American Notes for General Circulation (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Book

Reread I reread this in anticipation of an upcoming reread of Martin Chuzzlewit.

Dickens was a young man when he visited the U.S.A. the first time and much of American Notes is written in the spirit of a crusading journalist, which he was. He came to the U.S. loving the idea of it and ready to be wowed, but instead he couldn't stomach the signs of slavery he saw, starting in Baltimore, and turned around before he even made it to the Deep South. But he'd seen enough to excoriate the U.S., including the "public opinion" he was told would ameliorate the harsh treatment of the slaves: He quotes from newspaper accounts to show there's no evidence of that.

The above leads to another topic still relevant in the U.S.: the use of gun (and knife) violence to settle even petty differences between angry men. He sets out several newspaper accounts he acquired during the time he was in America: a tip of an iceberg. Reading these today is sobering because one sees how prevalent and ingrained gun culture was, and thus is, in the U.S.

But what comes before his accounts of these more major issues are ongoing complaints, everywhere he goes, rendered sarcastically and causing me to laugh aloud, of the spitting of tobacco, the ignoring of omnipresent spittoons, as if the men can't be bothered to use them even as the floor grows filthier. From my reading of Dickens's biographies, I seem to remember Americans were more upset over this depiction than they were of the above issues.

After his second visit to America, some twenty-five years later, Dickens mellowed, saying there'd been changes in the country since his first visit, as well as in himself, enough to warrant a postscript in future editions saying so. He needn't have done so. Party politics still rule over (mental) health facilities. Legal disputes still stop (educational) progress. Young white criminals are still treated differently than their black counterparts. Native Americans are still treated dishonestly. The rich are still considered more "virtuous" than the poor. Immigrants are still exploited. Racists still threaten the white-allies of blacks with violence and death, same as slave owners did to abolitionists.

Americans are notoriously thin-skinned when criticized by outsiders (or even insiders) and it's likely, in his "old age," Dickens wanted to keep his American friends and ensure his books would still sell in the U.S. I don't think Dickens walked back his comments about spitting, as he shouldn't have. Spitting in public still exists here. Don't get me started on the young man I saw at a Houston brewery a few years ago and what he was doing with his chewing tobacco. I wasn't laughing.