This week at the library: …we’ll find out together

Posted on July 7, 2014 by smellincoffee

Dear readers:

It turned out, despite their normally up-to-the-minute-correct website, that my university library was not open today, which means for the first time a long while, I have no idea what I’m going to read next. My local library doesn’t carry a lot of French history, so finding something for my usual Bastille Day reading is going to be a stretch.  I’ll continue with my journey through American literature, which I’m enjoying far too much, and look to the to be read list. Next up will be Fighting Traffic, I think.

This past week, of course, was taken up with readings related to Independence Day; there’s one I’ve not mentioned here yet, a novel featuring Thomas Jefferson. It ends with the French revolution, so a more fitting lead-in to that reading I could not ask for.  The American series isn’t complete yet, because I’m still waiting on The Men Who Lost America. It was lost in the mail, so another copy is being sent.

Quotable

“Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If we would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our name.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

Common Sense, Tom Paine.

“You want to send Jim and me back to be whipped and tortured, and ground down under the heels of them that you call masters; and your laws will bear you out in it — more shame for you and them! But you haven’t got us. We don’t own your laws; we don’t own your country; we stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty ’till we die.”

p. 224, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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George Washington’s Secret Six

Posted on July 5, 2014 by smellincoffee

George Washington’s Secret Six
© 2013 Brian Kilmead
257 pages

Wars are not won by soldiers alone. In the shadows are those silently gathering information, sometimes at great risks to themselves,  to give the nation’s leaders an edge over the foe — or to prevent the foe’s own shadowy talents from doing likewise. George Washington’s Secret Six is a flashy history of a civilian intelligence ring operating throughout the revolutionary war, a ring that invented by necessity many of the tactics still faithfully and productively employed by intelligence agencies today — and a ring that accomplished more in the dark than the young nation’s struggling army did on the battlefield. It’s an area of history which is getting increasing attention these days, but The Secret Six is as its title indicates intended for a popular audience; it’s quite casual history, full of energy and fanciful storytelling — including scenes with dialogue. Given that the book is centered on New York, and that George Washington spends its entirety brooding over reports from the spies that give him little hope for taking the city, the full title seems something of an overreach. Despite the fact that the ring was created to help Washington free New York City from the British, however, they keep turning up information of interest outside that limited theater, like a plot to undermine American currency through counterfeiting.  These episodes link  the spy ring to a war that otherwise seems to be taking place in a place far, far away.  Though limited in scope, and distressingly sparing in cites sources,  the heroism undertaken by the merchants and common men and women is well worth being introduced to, as is their cleverness.  It remains of interest despite being very light history.

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Common Sense

Posted on July 4, 2014 by smellincoffee

Common Sense
© 1776 Tom Paine

After the battles of Lexington and Concord that scotched any idea of peaceful reconciliation between Britain and its former colonies, but before the Declaration of Independence that stared the colonies on their march toward united nationhood,  rabble-rouser Tom Paine penned a now famous pamphlet intended  to fire up support for the glorious cause.  It’s an ambitious little book, containing an argument  for independence , a review of America’s material ability to take on the greatest power in the world, and a rebuttal of arguments for reconciliation, targeted mostly against Quakers.  While not as oft-quoted as “The Crisis”,  he argues powerfully and leaves no doubt as to why it might have been so explosive at the time.

Paine’s bone to pick with royal governance stems not merely from the fact that they are abusive, or incapable of effective administration considering the distance between Parliament and North America, a distance bridged only by months of sea travel; he is against monarchy [b]in principle[/b],  which is presumably why its publication was so dramatic.  He asks the reader to examine the origin of kings — not a one of them fell from heaven. William of Normandy who fathered the English line was merely a successful French brigand; did his triumph on the battlefield suddenly imbue him with divine right? And even if it did, isn’t it patently obvious that virtue is never inherited? What good king hasn’t been followed by an execrable sons like Commodus?

The only real government is autonomous and here Paine’s condemnation retains more value beyond historical consideration. While no one today argues for the divine right of kings, kings are still among us — clothing themselves not in royal purple, but in republican brown or the humble uniform of military service. They are presidents and chairman, not imperators, but regardless of their language they still set their sights ahove the heights of the clouds and seek to rule people ‘for their own good’.  While the king and parliament may make their case in tradition, Paine argues as a man of the enlightenment, looking toward the future and arguing to self-interest:  as long as America remains tethered to Britain, its trade and people will suffer every time the monarchies of Europe go to war, as is their wont. Far better to declare independence and then make a killing in trade while the the kings drag one another to hell.

A short, fiery piece, Common Sense merits its place in America’s revolutionary imagination.

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The American Tory

Posted on July 2, 2014 by smellincoffee

The American Tory
© 1972 ed. Morten Borden, Penn Borden
141 pages

American colonists yearning for independence from Britain called themselves Patriots, not in opposition against the not-yet-arrived royal army, but to set their cause against that of the Loyalists. Not all colonists supported separation from Britain; even in the steamy summer of 1776, with war already waging, some congressmen were reluctant to shove away any hope of reconciliation with the mother country. They were bristling against their rights offended as Englishmen, were they not?  The American Tory collects the reactions and thoughts of loyalists during the revolutionary period to the turmoil happening around them, as well as accounts of how they were treated by the revolutionaries, and how they and the patriots regarded one another.

‘Tory’ first described the defenders of the king’s cause during the English Civil War, and is sometimes used as a byword for conservative. In the United States, ‘tory’ seems have been hurled at loyalists with particular hatred. Good, then, that they be given a chance to speak. This is exclusively a collection of excerpts from letters, speeches, assembly minutes, and official proclamations from the period, including two essays comprising histories of the revolution from the patriot and loyalist views. The collection offers a look into the myriad reasons that loyalists gave for staying true; ardent devotion to England,  fear of revolution driving everything to ruin,  and an abiding distrust of those agitating for separation. The Congress made a lot of noise about violated rights, but what if their real motives were more base? What if Adams and Washington simply wanted to create grander names for themselves than peace and cooperation allowed for?  And where did those rights come from, after all, if not the English law, embodied in the person of George III?

Although the patriots liked to dismiss the loyalists as fainthearted and timid, too afraid to make a progressive leap into the future, the abuse many endured for their abiding convictions puts the lie to that. The far easier course would have been the sunshine patriotism Tom Paine grumbled about in The Crisis.  There is pragmatic sense in the tories’ belief that rights depended on the application of force — rights unobserved have no functional existence–  and the able bedrock of the law —  but who wants to depend on the state for the defense of their rights?  The United States still avers to live by natural rights, but do the actions of its government live up to that? Certainly not, and nor did the king and his parliament’s.  The struggle between a people’s rights and their government’s desires is never over, and the strife between the tories and patriots was less a battle between good and evil and more the ancestor of our own debates today.   There is much value in this little book, not only for giving the loyalists a nuanced opinion, but in showing how similarly their passions were expressed.  Both sides used the same language, referring to the respective opposition as a junta, and both taking stands in defense of liberty. The tories saw liberty threatened by disorder and wars; the patriots, by a peace accomplished at the price of subservience; both feared the others’ banditti. 

Such realizations are helpful now, as in any time, to realize how people are more often linked than their passion will allow them to admit. There is still room for civility, here evidenced by one Tory expressing his admiration of George Washington and hoping, if he is defeated, it is a noble defeat, one worthy of the man.   This is in short a fascinating and profoundly helpful work for those seeking to understand the revolution and its causes.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Posted on July 2, 2014 by smellincoffee

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
© 1876 Mark Twain
202 pages

            There is truly no better time to revisit The Adventures of Tom Sawyerthan the summer, with its long, languid days bringing back memories of childhood liberty from school, and the mischievous episodes used  to fill them.  Tom Sawyer is the history of a boy, told by an aging boy – Mark Twain – whose own fond recollections of boyhood are obvious.  Tom is the quintessential boy;  wild, clever,  with a head full of adventures. The importance of memorizing  Bible verses may be lost on him, as is the value of whitewashing a fence – but he is not dull or lazy. How could he be when he spends days hard at work digging for treasure, or playing out The Tale of Robin Hood with his friends, delivering dialogue word-for-word from the book by memory?  Tom may struggle at being civilized,  but he has his own values to live up to. For all his youthful mischief, Tom is hard at play, practicing to be a man; he yearns to be the adventurous pirate, the gallant knight winning the favor of his lady love. In Tom’s case, such practice is fruitful, for his pursuit of pretend adventure will lead him headlong into actual danger when he and his friend Huck  witness a murder. In the months that follow, Tom must live up to the nobility he practiced to truly rescue damsels in distress, to truly defeat a dastardly villain, and win the prize for all his derring-do – genuine pirate treasure!  Could there be a better book for boys?
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The American Classics

Posted on July 1, 2014 by smellincoffee

Readers may have noticed in recent weeks American literature appearing with more frequency than usual on a blog that is dominated by nonfiction. This is not an accident; a few weeks ago I arranged a course of reading for myself to rediscover, or perhaps discover anew, the American soul. I say discover anew because though I’m familiar with many of the books’ reputations, I’ve never really encountered them.  It’s high time I learned my country’s stories.   The list that follows contains ten items from the course, but the ‘complete’ list is longer and unknown to me, as it it will grow and shrink as I travel onward.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
3. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
4. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
5. The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
6. Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington
7. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
8.  White Fang, Jack London
9.  Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
10. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Before these I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Legend of Rip Van Winkle,  The Last of the Mohicans, The Scarlet Letter,  A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  I’ve been trying to work chronologically,  though Twain skipped a few places in line because I’ve wanted to read Huck Finn for the longest and wouldn’t do it before re-reading Tom Sawyer.  My hope is to gain a fuller appreciation of American history, with all of its meaning, through the literature its troubles and hopes produced.

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This week at the library: the Spirit of ’76

Posted on June 30, 2014 by smellincoffee

Greetings, dear readers!

It’s been a busy week for me, reading-wise, because work at the library has been slow. Oprah and Brad Pitt have been wandering around town filming for a movie,  and a lot of our usual patrons and traffic were diverted by a week of movie-making. I have had a great many hours to fill with nothing to fill with with, so I’ve been investigating the merits of Gutenberg.org on behalf of our patrons and doing some reading.   Most importantly, I  knocked off Good Natured, so that’s another from the to-be-read list, which is getting smaller by the week.

Early on I finally managed whacking through The Last of the Mohicans, which stymied me several times as a child and theatened to do it again, but I was bound and determined to finish the darned thing. It’s an early American frontier novel, the prototypical western, set in the French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years War). Two young women have decided to join their father at the front, which is questionably wise, and have to get there by trucking through the wilderness, filled with natural hazards and malevolent Indian politics.  They are lead by a white man raised by Indians through various spots of peril  until finally they reach some safety, despite having lost half their party. I liked the action scenes, but the dialogue — grief. The crushing, mysterious wilderness of the colonial frontier has nothing on the thicket of words Cooper throws at the reader — the occasional conversations in French were more comprehensible than his English at times.

I also encountered but did not read fully in part White Trash, which turned out to be a collection of essays on race and class. Some of the articles were engaging and promising, and others absolutely odious. One was so execrable — featuring a young researcher who decided to live as “White Trash Girl” as an art project, pretending that her acting as vulgar as possible was a celebration of the common man,.  One interesting note about this collection is that the authors ground themselves in the academic left; it’s very odd to see the Frankfurt School brought out to bear on ‘queer trailer culture’.   Jim Goad used class distinctions in his Redneck Manifesto, but his had an authentic edge to it while these authors are simply trying too hard to be serious.

This week I will be focusing on the remainder of my Independence Day reading,  and then at the weekend perhaps take on another of the TBR books.

Quotable

“Yes, yes, I have heard that a young gentleman of vast riches, from one of the provinces far south, has got the place. He is over young, too, to hold such rank, and to be put above men whose heads are beginning to bleach; and yet they say he is a soldier in his knowledge, and a gallant gentleman!”
“Whatever he may be, or however he may be qualified for his rank, he now speaks to you and, of course, can be no enemy to dread.”
The Last of the Mohicans



“Like the Biami, apes do not need reflective surfaces to gain self-awareness. They are used to watching themselves in the social mirror; the spectators’ eyes.”
p. 71, Good Natured


“A real patriot can seldom or ever speak popular language. A false one will never suffer himself to speak anything else.”   Governor William Franklin, letter urging New Jersey legislature to seek reconciliation with Britain, 1776.
p. 23,  The American Tory.

The old moral order, however imperfect it may have een, at least moved toward the virtues by way of the passions. If men were self-concerned,  that order tried to expand the the scope of self-concern to include others, rather than commanding men to cease being concerned with themselves. To attempt the latter is both tyrannical and ineffective.”
p. 129, The Closing of the American Mind

To Be Read Takedown Challenge

Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Vikings, Robert Ferguson (6/7/14)                                       
Power, Inc; David Rothkopf (6/14/14)
An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage
Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman
The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond (5/29/14)
Fighting Traffic: the Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, Peter Norton
Earth, Richard Fortey
Good Natured, Frans de Waal (6/27/14)
Galileo’s Finger, Peter Atkins
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A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Posted on June 29, 2014 by smellincoffee

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
© 1845 Frederick Douglass
144 pages



Although modern readers take for granted the idea that slavery is “bad”, its horrors can only be fully appreciated  by the shared experience of those who were subjected to it. No finer conveyor is available than Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became an abolitionist leader, who achieved such renown in his lifetime that he dined in the White House.  The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was penned by Douglass for the benefit of an abolitionist society to arouse sympathy in the north. Douglass later authored other biographies, but The Narrative is limited to his years in bondage, and – considering its intended purpose — focuses on the evil slavery was in practice. The tale of constant beatings, of the culture of subservience, of the dehumanizing ways slaves were forced to live is surely enough to set anyone’s blood on fire, though the modern mind may be numbed by the thought of the Holocaust, or the obscenities we subject ourselves to voluntarily through the daily news.  The antidote to rage and despair are joy and hope, both offered by Douglass’ story. Cause for hope stems not from the fact that he escaped — he is very coy about how he did it, so slaveholders cannot use his narrative to improve their security —  but the fact that he made himself a man.  Douglass’ greatest triumph is not in escaping physical slavery, but escaping the enslavement of his mind and spirit. Given a start by a briefly sympathetic mistress, Douglass learned to read — but even after she abandoned her kindness, her soul corrupted by the conceit of owning another man,  he pushed himself forward. In defiance of the slave-culture created by the plantation owners, Douglass pursued what he recognized as the sure route to liberty, and sought out every opportunity to make advances. He taught himself to write as well, enough to forge passes in an abortive escape attempt, and enough to write with a command of style that was doubtless a boon to the abolitionist cause. His strength of spirit would make him a free man even if his body were in chains.

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The Scarlet Letter

Posted on June 28, 2014 by smellincoffee

The Scarlet Letter

©  1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne
180 pages          

         In 18thcentury Boston, a young woman stands upon the gallows in the center of town, facing down the contempt of the assembled mob. Having broken the laws of her adopted Puritan home, Hester Prynn must endure its punishment for her crime:  lifelong ignominy. Having conceived a child out of wedlock – and with a man not her absent husband – she will wear forever on her breast the  prominent letter “A”. The Scarlet Letter is a story of morality, persecution, and redemption;  an American classic whose readability belies its status as a classroom staple. 
        Though Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing in a setting a century before his, and including historic personalities like John Winthrope, The Scarlet Letter is less a gritty historical tale and more a legend – and, like all good myths, one with a point. Its heroine is a legend in her own time, a woman whose morality could not be contained by her community. Judged a sinner,  Prynn accepts the verdict of her community, knowing she has broken its rules. She wears the scarlet letter with quiet dignity, but her own skills as a seamstress and moral center give her a strength that carries her through the years, despite being an outcast.  She does not run away from her moral imperfections, nor their consequences, but embraces it,  making her life’s work the support of the poor and infirm — combating passion with selflessness. Though she bears the titular mark of indiscretion, the piece’s true sinners are her husband and the local minister, both with secrets. The husband arrived in town just in time to see his near-abandoned wife on the scaffold. Perhaps it’s the months spent imprisoned by Indians, but hubby dear is a decidedly nasty sort who decides to adopt the false name Roger Chillingworth, and give himself the quest of finding out who cuckolded him and then destroying the man.   The Reverend John Dimmsdale, who – as you might guess is the third part of this little love triangle —  is equally responsible for Hester’s sin, but cowers from accepting it, fearful of the consequences. Though he professes an admirable concern for his congregation’s welfare, his and Chillingsworth’s actions through the piece most decidedly are not, and by its end all actions have found their inevitable fruit. Prynn is redeemed, and the others…well, not so much.
        I expected dreariness of a novel set in the Puritan world, but Hawthorne’s characters are highly spirited, especially Prynn and her little daughter, Pearl. Hawthorne writes in clear condemnation of the Puritans’ severity, though  it is doubtful that he condemns their morality in general considering Prynn’s decision to live in a spirit of penitence thereafter. Although the dialogue is purposely stilted (the Puritans seeming to take the KJV bible as their guide in speech), this is a novel filled with passion that roars along, with moral arguments along for the ride.  The Scarlet Letter is quite laudable. 

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American Sphinx

Posted on June 28, 2014 by smellincoffee

American Sphinx: the Character of Thomas Jefferson
© 1998 Joseph Ellis
464 pages



Principle author of the Declaration of Independence, partial broker of the Franco-American alliance,  third president —  there is no denying Thomas Jefferson’s pivotal place within the revolution.  He is a constant presence in Joseph Ellis’  prior histories concerning the revolutionary period, cast as a complex character — quixotic one moment, pragmatic the next.  American Sphinx shines a spotlight on his contradictory character, being a study in character by way of a biographical sketch.

Little is known of Jefferson’s early life,  owing to his parents’ appalling lack of foresight in not realizing future generations would want to know everything about their little scion, and to a fire that consumed what  little documentation of his early life existed. Jefferson would make up for that in his adult life, being a prolific author;  indeed, he is best known for his literary output, like the Declaration of Independence. No fiery orator like John Adams or Patrick Henry, he no less set fire to the world. In Ellis’ account, Jefferson appears for the first time on the political stage, producing a series of works that make the patriotic case against British abuses in ever-sharper and ever-seeping language. Jefferson will continue to write on the themes developed in such works as A Summary View of the Rights of British America and the Declaration.  It is the tension between the values he defended, and the actions he committed, that most of the works concerns itself with.

Of all the founding fathers, it is Jefferson’s spirit which is most invoked today, hailed by liberals for his commitment to equality and by conservatives for his deep distrust of centralized power.  Jefferson was in turns a liberal and a conservative;  his love affair with the French Revolution, even amid its violence, demonstrated that he had no aversion to destroying the old order completely; but such was his faith in the rationality of man that he believed justice would prevail once the old founts of inequality like monarchy and religion were destroyed.  Government must be kept at minimal levels, however, to ensure that the babe of equality was not smothered in its cradle by power-mad despots (Alexander Hamilton), military juntas (Alexander Hamilton)  and malicious big bankers (Alexander Hamilton*).    Thus he looked for conservative ends through liberal means.

Contradictions abounded elsewhere; though rightly lauded as the author of the Declaration, the words of which have been an ideal Americans have struggled to realize in full ever since — “We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal….”  — he did, in fact, keep slaves. Ellis examines both the facts of Jefferson’s plantation and his expressed thoughts;   despite his frequent cooing over the nobility of American yeoman farmers,  Jefferson devoted little care to his fields himself, taking an interest only at harvest time. The slaves he spent the most time around were his house servants, mulattoes who appeared to some visitors closer to white than black, and treated with intimate familiarity. They were a world apart from the grisly, bloody reality of most slavery. Even when Jefferson was around his field hands, it was only when he employed them in the farm-saving work of being apprenticing in his nail factory. Yes, Jefferson the agrarian only found solvency by creating a little workshop on the premises. By giving hands such marketable work, he reasoned that he was preparing them for the day when emancipation was possible.

These are only two instances of Jefferson almost being a man of two-minds, but such contradictions are the prevailing theme of the work.  Ellis isn’t a sharp critic of Jefferson — who could be? — but the work reveals him at worst a romantic, a man who exalted farmers but took little real interest in his, who believe great things but did not take great stands lest they imperil his other dreams. At his best, however, Jefferson was an idealist who could be pragmatic when it counted, as the many compromises through his presidential career showed —  and as even his enemies admitted.  American Sphinx is as promised a fascinating look into Jefferson’s mind, though  it’s not quite a complete biography.

Related:
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Christopher Hitchens.
Alexander Hamilton, Rob Chernow. A look at the Jefferson-Hamilton ragefest from the other side..

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