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Andrew Levy is the author of several books including The First Emancipator, and his work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Dissent, and Best American Essays, among other publications. He lives in Indianapolis.

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The Best American Essays 2002 (2002) — Medewerker — 220 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1962-11-05
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA
Land (voor op de kaart)
USA
Geboorteplaats
Mount Holly, New Jersey, USA
Beroepen
Professor of English, Butler University

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For most of us, American history consists of well-attested narratives. Northerners were against slavery while Southerners were for it. General emancipation of slaves after the Revolution was impractical. The founding fathers were deist in their religious orientation. To these three national myths, the case of Virginian aristocrat Robert Carter stands in stark opposition. In the late eighteenth century, he freed around 500 of his own slaves, to the ire of his neighbors and without compensation, because of religious inspiration. His story provides us with courage to live up to our principles even when they contradict our practices.

Like many aristocrats of his time, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Carter was educated in Enlightenment principles and kept good records of his actions. However, unlike these two other leaders, Carter was not a political leader publicly using high rhetoric to espouse an egalitarian age while swallowing the uncomfortable pill of private slavery. Instead, Carter freed his slaves in the largest emancipation before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. He did so explicitly because he found American rhetoric about universal freedom was not supported by popular practice.

These convictions were buttressed by Carter’s devoutly religious practices. Though an aristocrat invested in the current order, he converted to the Baptist faith around the time of the Revolutionary War. In Baptist churches, he was placed on equal footing with social outcasts and developed an egalitarian social view. He did not leverage equality as an ideal to gain political power, though, unlike others. Instead, as Levy carefully documents with copious references to Carter’s papers, his views slowly morphed over time.

Because of a reversion to conservative living after the Revolution, the Baptists and popular American views fell out of favor in Carter’s mind. He later converted to the Swedenborgian faith, which further called principles of equality to mind. He put practice first and rhetoric second – an example for chattering political classes of today. Yet Carter is not remembered in American history. Perhaps this omission is because of America’s unresolved tensions pertaining to race continuing through the Civil War, the Klan, Jim Crow, and to this day.

Levy’s biography seeks to remember Robert Carter and inspire readers to put practice ahead of rhetoric, not the other way around. Those attentive to American history should remember Carter’s more muted stand. Most Americans do not have great platforms to share their eloquent views with the masses; most of us resemble Robert Carter more than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Shouldn’t this man’s place in history push us to lead our own “quiet revolutions?”
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scottjpearson | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 15, 2022 |
I found this fascinating. According to Levy, my recent disappointment with the ending of Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck allows Jim to remain imprisoned for weeks and contributes to his misery by putting snakes, rats, spiders in his cell and making him write messages in his own blood when Huck could easily set him free, merely so that Tom Sawyer, who knows Jim's owner freed him at her death, can enjoy an elaborate game of “free the prisoner,” was actually a result of my misunderstanding of the sort of story Twain was writing. Andrew Levy's intriguing book offers a more nuanced understanding of Twain's classic, tracing Twain's changing views on race throughout his life, and most particularly from his early years to the time he finished Huckleberry Finn, as well as on racial attitudes in America at the time, but also pointing out the extent to which childhood and child-rearing, more than race issues, were Twain's focus in the book. Part One of the book focuses on issues related to childhood, while Part Two concerns 19th century debates on race.

Levy's explanation goes a long way toward explaining the rather jarring shift in tone which occurs in Chapter 33, when Tom Sawyer reenters the story. Huck's willingness to allow Jim to serve as a prop in Tom's rather sadistic “suffering prisoner” game is certainly plausible, however narratively unsatisfying, in light of his oft-expressed admiration for his socially superior, better educated friend. Given the episode early in the book, in which Tom, with Huck's cooperation, tricks Jim into believing he's been ridden by witches, Tom's later, elaborate game with Jim gives the book a certain circularity. Despite this, when I recently read Huckleberry Finn I found the ending a “cheat” – a descent into slapstick and a reversion by Huck to treating Jim as an inferior whose abuse was acceptable if it provided entertainment. By Levy's interpretation, however, the ending, which apparently, was not a “rush” job, but actually a part with which Twain was particularly pleased, was consistent with the book he intended to write. He was interested in improving the situation of African Americans, certainly, but he was also very concerned with portraying children rebelling against conventions and rules, and with writing an entertaining story of independent, high-spirited boys. And he had a lifelong affection for minstrel shows, aspects of which, Levy shows us, appear in various guises throughout the book. Reading the book through the lens Levy provides clears up certain aspects of the book which otherwise seem inconsistent, and the insights he offers into 19th century concerns are interesting just for themselves!

Levy reminds us that concerns about the impact of media on impressionable youth were as prevalent in Twain's day as they are in ours. The news stories he cites suggest a time no more idyllic than our own, in which boys and teenagers commit acts of horrific violence and commentators blame the corrupting influence of violence-filled media.

In the midst of an ugly presidential election year, when racial issues are once again in play, it is difficult to deny Twain's prescience.

”The consensus of the twentieth century made one simple mistake about Huck Finn, but it echoed: they believed that it made a difference when Huck said he'd go to hell to free Jim. And they figured Twain failed when it didn't – or, like Ronald Reagan or Arthur Schlesinger, they figured he didn't fail at all. And as they told this story, they told the bigger story for which they made Huck Finn stand in: that the “final emancipation” of African-Americans, as Elizabeth Hardwick wrote in 1948, was “real and historical.” But that was exactly what Huck Finn was not saying. And mistaking a dark comedy about how history goes round for a parable about how it goes forward is a classic American mistake. Writing in the aftermath of the Civil War, surveying all that blood and treasure spent to free slaves, and then Reconstruction collapsing, convict-lease, the rise of the Klan, Jim Crow, lynchings – Mark Twain eventually dedicated Huck Finn to the proposition that, contra Lincoln, there was no new birth of freedom.”

Levy's exploration over the course of his book of 19th century ideas about parenting, education, juvenile delinquency, criminality, and race issues, and his examination of Twain's changing attitudes on these topics through his personal and public writings, offers new insights into the unexpectedly complex themes of Twain's masterpiece. If that makes the book sound excessively scholarly, it's because I'm putting it badly, as it is really a very enjoyable read for anyone interested in 19th century American literature and history.
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meandmybooks | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 16, 2016 |
Interesting overview of the writing of one of the classic American novels. After having created the Huckleberry Finn character (which was based on a friend from Twain's childhood) as a foil in THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, the author began a novel about him after the Tom Sawyer novel was published. After writing 400 manuscript pages, Twain shelved the project before completing it seven years later.
As he was putting the finishing touches on the Huck Finn novel, Twain embarked on an ambitious national speaking tour (billed as "The Twins of Genius") with New Orleans-based writer George Washington Cable. Andrew Levy uses both the Huck Finn novel and the speaking tour to explore what was going through Twain's mind.
Unlike many critics, Levy downplays the racial overtones of the novel. What he finds interesting is Twain's views on the roles that schools play in educating children and preparing them for the rigors and responsibilities of adulthood
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dickmanikowski | 2 andere besprekingen | May 25, 2015 |
A special thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Andrew Levy’s Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece delivers an exploration of the character with a fresh new contemporary look of the American literary Classic Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. Have we missed some critical points in the classic and controversial novel over the years?

“Maybe we have misread Huck Finn on matters of race and children especially, for the same reason we repeat the cultural and political schema of the Gilded Age-because the appealing idea that every generation is better off than the one before conceals our foreboding that we live in a land of echos. And yet we read, after all these years, because the foreboding speaks to us anyway. “

There was a serious debate about how to raise and educate children in the American 1880s. Twain was contributing something more than a lighthearted boy’s book to that debate. He was thinking and speaking about literacy, popular culture, compulsory education, juvenile delinquency, at-risk children, and the different ways we raise boys from girls, and rich from poor. There was also a serious debate about the future of race relations in the American 1880s, as well. But possibly not as much a part of it as we tend to think.

Twain offered Huck Finn to a country where parents, educators, and politicians worried that children, especially boys were too exposed to violent media, that they were too susceptible to amoral market forces that made them violent themselves. The twenty-first century reader lives in a country worried about the exact same things, only with fresher media. In fact, Levy reiterates the debate over children has changed so little over the last century.

In this light, it matters that we have been misreading Huck Finn because that misreading is both wasted opportunity and metaphor for our larger failure to recognize our close relation to the past.

Richly researched, well-developed and insightful, Levy dives into controversial issues of race, violence, and parenting. Levy brings to light Twain’s focus on race was less about civil rights than the role of race in entertainment and culture. Levy reveals sides of the 1884 fiction that few of us ever noticed.

A fascinating re-discovery and thought-provoking narrative, Andrew Levy breathes new life into an American classic, giving modern readers a fresh understanding of Huck Finn's colorful world.

Recommended for fans of Twain, African and American history, American literature, and books about writers and books about books.
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JudithDCollins | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 14, 2015 |

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Werken
4
Ook door
1
Leden
294
Populariteit
#79,674
Waardering
½ 3.8
Besprekingen
6
ISBNs
37
Talen
2

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