[For this year’s April Fool’s series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural works with “fool” in the title. Share your thoughts on foolish texts, with or without the word, for a fool-hearty crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On two
inspiring layers to one of our most unique novels.
In this early
post, I wrote about the life and career of Albion Tourgée, one of my
favorite Americans for a wide variety of reasons (including but not limited to
those I detailed in that post). I had a good bit to say there about his first
novel A Fool’s
Errand, by One of the Fools (1879), so I’d ask you to check out
that post if you would and then come on back for some further thoughts.
Welcome
back! As I discussed in that post, the title of Tourgée’s novel is not
misleading, as it takes a consistently ironic and self-deprecating perspective
on its autobiographical protagonist’s efforts to contribute positively to
Reconstruction’s efforts. To be very clear, that doesn’t mean Tourgée is
critical of Reconstruction’s goals when it comes to African Americans and
equality (he dedicated his life to those goals, as I hope that prior post
illustrated at length), but rather that he recognizes that his own youthful, lofty
ambitions and sense of self-importance were severely punctured by his
experiences during Reconstruction and his recognition of the limitations of
both any individual’s reach and (more complicatedly to be sure) societal change.
I remain less cynical and more optimistic than the tone of Fool’s Errand
(yes, even in early 2025), but I nonetheless think being able to reflect
thoughtfully and critically on our own ambitions and arc is an important and
inspiring skill to model.
In both
that prior post and the paragraph above I focused on the real-life elements of Tourgée’s
book—the autobiographical echoes and the political and cultural contexts of
Reconstruction. But while those are undoubtedly present and perhaps even paramount
in the book, it’s important to add that it is a novel, a work of fiction, as
was Tourgée’s follow-up second book about the Black experience of
Reconstruction, Bricks
Without Straw (1880). Which is to say, having spent years serving as a
lawyer, politician, and journalist (careers he would continue fully and
successfully for the rest of his life), at the age of 40 Tourgée turned his
hand to creative writing and published not one but two novels in a two-year
span. And they’re good, with really interesting creative choices (such as the distanced
third-person narration of Fool’s) that engage his readers and get them
thinking about those aforementioned personal and political contexts. As someone
who’s own career and writing have evolved a good bit over the decades, and who
hopes that trend continues for the rest of my life, I find this aspect of Tourgée’s
not-at-all foolish books particularly inspiring as well.
Next
foolish text tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Foolish texts you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment