[For this year’s
installment in my annual
series of holiday
wishes for those mischievous AmericanStudies
Elves, I’ll be expressing wishes for figures from American history whom we
should better remember. Share your nominees in comments and happy holidays!]
On the important
advice a prolific author, journalist, and activist might offer us all.
Once again, I’ve
written
a good bit previously in this space about the Russian Jewish immigrant
editor and journalist, creative writer, and socialist and labor activist Abraham
Cahan, and so wanted to use this first paragraph to highlight
those posts so you can check them out if you’re able.
Welcome back! Clearly
Cahan left his mark on American literature, culture, and society in numerous
ways, but one of the most longstanding and likely influential (if its
influences were more personal and so somewhat difficult to quantify) was with
his “Bintel
Brief” column. Written for the Jewish
Daily Forward (Forverts), the
Yiddish-language newspaper Cahan founded and edited for many years, the “Brief”
featured letters from readers asking for advice, as well as Cahan’s thoughtful
and wise responses to those letters and requests. The questions spanned a huge
range of topics, from those more specific to Jewish and/or immigrant American communities
to more universal subjects (such as parenting and romance). What did not
change, however, was the depth and quality of Cahan’s responses—while his
overall career featured many more stages and sides than is the case for more
dedicated advice columnists like the sisters Ann
Landers and Abigail Van Buren, I would nonetheless put Cahan right
alongside them as a model of this difficult skill of public advice-giving.
So if Cahan were
still doling out great advice in this early 21st century moment,
what might he have to say about our collective situation and struggles? (To be
clear, Elves, my main wish is that we better remember and read his work, so
that we can take his multi-layered lessons as directly as possible. But I’m
gonna attempt to speak for him for a moment here nonetheless.) To my mind, one
of his main emphases would be that we still desperately need more
self-reflection on and analyses of our national narratives and myths. As I
wrote in
this post, Cahan’s masterpiece, the 1917 novel The
Rise of David Levinsky, provides such reflections and analyses for
narratives like “rags to riches,” the “self-made man,” and the American Dream;
that it does so not through direct authorial commentary but rather through the
complex, contradictory psychology and emotions of its title character and
first-person narrator, only strengthens its modeling of those skills of
reflection and analysis. Moreover, David’s status as a first-generation Russian
Jewish immigrant also allows for reflection and analysis (from his audience as
much as from him) of other national myths, including those that emphasize “Anglo,”
“Christian,”
or other homogeneous origins of American identity. All subjects on which much
more reflection is needed here in late 2019.
December Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. Figures (or
stories, histories, texts, etc.) you wish we’d better remember?
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