When I have to restrain myself

Republished with a few changes from my blog for the counterculture oral history project.

Have you ever been sitting in a class, listening to a teacher and just wishing everyone in the room could be making the same epic connection as you?

I had one of those experiences last week. We were reading a book called Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. It was written in 1974, so just at the end of the time our counterculture documentary wraps up. We were talking about this character Younger Brother, who puts on blackface and hangs out with this gang of black radicals who are threatening to blow up J.P. Morgan’s art gallery in about 1913. Now, this didn’t actually happen, but in our discussion we were talking about what Doctorow was trying to say about whites who were involved in black radical causes and whether they are real or posers. And that just took me into a land of counterculture thoughts.

In my seat I was jumping up and down, biting my tongue to keep from blathering on and on about how the dynamic between African Americans and whites in the counterculture era is one of the most interesting things that comes out in our script and in all the interviews we have.

The section about Project 500 has probably some of the most obvious examples of this. One of our Caucasian interviewees told a story that I think really sums it up in a unique way. She talks about how she was proud of her non-materialistic leanings, of not living in a fancy place, because she wanted to be outside the materialistic norm. And she talks about how confused she was by African Americans who were demanding better housing when she was so proud of the drafty conditions.

Clarence Shelley, one of our interviewees, summed it up the difference between the causes students were interested in really well:

“The Vietnam war, for example, was not a black issue at first. Black students’ concerns were much more personal. They wanted reactions and safeguards against violence, against police brutality, against students having demonstrations and sit-ins. If the issue didn’t deal with a racial problem it didn’t mean as much to them. Whereas the white kids were concerned about things like free speech. About, well, the war was a big one. The uses of recreational drugs, all that stuff. Whereas the black students’ concerns had much more to do with how they were treated, how they were accepted.”

Most of the other examples hit on the same themes as above. Sometimes it is African Americans explaining why they thought the hippie movement was pointless, an exercise of affluent white students. Sometimes they are white students sharing their confusion about why their efforts to be involved with the civil rights movement were rejected or dismissed by black students.

So what was Doctorow saying about this issue in American culture? Was he affirming whites who put on blackface (metaphorically) and were involved in the civil rights movement or was he pointing out how easily they could leave the movement and not have to face any consequences in their daily lives?

Personally, I think Doctorow is affirming the efforts of anyone who takes part in trying to right racial injustice in America, whether they are the victims or not. Younger Brother doesn't strike me as undermined. I don't think he is jokingly participating in Coalhouse's little band. He seems to genuinely believe in the cause and be willing to sacrifice. He literally puts on the blackface and goes to the extreme for his belief in the rights of Coalhouse.

Now whether Doctorow is affirming the use of violence in the struggle for justice is the topic for another blog post, because you could fill books on the issue!

How you see it makes all the difference

"Viewed simply as verbal artifacts histories and novels are indistinguishable from one another. We cannot easily distinguish between them on formal grounds unless we approach them with specific preconceptions about the kinds of truths that each is supposed to deal in." ~Hayden White, "Fictions of Factual Representation," page 122.

When I looked back at the first entry in my notebook about the differences between history and fiction, I think that I wasn't so far off, at least at a basic level. History and fiction do have a lot in common, especially the element of narrative and piecing together a story from either fragments of facts or figments of the imagination paired with facts.

But a month into the class, I also have a change I might make. Maybe it is the influence of all the postmodernist essays we've been reading, or maybe it is my own partly postmodernist mindset (not like I consciously have aligned myself with postmodernism but because I think I, like most people in my generation, have grown up in a world that has been strongly influenced and infiltrated by postmodernist ideas).

But whatever the origin, I think I would make one significant change to my original thoughts. I would now be more willing to say that history is narrative and stories that we believe happen, where with a novel we know what happens originates at least partly in the author's imagination. I think this accounts for the claim that all history is "made up" in the sense that someone chooses which details to include, which version  of events "must" be right.

And that is where White's quotation really makes sense. He is right, if you just look at a novel and a history they are impossible to tell apart simply by the language. If you only consider the works themselves, than there is no difference between history and fiction.

But if you take the reader's perceptions into account, then you have to say there is a difference between history and fiction because we perceive them differently.

When you say "history" I automatically think "true, fact, what actually happened." When you say "fiction" my brain thinks "the made-up stories in the library, novels, imaginary." Those are my preconceptions about what each type of book is supposed to be; so if you hand me a novel I don't assume what goes on actually happened, and if you hand me a history textbook I believe that what I will read is true.

As a person who grew up in a postmodernist influenced world, I do have a nagging sense of doubt about the absolute truth of history and I am open to the idea that fiction and history are have much more in common that I usually acknowledge. But I am not ready to say that there is no difference between them because I think that as long as people read them with different assumptions, the two genres will be different.

Not so idiotic after all

"...She was checked in her response, which was to condemn him for an idiot..." ~Ragtime page 226.

Sometimes Father looks like an idiot. It is just a fact. Depending on how you interpret "idiot" you might think I'm saying he seems not very intelligent or not very authoritative or just bumbling and foolish. And I mean all of those things.

Father's trip to the North Pole, or his part on Peary's journey to the pole, is really not the most impressive adventure. In that scene he comes off a little bumbling and non-authoritative. He's just a weaker link on the mission, sent back as soon as possible while the real men go on to the pole.

Father's awkward request for "coon songs" from Coalhouse Walker makes him seem somewhat foolish and socially un-intelligent. He is a little bit insulting, a little bit demeaning, but seems mostly just ignorant of what is socially acceptable.

And of course, there is Father's brilliant idea of taking the boy to a baseball game which provokes the above response from Mother. To clarify, she does check her impulse to call him an idiot, but you get the idea that it was a natural and fitting response to this idea. The baseball game has trouble written all over it for the father-son relationship. Actually, it turns out better than I anticipated, but all these scenes help create an idea in the reader's mind that Father is kind of an innocent idiot. He doesn't seem malicious, totally brainless, or reckless. Just sometimes foolish.

This set up then makes the end of Part III very interesting as Father looks like a voice of reason, a figure with authority and guts, a true mediator, not an idiot at all.

I think part of this comes from a reader's desire for the conflict in the book to be resolved. Readers don't want Coalhouse to blow up Morgan's collection; they don't want the Attorney General to have his way.

No, readers are looking for an ending to the drama, a satisfactory conclusion to the strife. So Father looks very clever, or at least strong and well-intentioned, as he tries to mediate between the two sides carrying messages back and forth. He wants to de-escalate the situation, which has the affect of making him appear more mature and reasonable than Younger Brother with his ideas of a revolution and violent approach to resolution.

And not only Father benefits from this, Coalhouse does too as he walks out into the rows of police and guards. Coalhouse is ready for an end to the conflict and for evident justice. He gets his car, and he trades the life of Conklin for the lives of his gang. So then he calmly turns himself over, knowing it would be death. Notice that Coalhouse, for all the violent acts he commits, doesn't come off as violent. Younger Brother seems violent. Coalhouse just seems to be in search of justice which is a form of reconciliation and restoration of things to their proper state. And if justice means he must die, then let justice be served.

So the two men who throughout the book have instances where they look idiotic (or insane in Coalhouse's case) in the final crisis come through as the most intelligent, well reasoned, respectable characters. I guess they aren't such idiots after all.

Morgan's Nose

Was anyone else expecting to get an illusion to Pinocchio in the passage about J.P. Morgan's nose on page 139? I was waiting, and waiting and it didn't come.

I checked it out, and the story was written in 1883, so it would have been a valid reference by the time of the novel. And the movie by Disney came out in 1940, so Doctorow's 1970s audience should have been as familiar with it as we are today.

It is completely appropriate since every time "he made an acquisition or manipulated a bond issue or took over an industry, another bright red pericarp burst into bloom."

It isn't exactly the same, but every time Morgan makes another business deal his nose gets uglier and larger just like Pinocchio's nose grows every time he tells a lie.

So why no Pinocchio?

Why does Doctorow use Nathanial Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" instead?

Okay, I guess Hawthorne is a little bit more highbrow than Pinocchio. And the moral of Hawthorne's story does fit Doctorow's point about Morgan's in-humanness a little bit better.

But still, he could have at least thrown in one little line about Pinocchio. It would have been so perfect!

The Postmodernist Doubt

The first time I really learned what postmodernism meant was about a year ago, on a Sunday morning, talking with some friends and our youth group leader. We were talking about doubt.

Our leader explained it like this: your generation has grown up in the postmodernist mindset that there is no universal truth, no system of meaning that has the right answer, and therefore you tend to doubt or question even those things that you are convinced are true.

You can find almost the same exact thing in "Postmodernism is Dead." Maybe he has read that article...

For me, this really resonates. I don't know whether this applies to people who are in their twenties and above, but for my age bracket it seems to sum things up well.

Take for example, religion and tolerance. The whole mantra of our generation in the US seems to be: "be tolerant" or "all religions are equally valid." It hasn't always been that way.  People used to be fully convinced that theirs was the only religion and the only truth. Of course, that led to some pretty nasty treatment of those who didn't agree with them so I'm not saying tolerance is all bad. I just think religious tolerance is an issue where it is easy to see the difference that a postmodernist mindset makes.

I wonder how much effect these postmodernist thoughts have on our mental health. Believing that nothing you believe is universally true is pretty disorienting, don't you think?