April 24, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Haiti in 2010

[125 years ago this coming weekend, the first name in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On two distinct but interconnected ways to AmericanStudy a Caribbean catastrophe.

First things first (and I know I offer this disclaimer often when I write about global events and issues, but I think it bears repeating each and every time): the horrific earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010 is a specific event and history, our understandings of and engagements with which must be centered on that island nation and its people. The hundreds of thousands of Haitians killed and millions more uprooted, the hundreds of thousands of destroyed or severely damaged homes and other buildings (including the National Palace), the urgent and still in many ways ongoing humanitarian crises that resulted from all those and many more effects; these tragedies have to be framed and responded to as centrally and fundamentally Haitian, and nothing I say on an AmericanStudies blog is meant to redirect or minimize that attention.

Yet of course the United States is linked to the rest of the world, and in some specific cases it’s even more clearly and significantly connected in ways that demand we also engage such global stories in terms of what they help us see in ourselves. I’m not sure there’s any other nation of which that’s more true than Haiti: from its early 19^th century Revolution and the both inspiring and fraught effects of that event in the Early Republic U.S.; to the striking number of 20^th century moments in which the U.S. directly intervened in Haitian politics, including an extended (nearly two-decade, in fact) occupation early in the century and an ambiguous but unquestionable influence on a coup at the turn of the next century; the United States and Haiti have played as prominent a role in each other’s histories over the last couple centuries as any two Western Hemisphere nations. When the U.S. helped spearhead relief and recovery efforts after the quake, particularly the January 22^nd “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon, that role has to be understood as in some way connected to these longstanding relationships—whether a continuation of US interventions, guilt for that history, or some combination of the two and other factors as well.

But that’s not the only way to AmericanStudy the U.S.’s role in the earthquake’s aftermath, and I would say it’s at least as meaningful to understand this moment as part of a humanitarian foreign policy alternative to those histories of global intervention and realpolitik influence. No American political leader embodied that humanitarian perspective better than President Jimmy Carter (RIP), and Carter was of course still doing that humanitarian work long after his presidency, including in Haiti with those affected by the earthquake. And while that humanitarian perspective and role can and should be extended anywhere in the world, it’s perhaps especially meaningful in a Western Hemisphere context—given the U.S.’s history of interventions and interference, but also and maybe even more importantly given the concept of creolization, of the ways in which we can even more fully parallel the histories, communities, and identities of nations like the U.S. and Haiti. In at least some ways, that is, the 2010 earthquake hit us as well.

Last quake tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 23, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: The Indian Ocean in 2004

[125 years ago this coming weekend, the first name in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On three cultural works that can help us remember one of the most devastating natural disasters in recorded human history.

1)      Paint the Sky with Stars (2005): This poetry collection, edited by British author Stephen Robert Kuta, brought together the voices of those directly affected by the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami alongside many other poets and artists. All proceeds from the book’s publication went to the Tsunami Relief Fund, making it a worthwhile project to support in any case. But I would add that, while some of the poems do represent a frustratingly external (ie, Western) view of the tragedy, many were indeed authored by folks from the countries most affected, offering a vital view into those communities and experiences.

2)      “12/26” (2006): Speaking of complicatedly Western perspectives, the idea of a white American singer-songwriter writing a song which features (in part) the point of view of a non-white young woman whose family and community were destroyed by the tsunami is, to say the least, a fraught starting point. But I think Kimya Dawson walked that line pretty effectively, balancing that distinct perspective with her own point of view, details of the tragedy and its effects with critiques of the US government and response, first-hand experiences with second-hand but still related issues, and more. I was glad to learn about this song while researching this post, and plan to return to it.

3)      The Impossible (2012): A Hollywood film featuring two current mega-stars (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts) and a young actor who would soon become one (Tom Holland in his first on-screen role) was bound to come down on a particular side of that aforementioned cultural line, and there’s no doubt that a good bit of this film focuses on the experiences of the white tourist family at its center. But as I remember it (I saw it not long after it came out), it did both depict the tsunami with striking realism and portray its effects on local communities with depth and pathos—and since the film likely wouldn’t have been made without the initial star power, it’s fair to say that it represents at least a better-case scenario for how global cultural works can engage with this tragic quake and its aftermaths.

Next quake tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 22, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Three Other California Quakes

[125 years ago this coming weekend, the first name in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On one striking detail about each of three quakes that followed the 1906 disaster on which I focused in yesterday’s post.

1)      San Fernando in 1971: Perhaps the worst quake to hit California since 1906, this hugely destructive disaster was also (as that hyperlinked website highlights at length) strikingly productive, resulting in a number of new policies, laws, and research programs that substantially improved the state’s infrastructure and disaster readiness. I’d point in particular to the Earthquake Clearinghouse, a groundbreaking resource (bad pun intended, but also it really was and is) that has become a model for how multiple scientists and organizations can share information and ideas.

2)      The Bay Area in 1989: No amount of preparation or readiness could prevent earthquakes from occurring, of course, and the next major one would hit the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area (the first major quake in that region since 1906) in October 1989. Like the 1906 quake, this one’s epicenter was on the San Andreas fault, which to my understanding remains the most fragile site for such disasters to this day. But for this AmericanStudier, as I’m sure for many Americans then and since, what made this quake truly stand out was its impact on the World Series, the first and to date only that featured the two Bay Area teams—and which was delayed for a week due to the quake.

3)      Northridge in 1994: To come full circle to my first item, this catastrophic Southern California quake was particularly ironic because it came four years after the California Legislature passed  the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act of 1990. As with most bureaucratic processes, the actual such mapping had proceeded slowly, and likely had not been able to take much effect by the time of this January 1994 quake (which would be, perhaps unrelatedly but perhaps not, the costliest earthquake in US history). In any case, this disaster certainly sped up the mapping and zoning processes, and in the decades since Northridge a great deal of Southern California and the state overall have been assessed and developed to make them safer before the next big one.

Next quake tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 21, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: San Francisco in 1906

[125 years ago this coming weekend, the first name in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On two distinct, equally inspiring communal responses to one of our most destructive disasters.

The April 18^th, 1906 earthquake that struck the coast of Northern California, with a particular locus of the San Francisco Bay Area, was itself a particularly destructive one, measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale and hitting the maximum level of Mercalli intensity of XI (both of those measures were developed in the 1930s, and so have been applied retroactively to estimate the quake’s force and effects). But it was the fires that developed throughout the city in the quake’s aftermath—some started by firefighters themselves while dynamiting buildings to create firebreaks; others supposedly started by homeowners seeking insurance payouts; but most simply the effects of a natural disaster on a largely wooden city—that produced the most widespread destruction; by the times those fires died down several days later, an estimated 80% of San Francisco had been destroyed. Well more than half of the city’s population of 410,000 were left homeless by the quake and fires, with refugee camps in areas such as the Presidio and Golden Gate Park still in operation two years later. Although the relatively new technology of photography and the very new technology of film allowed the quake’s effects to be catalogued more overtly than for any prior disaster, amplifying the destruction’s public visibility, by any measure and with or without such records the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was one of America’s most horrific natural disasters.

No amount of inspiring responses to that tragedy can ameliorate its horrors and destructions, and I don’t intend for the next two paragraphs to do so. Yet in the aftermath of the earthquake, San Francisco communities did respond to it in a couple of distinct but equally compelling and inspiring ways. In the quake’s immediate aftermath, the city’s residents began to set up emergency procedures and services with striking speed and effectiveness, a process documented and celebrated by none other than William James. The pioneering American psychologist and scholar was teaching at nearby Stanford at the time, and, after waking up to the earthquake, managed to journey into San Francisco later that day and to observe at length the city’s and community’s ongoing responses to the quake. He detailed those observations in Chapter IX, “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake,” in 1911 book Memories and Studies, describing what he saw as “a temper of helpfulness beyond the counting” and noting that, while “there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before the weeks and months are over, … meanwhile the commonest men [used in a gender-neutral way, I believe], simply because they are men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing this admirable fortitude of temper.” While not all American disasters have produced that same communal spirit (as we’ll see later in the week’s series), it does represent a consistent historical thread, and James’s observations ring true across many such moments.

The other inspiring response to the earthquake came from a more specific San Francisco community, and represented an opportunity to challenge a discriminatory and unjust law. By 1906 the Chinese Exclusion Act and its many subsequent extensions had been in operation for a quarter century, leading to both the detention and exclusion of Chinese arrivals and numerous hardships for existing Chinese American families and communities (such as San Francisco’s century-old Chinatown). When the 1906 fires destroyed numerous public birth records, members of those Chinese and Chinese American communities saw a chance to resist and circumvent those laws, and the concept of the “paper sons” was born. Current Chinese American men and families would produce fraudulent birth documents, whether for children born in China or to be sold or given to other unrelated young men, in order to claim them as having been born in America and thus U.S. citizens (itself certainly a fraught category for this community, but one to which, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1898’s United States vs. Wong Kim Ark decision, the 14^th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship still applied). Despite its unequivocal horrors and losses, then, the 1906 earthquake allowed for the city’s and nation’s Chinese American community to continue and grow despite the Exclusion era’s xenophobic limitations, a positive and inspiring outcome to be sure.

Next quake tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 19-20, 2025: Kyle Railton’s Guest Post on the OJ Simpson Trial

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to this repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Hey everyone, my name is Kyle Railton and I am an upcoming senior in high school. As you can tell by my last name, I am the son of the legendary professor Ben Railton, and writing for my dad’s blog has been on my bucket list for a while, so it is an honor to get the chance! I have been semi-interested in the O.J. Simpson trial for some time, hearing occasional things about how he was guilty, the lawyers messed up, the gloves, etc., but I only became very invested in the past year, when I began a school project about the case. It was in my American Legal Studies class, and I chose to read The Run of His Life, the book by Jeffery Toobin, which quickly fascinated me about every aspect of the case: the media, lawyers, drama, and especially the defendant–O.J. Simpson.  

As I continued to learn more about the case, a couple of parts of the case bothered me the most. I will preface this by stating that I do believe that O.J. committed the crime, despite the mistakes from the prosecution and the alternate theories proposed by the dream team. Firstly, I believe that the trial did not deliver justice, as America’s justice system is supposed to do, implied by the name. One of the main focuses of the American Legal elective I took this past school year was to study what justice was, and how courts are expected to promote justice through application of the law. However, I saw this entire case, specifically the outcome, as not proper justice, because many external factors influenced the not guilty verdict. For example, the media played a crucial role since the discovery of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, negatively affecting and manipulating perceptions of the trial to the public, even before the jury was selected. Many people saw the police as “mistreating” O.J. Simpson when rather the LAPD had treated O.J. Simpson like royalty many times in the past, and he was close with many officers. Additionally, race was almost certainly a deciding factor in the case, which was exacerbated by the media and constant coverage of the case. While it is obvious that Mark Furhman was extremely racist–a nazi even–and the LAPD has a horrific history of racial prejudice and police brutality, these facts had nothing to do with O.J. Simpson’s case. As mentioned in Toobin’s book, they were specifically used as the “race card” to get Simpson free. The reason I see this as a massive injustice is because there is lots of racial profiling in the court system and police forces across America, but this case was not an instance of racist police officers framing an African American man. Now, it is completely understandable why many would believe that the LAPD framed O.J., but this use of the “race card” only opens the world up to criticism when actual racist incidents come, as they too often do because then Americans claim that it is just another use of the “race card.” I remember a hilarious quote from a show I watched with my family based on the O.J. trial, which goes something like, “O.J. Simpson is the first defendant to get acquitted because he is Black!” Race has never been a black-and-white subject in America, and while it is unfortunately impossible to change the past and convict O.J. Simpson, it is possible to build and grow as a nation, which starts with learning from the history of America’s complicated justice system. 

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any responses I can pass along to Kyle!

April 18, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Chinchillas

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Three ways to contextualize my son’s favorite animal (and one of the cutest out there, just objectively, you know it’s true).

1)      Exotic pets: I wrote a good bit in that post on ostrich racing on both exotic pets overall and my sons’ interest in them in particular (focusing there on alpacas, another favorite of the boys’ and one featured at my wedding!). I certainly get critiques of exotic animal fads, such as the pot-bellied pigs a few decades back who ended up being left at shelters or just abandoned altogether far too often. But in truth, chinchillas are not radically different from many other rodents frequently kept as pets, from guinea pigs to hamsters to gerbils and more. Yes, they require a bit of specialized care, but every animal is unique in its needs. And the benefits more than speak for themselves.

2)      Fur is murder: Most of the chinchillas in the world these days are indeed kept as pets, as both of the chinchilla species in the wild have become extremely endangered. There are a few reasons, but by far the most significant is hunting for their fur, which has been prized for items like coats for a long time. (Even Jay-Z references chinchilla fur as the gold standard in his rap verse on his wife Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.”) I’d like to think that we’ve all realized here in 2025 that fur is indeed murder, but just in case not: the only place chinchilla fur should be found is on chinchillas.

3)      Animal Adventures: Young Kyle had been a fan of chinchillas for a while before he had the chance to meet one in person, but when he did it took things to a whole ‘nother level. That was thanks to the folks at this local animal rescue business, and specifically to their featured exhibit at the awesome Kimball Farms in Westford, MA. When they let Kyle take part in a performance and hold a chinchilla on his head (as well as in his arms, natch), my younger son’s fondness for not just this particular animal, but all cute animals, was truly cemented—and despite his thoroughly mature 18 year old self, that fondness remains, one of so many things I love about him.

Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 17, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Track & Field Fighters

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

In honor of a track career which has faced way more than its share of setbacks (from all of which Kyle has bounced back and then some), quick hits on five moments when track & field stars fought the good fight.

1)      Jim Thorpe: Being a Native American athlete brought up on a reservation who became known as the greatest American athlete of the 20^th century would be more than enough to earn Jim Thorpe a spot on this list, as would his genuine successes at more than a few distinct sports. But for a post on track & field fielders, I’ll highlight the story—hard to confirm, but I’m very willing to believe it—that the reason Thorpe is wearing two different shoes in pictures from the 1912 Olympics is that his were stolen and so he found two mismatched ones in the trash and wore them when he set hugely longstanding records in the decathlon.

2)      Babe Didrikson Zaharias: I wrote about Zaharias’s Olympic track & field achievements at the 1932 Games (when she was known as Babe Didrikson), among many other inspiring layers to her sports successes, in that hyperlinked post. Her fight was against the kind of sexism that led sportswriter Joe Williams to write, as I noted in that post, that “it would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up, and waited for the phone to ring.” Don’t hold your breath, Joe.

3)      Jesse Owens: I don’t know that I can detail Owens’s track & field fights, triumphs, and tragedies any more clearly than I did in that hyperlinked Saturday Evening Post Considering History column. Check it out and c’mon back!

4)      Mexico City: Like many other commentators have over the last decade, in that hyperlinked post I linked Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s 1968 Black Power protest to Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 anthem protests. But while I stand by that comparison, it’s important that we not minimize how much more danger Smith and Carlos were putting themselves in—Kaepernick has faced countless consequences for his courageous stand, but in 1968 (as throughout the decade) African American leaders were being murdered left and right by white supremacist domestic terrorists. There are few braver protests in our history.

5)      Caster Semenya: Semenya’s story is far more multilayered than I can do justice to in this brief space, but the simple and crucial fact is this: due to aspects of her specific human body, ones that are no different from Michael Phelps’s extra-long wingspan or any number of other quirks possessed by great athletes, Semenya has been targeted time and again by both transphobic hate and official sanctions. That she has consistently fought back and continued to compete and to do so at the highest level makes her a fighter any track & field athlete, and any human for that matter, should be inspired by.

Last context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 16, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Musical Crossovers

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is a big fan of Kane Brown (whom he and his brother recently got to see in concert!), and also has a personal playlist that moves smoothly between hard-core rap, hip hop, and country, so I wanted to dedicate this post to highlighting a handful of examples of historic musical crossovers:

1)      Popera Performances: Perhaps the most striking crossover genre is popera, a form that combines one of the oldest enduring forms of musical performance with one of its most overtly contemporary. That hyperlinked last.fm page highlights many of the individual artists who have embodied this combinatory cultural medium, but I would also note that many popera performances feature duets between artists in each respective genre. Either way, popera represents what’s possible when genres truly crossover.

2)      Anthrax and Rap: At a very, very different place on the crossover spectrum is Anthrax, a heavy metal band who had been profoundly influenced by rap & hip hop, incorporated those genres into their own music, and then produced pioneering collaborations such as their song with rap legends Public Enemy. Much is (rightly) made of Aerosmith and Run-DMC’s collab, but that a remix of an exiting song, while Anthrax’s multilayered crossovers and collabs were original and to my mind even more groundbreaking.

3)      Jones Jazzes Up Pop: These next two are just individual artists whose music crosses generic boundaries. Jazz and pop have been crossing over since at least Louis Armstrong (and we could say since Scott Joplin himself), but in the 21^st century no artist embodies that crossover combination better than Norah Jones. Through nine studio albums and a great deal more, Jones have brought the worlds and audiences of jazz and pop together in groundbreaking ways, creating profoundly American music in the process.

4)      Lil Nas Xplodes: It’s not a hierarchy nor a competition, but I’d say that a crossover between hip hop and country is even more profoundly American (or at least more rare), though. We’ve seen a variety of such crossover artists as well as songs in recent years, with Kane Brown himself high on the list. But no hip hop-country crossover artist and song achieved more success, nor as I wrote in the hyperlinked post at the start of this entry generated more controversy, than did Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road.” And honestly, if he’s making white racists mad, he’s doing exactly what crossovers should do.

5)      Parton Rocks Out: This is a simpler one—I just really love that country (and American, and universal) legend Dolly Parton recently released an album of rock and roll originals and covers, and by all counts it is phenomenal. Not sure it’ll end up on Kyle’s playlist, but it’s definitely on mine!

Next context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Three significant stages in the evolution of the nation’s preeminent civil rights organization (and one with which my blossoming future lawyer and/or activist of a younger son has connected in multiple ways over the last few years):

1)      1910s and 20s Origins: The ACLU evolved out of another organization, the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), which was founded during World War I (or the Great War, as it was then known) to defend anti-war speech and conscientious objectors among other causes. The official co-founders were Crystal Eastman and Roger Nash Baldwin, but original members also included such luminaries as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, Felix Frankfurter, and the dissenting anti-war Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. Its WWI activisms certainly put the NLCB (which Baldwin renamed the ACLU in 1920 when he became its sole director) on the map, but it was its central role in the Scopes Trial (about which I blogged a few weeks ago) which truly launched the organization into national prominence.

2)      Japanese incarceration: I wrote at length in my book We the People about the role that Baldwin and the ACLU played in the early opposition to the Japanese incarceration policy, leading up to their key role in all of the major court cases opposing that policy, from the unsuccessful but influential Korematsu v. United States to the successful and even more influential Ex parte Endo. While in hindsight it might be easy to see those efforts as right (although these days I’m not at all sure that’d be a shared perspective), it’s important to note that Japanese incarceration was quite popular in its era, supported by a significant majority of Americans, and indeed seen by many as part of the war effort, making opposition to it potentially treasonous as well as unpopular. But the ACLU pursued that opposition nonetheless, to my mind one of the most courageous organizational actions of the 20^th century.

3)      Loving v. Virginia: A couple decades later, the ACLU took another unpopular and courageous stand, if perhaps one that also reflected a changing society that was coming around to the organization’s civil liberties and rights emphases. When young Black woman Mildred Jeter Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for help staying together with her white husband Richard Loving despite Virginia’s laws prohibiting their marriage, Kennedy referred the couple to the ACLU, who represented them in their landmark Supreme Court case. Given that I grew up in Virginia and that my sons are the product of an interracial marriage, it’s fair to say that this item represents a truly multilayered context for Kyle!

Next context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 14, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Younger Siblings

[This week, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’s blog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat of his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is a younger sibling to a very impressive older brother, a situation which it seems to me often leads the younger sibling to carve out their own identity and future very fully (and certainly has for Kyle). Here are a few prior posts where I highlighted such badass sibling duos and dynamics:

1)      Henry and William James

2)      Serena and Venus Williams

3)      Angelina and Sarah Grimké

Next context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemme know any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 12-13, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ve highlighted a handful of them, leading up to this weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

Four great public scholarly takes on Fitzgerald’s novel, and a request for more!

1)      Matthew Teutsch: My friend and online collaborator Matthew has written about Fitzgerald’s novel multiple times, but I particularly enjoyed the chance to read this multi-part account (part two is linked at the bottom) of his excellent Fulbright lecture on the book (and not because he engages so thoughtfully with my own takes, although I sure do appreciate that).

2)      Stephanie Powell Watts: In that lecture Matthew also engages with Watts’s take on the book in this LitHub piece, which remains one of the single most thoughtful intersections of autobiography and analysis I’ve ever encountered. A must-read!

3)      Wesley Morris: Morris’s intro to the 2021 Modern Library edition of the novel, reprinted by The Paris Review at that hyperlink, is also a must-read (honestly all four of these pieces are for anyone who wants to engage with Fitzgerald’s novel beyond its own stunning prose). I particularly like that he doesn’t take for granted our reading of the book—yes, it’s often assigned by teachers, including me, but we should still think long and hard about why we read it, as Morris models so thoughtfully here.

4)      Jillian Cantor: I tried to engage with Daisy Buchanan a lot and Myrtle Wilson a bit in my earlier posts this week, but there’s still much more to say about women in Fitzgerald’s novel, and Cantor’s LitHub piece says a great deal very powerfully.

5)      Add your suggestions (including your own work) here!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts, yours or others’?

April 11, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Novelist-Narrators

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

As I hope this week’s series has reflected, there are a lot of layers to Fitzgerald’s novel and its AmericanStudies contexts, a lot of reasons why it has endured as fully as it has for the 100 years since its publication. But high on the list has to be his complex and crucial use of a novelist-narrator, a storytelling voice who is a character in the story but also and perhaps especially a novelist crafting the text that we’re reading. That’s a device that many of our most interesting novels have used, and used specifically to consider the American Dream, as I argued in this 2011 American Literary Realism article. It’s available in full at that link, so in lieu of a final post in this series I’d ask you to check out that article if you’re interested, and let me know any thoughts if you do please!

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 10, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s American Dreams

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

On two contrasting but also interconnected ways to analyze the novel’s title character and themes.

On the actual centennial of Gatsby’s publication, I have to start by noting that apparently, at the very last minute (and thus too far into the publishing process), Fitzgerald tried to get the book’s title changed to Under the Red, White, and Blue. That hyperlinked piece features info about a recent public scholarly book, Greil Marcus’s Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby (2021), which takes Fitzgerald’s alternate title as a starting point for thinking about the book’s, it’s era’s, and our own engagements with key American themes. Since I’m going to do the same here (having so far read only excerpts of Marcus’s book, although I hope to check the whole thing out soon as it looks great), I wanted to shout-out Marcus’s work as well as Fitzgerald’s original title, before offering my own considerations of Gatsby’s American Dream (which is also, as that hyperlinked record label page reflects, the name of an indie rock band, reflecting just how ubiquitous this association has been).

On the one hand, Gatsby’s American Dream seems at best profoundly ironic, and at worst entirely fake and false. After all, the centerpiece of his dreams is Daisy Buchanan, a character who is not only married to someone else, and an awful someone at that (the exemplary American white supremacist Tom Buchanan), but whose most defining action in the novel is the accidental murder of another character (the tragic Myrtle Wilson, whom I mentioned in last week’s final post as a perspective we need to consider more fully and then am not really considering more fully this week—my bad, Myrtle!) from which she literally and figuratively flees, leaving her supposed love to take the fall. At the novel’s conclusion, its narrator Nick says of Daisy and Tom that “They were careless people…they shamed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made,” and if we even somewhat agree with Nick, we have to recognize that Gatsby’s dreams and his titular greatness alike are built on a very shaky foundation.

But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Daisy herself can be read as a far more nuanced and sympathetic character than Nick’s vision of her suggests (Tom definitely can’t, but he can within this alternative frame be read as abusive toward Daisy, just as he physically abuses Myrtle in their one scene together in the novel), as both flawed and full of potential in ways that in this reading would parallel Gatsby and help explain their mutual attraction. But Gatsby’s dreams are also not limited to Daisy, especially as the reader learns more about Gatsby (or James Gatz, as he was born) in his childhood and youthful identity, experiences, perspectives, and arc. That young man’s goals of moving beyond the horizons of his parents and his hometown, of remaking himself, of pursuing his own future rather than being defined by what had come before, are, as the novel’s iconic final lines illustrate, very much the story of America as well, from its founding (whenever and however we locate that moment) on down. The fact that he doesn’t quite succeed, or rather that the past remains with him as he moves into that future, could be read as a failure or as ironic or etc.—but it could also be read as deeply human, as the intersection of the worst and best that defines us all, individuals and nations alike.

Last GatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 9, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Foshay Tower

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

[NB. I originally wrote this post for an August 2013 series on things I had recently learned, but both that spirit and the specifics remain entirely relevant here in April 2025!]

On the building and enterpreneur that bring an American icon to life.

The Midwest in general, and Minnesota in particular, occupy important places in Jay Gatsby’s story. F. Scott Fitzgerald himself had been born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the state’s capital and the twin city to Minneapolis; while Fitzgerald gives Gatsby an unspecified North Dakota birthplace, he has him attend college (briefly) at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. And while Gatsby spends the rest of his tragically short life running away from those Midwestern origin points, Nick Carraway argues in the book’s concluding moments that the story has been a profoundly Western (by which, given the locations to which he’s referring, he means what we would call Midwestern) one.

I’ve recently learned about a Minneapolis history that reverses Gatsby’s geographic trajectory but seems in many ways to mirror his identity. Wilbur Foshay, born in upstate New York, moved to Minneapolis in the 1920s to pursue his dreams of wealth and success, and like Gatsby he embodied those dreams in a spectacular, garish edifice. For Foshay that building was not a mansion but a skyscraper, Foshay Tower; modeled after the Washington Monument, an early encounter with which Foshay credited with inspiring his dreams, the Tower was completed in 1929, at a dedication ceremony that included a march written for the occasion and conducted by John Philip Sousa. And Foshay’s dreams crashed as suddenly and nearly as dramatically as Gatsby’s: first with the Great Depression, which began only months after the dedication and left the Tower unoccupied; and then with a famous trial in which Foshay was convicted of mail fraud (for running a pyramid scheme) and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Foshay’s story doesn’t end there—President Roosevelt granted him a partial pardon, commuting 10 years off the sentence—and I’m interested to learn more about what seems to me just as iconic a story of the 1920s and the American Dream as Fitzgerald’s novel. America is full of such complex and compelling identities and stories—enough to spend a career AmericanStudying them!

Next GatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 8, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Three Phone Calls

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

On three phone calls that illustrate the classic novel’s thoughtful portrayal of Modern technologies.

When you teach a book as often as I have F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), you start to focus on different layers each time. Along with the dialogues with other authors/works like Nella Larsen’s Passing that I talk about in that hyperlinked post, in my last couple times reading and teaching the novel I’ve thought a lot about just how many early 20^th century technologies play central roles in its story. That’s especially true of automobiles, of course; not only in the book’s climactic events (which I won’t spoil here for the few people who managed not to read Fitzgerald’s novel in high school), but in the central presence (geographically as well as symbolically) of Wilson’s gas station and auto repair shop. It’s true of Hollywood film, both in presences at Gatsby’s parties (and Fitzgerald’s career) and in the novel’s underlying themes of surface and depth, illusion and reality. But it’s also certainly true of the still relatively new technology, particularly when it comes to the idea of every household having one, that was the telephone.

As we meet the novel’s main characters in the opening few chapters, Fitzgerald uses a couple key phone calls to present mysterious and ambiguous sides to them. In Chapter 1, as Nick Carraway visits the beautiful home of his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom for a dinner party, Tom gets a mysterious phone call; Daisy suspects that it’s his mistress on the other end, but of course can’t know for certain to whom he’s speaking. In Chapter 3, as Nick attends one of the lavish parties at his neighbor Jay Gatsby’s mansion, Gatsby gets a mysterious call; other partygoers suggest that it’s a criminal business partner of Gatsby’s on the other end, but of course no one knows for certain to whom he’s speaking. These calls reveal both men as defined by secrets, dynamics that precisely because of their ambiguity are a source of intense speculation by those around them. And those secrets can only be maintained in these scenes because of the technology of the phone, without which their conversants would have to visit in person (or write a letter, which of course would be far less immediate).

[Serious SPOILERS in this paragraph.] At the end of the novel, after all the aforementioned climactic events have unfolded, Nick has his own, quite different phone call. He is trying to organize a funeral for Gatsby (or maybe James Gatz, since his father who knows him by that name is one of the few who attends that tragic event), and manages to speak with Gatsby’s elusive business partner Meyer Wolfshiem on the phone. In one of the novel’s only moments where a character says directly what he’s feeling and thinking, shares what seems at least to be the unvarnished truth (even when Gatsby and Nick have their heart-to-hearts, it’s always an open question whether Gatsby is telling the truth), Wolfshiem confesses to Nick that he can’t possibly be seen at the funeral, that it would be far too destructive for his reputation and relationships. This is the side of the telephone that allows us to be more honest, more ourselves, in its conversations than we might manage to be if had to face someone and something in the flesh. Just another layer to how Fitzgerald’s novel reflects the technologies and contexts of its rapidly evolving Modernist world.

Next GatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?

April 7, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Gatsby’s Pool

[On April 10^th, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have my problems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential and important novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post featuring fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

On the tragic dip that’s as difficult to pin down as the man taking it.

Jay Gatsby spends his final moments relaxing in his home’s luxurious swimming pool. As Nick Carraway is about to leave his neighbor for what turns out to be the last time, Gatsby’s gardener arrives to drain the pool; fall is arriving and the gardener is worried that “leaves’ll start falling pretty soon and then there’s always trouble with the pipes.” But Gatsby asks him to hold off for one more day, noting to Nick, “you know, old sport, I’ve never used that pool all summer.” And so it is during Gatsby’s first and only dip in his own swimming pool, lying on “a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer,” that the grieving George Wilson arrives, an “ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.” Wilson is armed and crazed, seeking vengeance for the tragic death of his wife Myrtle, and kills both Gatsby and himself.

It’s a striking and evocative image and moment, as so many of Fitzgerald’s are. And like so many others in the novel, it seems clearly symbolic—but of what, exactly? The imminent shift in seasons feels significant—Gatsby is a novel of summer, and here the season has ended but Gatsby is not willing to let it go, not least because he has not yet had a chance to enjoy it. Or perhaps the pool is simply a microcosm of Gatsby’s palatial home—the height of luxury and excess, of the Roaring 20s and their decadent atmosphere, but offering those thrills less for its actual owner (who barely makes use of it as anything other than a host for visitors) and more for all those guests who come to bathe in its excesses. Or maybe it’s just the final irony in a novel full of them—Gatsby finally takes a moment to relax, for what feels like the first time in years, and looks what it gets him.

All of those interpretations hold water (sorry), but I would also note a historical context that it’s easy for us 21^st century readers to forget: like so many of the novel’s crucial social and technological features (cars, Hollywood films, recorded music), an in-ground swimming pool in the early 1920s represented a striking innovation. The first such pools in America had been open for less than two decades, and were generally public or communal spaces; it was not until more than two decades later, after World War II, that they would become part of the typical imagery of the ideal American home. So as with every aspect of Gatsby’s success, here too he would seem to have been ahead of the curve, helping to embody the American Dream—as well as its dark and violent undersides—as it would continue to develop for the rest of the American Century, and into our own.

Next GatsbyStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts?