Books and Ideas (38)

I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.

Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.

Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s “Corn-Pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment, and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of these essays provoke. [Many of these essays I had never read before, but they paint a mostly disturbing portrait of the twentieth century. RayS.]

With the following summaries of the essays in this book, I bring to a conclusion my review of some of some books and ideas that I have read. Books produce ideas. Pictures present images. An idea in a book is worth a thousand images. Ideas and images appeal to different parts of the human personality. Ideas appeal to the mind. Images appeal to the emotions. Ideas can appeal to emotions. Images can appeal to the mind. Both can lead to action. Both can lead to contemplation. Both enrich the human experience.

Mark Twain. “Corn-Pone Opinions.” 1901. The source of most men’s ideas is in imitation of others’ ideas.

W.E.B. DuBois: “Of the Coming of John.” 1903. John, a young black man, has been educated at college to think and to question. When he returns home to the South from college, he is met by the stone wall of prejudice. The white people want nothing to do with thinking and questioning the status quo. [A touching drama of the black experience in America. RayS.]

Henry Adams. “A Law of Acceleration.” 1906. The complexity of the modern world as bombs and knowledge double in power and ideas every ten years, leading to unresolvable contradictions. [A “classical” Future Shock (by Alvin Toffler). RayS.]

William James. “The Moral Equivalent of War.” 1910. William James suggests that the “moral equivalent of war” would be universal service for young people in the country’s behalf. Young people would be “drafted” to be trained to work in mines, on highways, etc. Thus the military virtues—the conceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal military duty is now teaching—would be preserved without war. [Did this essay influence John F. Kennedy when he suggested the Peace Corps? Harry S. Truman suggested universal service after WWII. Couldn’t get it through Congress. RayS.]

Randolph Bourne. “The Handicapped.” 1911. The inner thoughts of a disabled person. He analyzes his condition, the responses of others to him, and understands that his disability has advantages as well as disadvantages. He insists especially on developing and recognizing his individuality as opposed to the stereotyped beliefs of those whom he encounters that disabled people do not have the potential for success as do the healthy. [A remarkably contemporary essay. RayS.]

John Jay Chapman. “Coatesville.” 1912. Expresses his horror and rage at the burning of a black man in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, while hundreds of white onlookers did nothing. [I live less than five miles from Coatesville. I had never heard of this incident. I’m shocked. RayS.]

Jane Addams. “The Devil Baby at Hull-House.” 1916. A rumor that a devil baby is at Hull House brings many women to see what they believe to be retribution for some domestic sin committed by a man against a woman or child The stories of most of these women are of unrelieved suffering at the hands of their husbands. The problem of the rights of women in a man’s world pre-dates the later Civil Rights movement of the treatment of African Americans in a white world.