Revolution and the Word: Chapters 3 & 4

My favorite bit of this week's reading came toward the end of Chapter Four when Davidson is pointing out the emotional attachment that many early American readers had for the novels that they were reading, "In short, people then as now read themselves into their fictions and their fictions into their lives" (142).

Because I study fan culture, this was particularly interesting to me as it related to the ways that fans are perceived today, and some of the similarities between early novel readers and avid film and television audiences. Too often, I worry that academics underestimate the emotional power of fiction, and I was pleased to see Davidson make mention of what sound very much like novel fanatics on pg. 142:

"What do we make, for example, of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of young men who leapt off bridges or put a pistol to their foreheads with a copy of Werther in their breast pockets? Surely theirs was an intensive reading. Or of the young women who made a grave in New York City for poor Charlotte Temple; who, for two generations, left wreaths, locks of hair, and mementos of lost loves upon that grave; and who, when they discovered that Charlotte was not a 'real' person but merely a fictional creation, felt utterly betrayed and enraged, for they had--they said--lost a friend."

What's even more interesting about this example is that it comes as a defense against the accusation that reading more books indicated "an increasingly passive form of consumption or comprehension" (141). I was glad to see Davidson defend the novel in this regard, because one of my biggest issues with intellectual big wigs is their inability to acknowledge a value in "low" literature, and the immediate need to disregard works of fiction that do not live up to some imagined literary standard. In Chapter Three, Davidson notes that "social authorities would not have feared the effects of merely escapist literature"-- a comment that I appreciate as someone who feels that the word 'escapist' may be a bit overused by academics.

After all, how do we determine what is "escapist"? How do we determine how a story really spoke to a person? Davidson recognizes that although the availability of books increased in this time period, and people became more "extensive" readers, "even the 'extensive' reading of this fiction could be emotionally intense, psychically fulfilling, imaginatively active, socially liberalizing, and educationally progressive-- quite the opposite of the merely consumptive, passive, repetitive act posited by the Leserevolution model" (142)

Revolution and the Word: Chapters 1 & 2

"Of approximately sixty-five American novelists who published before 1820, less than a third were named on the title pages of their books; slightly over a third appeared either anonymously or pseudonymously but are known today (often because the veil of anonymity was only tenuously employed, with the author's actual name revealed in the advertisements for the specific book or in a subsequent publication by the same individual-- as was the case for Brockden Brown, Susanna Rowson, and Royall Tyler). The remaining authors (and the largest single group) were and remain anonymous." (92)

Okay, so I get that at the time, novel writing was considered especially racy and improper, but I still have such a hard time with this aspect of early American literature. I just don't get it. It's one thing to accept that the novel is subversive and racy, but it seems completely ridiculous that someone would write & publish a novel, which was unlikely to produce any amount of money, without attaching some kind of ownership to the work. I mean, it is work, and I can't imagine that novel writing was an incredibly leisurely activity-- I mean physically as well as emotionally --especially when it's considered to be so absolutely deviant.

And here's the other thing-- so say you have written a novel in 1790, and you're worried that your reputation will forever be marred by this atrocious activity. My question to YOU, Mr. 1790, is what exactly did everyone think you were up to when you were holed up writing this novel? I mean, seriously? How conspicuous could you possibly be? Wouldn't the people in your life, your immediate family and close friends-- wouldn't they notice that you were spending an awful lot of time with, I dunno, your quill?

What's even more baffling about this very different conception of authorship is the bizarre way that it devalues the time and effort of the writer/author. Davidson describes the role of the printer in the publication process, noting that "sometimes advertisements for books even emphasized the printer's art more than the writer's", explaining how the aesthetic appeal of the physical book was noted in advertisements (79). It seems strange that this work would be acknowledged and somewhat glorified, where the author of the text, without whom there was no novel, was more often than not never even acknowledged for their contribution to the product as it appeared in book form.

Revolution and the Word: Introduction

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my favorite bit of Davidson's introduction was her concern with those things that tend to get brushed under the rug in historical accounts, and I loved the example of David McCullough's John Adams.

I should probably start by saying that I haven't actually read John Adams, or seen the HBO miniseries, but I was excited to see a connection between current media representations of early American history, and the texts that claim to provide exhaustive accounts. There is a missing piece of every story, and I think that an important point that Davidson is making here is that it isn't only media representations that twist the facts. Ever mindful of my very limited knowledge of American history, I did start to notice as we read Starr that some of these great American "characters" (Adams, Jefferson, Washington, etc), seemed to have more controversial and conflicting ideas about the way the fledgling country should be managed, and Davidson makes this point all the more clear. Although I didn't watch John Adams myself, I know many people who did, and who lauded it for its authenticity (and c'mon, Paul Giamatti was in it, it's gotta be good) -- which is sort of scary, no? It reminds me of The Patriot or the story of Pocahontas, which we as academics find eye-rollingly inaccurate, but while we cringe we have got to remember that our own history books are altering facts in similar ways, and we should be mindful that we're rarely seeing all sides of anything.

Davidson immediately moves from her John Adams example to describe another problem close to my heart, and one that had me highlighting basically all of page 18:

"Nationalist history casts disagreement as 'anti-American'--as dissent from an assumed, if unarticulated, consensus rather than as an invaluable contribution to a process that is innately and definitionally 'democratic'" (18).

Yep, this bit struck a chord.

And, in fact, I'm having a hard time clearly explaining what that chord is. To simplify the matter probably entirely too much, I could say that reading a text that acknowledges the troubled position of someone who expresses a dissatisfaction with this country is reassuring, because it indicates that the counter-opinion will be investigated along with the popular historical myth of America. I've tried to keep my List of Things I Loathe to only the bare essentials, and calling someone "anti-American" if they voice any opinion contrary to the "American way" is close to the top of that list.

And isn't it a bummer that this passage rings so very true?:

"In considering the rich body of theory and history on nation building, it becomes clear that one of the defining features of Americans is the ease with which we pronounce other citizens "un-American" or "anti-American" for relatively mild protests against the status quo" (18).

So yeah. Not cool, guys.

Honestly, I could go on and on about this for ages and ages and I couldn't do it nearly as effectively as Davidson on pg. 18. The fact that other countries don't seem to share this problem ("The most vituperative British member of Parliament, railing against the prime minister, is still British, maybe even definitively so because of the railing. He or she would rarely be called "un-British" or "anti-British'.") only really makes it more interesting. That Davidson points this out and points it out well, only makes me more anxious to read what else she has to say. I mean, the lady clearly has a point.