[On August 2nd, this AmericanStudier’s amazing younger sister celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’ll AmericanStudy interesting American siblings!]
On the
influential and inspiring relationship between America’s most talented pair of
brothers.
Of all the
topics I’ve researched, pondered, and analyzed over this blog’s nearly thirteen
years, I don’t think I’ve spent anywhere near as much time thinking about any
one of them (or maybe even all of them combined) compared to the relationship
between two close (in age and every other sense) brothers. My sons are 15.5
months apart (I know I should just say 16, but no, those two additional weeks
count!), and as far as I can tell, few if any aspects of their young lives (at
least until my older son leaves for college, which is so far in the future
still that who can even imagine it?!) are going to be untouched by that fact,
and by the complex interconnections it has already produced and continues to
produce. Obviously I have my fondest hopes for what that will mean (exemplified
right now by the way they cheer on each other’s divergent yet equally
impressive running careers) and my scariest worries about it (such as my fear
that if they drift apart it will have a profoundly negative influence on both
of their futures), but no matter what, this is clearly going to be a defining
relationship and influence in each of their lives.
I’m not
trying to put too much pressure on the boys, but you know who else were born
almost exactly 15.5 months apart? William
and Henry James, the brothers whose influences and talents extended into
virtually every aspect of late 19th and early 20th
century American and British society and culture. Perhaps the older William’s far-reaching investigations into
medicine, psychology, philosophy, and religion impacted more conversations and
communities than did the
younger Henry’s work as an author of fiction, drama, travel
writing, literary criticism, and autobiographies; but just as those branches of
the sciences and social sciences would not have been the same without William’s
impacts, so too were American and English literature and culture
profoundly impacted
by Henry’s works and ideas, style and themes. While I have no doubt that the
brothers would gladly have quarreled over whose legacy was more significant,
probably while at the same time making the case for each other’s importance,
the truth is that the combination is more impressive, and more accurate to
their collective legacies, than the competition.
Perhaps
the most overt and poignant tribute to that brotherly combination was written
by Henry himself, in the opening chapters of his memoir A Small
Boy and Others (1913). William had died a few years earlier,
in 1910, and while any memoir is likely produced by a number of psychological
factors, there’s no question that his brother was heavily on Henry’s mind as he
wrote this one. The opening chapter, in fact, begins this way: “In the attempt
to place together some particulars of the early life of William James and
present him in his setting, his immediate native and domestic air, so that any
future gathered memorials of him might become the more intelligible and
interesting, I found one of the consequences of my interrogation of the past
assert itself a good deal at the expense of some of the others.” It’s not at
all clear at this point, nor for many chapters, whether the titular small boy
is Henry or William; and since the text continues to focus on the pair of them
for many more chapters (indeed more than half of the chapters), it could with
just as much accuracy be titled Two Small
Boys. Boys whose lives and legacies would likewise always and compellingly
be interconnected.
Last
siblings tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?
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