. They not only explain the veterans’ activities to reintegrate into civil live but remind readers of their responsibility to aid veterans in this process. Calica states that she finds the work with veterans to be “exhausting” but that she continues in her efforts because she knows “that our lives are bound together, that we share these struggles as a society, and that art can provide a path forward” (Editor’s Notes, Warrior Writers 16). She thus sets an example that she expects civil society to follow. This expectation is voiced more clearly when she warns the audience that their reading experience will be painful and might “infuriate” them (Editor’s Notes, After Action 3). She directly calls upon readers: “[D]o not turn away from these voices of our veterans” because “[i]t is up to all of us to hear our story, to refuse to disregard the voices of veterans and to utilize this creative expression as a bridge to move forward together” (3). In this, Calica diagnoses a social problem (i.e., that veterans are largely ignored by US society) and postulates civil society’s responsibility to remedy the situation by reading about and, thus, acknowledging veterans’ experiences and struggles. In evoking the image of a bridge,

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activists seek to raise awareness about and diminish the gap between civil society, the military, and veterans. Once more, Calica’s own position as an activist and grassroots organizer here sets an example for how civil society is supposed to approach and aid the veterans.

33 Third, WW’s editorials often switch from prose to poetry to make their case. In these passages, ritualization becomes obvious because they utilize stylized language (e.g., cadence, repetition) in similar ways as chants, prayers, and liturgy do in religious ceremonies. In After Action Review, Warrior Writers is described simultaneously as “a community,” “a movement,” “a voice,” and as “a performance” (anon. x). Most of these descriptors are arranged as individual lines, and thus stand for themselves. The sum of this listing signifies the intertwined tasks of the group, that is, their effort to serve as a self-help organization for veterans and to represent civilian-veteran support, to raise awareness for veterans’ issues among civil society and to perform―that is, to enact and to exemplify―the civil-military social contract. The explicit listing of these attributes in the form of a poem marks the group’s activities as civic rituals.

34 In addition, Calica personally assumes a role model function―as a course instructor and organizer, she is the point of first civilian contact for the veterans’ voices, and she represents the civilian witness to veterans’ stories in general, postulating that listening is an active effort: I do nothing but stand beside… I do nothing but hear you. (Editor’s Notes, After Action 4)

35 This might be interpreted as a somewhat apologetic acknowledgment that, although civilians did not go to war themselves, they at least make an effort to listen to veterans’ stories. Yet, it can also be read as a confirmation that civilians are fully dedicated to listening to veterans now that they have returned. The reciprocity in this sequence of veterans sharing their war experiences and civilians bearing witness becomes even more obvious in the following section: it is with these words you walk it is with our willingness to absorb them that we remain that we create that we sustain that we can rebuild. (Editor’s Notes, After Action 4)

36 Veterans “walk” with words, that is, they learn to cope with their memories through writing and to go on with their lives. “[O]ur willingness to absorb” these words signifies that civil society acknowledges its responsibility for the veterans’ well-being. The interaction between both groups suggests the successful reintegration of society, which is represented by the final lines, including a reference to the problem of rampant veteran suicides (“we remain”), to creating stories that can outweigh war loss, and to the notion that reintegration will “sustain” the social contract and “rebuild” both individual selves and society as a whole. In their metatexts, then, NGOs such as Warrior Writers and the Veterans Writing Project use writing as a conduit to help veterans cope with their war memories, and they work to empower veterans in supporting their efforts at self-expression and self-publishing. The NGOs exemplify the civil-military social contract by enacting and affirming veteran integration through writing and through using their publications as calls to action, directed at civil society in general.

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5. Conclusion

37 The current proliferation of veterans’ writing projects stands in the longer tradition of life writing about war in the US. Such writing groups are embedded in the public debate on war experience and on the psychological costs of war since Vietnam that has regained immediacy in the public perception after the outbreak of the post-9/11 wars. Like many civic activists working on war-related issues, protagonists postulate a social crisis derived from the increasing social segregation between civil society and the military, and they relate many current veterans’ psychological problems to this perceived gap. Venturing forth from the premise that psychological injury is not simply determined by individual attributes but that it conveys a wider sociocultural problem, activists argue that writing about and publicly sharing firsthand war experiences offers a remedy.

38 Writing and publishing are understood as vehicles for therapy and social integration, based on activist scholarship about trauma and narrative since the late twentieth century. Protagonists in veterans’ writing projects have begun to explore heterogeneous avenues to promote veterans’ writing. Campus-based groups offer composition courses to support student veterans’ academic careers and to serve as contact zones between military and civilian culture. They also utilize networks, infrastructure and the penchant for social organization and activism found at university campuses to further veterans’ interests. Writing, thus, is supposed to fulfill therapeutic as well as social functions.

39 Similarly, grassroots NGOs such as The Veterans Writing Project and Warrior Writers employ writing for a range of interrelated purposes. They seek to benefit from the therapeutic effect of ordering memories and emotions through writing, and to help rebuild veterans’ civilian selves through self-expression, but they also create environments for social reflection and debate, both within veteran circles and in exchange with civil society. They encourage as well as empower veterans to engage civil society. In doing so, these projects are acutely aware of their role-model function. They showcase the forging of civil-military relationships in their activities as well as in their publications. The self-reflective representations of their work take on the form of civic rituals in that they not only envision and affirm values and norms regarding veterans’ integration into civil society but, by discussing these values and norms and by instigating veteran-civilian exchange, they self-consciously enact this integration.

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NOTES

1. My forthcoming monograph Ceremonial Storytelling: Ritual and Narrative in Contemporary US Wars discusses the respective mediality and textuality as well as the biographical contexts of different formats and media in more detail (e.g., differences in immediacy, limitations due to [self-] censorship and the anticipation of homecoming in deployed soldiers’ milblogs, in contrast with reflections on actual homecoming experiences in veterans’ writing after their return). 2. As a consequence, representatives of this crisis-centered activism often seem to perceive all war experience as somehow traumatic; some groups and publications struggle to avert the fallacy of perpetuating the popular image of the ‘broken’ veteran. However, the perspective of war experience as traumatic is grounded in the social-therapy approach that, in fact, seeks to avoid subscribing to this popular image. As John Becknell explains, observations on war experience should differentiate between “suffering” and “pathology.” Like many other activists, he argues that the experience of war and homecoming generally causes suffering because it is beyond the range of what is considered “normal.” To understand the “normal” expressions of suffering from such “abnormal” experiences as an illness would pathologize this experience and absolve society from responsibility because it would individualize the problem and hand it over to medical professionals. The social-therapy approach to war experience, then, argues that society must acknowledge its responsibility for this suffering in order to absorb it and to help the returning veterans reintegrate―it recognizes the psychological costs of war experience but does not automatically perceive veterans as “sick” or “traumatized” (Becknell 10-16). 3. Here, as in my research for the forthcoming monograph Ceremonial Storytelling, the activist projects I analyzed represent a wide range of political affiliations and ideas about the role of US civil society regarding war. Some postulate a civic duty to support veterans regardless of the political circumstances of war, while others embed their work in an explicit, politicized anti-war message. Since my research is not concerned with notions of activist efficiency or in how far the projects actually succeed in bridging the civil-military divide, it will suffice here to state that

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their cultural work lies in the ritualizing of and self-reflections on the process of writing in order to enact the civil-military social contract. 4. My thanks to Larry Acker of Lindenwood University for his insights into these political considerations within higher education.

ABSTRACTS

The post-9/11 wars have brought forth a new generation of military veterans in the US and rekindled debates about social and psychological problems related to war experience. These veterans produced a plethora of firsthand war narratives in diverse genres and media. This article explores how public discourse about civil-military relationships, war experience, and trauma, simmering since the domestic divisions over Vietnam, turned to such first-person narratives in recent years to discuss the psychological costs of war and homecoming. It interprets the proliferation of veterans’ writing projects as part of a civic activist movement that, postulating a social crisis in civil-military relationships, seeks to address veterans’ social and emotional struggles through community (re)building and social therapy. The writing projects promote themselves as a means to bridge the experiential gap between civilians and veterans and, in doing so, they enact social reintegration.

INDEX

Keywords: creative writing, veterans, social therapy, narrative therapy, PTSD, civic engagement, civil-military relationships, social segregation.

AUTHOR

FRANK USBECK Frank Usbeck studied American Studies, History, Journalism, and American Indian Studies at Leipzig University and at the University of Arizona. His dissertation Fellow Tribesmen. The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany (2010) earned the Rolf Kentner Prize of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies and was published in 2015. His latest project, Ceremonial Storytelling, explores civic rituals and post-9/11 firsthand narratives written by US soldiers and veterans. Usbeck currently serves as Research Scientist at the State Ethnographic Collections Saxony, Germany.

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Interacting Interests: Explaining President Obama´s Libyan Decision

Mikael Blomdahl

Introduction

1 President Obama’s foreign policy has at times puzzled both critics and supporters alike. The administration’s foreign policy has for example been described as “ideological pragmatism”, as abandoning the “democracy promotion tradition” of U.S. foreign policy, as “incoherent” and as “pragmatic realism” (Muravchik 2009; Nau 2010; Drezner 2011; Walt 2014; Kay 2014). Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration had been grappling with how the U.S. should respond to the democratic uprisings sweeping the region. One country, Libya, stood apart from the rest of the uprisings given that president Obama confronted issues not raised elsewhere: questions about the proper use of force and presidential power (Mann, 2012). Yet on March 19, 2011, President Obama ordered U.S. military forces to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn (OOD) against Libyan military targets. OOD was a noteworthy departure from the traditional pattern of US military interventions and has been argued to be “first new war for President Obama”, a new American paradigm of “leading from behind”, and a demonstration of President Obama seeking to “off-load” responsibility to American allies. (Hendrickson 2013; Lizza 2011; Goldstein 2016).

2 Initially, however, several factors worked against support for intervention and this case underline problems of intervention amidst both domestic and international factors. At the international level, the U.S. was in the phase of withdrawing from two unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the domestic political level, the administration faced congressional criticism, public war-weariness and financial constraints. Given these conditions, combined with reluctance of the defense officials from major military powers within NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to become involved in Libya, there seemed little probability for any US participation in this case (Michaels, 2014: 22).

3 Previous research on why states participate in “humanitarian interventions” consists of a variety of rival theories, taking into account various levels of analysis, independent

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factors and causal mechanisms (Wheeler, 2000; Gibbs, 2000; Mearsheimer, 2001; Bellamy, 2004; Chandler, 2004; Glanville, 2006; Hildebrandt et al. 2013). Previous analysis of the Libya intervention has, for example, examined on the viability of NATO, humanitarian interventions, international law, if the operation meant the implementation of a so-called “Obama Doctrine” in US foreign policy, questions of OOD`s constitutionality and ramifications for presidential war powers, and the implications of airpower-centric strategy for forthcoming US military interventions (Barry 2011; Drezner 2011; Jones 2011; Hallam and Schreer 2012; Hendrickson 2013; Chivvis, 2014; Engelbrekt et. al, 2014; Michaels 2014).

4 Hence, previous research has been successful in identifying how different factors contributed to the U.S. decision to join OOD. The scholarship of the Libya intervention has, however, not accounted for how a broader framework can contribute to the understanding of this case. What has been missing is a framework that examine explanatory factors from a number of different perspectives.1 Another limitation in previous research is the lack of debate about interaction effects between different explanatory factors. Analyses based on a combination of explanatory factors and how they interact can, therefore, further the understanding of this significant decision by the Obama administration. This article focus on the following questions: what were the necessary conditions behind the decision made by president Obama to participate in OOD, and how did these circumstances interact with each other?

5 The study demonstrates that it is essential to take into account factors from a number of particular perspectives in order to explain the U.S. decision. To start with, insights from a constructivist perspective on the decision making is required. The mounting use of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War is mainly the outcome of states having included ethics, values and humanitarian concerns into their foreign policies to a greater extent than before (Wheeler, 2000; Finnemore, 2003; Bellamy, 2004; Chandler, 2004; Glanville, 2006). Hence, according to a constructivist view, states can perceive humanitarian intervention as a moral duty to intervene in the domestic affairs of states to protect individuals from genocide or collective persecution. The empirical analysis, below, illustrates that the U.S. decision reflected, in part, feelings of humanitarian considerations. Thus, several central actors within the Obama administration perceived the humanitarian situation in Libya as startling, and this view contributed to the decision.

6 In addition, it is also necessary to incorporate a rationalist perspective on foreign policy decision making. Starting from this position, proponents call attention to various forms of self-interest in decisions to intervene (Neack, 1995; Krauthammer, 1999; Gibbs, 2000; Mearsheimer, 2001; Hildebrandt et al. 2013). This literature is based on the assumption that, even if political leaders have an inclination to help others, the actual willingness to do so depend on other circumstances. In other words, if a potential intervention is perceived by the government to impact negatively on its self- interest, there will almost certainly be no intervention.

7 Finally, it is crucial to include an evaluation of the domestic politics of OOD. As argued by Hildebrandt et. al, (2013: 247) “humanitarian intervention—although waged for seemingly altruistic ends—proceeds along the same domestic political paths as other uses of force”. If states decide to engage in humanitarian efforts, they are putting their troops, defense budgets, and political support on the line. Thus, decisions of this kind can lead to political crises at home and is, therefore, not a decision that states make

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without difficulty (Hildebrandt, 2013: 244). The involvement of domestic political factors offers researchers the chance to examine the specific influence of political factors on humanitarian intervention decision making (Redd 2005). Based on this, the article builds on a small but growing literature on humanitarian intervention decision making (Shannon, 2000; Glanville, 2006; Ward, 2010; Hildebrandt et. al 2013; Krieg, 2013; Doeser, 2014). Thus, this approach draws on the insight of Hudson (2005) and Yetiv (2004) that we should aim for multi-causal explanations in foreign policy research.

8 As demonstrated in the analysis, four particular circumstances influenced the characteristics of OOD and acted as a major influence on the timing and scope of the intervention (Marsh 2014a: 127). The first necessary circumstance was that some actors within the Obama administration perceived a feeling of moral obligation to intervene in order to help individuals in need and were not part of their nation.

9 The second circumstance was the legal basis and international support for the use of force, which was provided by the mandate from the UN Security Council (UNSC) on March 17. Given continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, a military operation absent international authorization and support would be to step into a risky situation with unforeseeable consequences for American credibility (Chivvis, 2014: 55; Clinton, 2014: 364).

10 The third circumstance was that public war-weariness and congressional skepticism and reluctance affected the decision-making by excluding any form of ground troops in the final decision. When sending troops abroad, governments want to make sure that the decision does not impact negatively on their political power at home (Kreps 2010). One way of doing this is to limit the risk of the intervention and the U.S. mission was intended to be short and involving no ground troops. Thus, by limit the risk of casualties it protects the government from electoral punishment. Hence, this circumstance provide support for theories on the domestic politics of military intervention (Howell and Pevehouse, 2005; Redd, 2005; Drury et. Al, 2010; Kreps, 2010; Hildebrandt et. al, 2013).

11 The fourth circumstance was that the U.S. could take a supporting role and quickly transfer control of the operation to NATO for self-interest based reasons. A limited air operation and quick transfer of command and primary mission responsibility to NATO presented the Administration with a more cost-effective approach to conserve U.S. strength in time of economic crisis and military overstretch. These findings can be related to the realist perspective, which claims that material interests are always present in the foreign policy calculations of states (Krauthammer 1999; Gibbs 2000; Mearsheimer 2001; Dueck, 2009).

12 In sum, President Obama´s decision to launch a limited air operation on Libya can be seen as the result of a combination of factors: altruism; the legal basis and international support for the operation; domestic political constraints and the possibility to limit U.S. participation and transfer control to NATO. The next section demonstrates through an analysis of primary and secondary sources the way in which these circumstances influenced the U.S. decision making.2 The final section summarizes the primary argument of the study and discusses the need for further research.

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The Beginning of the Crises: Reluctance vs Altruism, 13 January–11 March

13 The Libyan crisis began with peaceful demonstrations against Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in Benghazi on 13 January 2011. As the protests in Libya developed into armed rebellion in mid-February, Gaddafi responded with systematic attacks by air and ground forces, often against non-combatant civilians (Domansky et. al, 2012: 2).

14 In Washington heated debates over intervention started as soon as the revolution broke out (Chivvis, 2014: 6). On February 23, President Obama voiced U.S. support for the universal rights of the Libyan people and stated that the Qaddafi regime had a responsibility to refrain from violence, if not, the regime would have to be held accountable (Obama 2011a). On the day after, with their citizens out of harm´s way, the U.S., France, and Britain moved quickly to sanction the Qaddafi regime. On 26 February, the UNSC adopted Resolution 1970, which imposed an arms embargo in Libya in an attempt to stop the violence (UNSCR 1970). The resolution was fully supported by the Arab League.

15 Within the U.S. administration, President Obama, who was reluctant to any U.S. intervention, had begun a series of discussions on how to handle Libya. Yet, the question of whether to move forward military intervention was now clearly on the table (Hastings, 2012: 286). The actors broke down into two distinct camps. On the critical side were top-level Pentagon and White House advisers who were skeptical of further military intervention, given the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq (Sanger, 2012). This group included Secretary of Defense Gates, who dubbed calls for intervention “loose talks” (Gates, 2011a). From the outset, Gates was among the most vocal skeptics against the proposal of a no-fly zone over Libya. On March 2, during a hearing before the Senate, Gates said that: “Let's just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses (…) and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down” (Gates, 2011a). Gates pointed to US economic realities after Iraq and Afghanistan, which were not the best.3

16 On the other side of the division within the administration was a faction of actors within the White House and the State Department. These actors viewed Libya as an opportunity to enact a new form of humanitarian intervention, one they had been sketching out for nearly a decade. One actor, belonging to this group, UN ambassador Susan Rice, had used her first statement in the UN Security Council to endorse the principle of “the responsibility to protect” (Rice, 2009). Moreover, within the NSC (National Security Council) there were a group of staff members who joined ranks with Rice and pushed for military intervention. These staff members belonged to a core of a White House group that argued the case for humanitarian intervention (Hastings, 2011). One of these staffers, Samantha Power had devoted much of her professional career to the question of how to prevent mass killings. Alongside Rice, Power was the second senior official who had come into the Obama administration determined to prevent any further atrocities like those in Bosnia or Rwanda (Mann, 2014: 284-285).4

17 The preferences of this group reflect a life-long personal sympathy for humanitarian intervention and memories of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and Rwanda (Hastings, 2011; Mann, 2012: 339). This group was not so imbued with the more cautious traditions of the State Department and the Defense Department. They strove to ensure that the president heard alternative options from the one´s from Pentagon and the

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military and viewed the events in the Middle East as a sign of a new era. Obama was thus confronted with conflicting views within his administration between proponents of “realism”, who urged him to stay out of Libya, and proponents of “humanitarian interventions”, who wanted him to act (Mann, 2012: 266-289).

18 On March 1, the USA Senate passed a non-binding Resolution calling for the resignation of Gaddafi and the possible establishment of a no-fly zone (S.Res.85, 2011). So, in early March, when Gaddafi´s forces began to move toward Benghazi, this group of actors began to support the use of force if necessary to stop mass killings. Rhodes, the president´s speechwriter, argued that the Libya case fit Obama´s own criteria for humanitarian intervention (Sanger, 2012: 342).

19 On March 9, the president´s top national security advisors met to discuss U.S strategy, but the official U.S. position did not change. The United States would support humanitarian action but nothing more (Carney, 2011). Yet, the “interventionist” group within the administration perceived that the humanitarian situation in Libya was acute and dire (Mann, 2014; Sanger, 2012). Rice and her team at the UN began preparing a resolution that called for international action in Libya.

20 However, this perception by itself did not lead to the conclusion that the administration should work for the use of military force within the frameworks of the UN Thus, feelings of altruism on their own did not result in any attempts by the government to argue for a military intervention. If altruism had been the sole reason for the later decision to launch air strikes, it seems reasonable to assume that the Obama administration would have supported the establishment of a no-fly zone more actively already in the beginning of March. Instead the Obama administration adopted what can be called a ‘wait and see approach’, in order to await the situation in Libya and observe what the UNSC and Congress were up to. Altruism can, nonetheless, be seen as one of several reasons for the final decision on March 15. Another reason is the legal basis and international support for OOD.

Resolution 1973 and International Support, 12 March-17 March

21 On March12, discussions on how to handle the Libyan crisis intensified within the UN Security Council. Within Washington, the State Department had all along been divided on how to act in Libya and Secretary Clinton was skeptical of any military actions (Cooper and Myers, 2011). At first, she stuck with Gates and worried that if an intervention failed to remove Qaddafi, or failed to gain enough international support, it would jeopardize American credibility (Clinton, 2014: 367).

22 From March 12, however, after the Arab League had requested action from the UN, Clinton seemed to have decided to split from Gates and work actively for an intervention in Libya. The rapid developments on the ground, Clinton’s traveling in Europe and North Africa and private meeting with National Transitional Council of Libya (NTC) representatives in Paris, made Clinton shift her view as she saw the international support for such a mission (Clinton, 2014: 367). In an interview, Clinton stated that the U.N. backed intervention in Libya is “a watershed moment in international decision-making” (ABC-News 2016).

23 Thus, Clinton ultimately supported the intervention and formed a unified front with Rice, Power, Smith and Rhodes. Why did Clinton change her mind? Iimportant for this change were three preconditions: two diplomatic and one humanitarian. First, on

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March 12, the Arab League came out in favor of a no-fly-zone. Over the following days on a trip to Paris, Cairo and Tunis, Clinton met with both Arab leaders and with those of the Libyan opposition. She reported back to Obama that the leaders in the region were serious and even willing to take part in the military operation (Clinton, 2014: 370). According to Clinton this was not just “hollow calls for action”.5

24 Second, British and French officials privately made clear that they not only wanted but expected America to join them. According to Clinton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague´s positive stand on a military intervention “counted for a lot” (Clinton, 2014: 368).

25 Third, in Libya, Gaddafi´s forces were approaching Benghazi where a large group of civilians could soon be left defenseless at the hands of the Libyan troops. So, the horizons for diplomacy were limited and Clinton took a decisive step: she came down on the side of intervention, supporting the views of Rice and Power (Clinton, 2014: 373). Clinton argued that absent international authorization, the U.S, would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable. (Clinton, 2014: 364, 367; Chivvis, 2014: 55). At a minimum, the Secretary of State had a responsibility to insists on multilateralism and it was, thus, decisive for Clinton to reach consensus with U.S. allies and get legal support for any military actions.

26 Overall, Clinton´s view played a significant role in influencing President Obama’s decisions concerning Libya (Warrick 2011). Without her presence, it is quite possible that the president would have relied more on Gates and his more cautious approach (Marsh, 2014b). President Obama was more reluctant to use force in the initial stages of the crisis in Libya, when Gates seemed to have the upper hand, but he was more aggressive in the latter stages beginning in mid-March 2011, when Clinton began to assert herself more forcefully.

27 Late in the afternoon of March 15, 2011, President Obama meets with members of his NSC in the Situation Room of the White House. Mullen laid out the plans for a no-fly zone. The president asked Mullen whether this no-fly zone would stop the possible bloodbath in Benghazi. “No sir”, said Mullen. “Then why are we focusing on a no-fly zone? I want more options”, asked the president (Sanger, 2012: 343). The NSC meeting restarted at nine and this time the president was presented a range of military options. One was to use no American force at all, but simply to provide intelligence and other support for the French and the British. Another was the no-fly-zone. The third was to go beyond the no-fly-zone by sending out planes to strike at Libyan targets at the ground. They went around the table and Gates again voiced his reservations. Clinton was out of the country but had made her views in favor of intervention known in advance (Cooper and Myers, 2011). Finally, the president chose the third military option (Mann, 2012: xiii). Rice and the NSC advisers argued that a no-fly zone would lead to unavoidable further military action, and this aspect should therefore be permitted in any U.N. resolution (Morris and Usborne, 2011).

28 On March 16, Rice signaled publicly for the first time that the Obama administration supported the Security Council´s discussion of further international steps, including a no-fly zone in Libya (Rice 2011). According to Rice, it was necessary to be prepared to contemplate steps that might go beyond, a no-fly zone given that a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk (Rice, 2011). One day later, following several rounds of diplomatic negotiations, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973, which authorized a no-fly zone and the use of all

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means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians (UNSC Resolution, 1973).6 Among others, Clinton argued that absent international authorization, the U.S, would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable (Chivvis, 2014: 55; Clinton, 2014: 364). The UNSC mandate provided the operation with a legal basis, and thereby one obstacle to U.S. military involvement had disappeared.

Domestic Political Constraints, 15 March-19 March

29 President Obama had entered office at a time when public opinion of the U.S. in the Middle East had fallen to historic lows (Chivvis, 2014: 19-20). The American public regarded the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as expensive adventures that had largely failed to achieve their objectives. Public opinion polls showed on 15-19 March that the vast majority of Americans were concerned about the situation in Libya, but did not consider it to be the responsibility of the US to handle. For example, a Pew Research Center (2011) poll showed that the U.S. public expressed significant war-weariness since 63 percent of the public said that the U.S. did not have any responsibility to act in Libya. 51 percent of the public approved that this was related to already overcommitted forces. In addition, US public opinion strongly opposed even a limited role for the U.S., only 13 percent emerged in public support for the introduction of US ground forces into the conflict. Indeed, polls expressed concern over objectives in Libya and according to one Gallup poll the support for the airstrikes in Libya was only 47 percent, which comparatively is lower than for other recent U.S. military actions (Gallup, 2011). Consequently, President Obama faced an American public that was reluctant and skeptical to employing US military forces in humanitarian interventions.

30 Concerns of how the public would react to use of force was expressed by, among others, Vice President Joe Biden, who thought that getting involved in Libya was stupid and, politically, nothing but downside, and Chief of Staff Daley who asked how the U.S. are going to explain to the American people “why we´re in Libya” (Hastings, 2011; Lewis, 2012). On several occasions, President Obama emphasized the limited nature and scope of OOD and that any ground troops would not be deployed to Libya (Obama, 2011a; 2011b). Thus, the Administration’s desire to uphold at least a modicum of public support shaped both the nature of the operation as well as President Obama’s official statements concerning OOD (Marsh 2014a).

31 Also in relation with Congress President Obama emphasized the limited nature of OOD. It is clear that the president anticipated Congressional opposition to any use of force in Libya. In his official letter to Congress on March 21, he explicitly pondered on the limited nature of the operation (Obama, 2011b). The president restated that OOD would not involve U.S. ground troops and that operational control would quickly transition to NATO: The United States has not deployed ground forces into Libya. United States forces are conducting a limited and well-defined mission in support of international efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster. (…) We will seek a rapid, but responsible, transition of operations to coalition, regional, or international organizations that are postured to continue activities as may be necessary to realize the objectives of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (Obama, 2011b).

32 Congressional support for any kind of military involvement in Libya was low. Given budget cuts and the expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the money was not available. Republicans in Congress was not interested in giving the president

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unrestricted authority for OOD. For example, Senator Mark Begich (D-AK) questioned Gates about the financial cost of OOD and how the Administration intended to pay for it (Toohey 2011). Based on this, Congress in effect constrained the politically feasible policy options available to the Obama administration. In view of that, a small-scale air and naval campaign and quick turnover of command and primary operational role appeared to be the best available alternative to achieve the president’s objectives in Libya (Marsh, 2014a).

33 On March 19, cruise missiles and bomber strikes from a U.S.-led coalition destroyed Libya´s air-defense systems, forced Qaddafi’s armored columns to retreat and, established a no-fly zone over the country (Chivvis, 2014: 3). The president’s multiple references to limiting US involvement and exclude ground troops in the Libya intervention reflect decision-making consideration of both public opinion and Congress and its impact on OOD. Both the American general public and Congress acted as constraining domestic political factors and influenced the decision to limit the scope and duration of OOD. As demonstrated below, however, the Libya decision also involved calculations of self-interest at the international level.

NATO, Strained Resources and Burden-Sharing, 20-27 March

34 On 20 March 2011, when French air-strikes destroyed a Gadhafi regime column about to storm Benghazi, the Obama Administration announced that the U.S. was taking a supporting role in the conflict and would quickly transfer control of the operation to NATO (Sanger, 2012: 352-353). Two weeks later, command of the military operation to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973 passed from the U.S. to NATO. The U.S. withdrew forces from direct combat on 4 April, although the United States continued to play a major supporting role. Why was it so important to restrict the U.S. role and let NATO take control of the operation?

35 The Obama Administration inherited a military that was exhausted by a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president himself believed that a large-scale ground operation in Libya was an insensible use of US military resources. Obama maintained that the massive ground force deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes that should not be replicated in Libya or elsewhere (Obama, 2011c). Besides, the Department of Defense was facing impending series of major defense spending cuts in response to the economic downturn and facing the American political system throughout the spring and summer 2011. These heavy reductions placed an immediate constraint on current and future U.S military operations (March, 2014: 127).7

36 Between 20-21 March, Ivo Daalder, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, worked to bring operations under NATO command. Daalder was able, in part of his own connections to the White House, to make the argument for NATO at multiple levels within the U.S. government. Others agreed and by March 21, a consensus was forming in Washington (Chivvis, 2014: 71). President Obama worked out a deal with British prime minister Cameron and French president Sarkozy under which the United States would help initiate the air campaign over Libya, and then, after a few days, let Britain and France and other NATO allies and partners take over the work.

37 Administration officials described Obama’s strategy as one that was more focused and favored “smaller footprints” and the leveraging of unique US capabilities (Gates, 2011b). Thus, OOD denoted a new development in how the U.S. conducted military

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operations.8 The President also explained in his March 21, report to Congress that the use of military force in Libya serves important U.S. interests in preventing instability in the Middle East and preserving the credibility and effectiveness of the UNSC. The President also stated that he intended the anticipated United States military operations in Libya to be limited in nature, scope, and duration (Obama, 2011a).

38 On 25 March, NATO Allied Joint Force Command in Naples took command of the no-fly zone over Libya and combined it with the ongoing arms embargo operation under the name Operation Unified Protector (OUP). NATO offered several benefits. First of all, the organization had well-established working relationships with non-NATO European powers and Arab states that had offered to participate. NATO also had command and control systems that could bring the broad coalition that would participate in the operation together into a single, coordinated chain of command (Chivvis, 2014: 71).

39 On 27 March, NATO assumed full responsibility for the no-fly zone and all other military aspects of the UN Security Council resolution. The president believed that the USA should play more of a supporting role and encourage its allies to shoulder more of the burden in military operations. In fact, one of Barack Obama’s consistent aims has been to convince old allies to assume greater responsibility for global security. The administration has repeatedly made clear that the United States will be less keen than its predecessors to intervene abroad. Obama spoke to this new conception of US leadership in a speech on March 28 where he stated that “we should not be afraid to act – but the burden of action should not be America’s alone. As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action” (Obama, 2011b).9

40 Obama also emphasized how the limited, supporting role of the U.S. in OOD greatly reduced the cost of operations. Washington’s calls for burden-sharing with allies are not new and the positive experiences from Libya together with an increased focus on Asia-Pacific should indicate that the US will continue to encourage European allies to assume a larger responsibility for its geographical neighborhood. Yet, the administration distanced itself from the description of having “led from behind” in Libya after critics meant it implied lacking US leadership on the international arena.

41 There were additional national security benefits to the limited U.S. role. First of all, the realist component of OOD was to set forth a model of U.S. leadership at the international level. As argued by Ben Rhodes “If we were to sit this one out, it would have sent a signal that the U.S. isn´t really a leader (Mann, 2014: 293). President Obama, thus, made it clear that the US will not hesitate to lead ‘wars of necessity’ in defence of European allies. But it will not take the lead in ‘wars of choice’ in or around Europe, such as the one in Libya. Such a stance advances Obama’s goal of conserving US strength in time of economic crisis and military overstretch: a reduction in non- essential engagements saves money. A second national security side benefits to the limited role was that other NATO countries-at least the British and French- were willing to take responsibility for a large share of the war. In other words, in the Libya case allies were both paying their share end willing. The president’s multiple allusions to restricting US involvement, lower costs, and sharing burdens also reflect consideration of self-interests and its impact on foreign policy.

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Conclusion

42 President Obama´s decision to launch a limited air operation on Libya can be seen as the result of a combination of factors: altruism; the legal basis and international support for the operation; domestic political constraints and the possibility to limit U.S. participation and transfer control to NATO. Without one of the factors, the president might have picked another alternative than an air operation. Altruism within the “interventionist” group at the NSC seems to have been necessary for creating a sense of obligation to act on the part of the administration. This obligation to act became stronger when Clinton saw the international support together with the legal basis for OOD, which was provided by the mandate from the UN Security Council on March 17. The constraining factors of Congress, the public and strained resources influenced the timing and scope of the intervention in which the president perceived that U.S. could act without detriment to its self-interest at the domestic political and international level, respectively.

43 How did the four circumstances interact with each other in the decision-making process?

44 First, it is possible to observe some interactive effects linking feelings of altruism and international legal authorization. The perceived feelings of altruism of the “interventionist” group increased their hopes that the UN would be able to authorize a military operation, and when Resolution 1973 was adopted, the moral obligation of Rice, Power, and eventually Clinton was reinforced further. Given the legal basis and international support for OOD it became more difficult for the Obama administration to stay outside a military mission, because of their previous officially declared feelings of altruism in relation to Libya. Second, the possibility to transfer control to NATO contributed to the decision to limit U.S. participation. Without the interactive effects of these two factors, the government’s commitment to Libya would most likely have been limited to verbal condemnation of Gaddafi and to humanitarian support. Hence, it is possible to find interactive effects among some of the factors, but not among all of them. Consequently, the way in which different factors interact in US foreign policy should be examined further in detailed case studies as well as in comparative case studies (Doeser 2014).

45 What are the comparative implications of this examination of OOD? First, the combination of factors could be used as an analytical tool for examining other decisions on humanitarian intervention made by the U.S. or other liberal democratic states. When some Western powers considered an intervention in Syria in August–September 2013, President Barack Obama stated that a “red line” for US intervention in Syria would come if the Syrian regime used chemical weapons. But when evidence emerged that Syria's forces had used sarin gas in an attack that killed nearly 1,500 people in Damascus, Obama eventually backed down after threatening a military response.10 Although the Obama administration had a clear humanitarian purpose for joining an intervention in Syria, the operation would have lacked international authorization and support. Based on this, he would not have been able to transfer the operation to NATO. Thus, without one of the conditions, the U.S. will most likely not participate in the particular operation, and, here, two out of four circumstances were absent. In addition, the domestic political constraints in this case were even stronger given that the

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president sought congressional approval for military intervention in Syria, which he was not likely to get.

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NOTES

1. For an exception see March, (2014a) who examine and test the precepts of neoclassical realism on OOD. 2. For a discussion of U.S. decision-making in this case, see Clinton, (2014); Gates, (2014); Hastings, (2011); Lewis, (2012); Mann, (2014); Sanger, (2012). 3. Other actors skeptical of another military commitment for over-stretched U.S. forces included Vice President Biden, CJCS Admiral Mullen, National Security Adviser Donilon, Counterterrorism Chief John Brennan, Chief of Staff Daley- These actors expressed caution in how to handle the Libyan situation. Enforcement of a no-fly zone would require scarce air assets, domestic political approval, and international authorization and divert resources from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 4. Other staff members within this group included Ben Rhodes, Gayle Smith and Jeremy Weinstein. Rhodes, as a speechwriter, would have to write the speech explaining the decision, said that he preferred to explain why the United States had prevented a massacre over why it hadn´t. See Lewis, (2012). 5. Interview with Ben Rhodes, quoted in Mann, (2012: 290). 6. The resolution also supported the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by emphasizing the responsibility of Libyan authorities to protect the civilian population. 7. Secretary Gates believed that a Libya intervention was not a vital national interest for the United States and he expressed concerns for how overstretched and tired the military was. In a testimony before the Senate, he said that taking on another major commitment is “a very great worry for me”. In meetings, Gates would ask, “Can I just

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finish the two wars we´re already in before you go looking for new ones? (Gates, 2014: 511-512). 8. The American element of the operation was largely restricted to knocking out Libyan air defenses in order to allow NATO and allied aircraft to establish the UN-mandated no-fly zone and then providing support to NATO and allied forces as they conducted interdiction. 9. President Obama also declared that; “Because contrary to the claims of some, American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves. Real leadership creates the conditions and coalitions for others to step up as well; to work with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs; and to see that the principles of justice and human dignity are upheld by all” (Obama, 2011b). 10. The president eventually brokered a deal with Russia that saw Assad agreeing to destroy most of the regime's arsenal of chemical weapons.

ABSTRACTS

This article investigates why President Obama in 2011 ordered US air and naval forces to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya. The president’s decision was the result of a combination of factors, including feelings of altruism, the legal basis for the operation, international support, domestic political constraints and the possibility to limit U.S. participation. The case study attempt to trace the process by which Obama came to the decision to use force in Libya by relying on a multitude of different sources, such as government reports, speeches and remarks, parliamentary records, media coverage, secondary sources.

INDEX

Keywords: Operation Odyssey Dawn, the United States, foreign policy decision-making, humanitarian intervention, domestic politics

AUTHOR

MIKAEL BLOMDAHL Mikael Blomdahlis currently Assistant Professor in Political Science at at Stockholm University. He was awarded a PhD in 2009 for a thesis on the domestic political impact on U.S. foreign policy. His recent publications include articles in Comparative Strategy, Diplomacy and Statecraft and Armed Forces and Society. His primary research interests are Foreign Policy Analysis, U.S. foreign policy and humanitarian interventions.

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Hero, Champion of Social Justice, Benign Friend: Theodore Roosevelt in American Memory

Katy Hull

1. History and Memory

1 Our memories are a representation of the past and a production of the present. Maurice Halbwachs, the French sociologist whose work is foundational for all theorists of memory, argues that memories are socially constructed: collective memories are formed through the interaction of groups, whether organized by family, religion, or class; and each group reconstructs a version of the past that is adapted according to “contemporary exigencies.”1 Halbwach’s theories have led some scholars to ascribe the production of memories primarily to an “evanescent present.” 2 But others have challenged this interpretation. According to the sociologist Barry Schwartz, “[e]very society...displays, and perhaps even requires, a minimal sense of continuity with the past.” Collective memories, according to Schwartz’s interpretation, are built around a central kernel; successive generations may revise, but will never wholly obliterate, past conceptions.3

2 Following Schwartz’s understanding of the function of memory in society, this article demonstrates that there are significant continuities in American memories of Theodore Roosevelt. In particular, it identifies three recurring motifs in how Americans remember their twenty-sixth president: as a heroic and intensely masculine leader; as a champion of social justice; and as a benign figure. None of these memories has gone uncontested. Leftist scholars and activists have been at the forefront of efforts to pierce dominant memories of Roosevelt. These alternative memories, or “counter-memories,” have challenged but never unseated persistent tropes. 4

3 To date, scholars have analyzed memories of Roosevelt in discrete spheres— historiography, film, or foreign policy, for example—or over narrow time periods.5 By analyzing memories of Roosevelt in popular culture, politics, and scholarship from his

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death to the present day, this article draws broader conclusions. It argues that the interplay between memories and counter-memories of Roosevelt is indicative of the relative discursive power of various social groups. The continued resonance of memories of Roosevelt as a hero, champion of social justice, and benign friend demonstrates that while not immune to periods of national self-reflection, many Americans revert reflexively to historical memories that reaffirm their own stature, capacity for progress, and good intentions, even at the expense of moving toward a truer, and more usable, understanding of the past.

2. The Roosevelt Image in His Lifetime

4 As a master manipulator of his own reputation, Theodore Roosevelt cultivated each of the three images—the masculine leader, the benign figure, and the champion of social justice—assiduously, recognizing that all were essential for political success in the modern age. TR crafted himself as an embodiment of masculinity at the early stage of his career, in response to the rough and tumble of politics in Albany, where he was labeled “Jane-Dandy.”6 His escape to the Dakotas, following the death of his mother and wife in 1884, was not an escape from politics; rather, it was central to the reshaping of his political image.7 Embracing modern media, Roosevelt communicated his ranchman image to the public, posing for photographs in his tailor-made buckskin costume, and writing articles on his exploits for Century magazine.8 Most notably, Roosevelt used his leadership of the First Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba in 1898 to cement his reputation as a masculine hero. He went into battle flanked by his favorite journalists, and complemented their reports with his own version of events—The Rough Riders— published in 1899.9

5 Roosevelt also used his personal warmth to great political effect: he charmed his audiences with what his biographer, Edmund Morris, describes as his “famous electricity,” and disarmed his opponents with unremitting exuberance.10 The president took journalists on family trips to Sagamore Hill, feeding reports of a rambunctious clan, headed by their gentle giant of a father.11 Perhaps the most enduring rendition of the benign Roosevelt is the Teddy Bear myth, which originates from a 1902 report that the president refused to shoot a wounded bear cub whilst on a hunting trip in Mississippi. Roosevelt, the man who shot and killed with almost unparalleled ardor, became the namesake for the most-loved children’s toy.12

6 Finally, especially toward the end of his career, Roosevelt consciously crafted an image of himself as a champion of those oppressed by a system of unfettered capitalism. In Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1910, TR issued a call for greater government intervention in the economy to ensure a fairer system for all.13 His leadership of the progressive wing of the Republican Party after 1910, and his formation of a third party in 1912, provided him with an opportunity to cast himself as a savior of the people.14

7 The criticisms that Roosevelt’s detractors leveled against him during his lifetime would likewise form the basis for counter-memories that emerged after his death. Critics speared Roosevelt for his aggression, chauvinism, and egotism. Mark Twain wrote biting indictments of the consequences of Roosevelt’s imperialism for the “person sitting in the darkness.”15 Responding to TR’s tirades against “race suicide,” the literary critic William Dean Howells wondered about the consequences of high birth rates on the working class’s grocery and gas bills.16 And implying that Roosevelt’s political

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passions were motivated by raw ambition, unfriendly newspapers tracked the number of times he used “I” in his speeches.17

8 Dominant themes in Theodore Roosevelt’s image and counter-image were established before he died. While subsequent iterations evolved in the context of changing social conditions, both admirers and critics would build upon a familiar core of memories, consolidated in these early years.

3. Hagiographic Post-Mortems

9 The adage “everyone loves you when you are dead” rang true for Theodore Roosevelt, and his passing, in 1919, ushered in a decade of hagiography. Critics of TR during his lifetime became friends in his death. As Washington correspondent for the New York Times from 1898 to 1907, Charles Willis Thompson had been critical of many of TR’s policies.18 But after his death, Thompson wrote of “the magic” of the president’s personality, “his large, joyous, and generous soul.”19 In a lengthy article published on the ten year anniversary of TR’s death, Thompson claimed that Roosevelt’s “place in history” was assured by his fighting character, his keen sense of social justice, and his patriotism.20

10 In his post-mortem contributions, Thompson echoed Roosevelt’s own gendered discourse.21 He argued that the president’s male detractors had been “persons of a feminine cast.”22 Roosevelt’s calls for preparedness after 1915 were, according to Thompson, evidence of his hard-edged realism in the face of the “mushy school” of pacifists who threatened to “enervate manhood.”23 The accompanying photographs for Thompson’s 1929 article depicted Roosevelt in dynamic poses: on horseback in Cuba; and standing on the campaign stump, his fist raised. In the only seated image to appear in the article, Roosevelt, the young police commissioner, was still conspicuously energetic; in contrast to his aging colleagues, who sat at ease, he pressed his hand against his armrest, as if ready to spring up at a moment’s notice.24

11 The hagiographic tone of Roosevelt scholarship in the 1920s was due in part to Roosevelt’s own efforts, and those of his well-connected family members and friends, to control his historical legacy.25 Roosevelt’s autobiography and an approved selection of his letters became the principal documentary sources for a first generation of historians.26 Hermann Hagedorn was a friend of Roosevelt in his lifetime and a founder of the Roosevelt Memorial Association (RMA) after his death. Hagedorn headed up the RMA’s efforts to perpetuate memories of Roosevelt among young audiences; his Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt, first published in 1918, taught a generation of school children that Roosevelt was the “the doer of heroic things.”27

12 Also among the admirers was the British popular historian Lord Charnwood, whose 1923 biography was widely read in the United States. Charnwood expressed a “boyish hero-worship” for Roosevelt the polymath, the trustbuster, and the arbitrator of industrial tensions.28 Charnwood was particularly enamored by the methods that Roosevelt pursued in the anthracite strike and Northern Securities case, perpetuating TR’s image as a champion of social justice. In both instances, Roosevelt had taken unprecedented action to assert the federal government as an intermediary between “the people” and concentrations of wealth, Charnwood wrote, demonstrating that the president could act as a “reconciler” of “social and industrial strife.”29

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13 Glowing written portraits of Roosevelt had their physical counterpart in the efforts of the RMA to secure a monument to the president in a prime position on the Washington Mall in the mid 1920s. In its sheer proximity to the Washington and Lincoln memorials, the RMA’s planned memorial was a clear statement of its members’ belief that Roosevelt was “one of the three greatest American leaders.” But congressional objections to the proposals forced the RMA to purchase Analostan (later Roosevelt) Island—a tract of land in the Potomac—in 1931, for a more discreet celebration of Roosevelt as a conservationist.30 Congress’s pushback on the RMA’s proposals suggests that even during a period of intense Roosevelt worship, a portrait of him as one of the greatest American leaders was not uncontested.

14 It was left to Gutzon Borglum, a private citizen and a supporter of the 1912 Progressive Party, to give Roosevelt a permanent place beside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln at Mount Rushmore. In 1927, Calvin Coolidge ascended the site on horseback, dressed in cowboy attire, to preside over the monument’s dedication ceremony. Coolidge asserted that Roosevelt was worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great presidents. Avoiding references to TR the trust-buster, Coolidge claimed that Roosevelt had enhanced “economic freedom” and, by building the Panama Canal, had strengthened the ties between East and West. The dedication ceremony marked the beginning of a twelve- year construction process. Claiming full support of all South Dakotans for the creation of a new “national shrine,” Coolidge made no mention of the Sioux, who considered the Black Hills of South Dakota to be sacred space.31

15 What explains Roosevelt hagiography in the decade following his death, other than the immediate flush of affection that societies tend to bestow upon their recently departed? World War I and its aftermath witnessed a rapid waning of the progressive movement, with the erosion of civil liberties, violent strikes, and a crippling Red Scare. 32 By the mid-1920s, corporations were in the ascendancy and successive Republic administrations were both powerless and unmotivated to hold private power in check. 33 In this context, Roosevelt’s admirers expressed nostalgia for a time when a Republican leader had embraced the presidency as an opportunity to mediate between conflicting interests and cultivate countervailing forces to control corporate power. Meanwhile, the horrors of mechanized warfare, and the routinization of the mechanized workplace, contributed to a wistfulness for unbounded masculine energies, as embodied in TR. The decade following Roosevelt’s death thus cemented images of TR as a champion of social justice and a heroic, masculine leader.

4. Voices of Discontent

16 Disillusionment in the 1920s tended to boost Roosevelt’s reputation, but it could also provoke disgust with the society that worshipped him. Writing in the Smart Set, the satirical magazine of the New York elite, Henry Louis Mencken used memories of TR to impugn mass culture as facile and naïve. For Mencken, Roosevelt’s defects “were the defects of his race and time,” and the flood of eulogies following his death was evidence of the weak intellect of the average American.34 Less than two years after the end of World War I, Mencken made a provocative comparison between Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm:

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Both roared for doughty armies, eternally prepared … Both delighted in the armed pursuit of the lower fauna … If, in fact, there was any difference between them, it was all in favor of Wilhelm. For one thing, he made very much fewer speeches.35

17 For both Mencken and the Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, Henry Pringle, there was more showmanship than substance to Roosevelt’s reputation as a social progressive. Writing in 1931, Pringle argued that TR’s leadership of the Progressives was no more than a cynical bid for political power, taken up and abandoned in the same cavalier fashion.36 As one historian subsequently noted, Pringle even attacked Roosevelt’s “successful accomplishments … by making them either secondary products of an insatiable urge for power or the fortuitous result of an adolescent impulse.”37

18 Although Theodore Roosevelt was the direct target, these authors took broader aim at the society that enabled his political successes and worshiped him in absentia. Their formula—known as debunking—was an expression of pessimism about American culture and society in the 1920s and early depression years.38 Writing during the onset of the Great Depression, Pringle acknowledged his disillusionment with the milieu that allowed leaders like Roosevelt to thrive. “Politics is fundamentally a hysterical calling,” Pringle wrote. “Unless it is finance, there is no activity so beset with rumors and alarms.”39 Theodore Roosevelt was a cipher for Pringle’s and Mencken’s more thorough discontent with American democracy.

19 Even as they aimed to topple images of Roosevelt as a masculine ideal and champion of social justice, the debunkers contributed to the third major facet of TR memory in their construction of Roosevelt as a benign creature. Mencken noted that “the sweet went with the bitter. He had all the virtues of the fat and complacent burgher.”40 Pringle’s Roosevelt was more ridiculous than dangerous. To underline these characteristics, Pringle weighted his biography toward the less substantive sides of the president’s achievements, allotting more attention to TR’s attempts to reform spelling than to his efforts to ensure safety in the food and drug industries.41

20 Mencken’s and Pringle’s interpretations functioned as a form of counter-memory, existing alongside persistent images of Theodore Roosevelt as an effective leader. Debunking appealed to an intellectual elite, which viewed itself as more sophisticated, and more critical, than the average American. But cynical views, which prevailed as a frivolous decade reached its ignominious end, would soon lose their resonance. As Mencken’s biographer, Fred Hobson, writes, while “the 1920s had been Mencken’s decade … the 1930s, grim and earnest, emphatically was not.”42

5. A New Roosevelt

21 Conscious of the benefits of the Roosevelt name, Franklin Roosevelt drew liberally upon memories of his fifth cousin to bolster his own political standing.43 In 1927 at Mount Rushmore, Calvin Coolidge had avoided references to TR’s progressive bent. Franklin Roosevelt molded memories of Roosevelt to suit opposing political purposes: his TR was a progressive pragmatist who had used the presidency as a “pulpit” to advance the interests of ordinary Americans. Campaigning in 1932, Franklin named Theodore as one of the four most interesting men in American history, and one of the few presidents who had successfully adapted his office in response to contemporary realities.44

22 Franklin’s 1933 inauguration encouraged reflections in the “What Would Theodore Do?” genre. Writing in the New York Times, the historian Allan Nevins insisted that

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Theodore, like Franklin, would have reversed the policies of previous Republican administrations.45 Even Pringle’s own contribution to the genre functioned as a tacit acknowledgment that his 1931 biography had bordered upon caricature. In 1936, Pringle argued that “Theodore Roosevelt would never have tolerated starvation in a land of plenty,” he would have bolstered federal government to control excessive concentrations of wealth, and he would have supported some measures to strengthen labor. There was perhaps no stronger testimony to the limited resonance of the debunkers’ portrait than the willingness of Pringle himself to turn to Theodore Roosevelt as a model for what to do in times of unprecedented national suffering.46

23 In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt presided over the dedication ceremony for the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Franklin’s speech was peppered with words—such as “vital,” “passion,” and “pungent”—that evoked Theodore’s exuberant masculinity. FDR honored TR as a leader with a “strong sense of social justice,” missing no opportunity to indicate that, were he alive, the elder statesman would have endorsed the New Deal.47 Appointments of erstwhile TR associates, including the former Bull Moosers Harold Ickes and Donald Richberg, the Rough Rider Frank Knox, and Republican stalwart Henry Stimson, signaled that Franklin, like Theodore, was willing to cross party lines if it served the best interests of ordinary Americans.48

24 FDR enthusiastically supported funding for Mount Rushmore, enabling TR’s likeness— the last to be completed—to emerge swiftly from the stone.49 The 1939 unveiling of the Roosevelt carving was “by far the best attended of all the Rushmore dedications.” In a combination of Lakota, English, and Indian sign language, William S. Hart, the veteran Western actor, chose the occasion to speak on behalf of the Sioux people. His call for justice fell on deaf ears: CBS turned off his microphone.50 Over the course of the 1930s, American Indian and women’s rights activists had campaigned for a more inclusive vision of the nation at Mount Rushmore. Sioux chief Henry Standing Bear had called upon Borglum to include a carving of Crazy Horse in the pantheon of American heroes; Rose Arnold Powell had lobbied tirelessly for a place for Susan B. Anthony among the greats. But no changes were made to the original schema.51

25 There is no record of similar controversies accompanying contemporaneous tributes to TR in New York. William Mackay’s murals in the Theodore Roosevelt Hall of the American Museum of Natural History opened to the public in 1936. In this unabashed celebration of TR as a naturalist and statesman, the president stood among Nubian lions, pored over engineering plans for the Panama Canal, discovered the River of Doubt, and presided over the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth.52 In October 1940, with war clouds on the horizon, Edith Roosevelt unveiled James Earle Fraser’s bronze statue of her late husband at the museum’s entrance.53 Roosevelt, mounted on horseback, loomed large over an American Indian in traditional headdress and a half- clad African, who flanked him at either side. Expressing wistfulness for decisive leadership in a time of impending crisis, the New York Times editorialized: [F]ew, passing the newly dedicated statue and noting the firm, up-tilted chin and eyes fixed on a far distance, will doubt that this leader of other days would have met present problems face-forward, with high courage and clear decision.54

26 The high visibility of public works leaves them open to interpretation and reinterpretation by multiple viewers. But, as John Bodnar argues, discursive power is unequally weighted toward those who are “most powerful in the social structure” and

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“influential in the discussion and construction of memory.”55 Over the decades to come, some would criticize these memorials as symbols of chauvinism, arrogance, and imperialism. But many others would accept them as those who commissioned and created them intended: as a celebration of Theodore Roosevelt as an exemplary leader, an archetype of masculinity, and an American icon.

27 If the debunkers’ Roosevelt lost salience over the course of the 1930s, one element—the image of the affable extrovert—endured. This portrait of Roosevelt had its popular expression in Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 play Arsenic and Old Lace, which was made into a motion picture starring Cary Grant in 1944. In this play, Teddy Brewster was the unwitting accomplice to his murderous aunts. Suffering from a delusion that he was the twenty-sixth president, he appeared on stage at regular intervals, shouting “bully” and “[d]ee-lighted.”56 According to John Gable, for a “great many Americans” in the 1940s, this “funny and crazy character…was the mirror image, only slightly distorted, of Teddy Roosevelt.”57 By the early 1940s, Roosevelt was, temporarily at least, defanged.

6. The Cold War Roosevelt

28 The Cold War required activist leadership to confront communism abroad and head off its threat at home, and memories of Theodore Roosevelt adjusted to fill this role. Intimate portraits in the 1950s augmented previous conceptions of TR as an archetype of masculinity. Images of Roosevelt as a father contributed to the atmosphere of “domestic containment,” endorsing a more active role for men in family life as an antidote to the supposedly enervating effects of mothers on their sons.58 In 1953, the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) opened up Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt family home in Oyster Bay, to the public. Attracting 80,000 visitors in its first year, the home exposed the public to the details of Roosevelt family life.59 Hermann Hagedorn’s The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill was the Book-of-the-Month Club choice for August, 1954.60 Here was a father never so weighed down by the responsibilities of his office that he could not afford time to wrestle, hike, and play with his offspring.61 Building upon previous images, crafted by Roosevelt himself, these domestic portraits functioned as a model of fatherhood in the 1950s, as psychologists called upon men to engage warmly in family life so as to rear socially-adjusted and heterosexual offspring. 62

29 Roosevelt’s foreign and domestic policies also attracted renewed praise during the early Cold War. Writing in 1954 and 1961, respectively, the historians John Blum and William Harbaugh portrayed TR as a skilled practitioner of realpolitik, who embraced the responsibilities of global leadership and demonstrated genuine commitments to peace through his mediation of an end to the Russo-Japanese war. 63 Both Blum and Harbaugh suggested that Roosevelt combined foreign policy activism with substantive domestic reforms. Reflecting on his policies toward capital and labor, Harbaugh argued that Roosevelt was the first president to: concern himself with the … the maldistribution of wealth, and the subversion of the democratic process by businessmen and their spokesmen in Congress … and the first to encourage, however cautiously, the growth of countervailing labor unions.64

30 The notion that contemporary presidents might learn from TR’s combination of foreign and domestic policy activism was implicit in Blum’s and Harbaugh’s work. Arthur Schlesinger was much more explicit in his belief that Roosevelt offered a valuable

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model for leadership in early Cold War America. In a treatise first published in 1949, Schlesinger cast Roosevelt as the embodiment of the “vital center”—a leader who shunned corporate dominance and socialism with equal vigor and injected dynamism into the Republican political tradition. In a theme that would become familiar to future historians, Schlesinger argued that by rejecting Roosevelt in 1912, the Republicans abandoned activist and compassionate politics in favor of laissez-faire complacency.65

31 As argued by the historian Kyle Cuordileone, Schlesinger’s call for a virile form of political leadership had a profound effect on the political style of John F. Kennedy.66 Contemporaries observed similarities between Roosevelt and Kennedy, noting that the two were alike in their youth, their intellectual pedigrees, and their “adventurous” styles.67 Kennedy’s 1960 article in Sports Illustrated calling on American men to enhance their physical fitness bore eerie similarities to Roosevelt’s calls for men to embrace the “strenuous life.”68 Both Roosevelt and Kennedy were enamored with the concept of wars fought by elite, volunteer forces.69 Moreover, Kennedy, like Roosevelt, used his family to emphasize his youthful vigor. As a recent commentator has observed, “who could look at John F. Kennedy, scrimmaging with his clan at Hyannis Port, and not be reminded of another young President, tussling with his kids”?70 Kennedy exploited the Roosevelt parallel to turn accusations of youthful inexperience to his own advantage, indicating that with youth came masculine energies befitting of a cold warrior.

32 In the Cold War atmosphere of earnest nationalism, images of Roosevelt as a bumbling character temporarily fell away. A 1958 issue of Time, coinciding with the centenary of Roosevelt’s birth, represented the apogee of the Roosevelt revival: confronted by the threat of “foreign autocracy,” Roosevelt had boldly embraced the “power of the U.S. government” and built up military forces to wield “a new kind of power—deterrence” on the global stage.71 The Time tribute made transparent an idea that ran through much contemporary scholarship and popular memory-making: Roosevelt was a man for the season.

7. The New Left Counterattack

33 On June 14, 1971 six young American Indians defaced James Earle Fraser’s statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History, spray-painting “Return Alcatraz” and “Fascist Killer” at the base of the monument.72 These young people explained that they chose the Roosevelt memorial as the target for their protest because they considered it “racist”; “[i]f you’ve seen the statue,” said a local organizer, “you could guess why.”73 Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) also occupied Mount Rushmore on several occasions in the early 1970s. The historian Matthew Glass notes that while most Americans associated Mount Rushmore with a glorious history of American expansion, the activists associated each presidential carving “with a specific set of injustices.” In 1970, AIM member Reuben Snake wrote that Roosevelt had “nationalized the park service by taking Indian land for White America’s playground.”74

34 Equally visceral memories of Theodore Roosevelt prevailed for some African Americans in these years. According to scholars influenced by the Black Power movement, Roosevelt’s theories on “race suicide” were grounded in the politics of white supremacy. Writing in the Black Scholar at the end of 1969, the historian and activist Nathan Wright argued that, in aiming to boost the numerical power of whites, TR’s

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underlying goal was to deprive blacks of relative power. According to Wright, there was little difference between Hitler’s crude form of genocide and the “low-keyed yet evident American theme that black men are a curse to the earth.”75 Roosevelt, in this telling, was merely one of the more vocal exponents of a deep-seated urge of white men to deprive black men of their power.

35 American Indians’ and African Americans’ memories challenged the image of Roosevelt as a champion of social justice. These counter-memories were largely in line with the work of radical historians who questioned the degree to which Roosevelt’s policies were progressive in the true sense of the word. In reality, few of Gabriel Kolko’s 1963 observations regarding Roosevelt were original. In 1948, Richard Hofstadter had observed that Roosevelt relied on the advice of “representatives of industrial and financial capital,” that he created “a hundred times more noise than accomplishment” in his war against the trusts, and that the Northern Securities prosecution was first and foremost a “brilliant stroke of publicity.” Kolko deepened each of these themes to argue that Roosevelt’s economic policies enabled the ascendancy of business interests in American public life.76 Kolko’s interpretation was not original, but it resonated with New Leftists who were apt to question the moral and material foundations of “the system.”

36 The Vietnam experience contributed to a new-found willingness to accept the limitations of American power. While conservative congressman protested the efforts of the Nixon, Ford, and finally Carter administrations to renegotiate the terms of Roosevelt’s 1903 treaty with Panama, the mainstream press expressed empathy toward Panamanians, who viewed the canal as a “symbol of ‘Yankee imperialism.’”77 In the mid 1970s, contributors to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune cited Roosevelt’s boast that he “took the Canal Zone while Congress was still debating what to do” as an example of an imperious American attitude that needed to change.78 Similarly, the Democratic Senator Frank Church argued: Teddy Roosevelt and the White Fleet and the Big Stick, those are days that related to a period of empire, when great nations did as they pleased, with little hindrance. Those memories have nothing whatever to do with the realities of 1978.79

37 Proponents of a revised treaty suggested that Roosevelt’s “big stick” approach had belonged to a different era. With a degree of wishful thinking, they believed that those days had passed.

38 Critics on the left undermined the image of Roosevelt as a champion of social justice and promoter of American values abroad. They also contributed to a shift in TR’s reputation as essentially benign. In the 1920s, Mencken had mixed his satire with expressions of warmth, testifying to the seductive exuberance of Roosevelt’s character. Satirists in the 1970s were not so readily seduced. Over the course of his political career, Richard Nixon had drawn on memories of TR as the “man in the arena”: following his defeat in the 1960 election, Nixon sent his supporters a letter that quoted from TR’s speech; his 1968 campaign team ran a televised series of staged town-hall meetings that portrayed Nixon as the “man in the arena”; and he returned to the motif of the man who “fails while daring greatly” upon his resignation in 1974.80 For those predisposed to doubt Nixon’s sincerity, these references served to plasticize and hollow out Roosevelt’s words. In his 1972 play That Championship Season, the playwright Jason Miller assigned the “man in the arena” speech to Coach, a character who embodied trumped-up white masculinity.81 The New York Times columnist, William Safire,

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reflected that in Miller’s hands, Roosevelt’s notion of the “man in the arena” became “the ultimate alibi of a loser savaged by society.”82 For the growing chorus of Nixon’s detractors, Nixon’s invocation of Roosevelt served only to degrade Roosevelt’s reputation. While an earlier generation had laughed alongside Roosevelt as a big- hearted, larger than life character, a more cynical generation laughed at him, as a symbol of their political leaders’ pomposity and emptiness.

8. The Search for a Hero

39 Racist, conservative, and imperialist, the New Left’s Theodore Roosevelt was the counter-image of the benign, beneficent, and heroic Theodore Roosevelt of American memory. It is a testimony to the intellectual coherence of the New Left that the various groups which formed the movement settled upon a cohesive set of counter-memories of TR. But the New Left never had sufficient power or persuasiveness to unseat longstanding public memories of Roosevelt. Social instability, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal prompted radicals to question the essential tenets of American memory, but these same events encouraged an even greater number of Americans to seek reassurance in memories of their nation as a force for good.

40 The ongoing debate around the Panama Canal treaties created an opportunity for conservative organizers to galvanize their base. With his 1976 rallying cry, “We built it! We paid for it! It’s ours and we’re gonna keep it!,” Ronald Reagan demonstrated the political gains to be made through a robust defense of U.S. claims in Panama. While President Carter argued that, were he alive, Theodore Roosevelt would have supported the revised treaties, Congressman Philip Crane, the leader of the American Conservative Union, demurred.83 In a 1978 tract, the ultraconservative from Illinois argued that campus violence, Watergate, and defeat in Vietnam had placed the United States on the brink of collapse; the nation’s communist enemies looked on with “wolfish eyes.” Teddy Roosevelt, the man “whose leadership, more than anyone’s, first won the United States a respected place as a major power,” would have understood that there “must be no surrender in Panama,” wrote Crane.84 Opinion polls from 1975 to 1978 indicated the American public’s overwhelming opposition to the transfer of sovereignty of the Canal Zone to Panama.85 Although Carter gained the senatorial majority necessary to ratify the revised Panama Canal treaties, the New Right was the long-term political beneficiary of the debate, and its interpretation of history, rather than that of the liberal establishment, was persuasive to most Americans.86

41 The New Left had framed their disgust with contemporary politicians in a broader critique of the establishment. But for many Americans, the political corruption of the 1970s fueled an intense nostalgia for a morally simpler past, as embodied by Roosevelt. The August 1979 cover of Newsweek featured a pastel-shaded TR, leading the charge up San Juan Hill, and the simple question: “Where Have All the Heroes Gone?” Within the pages of the magazine, Edmund Morris reflected: Perhaps the ouster of Richard Nixon persuades us that our recent chief executives have represented the worst rather than the best in us, and we are wistful for the “essentially moral and essentially manly” qualities that the 26th President had in such abundance.87

42 Morris perpetuated a myth, which even Roosevelt’s most complementary biographers discarded, that as a young boy TR had overcome his asthma through sheer force of will.

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He argued that, like the greatest heroes in history, Roosevelt had battled successfully against misfortune: he followed his father’s body building program with “bulldog tenacity … Fiber by fiber, his muscles tautened.”88 The sheer hyperbole of Morris’s claims were evident when compared with the observations of David McCullough, an author hardly immune to Roosevelt-worship, who nonetheless noted in 1981 that Roosevelt’s progress in building his body was “pathetic” and that his asthma never fully subsided.89 Morris’s TR was Hercules and Leonidas combined, a “Homeric ‘tamer of horses,’” with a “Praxitelian body.”90

43 Morris reinvigorated memories of Roosevelt as an intensely masculine leader to satisfy a popular yearning for an unapologetically American hero. For his efforts, he won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Morris’s Theodore Roosevelt, much like the president-elect, Ronald Reagan, seemed to be the perfect antidote to the “national malaise” and “crisis of confidence” that had dominated the 1970s.

9. The Feminists’ TR

44 In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and two subsequent volumes in his biographical trilogy, Morris was non-committal on TR’s positions on race, and silent on issues of gender.91 Contesting this popular portrait of Roosevelt, feminist activists and scholars unpacked the racial and gendered dimensions of his policies. Women’s historians in the early 1990s pointed to the institutional barriers faced by women during the Progressive Era despite, or even because of, Roosevelt’s support for maternalist legislation, such as mother’s pensions and workplace protection.92 Historians in the early 1990s were drawn to an investigation of the origins of the maternalist state precisely because it was under attack. Reagan’s budget reforms had led to major reductions in Aid to Families with Dependent Children; and conservative commentators argued that welfare was a cause of, rather than solution to, poverty. Recognizing a shift in public attitudes, Bill Clinton campaigned, and ultimately made good on, a pledge to “end welfare as we know it.”93 Women’s historians aimed to demonstrate that social welfare for women, initiated with President Roosevelt’s blessing, was always more vulnerable to conservative attacks and rollback than social insurance for men.

45 In 1989, the feminist theorist Donna Haraway analyzed Roosevelt’s looming image in the American Museum of Natural History as an expression of an explicitly white and male-dominated hierarchy—the “Teddy Bear Patriarchy.” In Haraway’s telling, Roosevelt and his elite friends embraced nature as a way of asserting their manhood. The taxidermal apes and “primitive” Africans displayed at the museum functioned as reference points for the white male body.94 Haraway’s analysis anticipated a body of scholarship in the 1990s that exposed Roosevelt’s whiteness and masculinity as social and political constructs.95 Feminist scholarship highlighted the limitations of the president’s conceptions of a more just society, which never fully applied to women or people of color, and exposed white male power, as embodied by Roosevelt, as a careful construction rather than a natural given.

46 Well-received among like-minded academics, these studies did not prompt wholesale reassessments of Roosevelt’s historical reputation. In 1948 and again in 1962, historians selected and polled by Arthur Schlesinger had ranked Theodore Roosevelt as the seventh greatest president.96 In 1996, those selected and polled by Schlesinger’s son ranked TR as the sixth greatest president.97 If feminist historians’ interpretations of

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Roosevelt made little impact on their colleagues, there was little hope that they would reach beyond academia, to the public at large. The feminist scholars’ Roosevelt remained a self-contained counter-memory that ran parallel to, but rarely interfered with, long-standing memories of TR.

10. Roosevelt in Recent Memory

47 Among the various memories of Roosevelt sustained by left-of-center historians, the image of a champion of social justice has arguably been the only one to enter the mainstream of public history. While not devoid of scenes of battleground bravery, David Grubin’s 1996 documentary TR suggested that Roosevelt displayed his true heroism in the political arena, fighting big business and battling for a “square deal” for the American people.98 Similarly, Douglas Brinkley, in his mammoth Wilderness Warrior, suggested that Roosevelt employed forceful executive leadership for liberal ends, resulting in the creation of five national parks, sixteen national monuments, and fifty- three wildlife reserves. Both Grubin’s documentary and Brinkley’s study belonged to the hagiographic school of Roosevelt historiography: TR erased the brutal war in the Philippines from its narrative of the presidential years; Brinkley glossed over the long scholarly debate on the relative importance of conservation and preservation to TR, and did not acknowledge any contradictions between Roosevelt’s love of hunting and his love of nature.99 A far more scholarly rendition of the TR-as-champion-of-social- justice thesis was supplied by Kathleen Dalton in her 2004 biography. Dalton’s over- arching argument was that Roosevelt broke from the “iron cages” of Victorian thought, distanced himself from members of his class, and shattered his party’s unity in order to achieve his vision of a more equitable democracy.100 For instance, Dalton pointed to shifts in Roosevelt’s idea on race, as he became convinced that environment, rather than heredity, determined human capacity.101

48 Both Grubin’s documentary and Dalton’s magisterial study could be interpreted as “tacit but poignant” critiques of the direction of American politics in the 1990s and beyond, in which Republicans neglected his legacy of activist intervention on behalf of the public good, and Democrats moved from the center to the right.102 Dalton acknowledged: Part of the challenge of writing about TR at the end of the twentieth century was to try to keep hidden my affectionate nostalgia about a liberal Republican who believed in the welfare state.103

49 In this effort, she was only partially successful. Dalton’s Strenuous Life charted Roosevelt’s growing commitment to social reform over the course of decades, implying that in maturity he realized the fullest expression of himself.104 As unalike in texture and tone as a television documentary and scholarly study are want to be, TR and Strenuous Life were similar in one regard: each aimed to revive memories of the progressive era as a time when a powerful political leader had dared to strive for a fairer nation.

50 Those on the right also drew upon familiar images of Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the twenty-first century, albeit for entirely different ends. Neoconservative intellectuals revisited his foreign policy to produce an image of a warrior who never shied away from a good fight, and an assertive proponent of the United States’ global leadership. Minimizing Roosevelt’s efforts to mediate international disputes and avoid

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war with Japan, William Kristol and Robert Kagan argued that his foreign policy promoted a “robust brand of internationalism”: Roosevelt was an idealist of a different sort. He did not attempt to wish away the realities of power, but insisted that the defenders of civilization must exercise their power against civilization’s opponents. “Warlike intervention by the civilized powers,” he insisted, “would contribute directly to the peace of the world.”105

51 During the 2000 primary season, unimpressed by George W. Bush’s seemingly modest vision for U.S. foreign policy, most neoconservatives backed John McCain’s bid for the Republican nomination.106 In debate in Des Moines, McCain described TR as his “modern day role model and hero.” Roosevelt, said McCain, “put the United States on the world’s stage.”107 But in the wake of 9/11, Bush was increasingly amenable to neoconservatives’ strategic vision and embraced their interpretation of Roosevelt as an exemplary leader for extraordinary times. Bush described Edmund Morris’ 2001 Theodore Rex as one of the best books he had read.108 The president would have found few cautionary tales regarding the perils of empire in Theodore Rex: Morris’s passing references to the “fanatic Muslims” of Mindanao did not convey the human and moral costs of protracted guerilla warfare.109

52 Critics insisted that the neoconservatives had distorted TR’s image: as the Philippines war dragged on, he had recognized the “folly” of American empire.110 But the neoconservative rendition of TR as an aggressive defender of American interests resonated with a broader public. A 2006 edition of Time magazine devoted to the Roosevelt presidency was indicative of why this TR appealed to the American imagination in the aftermath of 9/11. The dominant theme of the issue, much like the dominant theme in Morris’s biographies, was of Roosevelt as a man of gargantuan personal strength, overcoming illness, leading the charge up San Juan Hill, battling against corruption, and eluding death on the Amazon. The issue’s cover story asserted that the twenty-sixth president “gave the nation a picture of itself as a place that could not fail to succeed, because it produced people who were vigorous and commanding— people like Teddy Roosevelt.”111 For a nation still reeling from existential threats, these heroic images of Roosevelt functioned as a reassurance of the resilience of the American spirit and the benignity of American power.

11. Conclusion

53 There is no single memory of Theodore Roosevelt; rather, various groups have remembered him through the prism of their intellectual and political predispositions and their current social conditions. Disillusioned and socially marginalized groups, and the scholars and intellectuals who aspire to speak for them, have always challenged the prevailing images of Roosevelt as a hard-boiled hero, a champion of social justice, and a well-meaning wag. Their counter-memories of Roosevelt as self-serving, aggressive, and governed by prejudice provide a cohesive critique of the twenty-sixth president. More profoundly, they represent a refusal to accept constructions of the United States as an exceptional nation, presided over by exceptional men.

54 Michael Kammen argues that the transmission of memory in the United States “tends to be decentralized, ad hoc, diffuse, and relatively non-coercive”: the United States has no ministry of culture to police the boundaries of public memory.112 This “relatively non-coercive” cultural environment may help counter-memories to flourish within

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marginalized social groups, but it does not ensure that counter-memories expand beyond those who generate them, to undermine pre-existing tropes. The capacity of critics to shift the course of public memory is a function of their relative power in society, and those who have generated counter-memories of Roosevelt have usually lacked this fundamental power.

55 As most recently regenerated by the popular historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, one element of TR’s image produced by left-of-center historians has succeeded in entering the public imagination: that of a champion of social justice. Goodwin acknowledges that by portraying TR as a defender of the common man, she hopes to “guide readers … toward a better understanding of what it takes to … bring our country closer to its ancient ideals.”113 But the net impact of the image of TR as a champion of social justice may run contrary to the intentions of historians who aim to reinvigorate the progressive era as an applicable episode from the United States’ past. In 2002, the US historian Robert Johnston expressed his own preference for “hope over despair” in our understanding of progressive reforms. By “re-democratizing” the progressive era, Johnston suggested, historians could contribute to a living debate about the role that citizens could play in creating a more expansive and meaningful democracy.114 Images of TR battling the trusts and stumping for a Square Deal, as conjured in Grubin’s TR, certainly represent a triumph of “hope over despair.” But by de-coupling the carriage of progress from the engine of democratic process these same images risk encouraging complacency and passivity. Rather than portraying progressive social reform as the end product of deep commitments of citizen-activists, these images suggest that all that is required is a deus ex machina to nudge the United States towards a more perfect rendition of itself. Goodwin’s, and especially Dalton’s, understandings of the internal struggles of the progressive era are more complete.115 But despite these authors’ sensitivities to the complex mechanisms of democracy, the most compelling figure in their narratives is, almost inevitably, the irrepressible TR. Images of Roosevelt as a champion of social justice thus risk eclipsing a much more realistic and usable history of social reform.

56 Some of the most recent renditions of Theodore Roosevelt in popular culture further demonstrate the resilience of familiar themes in public memories. In October 2012 the American Museum of Natural History reopened the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. The museum’s tribute to Roosevelt was visually stunning and historically flat. The 1936 murals were restored to their former glory, but the curators offered no commentary that would enable the viewer to digest the images of Roosevelt as a product of their times. The murals celebrated TR as he had always been celebrated, as a hero, imperialist, and masculine archetype.116

57 Also in October 2012, Teddy’s fortunes changed at the Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. For six seasons, a mascot version of Roosevelt had raced around the Nationals’ stadium, always to fall short against his rivals, and fellow Mount Rushmore icons, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. After a four-year-long, fan-based campaign to “Let Teddy Win,” Roosevelt finally crossed the finishing line first during the Nationals’ first ever playoff game, eliciting an explosion of joy in the stadium and Twittersphere. Teddy’s long losing streak had endeared him to the fans, who embraced this latest iteration of Roosevelt as a benign friend.117

58 Theodore Roosevelt continues, too, to be a reference point for other presidents. In 2011, Barack Obama returned Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Roosevelt’s 1910 speech,

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to issue his own vision of a more progressive society.118 Most recently, in August 2017, Mike Pence, visiting the Panama Canal, compared Donald Trump to TR: Then, as now, we have a builder of boundless optimism, who seeks to usher in a new era of shared prosperity all across this new world ... Just as President Roosevelt exhorted his fellow Americans to “dare to be great,” President Donald Trump has dared our nation to “make America great again.”119

59 These recent references demonstrate the ongoing salience of three TRs—a champion of progress, a benign figure, and a forceful hero—and are suggestive of a durability in how Americans imagine their political leaders. First, from Kennedy’s narrow election victory over Nixon in 1960, to Bush Senior’s trouncing of Dukakis in 1988, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Americans demand that their leaders convey robust masculinity. Second, as evidenced by Reagan’s successful election campaign in 1980, Americans look to their leaders to project an optimistic vision of their society as uniquely capable of progress.120 Finally, they want their president to be likeable, a man “you can have a beer with.”121

60 As democratically elected leaders and highly visible figureheads, presidents are proxies for Americans’ self-image. Hermann Hagedorn made this notion explicit in his immensely popular Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, wrote Hagedorn, was “the visible, individual expression of the American people”: He was the fulfiller of our good intentions … He was human, he was our kind, and, being our kind, his successes and his fame were somehow our successes and our fame likewise.122

61 Almost one hundred years on, the same observations were implicit in Edmund Morris’ final biography of Roosevelt. Without acknowledging Hagedorn’s obvious influence on his source, Morris ended his work with the 1922 quotation of an Oyster Bay schoolboy: “He was a fulfiller of good intentions.”123 It seems that in recurring images of Theodore Roosevelt as robust, optimistic, and benign a great many Americans see themselves.

NOTES

1. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 234. 2. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), xii. 3. Barry Schwartz, “The Reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln” in Collective Remembering, eds. David Middleton and Derek Edwards (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990), 82. 4. For “counter-memories,” see Donald F. Bouchard, “Preface” in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Bouchard and trans. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 8-9. 5. On Roosevelt and historiography, see Richard H. Collin, “The Image of Theodore Roosevelt in American History and Thought, 1885-1965” (Ph.d. diss., New York University, 1966); John Gable, “The Man in the Arena of History: The Historiography of

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Theodore Roosevelt” in Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American, eds. Natalie Naylor, Douglas Brinkley and John Gable (Interlaken, NY: Hearts of the Lakes, 1992), 613-643. On Roosevelt and film, see M. Patrick Cullinane, “The Memory of Theodore Roosevelt through Motion Pictures” in A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Serge Ricard (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), 502-520. On Roosevelt and foreign policy, see Andrew Johnston, “The Neoconservatives and Theodore Roosevelt” in L’Héritage de Theodore Roosevelt: Impérialisme et Progressisme, 1912-2012, ed.s Claire Delahaye and Serge Ricard (Paris: Harmattan, 2012), 155-174. 6. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 144. 7. Sarah Lyons Watts, Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 126-135. 8. Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 97-102; Watts, Rough Rider, 127-130; Theodore Roosevelt, “Cross Country Riding in America,” Century Magazine, July 1886. Roosevelt, “The Home Ranch,” Century Magazine, March 1888. 9. David Greenberg, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Image of Presidential Activism,” Social Research 78 (Winter 2011): 1066; Morris, Rise, 672. 10. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), 117. 11. Greenberg, “Theodore Roosevelt,” 1072. 12. Monica T. Albala, “Theodore Roosevelt: The Man and the Image in Popular Culture” in Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American, 552-553. On hunting see, Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York: Harper, 2009), 184, 236, 242, 506, 511, 544. 13. Dalton, Strenuous Life, 366. 14. Ibid., 372-413. 15. Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” North American Review 172 (February 1901): 161-176. 16. William M. Gibson, Theodore Roosevelt Among the Humorists: W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, and Mr. Dooley (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980), 13. 17. Dalton, Strenuous Life, 361. 18. Gerald L. Fetner, “The Washington Correspondent in the Progressive Era: The New York Times’ Charles Willis Thompson,” American Journalism 28 (Spring 2011): 23-47. 19. Thompson, “To Know Roosevelt was to Love Him,” New York Times, January 7, 1919. 20. Thompson, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Place in History,” New York Times, January 6, 1929. 21. Kevin P. Murphy, Political Manhood: Red Bloods, Mollycoddles, and the Politics of Progressive Era Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 178-187. 22. Thompson, “To Know Roosevelt.” 23. Thompson, “Roosevelt’s Place.” 24. Ibid. 25. Dalton, Strenuous Life, 515-517. 26. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Shown in His Own Letters (New York: Scribner’s, 1920).

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27. Hermann Hagedorn, The Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1922), 3. For Hagedorn’s impact, see: “Why I Admire Theodore Roosevelt,” Washington Post, Junior Post, October 23, 1932; “Subject: ‘T.R.,’” New York Times, November 3, 1957. 28. Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood, Theodore Roosevelt (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923), 3, 211. 29. Ibid., 21, 211. 30. Alan Havig, “Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967,” American Quarterly 30 (Fall 1978): 514-532, esp. 523. 31. “Coolidge Dedicates Mountain Memorial to Four Presidents,” New York Times, August 11, 1927. Matthew Glass, “‘Alexanders All’: Symbols of Conquest and Resistance at Mount Rushmore” in American Sacred Space, ed.s David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 167-178. 32. Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: Norton, 1987), 355-380. 33. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 15-55. 34. H. L. Mencken “Roosevelt and Others,” Smart Set, March 1920. Reprinted in H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series (New York: Knopf, 1920), 135. 35. Mencken, Prejudices, 112. 36. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), 575. 37. Richard H. Collin, “Henry Pringle’s Theodore Roosevelt: A Study in Historical Revisionism,” New York History 52 (April 1971): 154. 38. John A. Garraty, The Nature of Biography (New York: Knopf, 1957), 137. 39. Pringle, Roosevelt, 347. 40. Mencken, Prejudices, 135. 41. Gable, “Arena of History,” 616. Pringle, Roosevelt, 38, 247, 366, 429, 465-467. 42. Fred C. Hobson, Mencken: A Life (New York: Random House, 1994), 380. 43. James. L Golden, “FDR’s Use of the Symbol of TR in the Formation of his Political Persona and Philosophy” in Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American, 577-594. Eleanor Roosevelt was TR’s niece. 44. “Roosevelt’s View of the Big Job,” New York Times, September 11, 1932. 45. “If Roosevelt Looks Back at Roosevelt,” New York Times Magazine, October 22, 1933. 46. “If T.R. were in the White House Now,” New York Times, January 19, 1936. 47. “The President’s Speech at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial,” New York Times, January 20, 1936. 48. William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (New York: Harper, 2009), 68-70, 301. 49. Albert Boime, “Patriarchy Fixed in Stone: Gutzon Borglum’s Mount Rushmore,” American Art 5 (Winter-Spring 1991): 152. 50. Rex Alan Smith, The Carving of Mount Rushmore (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 370.

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51. Boime, “Patriarchy,” 161-162; Glass, “‘Alexanders All,’” 168-169; Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995), 385-392. 52. William A. Mackay and A. A. Canfield, The Murals in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1944). 53. “Unveils Statue of ‘Rough Rider,’” New York Times, October 28, 1940. 54. “Statue of a Leader,” New York Times, October 29, 1940. 55. John E. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 19. 56. Joseph Kesselring, Arsenic and Old Lace: A Comedy (New York: Random House, 1941), 21, 80, 89. 57. Gable, “Arena of History,” 618. 58. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 16-18, 138-141. 59. “Sagamore Hill Rounds Out First Tourist Year,” New York Times, May 30, 1954. 60. “Fun and Games with a Famous Father,” New York Times, August 15, 1954. 61. Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 48-49, 83-84, 172-176, 250-251. 62. May, Homeward Bound, 138-141. 63. John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 125-241; William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility; the Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961), 270-285. 64. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility, 522. 65. Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998), 21-24. 66. Kyle A. Cuordileone, “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety’: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” Journal of American History 87 (September 2000): 544-545. 67. “Topics,” New York Times, January 12, 1961. 68. John F. Kennedy, “The Soft American,” Sports Illustrated, December 26, 1960; Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life; Essays and Addresses (New York: Century, 1902), 1-21; Robert D. Dean, “Masculinity as Ideology: John F. Kennedy and the Domestic Politics of Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 22 (January 1998): 46-47. 69. David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 148-149; Dean, “Masculinity,” 31, 50-62. 70. “The 20th Century Express” Time, July 3, 2006. 71. “Heroes: The Turning Point,” Time, March 3, 1958. 72. “Six Indians Accused of Defacing Theodore Roosevelt Statue Here,” New York Times, June 15, 1971. 73. Ibid. 74. Glass, “‘Alexanders All,’” 174-775. 75. Nathan Wright, “Black Power v.s Black Genocide,” Black Scholar 1 (December 1969): 49.

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76. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Knopf, 1948), 293-294. Compare with Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism; a Re-Interpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 67, 72-77. 77. “Panama Canal in Brief,” New York Times, February 8, 1974. Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 114. 78. “Panama Canal in Brief”; “The Truth Behind our Canal Caper,” Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1976; “U.S. Created Panama, Setting the Stage for Stormy Relations,” Washington Post, August 11, 1977. 79. Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008), 181-182. 80. “Man in the Arena,” New York Times, June 7, 1973; Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President, 1968 (New York, 1969), 67; “Nixon Resigns as 37th President of the United States,” Washington Post, August 9, 1974. Nixon also quoted from Roosevelt’s diary in his farewell speech to White House Staff: “Sad, Emotional Nixon Bids Farewell to Staff,” Washington Post, August 10, 1974. 81. Jason Miller, That Championship Season (New York: Atheneum, 1972). 82. “Man in the Arena,” New York Times. 83. Michael J. Hogan, The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 149. 84. Philip M. Crane, Surrender in Panama: The Case Against the Treaty (New York: Dale Books, 1978), 16-17. 85. Ted J. Smith III and Michael J. Hogan, “Public Opinion and the Panama Canal Treaties of 1977,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (Spring 1987): 5-30. 86. Hogan, Panama Canal, 114-131; Clymer, Drawing the Line. 87. Edmund Morris, “The Saga of Teddy,” Newsweek, August 6, 1979. 88. Morris, Rise, 32-33. 89. David G. McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 113, 367-368. 90. Morris, “Saga.” 91. Morris, Rex, 224, 251, 258, 262. 92. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880-1920,” American Historical Review 95 (October 1990): 1076-1108; Sonya Michel, “The Limits of Maternalism: Policies Toward Wage-Earning Mothers during the Progressive Era” in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, eds. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (New York: Routledge, 1993), 277-320; Linda Gordon, “Putting Children First: Women, Maternalism, and Welfare in the Early Twentieth Century” in U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays, eds. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 63-86. 93. John O’Connor, “US Social Welfare Policy: The Reagan Record and Legacy,” Journal of Social Policy 27 (January 1998): 37-61.

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94. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), 26-58. 95. Arnaldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity,” Journal of American History 81 (March 1995): 1509-1533. Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 170-215. 96. Arthur M. Schlesinger, “Historians Rate the U.S. Presidents,” Life, November 1, 1948; Arthur M. Schlesinger, “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians,” New York Times, July 29, 1962. 97. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,” Political Science Quarterly 112 (Summer 1997): 179-190. 98. David Grubin, TR (PBS Video, 1996). 99. Matthew Frye Jacobson, “Imperial Amnesia: Teddy Roosevelt, the Philippines, and the Modern Art of Forgetting,” Radical History Review, 73 (Winter 1999): 117-127; Brinkley, Wilderness Warrior, 5, 19, 59. 100. Dalton, Strenuous Life, 44-5, 291-2, 295, 298. 101. Ibid., 126, 322. Dalton’s owed this interpretation in large part to Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 17, 22-44. 102. Jacobson, “Imperial Amnesia,” 124. 103. Kathleen Dalton, “Finding Theodore Roosevelt: A Personal and Political Story,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 6 (October 2007): 374. 104. Dalton, Strenuous Life, 524. 105. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “Introduction: National Interest and Global Responsibility” in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, eds. Robert Kagan and William Kristol (San Francisco: Encounter, 2000), 23. 106. Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives and Neoconservatives” in the The Neocon Reader, ed. Irwin Stelzer (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 226. 107. John McCain III, Iowa Republican Presidential Primary Debate (Des Moines, Iowa, December 13, 1999). McCain also expressed his admiration for Roosevelt as a “reformer” and a “truly wonderful father and family man.” See also M. Patrick Cullinane, “Invoking Teddy: The Inspiration of John McCain’s Foreign Policy,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, 19:4 (2008): 767-786. 108. George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 470. 109. Morris, Rex, 119, 457-458. 110. John B. Judis, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (New York: Scribner, 2004). 111. “20th Century Express,” Time. 112. Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 14. 113. Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), xiv.

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114. Robert D. Johnston, “Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 (January 2002): 68-92. 115. Goodwin, Bully Pulpit, xii, 323, 574; Dalton, Strenuous Life, 373-78. 116. “Bully! Museum Restores its Shrine to Roosevelt,” New York Times, October 26, 2012. 117. “Teddy Wins First Presidents’ Race” Washington Post, DC Sports Blog, October 3, 2012 (accessed August 25, 2013). “Twitter Reacts to Teddy’s First Win,” Washington Post, DC Sports Blog, October 3, 2012 (accessed August 25, 2013). 118. “In Kansas, a Combative Obama Tries on his Teddy Roosevelt Hat,” Christian Science Monitor, December 6, 2011. 119. “Pence Compares Trump to Teddy Roosevelt, Praises his ‘Can-Do Spirit,’” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 2017. 120. William E. Pemberton, Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan (Armonk: Sharpe, 1997), 89. 121. “Obama Seizes Chance to Score as an Everyman,” New York Times, March 22, 2012. 122. Hagedorn, Boys’ Life, 2-3. 123. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), 570.

ABSTRACTS

Following scholarship that suggests that societies crave continuity in their collective memories, this article identifies recurring themes in American memories of Theodore Roosevelt as an intensely masculine leader, a champion of social justice, and a loveable character. Memories of Roosevelt since his death have not been static. Leftist scholars and activists have contributed to counter-memories of TR as chauvinist, racist, and a dangerous imperialist. The interplay between memories and counter-memories of Theodore Roosevelt suggests that while cultural pluralism enables a multiplicity of memories to flourish within American society, it does not ensure that counter-memories expand beyond those who generate them. The resilience of memories of Roosevelt as a hero, champion, and friend is indicative of durable qualities in Americans’ self- image.

INDEX

Keywords: counter-memory; historiography; memory; politics of memory; popular history; presidential history; Theodore Roosevelt

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