Cover of “The Americans” by Robert Frank, Grove Press (2nd Printing, 1969)
At The New York Timesan interactive photographic portrait of a photographic portrait – this latter, from the legendary 1959 book The Americans by Robert Frank. The cover of that book is a startling image of a street car in segregated New Orleans taken by Frank during a road trip through the United States in 1955-57, and the NYT piece by Arthur Lubow uses that image as the impetus for an interpretation and a comparative study against other works of visual art – exploring racial and social division, hierarchy, symbolism. I don’t need to say how powerfully this rings, but should mention how unwelcome Frank’s “America” was to critics of the day. Here is a link to a working print of the “New Orleans Trolley-car” from the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art – more generally, a great online resource for looking at Frank’s extensive work.
It is June 2020 and I find myself, just, and only sort-of, out of a “sort-of” lockdown, and now agonising over an adequate response to the antiracism revolt that is claiming the world’s attention; and that as a white person – privileged by not much except reasonable intelligence and health, but certainly aware of that granted by the colour of skin.
The “streets” are something for the young; should I be in the States I may well be tempted anyway, so extreme are the circumstances, but in Germany, though racism is as present as it is in other countries, the situation with the U.S. is relatable only up to a point – different democratic and institutional structures, different demographics and a different history mean a different fight to be fought; one that focuses on the shortcomings in this country rather than those elsewhere. There is an awful lot to be thought about, mostly coming down in the end to some honest reflection upon one’s own socialisation that may not be “racist” but certainly not without resentments and intolerance.
In terms of America, and my concerns stated elsewhere, I am reasonably well-read and informed on social issues, inspired often by literature or movies or contemporary events. And that’s always important – stay informed, and reliably so. And what one is ignorant of – educate oneself about. To that end, I am having a go at an edX course from Columbia University history department called The Civil War and Reconstruction. I do know some things, but I also know what I do not – and that is a lot! If not the root of all evil, then pretty close – the slavery, the civil war, the aftermath.
I read in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungtoday a rather timely culinary piece on the delights of New Orleans’ gumbo, that led to Edouardo Jordan’s JuneBaby restaurant in Seattle, which led me to its website and at the top of the Encyclopaedia page (which is an interesting cultural and culinary resource) this:
Mr. Jordan knows his customers and they seem to be mostly white – at least those to whom he is speaking in his five tips above. (Do I hear: “What to do, Eduardo?” And would a Black person even need to ask?) Some simple lessons to take from this: listen, learn, support. Really not very hard. In this matter; it is for others to set the agenda and some, like me, to follow. (Though of course some will not.)
In a literary section of the Project, mentioned mostly for the point of mentioning Jesmyn Ward!, I did also enjoy very much a poem by Eve Ewing, probably because her subject, Phillis Wheatley, a most extraordinary woman, born in West Africa, sold into slavery as a child and transported as a young girl to Boston, was known to me (from a poetry course I did a few years ago), and Wheatley’s story is such that one tends not to forget, and Ewing’s verse honours her short, tragic life. Following is a poem by Phillis Wheatley; from the Poetry Foundation [sic].
On Being Brought from Africa to America
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
- BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY
Ms. Ewing is amongst the very many initiators of a letter to the Poetry Foundation criticising not only the Foundation’s tepid response to the current antiracism efforts, but more generally the lack of structural and financial support of marginalised groups. And they don’t pussy foot around with their demands!
Eve Ewing and Jesmyn Ward, poetry and prose; black and gifted and successful, but ready to fight this fight for writers of color, or those otherwise marginalised, who may not have a voice.
From the NYT article, one also learns of similar initiatives in the theatre. Could it be that there really is change afoot? Could this be the moment, the generation, to continue fulfilling dreams not dreamed out?
Coincidental to the racism discussion whirling about us in recent weeks; one thing leading to another, to another and so forth … then to Jesmyn Ward (see my last post), her picture in The New York Times today almost jumped out upon me.
In short, a #PublishingPaidMe has been making an impact (hesitate to say “gone viral” [sic]) highlighting as it does the disparity in advances given to white and black (and minority) writers in the United States (only the US?). Many writers are risking the ire of their publishers (and maybe even agents) and shining a not terribly flattering light on apparently inequitable structures in an industry that generally speaking tends to the liberal side of things. In respect to Jesmyn Ward the NYT reports:
Jesmyn Ward, a critically acclaimed novelist, said on Twitter that she “fought and fought” for her first $100,000 advance, even after her book “Salvage the Bones,” for which she said she received around $20,000, won a National Book Award in 2011. After switching publishers, she was able to negotiate a higher advance for “Sing, Unburied, Sing” — for which she won a second National Book Award, in 2017 — but, she said, “it was still barely equal to some of my writer friends’ debut novel advances.”
A spokeswoman for Bloomsbury Publishing, which published “Salvage the Bones” and Ms. Ward’s memoir “Men We Reaped,” said that the company does not comment on advances paid to authors, but that it was honored to have published her books.
I have followed The 1619 Projectat The New York TimesMagazine from its inception last year and into this with enthusiasm, and I now realise that I have been remiss in posting on it. From time to time I have also noted the disquiet and some controversy amongst historians and others; interesting in itself, but not something I am able to offer a qualified opinion on.
The premise of the project lay in placing the birth of America as a nation not at 1776 but with the arrival of the first ship of enslaved Africans in Virginia in August, 1619, and the profound consequences in determining the course of American history and society. As Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor-in-chief says:
Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.
The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.
It seems this remains an ongoing project, and I hope so for there is a lot more to be said, already there is a bounty of interesting and “edgy” material, and in light of recent events (also, ongoing – for better or worse) this is surely a good time to think again (or still) about issues of race and racism that may not only be systemic, but are certainly so entrenched in societal and institutional structures that without being addressed at their root will forever inhibit a more equable American society.
Beyond the historical, in literary terms, and especially given my relatively recent discovery of Jesmyn Ward, I was particularly arrested by this instalment. Singing with their particular brand of poetry and prose, sixteen writers pay tribute to some of the not so well known moments of American history that have left their mark on a continent and its people. Jesmyn Ward’s short fiction remembers the enactment of the “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves” on January 1, 1808, and how little that did to alleviate the suffering and brutality of the antebellum South. I recall reading a year or so ago that her next novel will be set in that time and place so this may be a tiny extract; certainly something she’s thinking about a lot.
Hallelujah! Something to look forward to still! (The truth is, look hard enough, and there is more than enough!) Some time ago I blogged on the confirmation of another Gilead novel from Marilynne Robinson, and schedule-wise not much has changed in the interim – what after all is a couple of weeks in these trying times! But it does now indeed have a cover – and, it seems, an author’s name typeset to the same dimension as the title. Presumably “Marilynne Robinson” sells! And so she should!
“Jack” by Marilynne Robinson, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In any old time I would be awaiting this book, but the circumstances and constraints, under which we are at the moment so struggling, particularly cries out for the grace and quiet and fortitude that emanate from Robinson’s prose.
A startling, comparative photographic study at The New York Times! Inspired by the solitude and deserted streets of a city under lockdown, the photographer Mauricio Lima has returned to the scenes of Eugène Atget‘s Paris of a century ago. Startling is; how ever much things change, devoid of the human factor, it is that which endures, in essence unchanged, that comes to the fore. One is invited to consider the act of habitation as a continuum, as bringing with it responsibilities – for the place in and of itself, for its history and its future, and for all the generations who have and will occupy that space.
Atget’s work is perhaps familiar to many from nostalgic postcards or illustrations, and I probably also similarly first encountered his work; one is tempted to think it a feat unto itself how Paris has been able to spin images that suggest melancholy and desolation to enhance itsimage as the city of lights, lovers …! Rather contrary sensual perceptions, but perhaps there-in lay the abiding allure of these photographs; they capture the essence of an urban landscape, and that in turn captivates the human heart.
…the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way.
from part VI of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin, 1936.
In my opinion a remarkably accurate analogy, for Atget has with almost forensic rigour extricated place from its human constraints, assiduously excavating the remnants, giving them every subjective advantage, and thereby humanising them.
A few years ago, an old worn paperback came to my attention at my local library’s bazaar -costing all but nothing, I was momentarily taken aback because I knew of it’s legend status amongst aficionados of the history and art of photography, but then kindly took it off their hands!
Cover of “Atget Paris”
Portrait of Atget, by Berenice Abbott, 1927
IVe Quartier Notre Dame
From my copy of “Atget Paris”, Eugène Atget, ed. Hazan
On any one of my next flânerie, be the streets deserted as they may, I’ll look again and differently, and see how rich they are in hidden humanity – and wonder at how the eye can deceive and all that exposed by a technical apparatus in the right hands.
Like many I dare say, every morning’s turn to the news in whatever medium is pretty much like the last; so dominated has our life become by the Corona spook. How I have wished in recent times for the headlines to be replaced by something else, and in some vague hope that would mean the worst was over. And now it transpires, and I think of the old adage: don’t dare wonder when you get what you wish for!
Here, I am speaking of the despicable – and racist – treatment and death of George Floyd at the hands of (quote unquote) “law enforcement” in Minneapolis last week, and the aftermath of righteous and self-righteous outrage, tributes paid and retribution called for, violence countered with …violence. Michelle Goldberg’s column at The New York Times collates the American experiences of the last months and years to describe a nation in “free fall”, as a “tinderbox” – metaphors that seem absolutely appropriate. And if one is not troubled enough, Goldberg links to a Bellingcat report on a nefarious movement that is harnessing all the digital tools out there to agitate for …what? At the very least social disquiet, or better still it seems some sort of post-modern civil war.
Then this other bizarre event in Central Park – Cooper vs. Cooper: black man vs. white woman, birdwatcher vs. dog-walker. Christian and Amy: in common, a surname, but separated by race and an assumption of white privilege. Contrary to the Floyd incident, and to any number of other such in recent times, one could say this one ended well. One could also say, that in its very strangeness – that is, not a brutal murder – it offers a potent and succinct micro-narrative of how the power dynamic of an inherent racism operates, and the long way ahead for America still.
Having caused its damage – physically, psychologically, economically … have I forgotten something?… – a virus will retreat or even disappear, and my trust in good science and good politics is such that I expect reasonable interventions in a reasonable time to mitigate the situation. But this other stuff? In my opinion, that which is simmering in our societies, and not just in America, and not since yesterday, and often under the guise of “freedom” or “liberty”, is more toxic than any naturally evolving infection could ever be. To further the metaphor, I worry that the boiling point will creep upon us and bring the pot to overflowing. I like hot chocolate and know too well the mess a few inattentive moments may lead to.
For a virus have I zero angst, only the wish to maintain a respectful distance; for the widening gap and intractability between societal groups – a.k.a. racism, but not only – and the growing fragility of institutional structures I am not so sure.
