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Summer 2012 CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM Jon K. Lauck University of Iowa

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JON K. LAUCK

Christopher Lasch was born in Omaha in cast over a generation of historians and cul­ 1932. By the end of his life, cut short at age tural critics who came of age in the 1960s and sixty-one, he had become one of the most 1970s."2 A product and one-time devotee of famous intellectuals in the world.l During his the American Left, Lasch later solidified his life of active writing from the time of the early standing as a commanding figure in American Cold War until the fall of the Soviet Union, letters as a trenchant and at times brutal critic Lasch's distinctive voice pierced through the of American liberalism. din of the nation's noisy political and cul­ Throughout his life, both when he was tural debates. The historian Jackson Lears firmly planted in the traditions of the Left recalled, in particular, the "spell that Lasch and after his dissent began, Lasch embodied a prairie skepticism about the vision and drift of his fellow intellectuals, the allegedly liberating aspects of modern life, and the coercive incli­ Key Words: agrarianism, Cold War, Iowa, liberalism, nations of technocratic planners. His midwest­ Nebraska, Omaha ern roots, Lasch said, were a "reference point to which I was always in one way or another Jon K. Lauck received his PhD in history from the returning."3 Lasch's work, with its multitude of University of Iowa and his law degree from the insights, his later skepticism of the narrative University of Minnesota. He is the author of American constraints of recent historiography, his atten­ Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly: The Political Economy of Grain Belt Farming, 1953- tiveness to regionalist sensibilities, his concern 1980, Daschle v. Thune: Anatomy of a High Plains about the erosion of historical knowledge Senate Race, and Prairie Republic: The Political and the health of democracy, and his general Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889. He is also rediscovery of older cultural traditions in the the coauthor and coeditor of The Plains Political American past, can provide much-needed per­ Tradition: Essays on South Dakota Political Culture. spective to historical interpretation. More spe­ cifically, Lasch's origins in, identification with, [GPQ 32 (Summer 2012): 183-205] and understanding of the Midwest can help

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rescue the region's history from irrelevance and as a method, as Goodwyn said, of determining give it broader meaning. "how democratic culture might be achieved."8 Lasch's most striking qualities were his intense honesty and his willingness to speak NEBRASKA ROOTS and write openly, despite the personal costs. In his recent biography of Lasch, which helps Lasch's intellectual odyssey began on the link Lasch to his prairie roots, Eric Miller Nebraska prairie, a biographical fact that con­ cites Kathleen Norris, who won fame with tributed to his later interest in the history of her meditation on returning to the Dakota Populism and his broader embrace of populist prairie, on the social role of prophetic voices sentiments. Lasch's father, Robert, was born such as Lasch: "A prophet's task is to reveal in a small house near 27th and N Streets in the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable Lincoln in 1907, at the same time and in the surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, same city that witnessed the creation of the the national myths as well as the little lies Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and and delusions of control and security that get Robert's family bounced around the Midwest us through the day.'''! Lasch's pursuit of the for several years, including stints in Chicago, truth, his fear of the "tremendous void" left by Springfield, Illinois, and Kansas City.9 The the decline of "historical awareness," his aver­ Lasch family, Robert recalled, "had always sion to the suffocating fog of ideology, and his been hard up."lO In 1924 Robert enrolled at commitment to making democracy workable the University of Nebraska in part because his ultimately led him back to the prairie's most father "always felt a sentimental attachment to famous political movement, Populism.5 the university at Lincoln, following its football Lasch's explicit turn to the Populist move­ team with pride."n He enrolled as a philosophy ment and to broader forms of populism late major, wrote for the college newspaper, the in life helps explain his early works and elu­ Daily Nebraskan, and became a reporter down cidates his doubts about elite opinion and on M Street for the Lincoln StarP A budding his resistance to the derisive treatment of writer, Robert paid homage to Willa Cather, the common man and traditional culture. who, he said, "had risen from the Nebraska His treatment of populism was not based on plains to become a leader in American let­ in-depth archival research or close attention ters. If she could do it, why not we!,,13 In to late nineteenth-century Populist institu­ 1928 Robert was selected as the University of tions, platforms, or party activities, but was Nebraska's lone Rhodes Scholar. After three part of a more general search for relief from years in England, Robert returned to Nebraska elite condescension, growing bureaucratic and became an editor at the Omaha World­ controls, and developments in the politics of Herald. 14 the American Left that he thought threatened Christopher Lasch's mother, Zora Schaupp, American democracy.6 This search included was born in Rockville, Nebraska, in 1896. attention to historical precedent and belief in Zora's father was a Lutheran schoolteacher the proposition, as he wrote in 1980, "that the from Indiana who had lost his faith, and her only way to understand the contemporary crisis mother's family ran a successful cattle-ranching is to understand it historically."7 Lasch's turn operation. After a short stint on the Southern to populism was, most fundamentally, driven Plains, Zora's family returned to Nebraska by his commitment to bolstering American in 1904, and her father took a job managing democracy. Greatly inspired by the publication a grain elevator in Virginia, Nebraska. He of Lawrence Goodwyn's history of Populism became active in politics and eventually won in 1976-which, Lasch thought, made "earlier a seat, as a Democrat, in the state legislature work on [Populism] look like child's play"­ in 1912. Zora enrolled at the University of Lasch helped draw attention to Populist history Nebraska in 1916, and her feminism and politi-

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 185 cal engagement impressed some of her profes­ sors, who urged her to attend graduate school. After earning a master's degree from Nebraska, Zora earned a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr and returned to the University of Nebraska to teach. Her roommate in Lincoln was Willa Cather's sister, Elsie, who taught high school in Lincoln.I5 One of Zora's best students at Nebraska was the young Robert Lasch. When Zora studied in England during the 1929-30 academic year, she connected on several occasions with Robert, who was there on his Rhodes Scholarship. Before she returned to Nebraska, they were engaged. They married during the summer of 1931, and the following June Christopher was born at the Methodist Hospital in Omaha.l6 Robert remembered that the "dates occasioned a good deal of finger counting among friends. An interval of nine months and ten days, plus the fact that we were separated throughout the summer prior to marriage, put us in the clear."l7 They lived in houses in North Omaha, on Davenport Street, west of downtown, and in the western subdivision of Rockbrook.l8 Unable to have more children, the Lasches also adopted a baby girl from Kansas City.19 FIG. 1. Robert Lasch, father of Christopher Lasch, Lasch's parents did not embrace the conser­ as a young reporter and editor for the Omaha World­ Herald in a photo dated November 20, 1935. Courtesy vative Republicanism that one might associate of the Omaha World-Herald. with contemporary Nebraska. Both Robert and Zora were hostile to religion, and Lasch remembered them as "militant secularists."2o the position of editor for Nebraska and western They came of age along with a budding group Iowa news.24 Robert supported the progressiv­ of American intellectuals who were generally ism of Nebraska Senator George Norris and critical of American middle-class life, who saw through his news reporting at the World-Herald religion as repressive, and who reviled capital­ "gave him as much favorable coverage as [he] ism. At the Omaha World-Herald, for which could."25 He voted for the Socialist presidential William Jennings Bryan had once served candidate Norman Thomas in 1932 (Robert as editor, Robert embraced its "tradition of remembers taking Christopher to the polls that populist-radicalism."2l Bryan gave his "Cross of year because Christopher had fallen "out of bed Gold" speech while at the same time serving as on his head" and he feared "some deep trauma a correspondent for the World-Herald. 22 Robert which never developed"), and Zora joined covered farmers' protests in Nebraska and Iowa others on the Left by working for the presi­ during the Great Depression and "applauded dential campaign of Henry Wallace in 1948. 26 their courage, and advocated other forms of During the sixties, Robert won a Pulitzer Prize direct action to challenge the system which for his columns criticizing the Vietnam War. 27 had brought the agricultural economy to such All the Lasches came to despise Nixon and a low estate."23 Robert was soon promoted to Reagan.

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EDUCATION, THE LEFT, AND IOWA 1950s, as he wrote to his girlfriend, was a coun­ try that "claims to be a democracy and yet has Lasch ultimately graduated from high this hideous fascist monster in its insides."38 school in Chicago because his father had After Harvard, Lasch entered the gradu­ "pulled up [the family's] Nebraska roots" in ate program in history at Columbia, where order to accept an editorial position at the he was exposed to Richard Hofstadter, whose Chicago Sun. 28 The Lasches rented a house in sweeping judgments on American history he the Republican suburbs of the North Shore would ultimately come to reject. In a sign of his and Christopher matriculated at Barrington interest in agrarian activism Lasch considered High School, where the precocious young writing his dissertation about the Minnesota Lasch embraced art, music, and, above all, Populist Ignatius Donnelly, but ended up writing, and attacked what he then saw as the writing on liberals' reaction to the Russian narrowness and provincialism of his peers.29 Revolution.39 After a few short-term teaching Lasch said he was always "flaunting my athe­ stints and a research fellowship, Lasch joined ism" and making "fun of their religiosity."3o At the University of Iowa history department.4o age sixteen, he trumpeted his support of the The Prairie Historian Allan Bogue, who was Iowa-born Henry Wallace and his Progressive serving as departmental chairman at Iowa at Party presidential ticket in school assemblies. the time (before his departure for Wisconsin), Lasch graduated in 1950 and left for Harvard, told Lasch that his credentials were impres­ where he was surrounded by similarly bril­ sive and that "a number of historians have liant students. He described to his parents the suggested your name to us.'>41 After a round of "insecurity" that is "often found in people who interviews, Bogue informed Lasch that he was are from the Midwest but seem ashamed to the "outstanding man in our field of candi­ admit it."31 Although not a part of the Eastern dates.'>42 In early January 1961, the Iowa history elite, Lasch found many like-minded liberals at department voted to extend Lasch an offer to Harvard. As one professor recalled about these serve as a professor of recent American history, years, at Harvard there was a "mutual reassur­ a field pioneered by the Prairie Historians of ance that everybody shared the same liberal the Midwest.43 Ten days later, Lasch accepted beliefs about everything."32 Iowa's offer, and that spring he completed his Lasch's original political path followed the doctoral work at Columbia.44 At the University course set by his parents, who remained anti­ of Iowa Lasch occupied a messy office in capitalist, irreligious, and staunchly supportive Schaeffer Hall piled high with books, papers, of liberal and radical causes. "I grew up in the and ashtrays and made light of Schaeffer Hall's tradition of Middle Western progressivism," designation as a Cold War nuclear war shelter Lasch later recalled, "overlaid by the liberalism by the university's Committee on Radioactive of the New Deal. I believed in the Tennessee Fall-Out (he thought the drinking fountains Valley Authority, the CIO, and the United were not up to the challenge).45 Nations.,,33 At Harvard, when the university Lasch generally found that Iowa City was president mentioned the possibility of chapel a "wonderful place" and said that he was "ter­ attendance, Lasch called him "a Midwestern ribly pleased with Iowa." Eric Miller notes that puritan of the worst kind."34 Lasch remained "much to his surprise, Lasch discovered at an atheist at Harvard who opposed the "smug Iowa a certain amount of interest, even sup­ bigotry" and the "narrow-mindedness of orga­ port, for his increasingly radical views.'>46 He nized religion.,,35 When he visited a friend's wrote to his parents that "we find ourselves family for Thanksgiving, he denounced them more attached to Iowa City ... than either of as "typical Indiana reactionaries."36 He saw us suspected.'>47 That first spring, Christopher Whittaker Chambers as a "degenerate."37 For planted tomatoes and his wife planted trees the young Lasch, the United States in the at their new home. While Lasch enjoyed Iowa

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FIG. 2. Christopher Lasch as a young history professor, perhaps during his first major appointment at the University of Iowa (no date, no location available). Courtesy of Christopher Lasch Papers, Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester.

City, he resented the fact that Ann Arbor and comprehend events distorted the American Madison received more attention for resisting reaction to the creation of the Soviet Union and the nation's Cold War foreign policy.48 "[WJe helped precipitate the Cold War.52 Following thought we had staged the first teach-in," Lasch on this study, Lasch soon went to work on a recalled.49 John Wunder, a young Iowan who broader book about the growing prominence of attended a Lasch teach-in at the University liberal intellectuals during the first decades of of Iowa student union, remembered him as a the twentieth century. Soon after arriving in "compelling, brilliant lecturer" who "was kind Iowa City, Lasch wrote to his Columbia advi­ of a 'cause' at that moment.,,50 While at Iowa, sor, William Leuchtenburg, and informed him Lasch was such an active writer that he literally of his plans for "a short book, a mere interpre­ wore out his typewriter.51 tative essay, on the American intellectual from During his years at Columbia and Iowa, 1900 to c. 1930."53 which roughly corresponded to the apex of the The result was the publication, in 1965, of postwar liberal consensus, Lasch slowly became Lasch's book The New Radicalism in America, critical of the liberalism he had inherited from 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type, his parents. In his dissertation, which was pub­ in which Lasch described the emergence of lished as a book by Columbia University Press intellectuals as a "status group" in the United in 1962, Lasch lamented the limited vision that States.54 Lasch argued that this new breed of encumbered liberals' response to the Russian social critic had failed at the essential task of Revolution and how the failure to accurately closely analyzing and intelligently critiquing

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the nation in a manner that would pave the conditions of society, and thus make possible way for social improvement. The intellectuals the long-anticipated revolution.,,63 In contrast he examined suffered from limited perception, to liberals and radical individualists, Lasch had forfeited the detachment necessary to thought that the "Marxists in the West took accurately interpret events, and had replaced the long view and preached patience: the thought with "feeling" and "experience."55 gradual preparation of a new culture."64 Lasch also believed that the new intellectuals were too focused on promoting sexual freedom, LEAVING THE LEFT and as Eric Miller explains, he criticized the "new radicals' desire to make what he con­ Lasch's stinging critiques of American life sidered to be cultural matters the object of and his skillful application of Leftist thought politics."56 Moreover, as Miller notes, these won him many radical allies, but he was uneasy intellectuals sought social reform through the with the tactics of the Left. The absurd behav­ use of "strokes of coercive power," which Lasch ior of student radicals and the general "lunacy saw as "morally repugnant" and an "arrogant of the New Left," Lasch thought, would only assault on fellow citizens.,,57 In a preview of undermine the effort to transform the nation.65 themes that emerge in his later work, Lasch Lasch criticized radical activists for cavort­ criticized these intellectuals' efforts to trans­ ing with Communists in North Vietnam and form American mores and traditions, especially denounced their uncritical and unthinking as they related to childhood, education, and embrace of any radical tradition or cause.66 sex. 58 Lasch's attacks on intellectuals for abus­ Lasch thought that "hedonism, self-expression, ing their power and undermining popular tra­ doing your own thing, dancing in the streets, ditions, which would continue throughout his drugs, and sex [were] a formula for political life, always struck a populist chord. 59 As Lasch impotence and a new despotism" and that the saw it, the "liberal myth of an enlightened tute­ student radicals had "traded self-government lary elite" needed to "give way before evidence for self-expression.,,67 The history profession, that allegedly backward, 'nostalgic,' and 'petty Lasch said, had also failed by embracing the bourgeois' movements like populism actually "revolutionary mystique" and "such absurdities had a much stronger commitment to democ­ as 'street history,' 'guerilla history,' etc., [and] racy than more 'progressive' forces."6o Elites, the whole notion of 'radical history' itself, Lasch later told the editor of the quarterly of scholarship enlisted in the service of the newsletter The Populist, needed to begin "firmly revolution."68 Lasch denounced the politicized committing" themselves to "the 'homespun' history of academics such as Howard Zinn for values of middle-class America.,,61 promoting the view that the "historian should Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lasch write only the kind of history that will further increasingly blamed liberals for the spread­ radical causes, prepare the ground for the revo­ ing consumerism, deepening self-absorption, lution, etc.,,69 While still at Iowa, Lasch began and rising individualism that undermined criticizing the Left's "fashionable cult of 'alien­ the possibility of substantive social reform. ation'" and its "symbolic gestures of withdrawal Lasch turned to the hard Left, the cultural and rejection," the decision of "prominent Marxism of German emigres, and English beatniks and civil-rights activists" to "play Marxism to understand American history, to symbolic parts, to pretend to be poor people explain why the Left could not advance its or to pretend to be Negroes," and the general cause, and to rethink the "whole progressive rejection of the "Western tradition of rational tradition itself.,,62 In his search for "a humane discourse" in favor of the "obscurantist jargon and democratic socialism," Miller explains, of 'the movement."'70 Upon returning to Iowa Lasch conducted a "highly analytic search for City for a visit after he had joined the history ways to alter both the economic and psychic department at Northwestern, Lasch thought

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 189 the "whole atmosphere had changed" and had ously the erosion of family life. When auditing "become very ugly, full of recriminations, full a class on the family at the University of Iowa of conspiracy theories of the wildest kind." The in 1962, Lasch noted that scholars of the family once "sensible people" he knew at Iowa had "are simply propagandists for a more permissive embraced the "conspiratorial view ofhistory."7! attitude toward sex" and were treating sexual The era of Benjamin Shambaugh and Louis liberation as "a kind of panacea.,,80 Instead of Pelzer at Iowa and the Prairie Historian tradi­ embracing a culture that undermined families, tion of embracing and studying midwestern Lasch sought a culture that respected "order and history had long since passed.72 authority," which were essential to implement­ Lasch argued that the Left needed to per­ ing any kind of lasting social reform.8! suade people that its program of reform was necessary, to support Leftist political can­ POPULISM didates, to organize, and to generally build popular support for their goals instead of During these years, Lasch began his explicit engaging in embarrassing and futile political turn toward forms of populism. He drew upon theater. To that end, Lasch worked to organize his midwestern heritage in his search for groups socialist organizations and hoped that some who had resisted the changes in American day "a socialism appropriate to the American culture and had doubted the march of prog­ conditions" would emerge.73 In 1968 Lasch ress and he turned to the Populist movement, said he wanted a "revolution," but he realisti­ regionalists, agrarians, naturalists, and authors cally confessed, "I don't see any possibility of who embodied all these movements, such as a revolution in this country right now."74 All Wendell Berry.82 Lasch made clear that the the radical energy of the 1960s, Lasch thought, old argument that Communism and socialism had been wasted. If he had at times blunted his "represented a big improvement over 'petty criticism of the student radicals-the social­ bourgeois' movements like Populism and the ist James Weinstein asked Lasch to refrain Knights of Labor can no longer be sustained."83 from "all public criticism of the nihilists"-in Lasch became more sympathetic to the con­ the ensuing years he would abandon his reti­ servative opponents of cultural radicalism and cence.75 embraced what he called the "generalized, ill­ In great frustration, Lasch turned away from defined revolution against 'permissiveness.",84 sixties radicalism and from political act iv­ Lasch denounced what he called the "cur­ ismJ6 He joined the history department at the rently fashionable outcry against the repressive University of Rochester to be part of what he nuclear family.,,8s Lasch began defending the hoped would be a cooperative intellectual effort American social mores that cultural radicals to seriously examine American history and to had been attempting to transform with the realistically promote social reformJ7 He began "wholehearted cooperation of liberals."86 The to focus his study on the form of culture that liberal intellectuals of the early twentieth would make social change possible, to draw century and their radical descendents, Lasch upon the lessons, as Eric Miller explains, of "his thought, were directly contributing to the des­ parents' early-twentieth-century Midwestern iccation of family life and local culture. Lasch world," and to weigh the consequences of self­ said the efforts of liberal elites to "deparochial­ absorption, consumerism, and family decayJ8 In ize people" resulted in a nation of people "with Iowa City, Lasch had started to worry about his no roots."87 Because of the role of progressive children's social development and his Nebraska intellectuals and liberals in this effort, Lasch mother had begun to worry about her grandchil­ said he "no longer felt comfortable with the dren's proclivity toward consumption and their traditions I'd inherited."88 interest in "buying things.,,79 Those who studied This discomfort included his parents' the family, Lasch thought, did not take seri- hostility to religion, a hostility shared by the

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emergent class of intellectuals that Lasch States, he thought, should not be dismissed studied early in his career. As early as his years "as just another form of cultural hegemony as a Harvard undergraduate, Lasch began to or imperialism.,,98 Lasch thought a "kind of wonder, only tentatively, if he had been too deculturation" had set in motion a "process dismissive of religion. When Lasch showed this of unlearning without historical precedent."99 early sign of interest in the history of religion, Lasch endorsed what Wilfred McClay deemed his mother considered arranging psychiatric "neotraditionalism," or what Miller calls a help for her wayward son and thought the "longing among Americans to restore their dean's office should be monitoring such prob­ rapidly eroding connections to their past."lOO lems.89 But Lasch thought that progressives, as Lasch began to actively resist the modern Lewis Mumford argued, had been living off the "eagerness to proclaim the death of the past "unearned increment of religion" for too long.9o and to deny history's hold over the present."lOl He began to recognize the "presence of persis­ He called the "ever-present sense of historical tent spiritual needs that cannot be fulfilled by discontinuity" the "blight of our society," which a secular culture."91 By the 1980s Lasch had was losing the "sense of belonging to a succes­ more fully considered the Christian tradition sion of generations originating in the past and and began to see hope in "a more deeply rooted, stretching into the future.,,102 local way of life, one that invariably had been Lasch focused on roots. He emphasized bound up in and constituted by religious struc­ the "particularities of place and time" in tures, beliefs, and practice."92 Leftist ideologies, American historical development and saw in contrast to religion, had "never been able workable democracy linked to "kinship ties, to strike deep popular roots.,,93 Only religion, local and regional traditions, and attachments Lasch thought, supplied the "ethical solidar­ to the soil," which were undermined by the ity" necessary for an "assault on injustice."94 "deracinated, disoriented outlook that is so Lasch came to see the Puritan tradition, which often confused, nowadays, with intellectual he was first exposed to at Harvard, as "perhaps liberation."103 He echoed Simone Weil's call for our strongest reservoir of moral idealism."95 Of rootedness and embraced what he called Lewis his interest in Calvinism, he quipped in a letter Mumford's "critique of the 'metropolitan mind' to Barbara Ehrenreich, "I kept it under wraps with its educated contempt for roots.,,104 Lasch for years but it was bound to come out in the called the Left's persistent attacks on social end."96 and cultural traditions a "misguided attempt to More generally, Lasch thought that the emancipate the individual from his past, from Western tradition, including Christianity, family ties, from the sense of place, and from deserved to be understood and preserved, and nature itself" and denounced the promotion as Eric Miller describes it, not pitched "onto of lives "conceived as endless novelty, change, the bonfire of cultural radicalism."97 The his­ and excitement, as the titillation of the senses tory of the United States, its experiment in by every available stimulant.,,105 Historians had republican government, and its cultural and also uncritically endorsed Richard Hofstadter's social traditions, deserved respect. Lasch pro­ increasingly popular view of American history tested against the erasure of American social as a battle, Eric Miller explains, "between the and cultural history through the unthinking unthinking, outmoded, village-loving, old­ embrace of theories of "modernization," aca­ stock Americans and the cerebral, analytical, demic equivocation in the form of multicul­ tolerant, city-dwelling pluralists."lo6 Lasch turalism, and the practice of radical history thought that the forces of rural rootedness that focused on American historical sins and that Hofstadter had discounted, including the ignored American accomplishments and the "allegedly reactionary sentiments like a strong nation's cultural endowment. The teach­ attachment to the land and to individual own­ ing of the Western tradition in the United ership," had "played a much more democratic

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 191 and 'progressive' role in history than is assumed "consistent with democracy," Lasch thought by intellectuals."!07 societies "dominated by large-scale production Lasch's attempt to recover the threads of [were] more and more hierarchical, inegalitar­ the American past-what he called the "sub­ ian and undemocratic."1l4 Lasch subscribed to merged traditions in American life"-that the view that the Populists and the coopera­ Hofstadter and other liberal historians had tive movement were ultimately corrupted by a denigrated was set forth in his magnum opus, turn to currency issues and fusion with the The True and Only Heaven, in which his own Democrats.t15 Lasch believed that historians, prairie roots were evident.108 After discussing too willing to follow Richard Hofstadter, had the artisans and intellectuals who questioned missed the early Populist vision and too read­ industrial capitalism, Lasch focused on the ily saw Populism as backward and nostalgic late nineteenth-century Populist movement. and only as a precursor to the milder reforms Although not fully articulated until The True of elite-led Progressivism. Such an interpreta­ and Only Heaven, Lasch's populist sentiments tion, Lasch thought, would only "consign the and his familial links to Populism began to Populists to the garbage dump of history."1l6 emerge early in his work. Eric Miller notes Lasch sought, Eric Miller explains, to reverse Lasch's "personal ties" to Populism, including the "smug and narrow conceptions of popu­ his maternal grandfather's job in Nebraska as lism that Hofstadter and other intellectuals a cooperative grain elevator manager and his had in the twentieth century done so much to campaign for the state legislature during which plant."117 Instead of seeing the family farm heri­ he embraced Populist themes, and explains how tage as "outmoded" and "hopelessly reaction­ these "political sensibilities certainly molded ary," Lasch saw great promise in the agrarian [Lasch's] own family's political ideals."!09 One impulse in favor of "small-scale production and of Lasch's graduate students concluded that grass-roots political control."1l8 the "basis of [Lasch's] morality ... was just Lasch's conception of Populism in The True the populist movement in America."110 M. J. and Only Heaven relied heavily on the work Heale, noting early signs of Lasch's populist of historians such as Lawrence Goodwyn proclivities, said Lasch's "fellow Harvard gradu­ and Steven Hahn.119 In 1980, when asked by ates might be forgiven for suspecting that the the New York Times to recommend books for young Nebraskan brought some prairie values "summer reading," Lasch listed Goodwyn's with him when he came east."111 Democratic Promise, which he said "explores Lasch saw the Populists as devoted to small­ one of the last genuinely democratic move­ scale farming and to protecting the tradition ments in American politics, Populism, and of decentralized production through the use of clarifies the far-reaching consequences of its farmer-run cooperatives.112 Underlying these defeat."120 Lasch said that Goodwyn, who efforts was a commitment to the indepen­ he saw as "a kind of lone survivor from the dent yeoman farmer and the artisan tradition almost extinguished tradition of Southern of nineteenth-century America and doubts populism," "had the effrontery to find some­ about the industrial "progress" that Tugwell thing of value in Populism, which Marxists and other technocratic planners would push and liberals alike have always regarded with a farmers to embrace. The self-organization of mixture of contempt and horror."121 Lasch was the Populists into farmers' buying and selling particularly active in creating platforms for cooperatives contrasted sharply with extrem­ Goodwyn's work and in assisting Goodwyn's ist state intervention in socialist economies efforts to find funding for further research.122 such as the Soviet Union, where "forcible Lasch strongly supported Goodwyn's applica­ collectivization," Lasch wrote, had resulted tion for a MacArthur Fellowship based on in "vast human devastation."1l3 Unlike many Democratic Promise and "Goodwyn's massive on the Left who saw large-scale production as demonstration of the deeply radical character

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 192 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2012 of the late-nineteenth-century agrarian move­ ism. The Populist vision, unlike socialism, did ment."l23 By focusing on the Populists and their not require a long reeducation campaign nor a rooted, democratic character, Lasch agreed "fundamental restructuring of American soci­ with Goodwyn that the two scholars were "lift­ ety," because it was firmly linked to American ing the blanket of modern sophistication" and historical precedent.l3l The Populists were allowing the "human race a better chance to not Marxists. Their views were grounded in breathe."124 Lasch was transcending the era of the "democracy of Jefferson, Jackson, and Hofstadter-inspired farmer-bashing and return­ Lincoln."132 Populism persisted in various ing to the findings of the Prairie Historians, forms, including the "LaFollette wing of the who first took the Populists seriously as a demo­ progressive movement," the brand of politics cratic force in American life.1 25 He was in the Lasch's parents held dear and which included process of recovering a major component of the a strong strand of midwestern agrarianism and midwestern historical tradition. favored political and economic decentraliza­ Lasch was also persuaded by the evidence tion over statist central planning.1 33 It was the of anticapitalist resistance among Southern populist version of midwestern progressivism farmers in Steven Hahn's The Roots of Southern to which Lasch returned in the decades after Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transforma­ The Agony of the American Left.134 By return­ tion of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890.1 26 ing to this populism, Lasch was returning to Hahn's book bore a heavy Lasch imprint, as his Nebraska roots. He had lessened his early it started as a senior honor's thesis directed by intellectual focus on the theories of Marx and Lasch at Rochester.127 Lasch even suggested Freud-and his parents' hostility to religion, changing the title to The Georgia Yeomanry a very un-Populist attribute-and returned to and focusing the study on "a particular class the midwestern populist tradition. and its way of life" instead of solely focusing Lasch's attempt to revitalize the tradition on its relation to Populism.128 Similar to his of American populism, and his promotion of attraction to Goodwyn's Democratic Promise, older American political and cultural tradi­ Lasch was drawn to Hahn's efforts to preserve tions in general, faced stiff opposition. For the memory of a class of people who had used many years, Hofstadter and other historians local culture and republican principles to resist had ridiculed the popular revival of interest modernization, industrialism, and capitalist in the American past as a "nostalgic" taste for development.129 Lasch also appreciated Hahn's "Americana."135 "By the early sixties," Lasch recognition of the "premodern" aspects of wrote, "denunciation of nostalgia had become Southern culture chronicled by Bertram Wyatt­ a ritual, performed, like all rituals, with a mini­ Brown, although he agreed with Hahn that the mum of critical reflection."136 Lasch thought treatment was "very muddled."13o that the liberal intellectuals and cultural radi­ Lasch's attraction to populism before his cals who sought to dismiss the public appetite embrace of the work of Goodwyn and Hahn, for history were foolishly casting away a wealth as well as evidence of his old Nebraska roots of traditions and precedents, including popu­ at work, could also be detected more than two lism, which could revive American democracy. decades before The True and Only Heaven. In The attack on nostalgia, coupled with earlier The Agony of the American Left, Lasch briefly depictions of a post-World War I "lost gen­ explored the exhaustion of the Populist and eration" and the emergence of the tendency socialist movements in the early years of the to think in generational categories, led to "a twentieth century. In his treatment, Lasch shortening of historical attention, an inability emphasized that the Populists, in contrast to to recall events beyond a single lifetime" and the socialists, were much more aligned with to the loss of the "connecting thread between American traditions, less ideological, and more earlier times and our own."137 Lasch, as M. resistant to centralized bureaucracy and stat- J. Heale explains, instead saw a "passionate

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 193 commitment to history as a means of under­ again to the "agrarian uprising" of the late standing the present and perhaps improving nineteenth century as the "first round in a long, the future."138 Lasch placed particular hope losing struggle to save the family farm" and, in Americans who were products of farms and more generally, as a sign of the erosion of the small towns because they tended to "carry the nation's republican and civic traditions.146 weight of a personal and collective history."139 Lasch's and Hofstadter's diverging visions These Americans, Lasch thought, lived day to of American history can tell us much about day with historical consequences and were less the role of the personal-in Lasch's case, the susceptible to fads, "creating new identities," role of the prairie-in historical interpreta­ and an "eclectic approach to history, appro­ tion. Lasch worked as Hofstadter's research priating whatever we need in order to piece assistant at Columbia in the 1950s and they together a 'usable past."'140 Lasch fought the breathed the same intellectual air, shared the attempt to construct or manipulate a "past" for same generally liberal sensibilities, and dis­ ideological purposes and sought one grounded dained the politics of the Cold War. While in custom and tradition.141 Lasch thoroughly respected Hofstadter's bril­ Lasch's devotion to preserving fading ele­ liance and his willingness to make bold and ments of the American past spurred his suc­ broad historical judgments, Lasch was not as cessful effort to rescue the Populists from taken with the supposed expertise of social years of derision at the hands of Richard scientists, as Hofstadter was, nor did he love Hofstadter.I42 The triumph of Lasch, along New York City, which Hofstadter did. Their with a number of lower-profile critics, over respective backgrounds in Nebraska and New Hofstadter is given added texture and detail by York were unmistakable. Lasch saw a great David Brown in his exceptional biography of tradition of civic-mindedness and republican­ Hofstadter. Brown's treatment of Hofstadter's ism on the prairie. Hofstadter doubted that The Age of Reform, in which Hofstadter sets the agrarian "golden age" defended by the forth his critique of Populism, lends credence Populists ever existed, but regardless of its to Lasch's suspicions of Hofstadter's inter­ existence, thought that "to live in that world, pretation. Brown explains that Hofstadter's actually to enjoy its cherished promise and its dedication to urban cosmopolitanism and imagined innocence, is no longer within our presentist fears of McCarthyism strongly col­ power."147 In The True and Only Heaven, Lasch ored his treatment of Populism. Brown notes criticized H. L. Mencken and other critics of how "Hofstadter's tendency to overemphasize the midwestern small town and prairie life and his insights left him vulnerable" and that, came to "see Hofstadter as a latter-day version after serious doubts had been raised about his of H. L. Mencken, endlessly belaboring the interpretation of Populism, "Hofstadter dis­ 'booboisie."'148 In his later writings, Lasch was tanced himself from The Age of Reform's most pointed about Hofstadter, but even as early provocative claims."143 Hofstadter admitted as Lasch's first year at the University of Iowa, privately to Merle Curti, a native Nebraskan, Allan Bogue could detect Lasch's aversion to that he had intentionally exaggerated Populist Hofstadter's treatment of the Populists and anti-Semitism for effect.144 Lasch's celebration noted, as he wrote to Lasch, the young histo­ of Populism in The True and Only Heaven rian's "deep sense of obligation to steep yourself served as a coda to this long-running debate. in a Populist gestalt before you definitively Lasch's book The Revolt of the Elites, published refute Hofstadter."149 just after his death, delivered another blow to Although they viewed Populism and rural Hofstadter's cosmopolitanism and, in a final life differently, Lasch and Hofstadter also allusion to Nebraska populism, denounced shared an important judgment. They were American elites for "turning their back on the both disgusted by the New Left, appalled by heartland."145 In Revolt, Lasch pointed once its attacks on the university, and fearful of its

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 194 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2012 effects on democracy.1 50 The centrist liberal­ of American democracy. The Left failed to ism that Hofstadter embodied was literally understand the consequences of rootlessness besieged by student radicals at Columbia, and growing statism and was "impervious, as and he criticized their embrace of violence, usual, to the sobering influence of events."157 the guerilla theater performed for the benefit The "left's quarrel with America," as Lasch of television cameras, their purposeful bait­ called it, was based on its view of America as ing of the police as "pigs," and their mindless trapped in "backward, provincial habits."158 attacks on the "system."151 His student Robert The Left was especially appalled at the "vast Dalleck recalled that Hofstadter "was deeply hinterland beyond the Alleghenies-the land disturbed by the irrationality of the Left."152 of the Yahoo, the John Birch Society, and In 1970 Hofstadter said that if he got "around the Ku Klux Klan" and continually feared to writing a general history of the recent past, "being overwhelmed by America's backward I'm going to call the chapter on the '60s 'The culture."159 The postwar decades "seemed to Age of Rubbish."'153 Hofstadter died soon after confirm liberals in the belief that the ordinary this remark, but perhaps he would have joined American had never been a liberal and was Lasch's mid-1970s turn toward a growing respect unlikely to become one."160 for the traditions and mores of lower middle­ Lasch lost hope in liberal intellectuals' abil­ class Americans and tempered his assault on ity to engage in rigorous and analytical inqui­ Populism.154 Alfred Kazin detected evidence of ries that could enlighten and renew the nation. this potential turn, remembering Hofstadter as He condemned "vaporous theorizing" and "a secret conservative in a radical period."155 concluded that "there really isn't much room Along with finding some significance in on the left for the kind of questioning that is Populism that Hofstadter, before his death, really serious."161 Lasch thought that liberals never did, perhaps Lasch's most powerful were "single-mindedly obsessed with racism legacy-one shared at least partially with the and ideological fanaticism" and that they con­ late Hofstadter-is his searching and painful sistently challenged the motives of those who critique of the American Left. Lasch's strong dissented from this obsession.162 The academy credentials as a Leftist and supporter of social­ was overtaken by "political correctness," he ism and his deep knowledge of radical theory thought, and the process of serious debate made him an incisive critic of the Left with had broken down, even in his department at strong bona fides. Few others would have been Rochester, in which he once saw great prom­ listened to as closely as Lasch. Although it ise: "There is a permanent sense of grievance; pained him to criticize his allies, and he was the whole institution is built on the politics of stung by the returning fire, his commitment envy. It's a poisonous atmosphere, ruinous to to speaking truthfully was unwavering. And, any serious pursuit of learning."163 Lasch said Lasch thought, some members of the younger the "worst people of all are in the humanities, generation were eager to listen. Lasch sensed which have been overtaken by refugees of the that students had become weary of the dogma New Left who are opposed on principle to any of the cultural Left and that they wanted "to form of structure, coherence, authority, or hear some plain words of truth"~ and be exposed intellectual rigor-all these things being part to some "moral wisdom and intellectual guid­ of the cultural imperialism long visited on the ance about the things that matter."156 world by dead white European males."164 Lasch The hard truth, Lasch thought, was that the saw the obsession with "race, class, and gender" Left, in which he had put so much faith and to as "a mess!"165 which he had dedicated so much energy, had Despite the resistance from academic col­ led the nation astray. He thought the Left's leagues, Lasch's arguments persuaded some commitment to uprooting American tradi­ younger scholars who found even more evidence tions ultimately threatenc:d the workability of the influences of the cultural and social

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 195

traditions that Lasch emphasized. Lasch's PhD Several historians working in the 1950s and students at Iowa included Donald Kirschner, 1960s had already questioned the wisdom of William Powers, Glenn Smith, John Hopper, Hofstadter's interpretation of American his­ and Thomas Ryan, who all explored rural tory. Lasch's critique could be so unyielding themes relating to the state's treatment of tradi­ because he did not always account for those tional rural communities.166 At Rochester, Lasch who also dissented from the main currents oversaw the work of Charles Shindo, who sought of thought on the intellectual Left. Lasch's to transcend the cliches about the Okie migra­ scathing tone is what caused his critic, Louis tion to California and to map the belief systems Menand, to comment that Lasch's writing had of rural migrants, or what he called "plain folk an "invasion-of-the-body snatchers urgency."172 Americanism."167 Shindo explained how liberal Lasch's account of Populism, too, was based on "reformers and artists excluded the migrants' a narrow reading of the movement-despite own voice from being heard," purposely sup­ the existence of a vast, complex, and con­ pressed their embrace of religion and tradition, tradictory historiography of Populism-and and "obscured the traditional and populist ele­ did not include farmers who sought to work ments of Okie culture in favor of a liberal and within the market system.173 Lasch's criticism progressive interpretation of the migrants' aspi­ of capitalism was indiscriminate and failed to rations."168 Lasch similarly noted that progres­ account for Populist-era farmers who were will­ sives' attacks on religion were linked to "rural ingly market-oriented, for the Populist embrace reaction" and fears of a revival of religion and of certain forms of modernity and progress, explained how liberals "have done their best to and more generally, for how capitalism could stamp [religion] out." He praised Shindo for his foster cuitureP4 Lasch's writing could also be ability to transcend "dogmatism, conformity, abstract and hard to understand, involve many distrust of truly original works, [and] craven fine and difficult distinctions, and rely on the submission to the party line."169 Lasch's con­ grouping of ideas and people whose unifying cern over the assault on the family, the church, characteristics were less than obvious. Even the common culture, and the nation's cultural Lasch's embrace of populism, which he saw as tradition of "reticence and propriety" can also the basis of the cultural and social reforms he be found in the work of his student Rochelle envisioned, suffered from vagueness.175 Gurstein, who worked extensively with Lasch For all his promotion of roots, Lasch was on her seminal research that explored these not overly concerned with his own. He did not themes po Lasch's intense interest in the culture dwell on the arrival of the German Lasches in of the petite bourgeoisie and the civic energy of the Midwest, nor on the story of German set­ small towns can also be found in Catherine tlement in Nebraska, which Frederick Luebke McNicol Stock's impressive history of the "old studied so thoroughly.176 Instead of focus­ middle class" in the Dakotas, where the own­ ing on the Southern Populism of Lawrence ership of land and businesses was widespread, Goodwyn and Steven Hahn, Lasch could have which fit with Lasch's populist sympathies.l7l more thoroughly considered the characteris­ tics of Northern Populism set forth in John CONCLUSIONS D. Hicks's treatment, The Populist Revolt, the first synthetic treatment of Populism, which Despite the supportive findings of younger dominated the field for decades, and a book scholars, Lasch's vision, although powerful Hicks wrote while a professor at the University and searching, was not unobstructed. In his of Nebraska.177 More generally, Lasch would focus on the luminaries of the Left, Lasch have benefitted from a greater awareness of the missed or failed to engage some of the solid Populist historiography first launched by the academic works produced by those who were Prairie Historian Solon Buck and, in particu­ less taken by the intellectual turn of the 1960s. lar, from more recent works on Populism which

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 196 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2012

focused on its grounding in rural republican­ of American traditions against the withering ismP8 Lasch never said much about his fellow attacks of cultural radicals stands as a testament Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan either, to his bravery, his deep understanding of the despite Bryan's representation of the "agrarian Western canon, his honesty and independence, wing of the progressive movement whose roots and his commitment to the historical past. He were deeply embedded in Populism."179 Lasch embraced the various strands of populism as a would abandon his parents' intellectual, tech­ model for reforming and renewing American nocratic, and cosmopolitan progressivism in culture because populism, both the political favor of Bryan's rural, religious, and moralistic movement connected to Lasch's Nebraska heri­ populism, but he did not directly connect this tage and its more general form, stood "for things transition to his own Nebraska roots. most Americans still believe in and are willing While Lasch's cutting judgments were to defend."182 Lasch's importance lies in his rec­ incisive and his social diagnoses exacting, an ognition of the fundamental qualities necessary immersion in his writing can risk incapacita­ for the survival of American democracy and tion. The centrifugal forces of social disinte­ the need to defend them, and in his attempts to gration whirl so fast in Lasch's work that his repair the "devastated realm of the political."183 conception of chastened hope can at times As Eric Miller concludes in his elegant render­ seem pointless. Although Lasch never relented, ing of the force of Lasch's writing, "Democracy, he understood the potentially paralyzing results like all good things, was a tenuous achievement, of extreme pronouncements, the risk that in need of vigilant, jealous defense."184 Lasch's they could immobilize the public and deepen vigilance, rooted in prairie populism and region­ social inertia, and the danger of "the endless alist sentiments, still lives on in the corpus of his announcement of decadence" and the embrace work and in our democratic hopes. of a "tone of unrelieved gloom."180 Lasch's dire warnings were surely heartfelt, but one NOTES wishes at times for more evidence to validate the doctrine of hope that Lasch set forth and 1. George Scialabba deemed Lasch the "most for Lasch to recognize that more remnants of important American social critic in recent decades." "A Muse of Politics: A Prophet, Honored," Harvard the old republican and religious traditions had Review, no. 8 (Spring 1995): 102. Richard Rorty survived than he intimated. At the moment called Lasch "one of the most influential scholars of of despair, however, when the reader's mind American culture and society in the postwar era." approaches a saturation point about the dif­ Rorty, "Two Cheers for Elitism," New Yorker, January ficulties ahead, Lasch offers a hopeful insight. 30,1995,86 2. Jackson Lears, "The Grim Optimism of The most despairing among us, Lasch told the Christopher Lasch," New Republic, October 2, 1995. graduating history majors at Rochester in 1993, 3. Casey Blake and Christopher Phelps, "History are those who once suffered under the "big illu­ as Social Criticism: Conversations with Christopher sions" of ideology during the 1960s. The future, Lasch," Journal of American History 80, no. 4 (March 1994): 1311. he wisely counseled, belonged to "a cold-eyed 4. Eric Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life realism that is by no means incompatible with of Christopher Lasch (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. warm hearts."181 Lasch, it might be said, was Eerdmans, 2010), xv, quoting Kathleen Norris, The urging a form of prairie realism as a vision for Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), overcoming the savage ideological wars of the 34. Norris's Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (New York, twentieth century and the wanton attacks on Mariner Books, 2001) first made her famous. 5. Lasch, "History in America," Salmagundi, no. the nation's social and cultural foundations. 50-51 (Fall 1980-Winter 1981): 190. Regardless of its degree of intensity, the 6. For Lasch's general attention to the petite central thrust of Lasch's critique of modern bourgeois, the worker, and agrarian resistance to liberalism spoke some essential truths at cru­ modern progress, small "p" populism is used in this cial times in American letters. Lasch's defense article. For references to the formal political move-

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 197 ment of farmers during the late nineteenth century, 18. Nebraska State Historical Society to author, capital "P" Populism is used. Lasch understood that August 6, 2010; Lasch, "What I Remember," 86-87. "populism" could be a "rather slippery term." Peggy 19. Lasch, "What I Remember," 86. Brawer and Sergio Benvenuto, "An Interview with 20. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 17. Christopher Lasch," Telos 97 (Fall 1993): 125. 21. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 12. The 7. Lasch to Leon Fink, July 7, 1980, Christopher Omaha World-Herald was the "leading Democratic Lasch Papers, Department of Rare Books, Special daily in the state" of Nebraska and a "loyal friend Collections and Preservation, Rush Rhees Library, of the Democratic Party." Bryan was only the University of Rochester (hereinafter Lasch Papers). second Democratic congressman in the history of 8. Lasch to Officers of the MacArthur Founda­ Nebraska. Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life tion, November 3, 1989, Lasch Papers; Lawrence of William Jennings Bryan (New York, Alfred A. Goodwyn to Lasch, May 18, 1981, "A Proposal to Knopf, 2006), 27-28, 41. David S. Brown has also the Ford Foundation," p. 3, Lasch Papers; Lasch to connected Christopher Lasch to the tradition of Leon Fink, July 7, 1980, Lasch Papers; Lawrence midwestern populism in historical writing in Beyond Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Move­ the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American ment in America (New York: Oxford University Historical Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Lasch believed that Democratic Press, 2009), 149-72. See also Jon Lauck, "The Promise was "the best work on [Populism] to have 'Interior Tradition' in American History," Annals of appeared since [c. Vann] Woodward's Tom Watson Iowa 69, no. 1 (Winter 2010), 82-93. (1938)." Lasch to Richard Sharpe, June 9, 1981, 22. Lasch, "What I Remember," 76. Lasch Papers. Sharpe oversaw grants at the Ford 23. Ibid., 78. Foundation. Goodwyn believes that his "book 24. Ibid., 80. turned Lasch toward Populism." Interview with 25. Lasch, "What I Remember," 81; Richard Lawrence Goodwyn, April 20, 2012. Lowitt to author, April 18, 2012. Lowitt, in a 9. Robert Lasch, "What I Remember," 2, manu­ speech delivered in Omaha, explained Norris's script located in Lasch Papers. The manuscript is rural Nebraska roots. Lowitt concluded that Norris inscribed "for Christopher Oct. 1987." Jon Lauck, "was born in the country and maintained his home "The Prairie Historians and the Foundations of as well as his heart there for the rest of his life." Midwestern History," Annals of Iowa 71 (Spring Richard Lowitt, "George W. Norris: A Country 2012): 139. Boy in an Urbanizing Nation," Nebraska History 52 10. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 4. (1971): 234. 11. Lasch, "What I Remember," 34. 26. Lasch, "What I Remember," 76; Miller, Hope 12. Ibid., 39, 41. in a Scattering Time, 12, 15. 13. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time,S. Robert 27. "Robert Lasch, 91, a Pulitzer Prize Winner," said he "always liked Miss Cather's story of a visit New York Times, April 11, 1998. to Red Cloud, her home town, after she became 28. Lasch, "What I Remember," 94; "Newspaper famous. Finding an old friend buying her latest Vital to Democracy, Editorial Writer Lasch Feels," book at the drug store, Miss Cather offered to sign Lincoln Star, May 2, 1953; "Ex-Star Staffer Is it for her. 'Thanks, Miss Willy,' said the farm lady, Editorial Editor on Post-Dispatch," Lincoln Star, 'but I'm buying the book for a gift, and I don't want October 18, 1957. The Chicago Sun was owned by no writing in it.'" Lasch, "What I Remember," 47. Marshall Field, whose widow later asked Robert Christopher noted Cather's admiration for the Lasch to write a biography of Field. Lasch to William local and particular culture she saw at work among Leuchtenburg, November 15, 1959, William Edward Nebraska Germans, Scandinavians, and Bohemians Leuchtenburg Papers, Louis Round Wilson Special "in that great cosmopolitan country known as the Collections Library, University of North Carolina­ middle West." Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Chapel Hill (hereinafter Leuchtenburg Papers). Progress and Its Critics (New York, W. W. Norton, Robert Lasch later became the editorial page editor 1991), 421. of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Lasch records, Staff 14. Lasch, "What I Remember," 71; John Taylor, Vertical File, University of Iowa Libraries. "Pulitzer Winner Robert Lasch Dies at 91; Ex-W-H 29. Lasch, "What I Remember," 94. Reporter," Omaha World-Herald, April 10, 1998. 30. Blake and Phelps, "History as Social Criticism," 15. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 5-10. 1313. 16. "Zora Schaupp Weds Robert Lasch," Lincoln 31. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 21; Lasch to Star, September 3,1931; Lasch, "What I Remember," Barrington Moore, April 30, 1970, Lasch Papers. 75; Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 9-10. 32. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 23, quoting 17. Lasch, "What I Remember," 75. Roger Rosenblatt. On Lasch and the Harvard class

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 198 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2012 of 1954, see Lasch, "The Class of '54, Thirty-Five votes of major decisions in the departmental min­ Years Later," Salmagundi, no. 84 (Fall 1989): 35-40. utes. William O. Aydelotte to Allan Bogue, June 29, 33. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 25. After 1959, Aydelotte Papers, University of Iowa Libraries; their first meeting, Robert Coles thought Lasch Stow Persons, "History at Iowa: The Modern Era," a "friendly, gracious yet relaxed and informal 2-5, University of Iowa Libraries. Professor William young man, even then struggling to connect his Aydelotte moved to hire Lasch and the motion was progressive politics to an intensely moral sensibil­ seconded by Professor Alan Spitzer. Minutes of the ity, nurtured in the middle class of the Midwest." Meeting of the Department of History, January "Remembering Christopher Lasch," New Oxford 20, 1961, Records of the Department of History, Review, September 1994. University of Iowa Libraries. Spitzer recalled the 34. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 18. "brilliant promise of [Lasch's) dissertation" and how 35. Ibid., 30. the "radio broadcast of [Lasch's) lectures stimulated 36. Ibid., 23. widespread admiration in the Iowa City com­ 37. Ibid., 24. munity." Spitzer to author, May 4, 2012. Lasch's 38. Ibid., 35. lectures were broadcast by WSUI. Stow Persons 39. Ray Allen Billington attempted to dissuade to Lasch, July 31, 1962, and Lasch to Allan Bogue, Lasch from writing about Donnelly because his August 21, 1962, Lasch Papers. The focus on recent student, Martin Ridge, had been working on a American history at Iowa had been started by Donnelly biography for many years. Billington to Arthur Schlesinger Sr., who was originally from Lasch, March 13, 1956, Lasch Papers. Ridge said Ohio and who advocated that the department Billington "aroused my interest in agrarian politics." promote meetings of historians of Iowa and Iowa Martin Ridge, Ignatius Donnelly: The Portrait of a history teachers to "build a feeling of regional com­ Politician (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, munity." Persons, "History at Iowa," 9, 12. Lasch 1962), vii. Lasch also inquired about the topic with took the place of Samuel Hays, who became depart­ Theodore Blegen at the University of Minnesota. mental chairman at the University of Pittsburgh. Blegen to Lasch, March 13, 1956, Lasch Papers. Allan Bogue to Lasch, December 9, 1960, Lasch 40. Lasch visited Iowa in January 1961 and Papers; Persons, "History at Iowa," 9. "was pleased and impressed. It seems a decent 44. Lasch to Aydelotte, January 30, 1961, Aydelotte sort of place and the department congenial." Papers, University of Iowa Libraries; Lasch to William Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, January 30, 1961, Leuchtenburg, January 23, 1961, Leuchtenburg Papers. Leuchtenburg Papers. 45. "A Voice of Dissent," Iowa Alumni Review, 41. Allan Bogue to Lasch, December 9, 1960, October 1965, 18; Lasch, letter to editor of undesig­ Lasch Papers; Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, nated newspaper (probably the Daily Iowan), "Some 64. When Lasch was hired, William Leuchtenburg Disconcerting Views on SUI Fallout Shelters," noted that "Iowa has made the most substantial Lasch records, Staff Vertical File, University ofIowa canvass of any university in the country this Libraries. year." Leuchtenburg to Lasch, February 6, 1961, 46. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 68, 82; Leuchtenburg Papers. Bogue recently recalled that Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, September 30, he "liked [Lasch) and tried to accommodate him 1961, Leuchtenburg Papers. more than normal" and that Lasch "was very con­ 47. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 137 (source of siderate of others." Bogue to author, August 1 and quote); Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, September August 30, 2010. When Bogue moved to Wisconsin, 30, 1961, Leuchtenburg Papers. he tried to hire Lasch again. Allan Bogue to Lasch, 48. Some of Lasch's critiques of the nation's Cold October 22, 1965, Lasch Papers. Prairie Historian, War policies which were written while at Iowa can Nebraska native, and Wisconsin Professor Merle be found in old issues of the Iowa Defender, includ­ Curti regretted Lasch's decision to remain at Iowa. ing Lasch, "Arthur Schlesinger and 'Pragmatic Merle Curti to Lasch, November 3, 1965, Lasch Liberalism,' Part I: The Cult of the Hard Boiled," Papers. On a potential move to Wisconsin, Lasch Iowa Defender (April 29, 1963), Lasch records, Staff wondered if he "could really stand living quite that Vertical File, University of Iowa Libraries. For a close to the new left." Lasch to William Appleman sample of Lasch's furious opposition to American Williams, January 25, 1968, Lasch Papers. foreign policy during the Cuban missile crisis, see 42. Allan Bogue to Lasch, January 5, 1961, Lasch the draft of his unsent letter to Iowa U.S. Senator Papers. Jack Miller. Lasch to Jack Miller, October 18, 1962, 43. Allan Bogue to Lasch, January 23, 1961 and Lasch Papers (unsent). Lasch to Bogue, January 30, 1961, Lasch Papers. The 49. "History as Social Criticism," 1321; Lasch, Iowa history department placed a strong emphasis The True and Only Heaven, 27; "A Voice of Dissent," upon democratic decision-making and recorded the 20; Carey McWilliams to Lasch, May 18, 1965,

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Lasch Papers; Lasch to Carey McWilliams, October that historians cultivate an 'activist outlook' and 12, 1965, Lasch Papers. For Lasch's teach-in materi­ that history be subordinated to the needs of the als, see Louis Menashe and Ronald Radosh, eds., 'movement'" in "On Richard Hofstadter," New York Teach-Ins U.S.A.: Reports, Opinions, Documents Review, March 8, 1973, 12. (New York: Praeger, 1967), 306-9. 70. Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, July 17, 1965, 50. John Wunder to author, August 20, 2010. Leuchtenburg Papers. 51. Lasch to Lawrence Gelfand, October 16, 71. Blake and Phelps, "History as Social Criticism," 1966, Lasch Papers. 1322 (source of quotations); "Lasch to Leave Here 52. Christopher Lasch, The American Liberals for Northwestern Job," Daily Iowan, May 5, 1966; and the Russian Revolution (New York: Columbia Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, February 12, 1966, University Press, 1962). Leuchtenburg Papers. 53. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 65. 72. Lauck, "The Prairie Historians and the 54. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in Foundations of Midwestern History," 143-44. America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as Social Type 73. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 145. (New York: Knopf, 1965); "Lasch Book Receives 74. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 141; Lasch, High Praise," Daily Iowan, July 7, 1965. "Democratic Vistas," New York Review, September 55. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 92-93. 30, 1965,5. 56. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 95 (source 75. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 146. of quote); Fred Siegel, "The Agony of Christopher 76. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 25. Lasch," Reviews in American History 8, no. 3 77. Lasch was lured to Rochester by Eugene (September 1980): 288. Genovese, but their relationship quickly became 57. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 95. strained. As Lasch once said, Genovese "certainly 58. Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, xiv­ makes things hard for his friends." Lasch to Ron xv. Radosh, February 2, 1970, Lasch Papers (source of 59. One reviewer noted that Lasch "was born quotation); Lasch to William Appleman Williams, and now teaches in the Middle West," had "not suc­ April 30, 1970, Lasch Papers; Lasch to Jim Holloway, cumbed to any of the obvious forms of intellectual­ June 22, 1970, Holloway Papers, Archives and ism now flourishing in the Eastern United States," Special Collections, University of Mississippi (here­ and that neither the "New Frontier nor the New inafter Holloway Papers). See also Ronald Radosh, Left appeal to him." Ramsay Cook, review of The "An Interview with Eugene Genovese: The Rise of a New Radicalism in America, Internationallournal20, Marxist Historian," Change 10, no. 10 (1978): 31-35. no. 4 (Autumn 1965): 549. 78. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 168. 60. Lasch to Richard Sharpe, June 9, 1981, Lasch 79. Ibid., 171. Papers. 80. Ibid., 175. 61. Lasch to David Cole, March, 22, 1992, Lasch 81. Lasch, "Politics and Social Theory," Salma­ Papers. gundi, no. 46 (Fall 1979): 199; Miller, Hope in a 62. Lasch to Russell Jacoby, July 8, 1980, Lasch Scattering Time, 178. Papers. 82. Lasch's debts to Berry are noted in Lasch 63. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 132, 113. to Steven Hahn, October 13, 1980, Lasch Papers; 64. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 29. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 188; Kenneth 65. Lasch, "America Today: An Exchange," Anderson, "Heartless World Revisited: Christopher Partisan Review 42, no. 3 (1975): 368; Lasch to E. P. Lasch's Parting Polemic Against the New Class," Thompson, June 12, 1976, and E. P. Thompson to Good Society 6, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 37. On Berry, Lasch, August 15, 1976, Lasch Papers. see also Allan C. Carlson, The New Agrarian Mind: 66. Christopher Lasch, "Journey to Hanoi," New The Movement toward Decentralist Thought in 20th York Times Book Review, April 23, 1967. Century America (New Brunswick: Transaction 67. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 151; Jefferson Press, 2000), 177-201; Kimberly K. Smith, Wendell Cowie, Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace the Working Class (New York, The New Press, 2010), (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003); 319 Steven Hahn, "Agriculture and Political Culture," 68. Lasch, "Whatever Happened to Socialism?" democracy vo!' 1, no. 4 (1981), 99-109; and Mark New York Review, September 12, 1968 (mystique Bittman, "Wendell Berry, American Hero," New quote); Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 156; Lasch York Times, April 24, 2012. letter, New York Review, November 11, 1965, 37. 83. Lasch to Leon Fink, July 7, 1980, Lasch Papers. 69. Lasch to Mary Furner, December 2, 1980, 84. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 190 (source Lasch Papers (source of quotation). Lasch also of quotation); Lasch, "Politics and Social Theory: A criticized Zinn and noted the "rise of demands Reply to the Critics," Salmagundi, no. 46 (Fall 1979):

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199. For Lasch's criticism of conservatives' defense 96. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 333, 289. of the market, see Lasch, "What's Wrong with the Lasch's wife, according to one source, believed Right?" Tikkun 1, no. 1 (1987): 23-29. For a similar that he had become a Christian. Jeremy Beer, "On treatment, see Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, "Democracy Christopher Lasch," Modern Age 47, no. 4 (Fall Should Not Have Losers," Minnesota Journal of 2005): 342. Robert Westbrook, a close associate of Global Trade 9 (Summer 2000): 589-93. Lasch at Rochester, denies this account. Westbrook 85. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 215; Lasch, to author, August 17, 2010. The True and Only Heaven, 34; Lasch, "The Cultural 97. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 232 (source Civil War and the Crisis of Faith," Katallagete 8 of quotation); Brawer and Benvenuto, "An Interview (Summer 1982): 14. Lasch memorably wrote that the with Christopher Lasch," 125. "cultural vanguard has become a rear guard. It attacks 98. Brawer and Benvenuto, "An Interview with bastions long since surrendered: the patriarchal Christopher Lasch," 127. family, repressive sexual morality, the conventions 99. Lasch, "The Fragility of Liberalism," 7; Brawer of literary realism." Lasch, "Recovering Reality," and Benvenuto, "An Interview with Christopher Salmagundi, no. 42 (Summer-Fall 1978): 44. For his Lasch," 127; Lasch to Frances Fitzgerald, November critique, Lasch said he was "regarded by feminists as 10, 1980, Lasch Papers. public enemy no. I" and also a "target of the rest of 100. Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and the left." Lasch to Jim Holloway, February 20, 1979, Society in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University Holloway Papers. of North Carolina Press, 1994), 282; Miller, Hope in 86. Lasch, "Beyond Left and Right," review of a Scattering Time, 254; Jon Lauck, "History Without Why Americans Hate Politics by E.J. Dionne, Dissent, History," The Social Critic vol. 3, no. 3 (Summer Fall 1991, 588. 1998): 14-18. 87. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 192, 101. Lasch, "The Illusion of Disillusionment," 191; Scialabba, "A Muse of Politics," 102; Steven Harper's, July 1991, 19-22. Watts, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Critic: 102. Lasch, "The Narcissist Society," New York Christopher Lasch's Struggle with Progressive Review, September 30, 1976, 12. America," American Studies 33, no. 2 (Fall 1992): 103. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 255, 262. 120; Lasch, "The Democratization of Culture: A For an exploration of this theme, see Susan J. Matt, Reappraisal," Change 7, no. 6 (Summer 1975): 20. Homesickness: An American History (New York: 88. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 238. Oxford University Press, 2011). 89. Ibid., 28-29. 104. Lasch, "Lewis Mumford and the Myth of the 90. Ibid. Machine," 12; Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: 91. Lasch, "Lewis Mumford and the Myth of the Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind Machine," Salmagundi, no. 49 (Summer 1980): 16; (New York: Putnam, 1952). Lasch also emphasized Lasch, "The Fragility of Liberalism," Salmagundi, the erosion of "local and regional loyalties" in The no. 92 (Fall 1991): 10, 16; Lasch, "Liberalism and Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy Civic Virtue," Telos, no. 88 (Summer 1991): 62. On (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995),5. See also Lasch, Lasch's Mumford treatment, see Robert Boyers to The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times Lasch, June 10, 1979, Lasch Papers. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 17. For a recent 92. Lasch to Jim Holloway, June 28, 1980, work echoing this theme, see R. R. Reno, "We Need Holloway Papers. See Lasch, "Theology and Politics: Roots," First Things, November 24, 2008. Reflections on Ellul's Living Faith," Katallagete 9 105. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 265 (mis­ (Fall/Winter 1984): 10-15. guided quote); Lasch, "What's Wrong with the 93. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 192 (source Right?" 26 (conceived quote). of quote); Lasch, "The Illusion of Disillusionment," 106. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 326; Jon 19-22. But Lasch was quick to deem a "full-scale res­ Lauck, American Agriculture and the Problem toration of a Christian theology" as "intellectually of Monopoly: The Political Economy of Grain untenable." Lasch to Robert Boyers, February 27, Belt Farming, 1953-1980 (Lincoln, University of 1979, Lasch Papers. As late as 1982, Lasch confessed Nebraska Press, 2000), 168-69 to "having hardly ever set foot in a church." Lasch to 107. Lasch to Richard Sharpe, June 9, 1981, Lasch Jim Holloway, February 11, 1982, Holloway Papers. Papers. 94. Christopher Lasch, "Religious Contributions 108. Lasch, "Liberalism and Civic Virtue," 59; Jon to Social Movements: Walter Rauschenbusch, the Lauck, '''The Silent Artillery of Time': Understanding Social Gospel, and Its Critics," Journal of Religious Social Change in the Rural Midwest," Great Plains Ethics vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1990), 8. Quarterly vol. 19, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 245. 95. Lasch to Jim Holloway, August 22, 1980, 109. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 259. Lasch's Lasch Papers. father wrote to him to remind him that Zora's

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 201 father's cooperative grain elevator suffered because 120. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 247-48n15. farmers would sell to the commercial elevator Lasch said, "Once you've read Goodwyn, you can when it paid higher prices for grain. Miller, Hope in never accept Hofstadter's account of Populism." a Scattering Time, 260n30. Lasch's father also noted Blake and Phelps, "History as Social Criticism," that when the "price of corn, hogs and wheat" 1319. increased during the 1930s "farmers returned to 121. Lasch to Richard Sharpe, June 9, 1981, Lasch their natural home of political conservatism." Papers (survivor quote); Lasch, "Consensus: An Lasch, "What I Remember," 78. Lasch also men­ Academic Question!" Journal of American History tions farmer cooperatives in The Revolt of the Elites, 76, no. 2 (September 1989): 459. 81-82. 122. Lasch supported Goodwyn's efforts to solicit 110. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 303. funding from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur 111. M. J. Heale, "The Revolting American Elites: Foundation, and the National Endowment for Christopher Lasch and His Enemies," Journal of the Humanities. Lasch to Lawrence Goodwyn, American Studies 31 (1997): 113. December 23, 1990, Lasch Papers; Lasch to Officers 112. Lasch saw farmer cooperatives as an "alterna­ of the MacArthur Foundation, November 3, 1989, tive to the welfare state" and as part of the Populists' Lasch Papers; Lasch to Lawrence Goodwyn, June support for "non-bureaucratic solutions." Lasch, 15, 1981, Lasch Papers; Lawrence Goodwyn to "Liberalism and Civic Virtue," 67. Lasch, May 31, 1981, Lasch Papers. 113. Lasch, "Lewis Mumford and the Myth of 123. Lasch to Officers of the MacArthur Foun­ the Machine," 20nlO. Lasch endorsed the view dation, November 3, 1989, Lasch Papers. that the Populists "refused to acquiesce in the 124. Lasch agreed with Goodwyn's characteriza­ conventional wisdom that centralized production tion in Lasch to Lawrence Goodwyn, September 3, represents the wave of the future." Lasch to Officers 1980, Lasch Papers (first quote); Lawrence Goodwyn of the MacArthur Foundation, November 3, 1989, to Lasch, August 17, 1980, Lasch Papers (second Lasch Papers. See also Brawer and Benvenuto, "An quote). For a critique of Goodwyn, see Robert Interview with Christopher Lasch," 124-25. On W. Cherny, "Lawrence Goodwyn and Nebraska the embrace of large-scale farming by technocratic Populism: A Review Essay," Great Plains Quarterly planners, see Deborah Fitzgerald, "Accounting for 1, no. 3 (1981): 181-94; William F. Holmes, Change: Farmers and the Modernizing State," in "Populism: In Search of Context," Agricultural Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston, History 64, no. 4 (1990): 28-32, 54-56; James The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Turner, "Understanding the Populists," Journal Political Histories of Rural America (Ithaca and of American History 67, no. 2 (September 1980): London, Cornell University Press, 2001), 182, 212. 356-57; Stanley B. Parsons, Karen Toombs Parsons, 114. Brawer and Benvenuto, "An Interview with Walter Killilae, and Beverly Borgers, "The Role of Christopher Lasch," 129. Cooperatives in the Development of the Movement 115. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 217-19. Culture of Populism," Journal of American History 116. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 220. Lasch 69, no. 4 (March 1983): 866-85; William C. saw Hofstadter as an "urbanite to the core" who Pratt, "Historians and the Lost World of Kansas "found in sentimental agrarianism a particularly fla­ Radicalism," Kansas History 30 (Winter 2007-8): grant example of the unreality of American politi­ 275; Jeffrey Ostler, Prairie Populism: The Fate of cal rhetoric." Lasch, "On Richard Hofstadter," New Agrarian Radicalism in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, York Review, March 8, 1973, 8. See also Lawrence 1880-1892 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, Goodwyn, "Rethinking 'Populism': Paradoxes 1993), 245. of Historiography and Democracy," Telos vol. 87 125. Lauck, "The Prairie Historians and the (1991): 40-44. Foundations of Midwestern History," 161-63. 117. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 350. Lasch 126. Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: thought that Hofstadter's Age of Reform "simply Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the crumbled (at least in its treatment of Populism) in Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York: Oxford the face of [Lawrence] Goodwyn's massive demon­ University Press, 1983); Lasch, The True and stration of the deeply radical character of the late Only Heaven, 543-44. On the similar theses of nineteenth-century agrarian movement." Lasch to Goodwyn's Democratic Promise and Hahn's Roots, Officers of the MacArthur Foundation, November see Martin Ridge, "Populism Redux: John D. Hicks 3, 1989, Lasch Papers. and The Populist Revolt," Reviews in American 118. Lasch, "Democracy and the 'Crisis of Confi­ History 13, no. 1 (March 1985): 150. dence,'" democracy 1 (January 1981): 36. 127. Steven Hahn to Lasch, September 26, 1983, 119. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 218-21, Lasch Papers; Steven Hahn to Lasch, September 543-44. 18, 1979, Lasch Papers; Hahn, The Roots of Southern

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Populism, ix. Although Hahn's study began as regard for speaker or occasiori, so as to form a a paper in Lasch's seminar at Rochester, it "was wholly synthetic system which is then attributed to inspired first by the work of C. Vann Woodward, the Populists themselves." Lasch, The Agony of the then by works of a whole variety of historians and American Left, 5-6n4. Earlier, Lasch had discussed social scientists interested in popular movements, some prominent works of Populist history and ques­ then by labor historians like [E. P.] Thompson and tioned the reactionary label applied to the Populists [Eric] Hobsbawm, and then by social historians and wondered if "perhaps Populism was one of the working on rural America who were challenging the last expressions of what once had been a flourishing place of capitalism in US history." Hahn to author, provincial culture." Lasch, review of The Populist September 20, 2010; Hahn to Lasch, September Response to Industrial America by Norman Pollack 26, 1983, Lasch Papers; Hahn to Lasch, February and The Tolerant Populists: Kansas Populism and 16, 1974, Lasch Papers. In graduate school at Yale, Nativism by T. K. Nugent, Pacific Historical Review Hahn's first advisor was C. Vann Woodward, but 33, no. 1 (February 1964): 72. Lasch also criticizes his dissertation was completed under the supervi­ Pollack's treatment of Populist anti-Semitism in a sion of Howard Lamar. On Lamar's use of Populist letter to the editor, American Historical Review 68, history, see Jon Lauck, "The Old Roots of the New no. 3 (April 1963): 910-11. West: Howard Lamar and the Intellectual Origins 133. Lasch, The Agony of the American Left,S; of Dakota Territory," Western Historical Quarterly 39 Lasch, "Herbert Croly's America," New York Review, (Autumn 2008): 268-69. July 1, 1965, 19. Although Wisconsin "was never 128. Lasch to Steven Hahn, October 16, 1979, Populist territory," according to John D. Hicks, "it Lasch Papers. While teaching at the University would be hard to find another American of the of Iowa, Lasch also taught Southern history. period more thoroughly representative of Middle Christopher Lasch Vertical File, University of Iowa Western agrarianism" than Robert LaFollette. Libraries; Lasch to William Leuchtenburg, June 9, John D. Hicks, "The Legacy of Populism in the 1963, Leuchtenburg Papers Western Middle West," Agricultural History 23, no. 129. Ridge, "Populism Redux," 150. For criticism 4 (October 1949): 226. of Hahn, see Holmes, "Populism," 41-43; J. Morgan 134. In 1972 Lasch also noted the "preindustrial" Kousser, review of The Roots of Southern Populism by resistance of peasants and artisans to modern Steven Hahn, American Historical Review 89, no. 3 progress and found "highly suggestive [Barrington] (June 1984). The notion that Southern Populism Moore's remark, in Social Origins of Dictatorship and was more "radical" than Plains or Midwestern Democracy, that revolutions are set in motion not Populism is discussed in Robert C. McMath, "C. by emerging classes but by classes over whom the Vann Woodward and the Burden of Southern wheel of progress is about to roll." Lasch, The World Populism," Journal of Southern History 67, no. 4 of Nations, 107. (November 2001): 754-56. 135. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 114. See 130. Lasch to Steven Hahn, July 20, 1984, Lasch also Lasch, "The Politics of Nostalgia: Losing History Papers; Steven Hahn, "Honor and Patriarchy in the in the Mists of Ideology," Harper's, November 1984, Old South," American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Spring 65-70, and "The Illusion of Disillusionment," 1984): 145-53. Harper's, July 1991, 19-22. 131. Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American 136. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 116; Brawer Left (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 7. For an and Benvenuto, ''An Interview with Christopher early and short treatment of Populism, see Lasch, Lasch," 126. "The Decline of Dissent," Katallagete 1 (Winter 137. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 109, 112. 1966-67): 11-12. Lasch also discusses the "schol­ A more positive portrayal of small town and rural arly rehabilitation of populism" after Hofstadter's life which embraced the image of a "lost Eden" that criticisms in The World of Nations: Reflections on could not be recovered similarly "diminishes the American History, Politics, and Culture (New York: past," Lasch thought, and blinds us to "the influence Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 162. See also Lasch, The of the past on the present." Lasch, The True and Revolt of the Elites, 83. Only Heaven, 118. 132. Lasch, The Agony of the American Left, 6. 138. Heale, "The Revolting American Elites," 103. Lasch criticized Norman Pollack's The Populist 139. Lasch, "The Politics of Nostalgia," 70. Response to Industrial America (Cambridge: Harvard 140. Ibid. University Press, 1962), which saw Populism as a 141. Lasch, "On Richard Hofstadter," New York form of socialism, for resting "almost entirely on Review, March 8, 1973, 7-13. Lasch grew frustrated verbal correspondences; it is arrived at by piecing with the "radical" history of Staughton Lynd together a series of quotations abstracted from their because, as he wrote to Lynd, to "you the radical context and treated with equal weight, without tradition is sacred and must not be analyzed, except

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln CHRISTOPHER LASCH AND PRAIRIE POPULISM 203 to murmur approvingly." Robert B. Westbrook, 152. Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 218. "Christopher Lasch, the New Radicalism, and the 153. Ibid., 226. Vocation of Intellectuals," Reviews in American 154. On Hofstadter's alienation from the Left and History 23, no. 1 (March 1995); 185 (quoting Lasch). Lasch's debt to him, see Lasch to Warren Susman, For Lasch's criticism of Lynd's father's attacks on the October 26, 1970, Lasch Papers. small-town Midwest, see Lasch, The True and Only 155. Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 218. Heaven, 425. 156. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 367. 142. Lasch thought that Hofstadter's argument 157. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 319 (source of was that a "sentimental agrarian myth [had] quotation); Lasch, "The Fragility of Liberalism," 9. distorted political thinking and [had] prevented 158. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 35. Americans from coming to grips with the urban, 159. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 37; Lasch, industrial civilization their country was destined "Democratic Vistas," New York Review, September to produce." Lasch, "The Politics of Nostalgia," 30,1965,4. 67. Goodwyn's book Democratic Promise "tried 160. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 37. to sideline Hofstadter, which Lasch appreciated." 161. Lasch to Lawrence Goodwyn, December 23, Lawrence Goodwyn interview, April 20, 2012. 1990, Lasch Papers (vaporous quote); Miller, Hope in 143. David S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An a Scattering Time, 302 (questioning quote). Intellectual Biography (Chicago; University of 162. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 345; Lasch, Chicago Press, 2006), 117-18. The Revolt of the Elites, 90-91; Lasch to J. G. A. 144. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objec­ Pocock, August 19, 1993, Lasch Papers. Lasch did tivity Question"and the American Historical Profession not think affirmative action should "be 'saved' in (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1988),338. any form." Lasch to David Cole, March 22, 1992, 145. Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites, 6. Lasch Papers. 146. Ibid., 96. 163. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 363; Lasch, 147. Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 110. "The Fragility of Liberalism," 17. 148. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, 416; 164. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 363. Blake and Phelps, "History as Social Criticism," 165. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 363; Lasch, 1317. Robert Collins notes that "Hofstadter saw The Revolt of the Elites, 182. not simply the dangers of populistic democracy but 166. The Lasch-directed theses at Iowa include more especially the threat posed to his cherished Kirschner, "Rural-Urban Tensions in the Politics cosmopolitanism by the reactionary village culture of the Twenties"; Bowers, "The Country Life of an older America." Robert M. Collins, "The Movement"; Smith, "William L. Langer and Originality Trap: Richard Hofstadter on Populism," American Isolationism"; Hopper, "Aspects of Journal of American History 76, no. 1 (June 1989): the Career of Harold L. Ickes"; Ryan, "New Deal 165. On Lasch's appreciation of the civic culture of Agricultural Administrators." Faculty Personnel small towns, see Lasch, "Preserving the Mild Life; Data Blank, Lasch records, Staff Vertical File, Neighborhood Hangouts and the Social Spirit of University of Iowa Libraries. For the books that the City," review of The Great Good Place: Cafes, emerged from these dissertations, see Kirschner, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, City and Country: Rural Responses to Urbanization General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get in the 1920s (Westport, CT; Greenwood Press, 1970) You Through the Day by Ray Oldenberg, Pittsburgh and Bowers, The Country Life Movement in America, History 74 (Summer 1991); 87-91. 1900-1920 (Port Washington, NY; Kennikat Press, 149. Allan Bogue to Lasch, December 20 [probably 1974). Glenn Smith taught for many years at the 1962], Lasch Papers. While at the University ofIowa, University of North Dakota. Lasch was close to publishing a 3,000-word article 167. Charles Shindo thanks Lasch for his dis­ about Populism in the New York Times Magazine, sertation direction in Shindo to Lasch, August 2, but the editor decided it was not focused enough 1993, Lasch Papers. Shindo also thanks Lasch in his on "American politics today." Harvey Shapiro to book for providing "much-needed stylistic scrutiny Lasch, June 24, 1965, and Harvey Shapiro to Lasch, of my dissertation, in addition to his usual incisive November 24, 1965, Lasch Papers. The draft of this observations and his well-timed words of encourage­ article on Populism is located in the Lasch Papers. ment." Charles J. Shindo, Dust Bowl Migrants in the 150. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 148; Lasch American Imagination (Lawrence;· University Press to Jim Holloway, July 21, 1968, Holloway Papers. of Kansas, 1997), xii. Lasch agreed with Shindo 151. Brown, Richard Hofstadter, 215-17; Robert that his dissertation would benefit from a chapter Erwin, "The Critic of Progress," Massachusetts about Dorothea Lange before it was transformed Review 45, no. 2 (Summer 2004); 291; Siegel, "The into a book. Lasch to Shindo, November 4, 1993, Agony of Christopher Lasch," 287-88. Lasch Papers. See also Jon Lauck, "Dorothea

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Lange and the Limits of the Liberal Narrative: A 2008): 11. Bruce Palmer noted that "historians of all Review Essay," Heritage of the Great Plains 45, no. 1 stripes ... can find just about anything they want (Summer 2012): 4-37. in Populism." "American History's Hardy Perennial: 168. Shindo, Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Populism from the 1970s," American Quarterly Imagination, 7-10. 30, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 561. On the "unusually 169. Lasch, "The Cultural Civil War and the bitter historiographical controversy" touched off Crisis of Faith," Katallagete 8 (Summer 1982): 16 by Richard Hofstadter's interpretation of Populism (stamp quote); Lasch to Shindo, November 4, 1993, and a review of the "debate that raged in the pages Lasch Papers (dogmatism quote). of major journals and in the meeting rooms and 170. Lasch, "The Fragility of Liberalism," 16. hallways at historians' conventions," see Collins, See acknowledgments in Gurstein, The Repeal "The Originality Trap," 152. On the "wrath" and of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and "acrimony" in the various debates over the meaning Legal Struggles Over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual of Populism, see K. D. Bicha, "Some Observations Liberation, and Modern Art (New York: Hill and on 'Ideology and Behavior': Legislative Politics and Wang, 1999), and the extensive Lasch-Gurstein Western Populism," Agricultural History 58, no. 1 correspondence in the Lasch Papers. (January 1984): 59. On the "Hofstadter imbroglio" 171. While "workers" outnumbered "proprietors" over Populism and the "fracas" that ensued, see by a margin of three to one in New York, for Turner, "Understanding the Populists," 356. See example, the opposite was true in the Dakotas. also, Holmes, "Populism," 27; Ridge, "Populism Catherine McNicol Stock, Main Street in Crisis: The Redux," 152; Worth Robert Miller, "A Centennial Great Depression and the Old Middle Class on the Historiography of American Populism," Kansas Northern Plains (Chapel Hill: University of North History 16, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 54-69. Rochester Carolina Press, 1992),42. Drawing on Lasch, Stock PhD Leon Fink warned Lasch about the "nebulous explains how this old order of decentralized owner­ quality" of "Good wynes que populism" in Leon ship and middle-class hegemony has been "relegated Fink to Lasch, August 1, 1980, Lasch Papers. Lasch to the scrap heap of politically incorrect historiog­ noted the "deficiencies of the populist tradition" raphy" (7). Lasch said that "Stock's book on the old in Lasch to Fink, August 15, 1980, Lasch Papers. middle class manages the unusual feat of treating For a review of the wildly varying treatments of with sympathy and respect the kind of people who Populism, see Goodwyn, "A Proposal to the Ford usually serve merely as the target of sophisticated Foundation," 4-8, appended to Goodwyn to Lasch, ridicule." See dust jacket of Main Street in Crisis. On May 18, 1981, Lasch Papers. Goodwyn's approach to the origins of this social order in South Dakota, see Populism was deeply rooted in his experience as an Jon Lauck, Prairie Republic: The Political Culture of organizer during the "Southern freedom movement Dakota Territory, 1979-1889 (Norman: University of the 1960s." Goodwyn rejects the term "civil rights of Oklahoma Press, 2010). For a new treatment movement" as a "white construction." Interview of Populism in South Dakota, see R. Alton Lee, with Lawrence Goodwyn, April 20, 2012. After Principle Over Party: The Farmers' Alliance and serving as an editor for the Texas Observer, executive Populism in South Dakota, 1880-1900 (Pierre: director of the "Civil Rights Coalition," and a free­ South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2011); lance writer, Goodwyn earned his PhD in history and Jon Lauck review, Montana: The Magazine of from the University of Texas in 1971. Goodwyn vita, Western History vol. 62, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 77-78. appended to Lasch to Officers of the MacArthur 172. Louis Menand, "Christopher Lasch's Quarrel Foundation, November 3, 1989, Lasch Papers. with Liberalism," in The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur 174. On how the Populists embraced forms of Schlesinger Jr. and the Challenge of the American Past, modernity, see Charles Postel, The Populist Vision ed. John Patrick Diggins (Princeton: Princeton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Leon University Press, 1997), 239. Fink emphasized this point to Lasch in Fink to 173. Michael F. Magliari, "Populist Historiography Lasch, August 1, 1980, Lasch Papers. For a discus­ Post-Hicks: Current Needs and Future Directions," sion of Postel's new treatment of Populism, see "The Agricultural History 82, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 16. Populist Vision: A Roundtable Discussion," Kansas The starkly different findings of historians of History 32 (Spring 2009): 18-45. On capitalism and Populism are related to political and presentist culture, see Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois biases. Connie Lester argues that histories of Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: Populism "speak to historians on so many levels" University of Chicago Press, 2007). that "analyses of the movements tend to follow 175. Leon Fink to Lasch, August 1, 1980, Lasch the lines of current problems or crises." "Populist Papers; Steven Hahn to author, September 20, 2010. Scholarship as a Survey of American Social 176. Frederick C. Luebke, Immigrants and Politics: Change," Agricultural History 82, no. 1 (Winter The Germans of Nebraska, 1880-1900 (Lincoln:

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University of Nebraska Press, 1969), and Germans in Robert Miller, "A Centennial Historiography of the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration American Populism," Kansas History vol. 16, no. 1 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Paul (Spring 1993),54-69. Gottfried noted Lasch's "rugged German ancestors 179. Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: who had settled in Nebraska as farmers." "Voices William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915-1925 Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965),364. Lasch, and Bradford," Front Porch Republic, August 180. Lasch, The Minimal Self, 17; Lasch to Veronica 11,2009. Geng, July 8, 1980, Lasch Papers. 177. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History 181. Christopher Lasch, Commencement Address of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party to the Department of History at the University of (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1931); Rochester, Spring 1993, reprinted as "The Baby John D. Hicks, My Life with History: An Autobiography Boomers: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow," New (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), 139-40; Oxford Review, September 1993; Lasch, "Academic Robert C. McMath, "Politics Matters: John D. Hicks Pseudo-Radicalism: The Charade of 'Subversion,'" and the History of Populism," Agricultural History 82, Salmagundi, no. 88-89 (Fall 1990-Winter 1991): 29. no. 1 (Winter 2008): 2; Lauck, "The Prairie Historians 182. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 371. and the Foundations of Midwestern History," 161-63. 183. Lasch to David Marr, December 27, 1980, 178. Lauck, "The Prairie Historians and the Lasch Papers. Foundations of Midwestern History," 161-63; Worth 184. Miller, Hope in a Scattering Time, 369.

© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln