The Organization of American Culture, 1700-1900: Private Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of American Nationality Book

"What far from average people have walked these streets, in old time! An angel like a hermaphrodite butterfly, a butterfly catcher, a Daniel Boone of the infinite, a finite Elijah, a herb doctor, Lot's wife, many pastorals, many mechanics, clouded dreamers, a celibate breeder of horses, poor Yahoos, the Spirit of Nature, rational man, irrational man, patriarchs, undertakers. Nor does this list, inclusive as it seems, exhaust the possibilities of nineteenth-century salvationism, as expressed by two Utopias - the first, forerunner of a New Jerusalem, exclusive and arbitrary; the second, forerunner of a New Moral World, to encompass all nations and all governments. Two Utopias comprehended, within a half-mile square surrounded by a vast wilderness, past, present, and future, however abstrusely - the burning of Rome, city planning, explosion of stars, a new calendar, anarchy, a New Jerusalem, repression, expansion, moneyless Eden, exaltation of pearls, a three-hour working day, exaltation of horses, infinite regress, the united nations of earth, the many, the few, Lucifer, lotus-eaters, the falling of autumn leaves, the myths of Narcissus, good dentistry, many fictions. So that such perfectionist orders, which would have excluded much of mistaken life, seem mistaken life itself, with all its infinite variety."

At times in her prose I hear echoes of the 17th century, in particular that wonderful baroque technique which found its apex in Sir Thomas Browne. At other times I can hear Stein, or DH Lawrence, or Woolf...But, of course, fundamentally she is uniquely herSelf. Her word choice, and her sentence structure, is often unexpected and unusual in its grammar and its lexicon. This is a Good Thing.

The above quote, from page three of this novel?history?prosepoem?, is both a good indicator of her thematic concerns in this text, and her techniques. We have lists, dualism, contradictions, humor, density....and details of these two extraordinary attempts at perfecting human society which took place in the early 19thc. Both failed, of course, as all Utopias must, but the differences in why and how they failed tell us much about human nature and the realities of socio-economic pressure.

And, of course, throughout we have soundings of her major themes - the irrational within the rational, the rational within the irrational, the seeds of dystopia within Utopia, the dreaming of mankind...Impossibly Romantic dreams of a Realist Utopia...We must, it seems, confront and accept our failure as a necessary part of any success. That we are always already broken, and that are lives are riven with disappointment and dissolution. But still such Beauty hiding here and there...

One could, in fact, imagine the whole thing as a prologue to Miss MacIntosh - the final ten pages in particular lead very nicely to the start, and the concerns, of that extraordinary novel.

A beautifully written exploration of a truly fascinating subject. What more could you want? Copies are cheap and all over the interwebs and this seems like a good place to start for those of you hesitant before the size of Miss Mac...