Asimov Would Like Me to Say: "That's funny ..."

For those of you unfamiliar with the Isaac Asimov quote I reference in the title of this post, I will repeat it for you here: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..." The following quote from Dobson's and Zagarell's chapter "Women Writing in the Early Republic" provoked a "that's funny" response from me: "[T]he proliferation of magazines specifically addressing female 'domestic' concerns provided opportunities in writing and editing that could take individual women out of the domestic arena" (374). This post is as far from a Eureka moment as one can get—and I'm definitely not heralding anything worthwhile (yet)—but this quote raised some interesting (at least for me) questions about gender roles and authorship. In our reading from last class, we saw how male authorship was defined by masculine values such as earning a living and supporting a growing family. Writing was not a worthy way for a man to spend his time, because he was ignoring his social role; however and I could be grossly misinterpreting our reading for today female authorship appears to have kept women from performing their prescribed social roles as well. I believe someone during the course of last class inquired about whether or not it was okay for a man to write about masculine topics such as participating in the market and earning money. I don't remember the exact answer, but I believe it was determined that regardless of topic, it was unacceptable for Early Republican men to be authors. Why would women be encourage to write to the detriment of their social roles, while men were punished for doing the same thing. I don't want to pull out a "double-standard" card, but i find this incredibly interesting; additionally, do not interpret my questions or anything in this blog as support for Early Republican ideas regarding gender roles. I don't want to say that women had it easy, nor do I say that men were some sort of victim (you shouldn't read until you find the victim anyway, it's a bad habit). Again, there could be something in this week's reading that I completely missed that discusses or expands upon this idea, but I wonder if these contrasting definitions of authorship along gender lines will warrant more attention in our discussion in class. I don't mean to say that a discussion of female authorship will only make sense in context of a discussion of male authorship, but perhaps we will have a better understanding of both if we talk about them together. Lots of disclaimers here...

It's Like the Night Before Christmas, but with Evolution

Twas the day before class and all through the house, not a creature was stirring because no one was home and my cat was asleep. After attending my first conference and presenting a paper using Literary Darwinism on a panel of the same focus, I sat down to read while visions of Darwinian fitness tests danced in my head. Okay, so it's nothing like "A Visit from St. Nicholas," but I thought I would try since it officially becomes Christmastime after Halloween. I really did present a paper, and I really couldn't shake those Darwinian thoughts. This inability to clear my mind probably explains why I was drawn to two specific characteristics of authorship that seemed to dissuade early American men from picking up the pen. It struck me as interesting that two of the major reasons why the role of the early American male author was shunned dealt with ideas of reproduction and survival.

Based on my reading of my reading of David Leverenz's chapter, "Men Writing in the Early Republic," male authorship was seen as an obstacle to sexual reproduction. Leverenz discusses Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne as examples of that view that male authorship impedes the propagation of one's genetic material: "Irving ... felt a lifelong lack of manliness because he had not married and established a family .... Hawthorne spent twelve years writing solitary tales about the dangers of being a solitary man" (Leverenz 354). A Darwinian reading of those two statements could spawn a nice little paper about the evolutionary role of art as developing cultural values and whatnot, but I'll refrain from going off on a tangent (mostly because it is way too big of an egg to crack for the purposes of this blog and my intellect). An unsuccessful male author (I use the words successful and unsuccessful here as indicators of financial stability) was unable to fulfill his genetic "destiny" so to speak; not only did he spend too much time writing and not copulating, but if the male author did manage to father offspring, he couldn't earn enough money to properly provide for his family. Even if a male author was successful, he still spent too much time writing and not enough time expanding the gene pool or participating in maintaining the physical welfare of society.

Despite these evolutionary tendencies, it should be noted that men still tried to become authors. Authorship must have had some important (dare I say instinctual?) role in human society that must be fulfilled. We all have our reasons for why art is vital, and I would be the last person to say that any one of these reasons is invalid, but the question remains: Why? Why keep pursuing this profession if it goes against one's own thoughts, beliefs, and tendencies? We've discussed this question (or at least a version of it in class), and I am still curious to get closer to the root of the developing role of authorship in the Early Republic. Yeah, I'm sorry for the title. I lured you in with visions of sugar-plums and I gave you an adjective noun of adjective plural noun. Boom! This post just got META! Thanks John Barth!

99.44% Pure!

For some reason a link came up to this video and I always get sentimental about Ivory soap because my namesake, Peter Dimitroff Simes was an Ivory soap cutter for most of his life (In addition to making me think about my ancestors, it raises a really probing question about soap). Great-grandpa Peter came to the United States from Bulgaria (rumor has it that he deserted the Bulgarian army just before WWI, because they marched the soldiers off to battle with swords and no guns; he also ran into his father for the last time while deserting, but that's another story) around 1918, settled in lovely Cincinnati, Ohio, and got a job at Proctor & Gamble cutting ivory soap. He worked there until he died in 1962; his death certificate even states "soap cutter" as his profession (I know because I've seen it!).

Peter D. Simes c. 1935 (left to right), great-uncle Peter Herman Simes, great-aunt Bernadette Simes, great-grandma Christina Simes (née Bunthoff), and great-uncle Frank as a toddler.

If you want to blame someone for having to interact with me on a weekly basis in this class, then blame Ivory soap (or Proctor & Gamble by extension), because that soap-cutting job led to my grandfather becoming a dentist; a career which helped him send my father to school; my father the engineer then helped me get to where I'm at today. Don't blame them, blame Ivory. However, you can't stay mad at it for long because after all, it floats!

Ivory Soap bar c. 1940s. There is a chance (albeit slim) that great-grandpa Peter cut this bar of soap.

On Sibylline Leaves, Political Saturnalia, and Death

Today I have a lot of random thoughts that popped up as I read for today. Most of what follows could best be classified as unfinished thoughts (if you're nice). After reading Andie Tucher's chapter "Periodical Press: Newspapers, Magazines, and Reviews," a few things caught my eye. First, I feel less bad about the "press" that Americans are delighted to read about today, because apparently it's always been pretty bad. It seems that the American public has always concerned itself with all that they should not waste their time reading, and that brings me comfort. I wonder if I'm having my generational moment when I claim that things were better in the good old days. When I was younger kids read more and paid more attention to texts. Did they really? Has my experience with books altered the way I view the differences between the generations. Unfortunately, I think that it has kept me from trying to understand how young people read now and prohibited me from trying to find the good in what is happening today with regards to literacy. As books and printed pages gradually become "Sibylline leaves" (as fellow Ohioan Dr. Daniel Drake recalls), does the quality of what we read diminish or has it simply transformed into something new? Regardless, I am confident that something good will come of this transition, and I only hope that I am part of what happens next.

Watch out Martin! It's the W.H.H. Express!

I feel better about the state of politics today, because nothing has changed. Again, I will claim that what is really exceptional about the United States is the fact that we are still here and we made it through the muck of the nineteenth century. I like how selling "the sizzle, not the steak" began with the election of 1840 and has become the dominant means of getting a candidate elected today. I think the Sizzler should have jumped in on this somehow and started a cheeky advertising campaign talking about how they are more than just the sizzle. Wait, nevermind ... Sizzler does just sell the sizzle. In order for them to sell the steak, they would actually need to sell something identifiable as steak. As dire as the news cycle makes everything seem, I think that it is simply the status quo. As much as the status quo displeases me, it has managed to get us through to this point. I'm not about to uproot two hundred years of mediocre tradition to try something new, because it would probably mean that I would have to work more.

Now on to a fun topic: death. It seems that Tucher describes the lifespan of periodicals much as one would a living organism: "By 1820, Tennessee and Kentucky had given birth to some one hundred thirty newspapers between them, of which fewer than thirty were still living" (396). She goes on to state to discuss the hard knocks of magazine life: "[B]y the end of the century, out of perhaps a hundred attempts, only two had lived as long as eight years. Most had died within a year of their founding" (397). I'll blame this observation on ignorance. Tucher could just be using the correct vocabulary when discussing this topic, but even if she is, there could be something gleaned from this usage. What does it say about us if we refer to our printed materials as living beings? What does that say about us if we don't? Does that idea transfer over to electronic media? Sadly, there seem to be more questions than answers when it comes to this idea of print as a living entity (at least for me).

Mad Tom

Devil: "Pull away, Pull away my son, don't fear, I'll give you all my assistance." Thomas Jefferson: "Oh, I fear it is stronger rooted than I expected but with the assistance of my old friend and a little more brandy, I'll bring it down."

Invisible Bullets

The title of this entry refers to Stephen Greenblatt's seminal essay of the same name (not this) in which Greenblatt discusses the Theory of Subversion and Containment (shout out to my Shakespeare classmates from last spring!). As I was reading Richard D. Brown's chapter "The Revolution's Legacy for the History of the Book," I was struck by the following passage:

Yet a republic of letters in which the radical works of Paine and of Mary Wollstonecraft ... circulated freely posed risks to liberty and threatened social stability, in the opinion of many gentlemen. It was imperative to create a correctly informed citizenry, and to this end prominent figures in the governing class set about creating new education institutions. (68, emphasis mine)

A light bulb that (for the most part) barely flickers and produces just enough light for neurons to find each other in the dark, suddenly gave off so much light that it was impossible for me to think about anything else. I was blinded by subversion and containment. As we've read (in Starr, Davidson, Gross, and now Brown), the dissemination of information and knowledge through the ever-increasing access to texts enabled the population of the Early Republic: "Ultimately, the Revolution's most powerful legacies were the uncapping of social aspirations and the opening of the republic of letters to diverse voices" (70); additionally, Brown states that this newly educated population, "not only brought government into the open buy also expanded participation in the public sphere" (59). There are some great benefits of this early print republic; education and literacy is tough to argue against. However, Brown touches on some ugly aspects of the formation of an American ideology (and by extension the formation of any ideology used to construct a national identity).

Brown states that, "the political upheaval of the Revolution subverted, without entirely supplanting, the social and cultural hierarchy that had sustained a significant measure of aristocracy and patriarchy in the colonial era" (60, emphasis mine). The general public was given access to knowledge and the ability to keep their representatives in check, which fostered a change from the colonies to the Republic. Step one: subvert ... check. However, the places where this knowledge was disseminated were set up by the same individuals who the the public was supposed to keep an eye on. Step two: contained ... check. The very idea that the Founders wanted to create a republic of letters is subversion and containment. Give the people access to something they were previously denied, but make sure that it's what we want them to know. I understand the Founders' intentions, but understanding of something without acknowledgement for the consequences is dangerous.

Now it's time for the I'm not un-American disclaimer: I'm not a proponent of anarchy and I see how subversion and containment was deemed necessary to facilitate a national identity and create unity among the states; however, it is always important to note that the foundations of the United States are not constructed of pure concrete. Sometimes, the builders had to spread the lime thin so there are parts that aren't as strong as they would have liked; in recognizing this, my positive view of the United States does not wain. Rather, I feel better for having a more complete understanding of this nation's history and the ability to recognize it's faults without tearing down for which it stands.I like to think that perhaps the Founders (at least some of them) really did have the citizens' interest in mind and cared about them.

Hey CNN!

I got your new motto right here: "From realms far distant and from Climes unknown, we make the Knowledge of [Hu]Mankind your own" (qtd. in Gross 6). How awesome would the news cycle be if every thirty minutes, James Earl Jones recited the quote listed above? On a more serious note, my feelings regarding our reading for today echo some of my fellow classmates, in that there is a lot here that we have seen before. However, there is some information that we haven't come across yet. I wonder how much all of our opinions regarding the reading will change once we get into the book; in other words, how much does the fact that what we read for today is an introduction to an extensive collection of essays (that cover a variety of different topics and perspectives) play into our beliefs. Of course there is going to be some overlap, but I think that Robert A. Gross does a substantially better job at presenting a more well-rounded approach to print culture of the Early Republic than Cathy N. Davidson or Paul Starr. Not that Davidson or Starr are without their merits, but by nature of what he has to accomplish in his introduction, Gross points to a number of different ideas that are ignored or slightly discussed by Davidson and Starr.

The first of these is geography and its role in shaping print culture in the United States. Whereas Starr claims that what developed was the result of American Exceptionalism, Gross cites the need to send information quickly across the expansive tracts of land now part of the burgeoning nation. The South is not treated as a stupid sibling of the North and Gross provides a logical and acceptable explanation for the lack of print culture below the Mason-Dixon. The sparsely populated South simply did not have the infrastructure present to facilitate the transmission of goods; moreover, it was not profitable for Norther booksellers to attempt to sell print goods to Southern readers. For Gross, it appears that geography was at the center of the print explosion that occurred during the Early Republic. Geography also serves to explain how decentralized the American printing industry became when compared to the British; this is a characteristic that (if I remember correctly, and I probably don't) Starr and Davidson fail to explain in an great detail.

Reading Gross, we get a larger sense of print culture in the Early Republic. Subjects such as children's literature, the progression of the novel, the rise of full-fledged publishers, the formation (or lack thereof) of a national identity, the role the telegraph played in the transformation of print culture, the rise of the penny press, and the influence of European culture on the American identity. All of these topics are discussed with more clarity by Gross than by either Davidson or Starr. With that said, I am sure that all of these topics are discussed in greater detail in the collection of essays that follows Gross's introduction, so he needed to at least touch on them to some extent in his introduction. However, I am already more interested to read on to discover whether or not I am correct than I have been with our previous readings.

The Ultimate Question of Literacy, Education, and the Reader

It occurs to me as I sit down to write this post, that all of my posts bare little resemblance to the title of this blog. The catalyst for my posts are conversations with classmates, discussions in class, and the reading. There is actually very little discussed about early national periodicals in this blog, but I can't make myself change the awesome design of this blog. Oh well, onward and upward. I seem to harp on change and the humanities (or something like it) in almost every post, so why should this time be different? As I read for my classes, plan lessons, and interact with students it becomes more evident that George Santayana is right: "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained ... infancy is perpetual." Ahh, yes. Everyone likes this quote. If you don't, your un-American. Just kidding, but only a little.

As we have discussed in class many times, the younger generations read differently than we do; they are capable of reading like us, but their literacy has adapted to their social needs. It seems that the early Republic went through something similar: "[T]he novel threatened not just to coexist with elite literature but to replace it, and its critics knew full well that changes in the primary reading of an increasingly greater number of people presaged far more than a faddish redeployment of leisure time" (Davidson 105). This new type of literacy threatens our discipline and with it the type of critical thinking we do about culture and the arts that gives depth to society and enables us to better understand who we are as a people.

Davidson goes on to discuss the quality of early Republic novels that (I think) corresponds to the new literacy emerging today: "[T]he early novel spoke to those not included in the established power structures of the early Republic and welcomed into the republic of letters citizens who had previously been invited, implicitly and explicitly, to stay out" (150). We are partly to blame for our current situation, in that we compartmentalized our discipline to such an extent that our knowledge was perceived by the outside world as esoteric. Esoteric is fine, but when your discipline acquires a label like that, it becomes difficult to survive. This misconception of our discipline keeps those new-literate generations at arms length. With our knowledge base out of reach, the new-literate will find the path of least resistance and most inclusion.

As literacy changes, we have refused to change with it. I'm not saying that we all have to stop reading Moby Dick and tweet ourselves to death; rather, I believe we need to become literate in the same way as our students. This is where Santayana comes in: retentiveness. If we allow a new type of literacy to completely supplant literacy as we knew it, then how can we hope to leave the world in a better position than when we found it? We must become multiliterate in order to transmit the knowledge (and the means to acquire it) to future generations. If we remain stubborn and stagnant, then all is lost and we leave future generations the grim prospect of rediscovering what we already know. We can get angry when someone calls into question the existence of our discipline and tell them that we're valuable; however, the time will come when we must justify our existence and simply telling someone won't do. We'll have to show them.

Look What I Made!

It's a girl! I'll never sleep well again.