Jennifer Howard

This is the fourth post in a cross-blog conversation Mark Athitakis and I are having about Henry Adams' novel "Democracy." See Mark's most recent post, "Skepticism Versus Cynicism," here.

Mark,

So it's as I feared, and Adams is a hard case. To quote you, "there's no silver lining he can't find a storm cloud in," especially hanging over Washington. Or even over pastoral Mount Vernon, where Mrs. Lee and some of her admirers and hangers-on go on a picnic-pilgrimage. Rather than being refreshed or purified by their pilgrimage to the home of the father of our country, though, the party carries the poisonous atmosphere of the Capitol with them.

Not that the cynicism can't be fun. I have to admit I enjoyed the cheap shots Adams takes at General Washington and by extension at the American impulse to turn the founding fathers into national deities. "We are all patriotic about Washington and like to hide his faults," the aptly named Victoria Dare tells Lord Dunbeg, the impecunious Irish aristocrat she's set her cap for. "The truth is that even when George Washington was a small boy, his temper was so violent that no one could do anything with him. He once cut down all his father's fruit-trees in a fit of passion, and then, just because they wanted to flog him, he threatened to brain his father with the hatchet." That certainly freshens up the old story about the cherry tree, doesn't it?

Oddly enough, I liked Ratcliffe more in the Mt. Vernon scene. His amoral pragmatism makes him immune to the kind of hagiography that takes place (still) at sites like Mt. Vernon. As a boy, he says, he was made to learn Washington's "Farewell Address" by heart. "In those days General Washington was a sort of American Jehovah," he tells Mr. Gore. "But the West is a poor school for Reverence."

But you asked about the minor characters, like Victoria Dare and Madeleine's sister, Sybil. Most of them are types, which is a defensible choice on Adams' part, given the kind of book he wanted to write. Some of them, like Mr. Gore, aren't vivid enough for me to care much about them as more than vehicles for amusing or caustic observations. I did warm to Sybil, in part because she's so guileless, so much a creature of feeling, unlike her sister, who's shut down most of her emotions. (Now I'm thinking of Austen again, and the sisters in "Sense and Sensibility.") Sybil is very...un-Washington. So is Baron Jacobi, the old European bon vivant, who endeared himself to me by attacking Ratcliffe with his cane in the street.

What about the city itself as a character? I realized that the Washington of "Democracy" is missing a lot of the physical elements that make today's Washington so distinctive. Work on the Lincoln Memorial, for instance, didn't begin until 1914, 34 years after the novel was published. The Washington of "Democracy" sounds muddy and half-built and not very civilized--which is probably how Adams would describe the democratic experiment itself. The old joke about Washington being built on a swamp makes it a fit place for swamp creatures like Ratcliffe. How did you react to the city that Adams describes? Does it feel like a place you know?

This is the second post in a discussion here and on Mark Athitakis’s blog, American Fiction Notes, about Henry Adams’ novel “Democracy.” which was published anonymously in 1880. See Mark’s first post in the conversation here, and a useful background piece on the book’s long history he found here. Mark, Adams does get off some great zingers, doesn’t he? I went in expecting cynicism; I wasn’t looking for humor. The two blur together all too easily, though, in Democracy. When Mr. Gore, the Massachusetts historian-turned-statesman, asks our heroine Madeleine Lightfoot Lee, the skeptical but curious New York widow, whether she’s… Read more...

For someone who grew up in Washington, D.C., I am not very well read in the literature of the city—the political literature, that is. I haven’t read many of the political novels set here. That has been partly a deliberate choice, a desire to concentrate more on the extra-political creative possibilities of this town. A lot of Washington lives have very little to do with politics; not everyone moves here to be a Type A politico or lobbyist or lawyer or, heaven help us, journalist. Many of my neighbors are people whose families have been here for three, four, five… Read more...

As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t get to the MLA this year; I was hanging out in Chicago with the historians. What’s been interesting to me, as I read reports from this year’s MLA in various venues, is to see themes re-emerge from previous years. Some of those reports inspired a sort of scholarly-conference deja vu. Twitter, anyone? Pedagogy? Rethinking standards of tenure and promotion? Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at my MLA coverage from years past. Here’s a sampling. One difference between then and now: I wouldn’t say “Twittering” in 2012; I’d say “tweeting.” (N.B. Some… Read more...

I’ve got a new short story out. It’s called “Mercury Rising,” and you can find it in Amazing Graces (Paycock Press, 2012), a collection edited by Richard Peabody. (Read a Washington Post profile of him.) Here’s the excerpt I read at Politics and Prose on Sunday, when we launched the book: “Call the fire department!” Everything Timmy said these days had an exclamation point at the end of it. Six was the age of enthusiasms. “He’s not on fire, stupid,” said William. “Don’t call your brother stupid,” Roberta said. “We’ll call 911.” She left the engine running while she plowed… Read more...

This winter, for the first time since I joined the Chronicle in 2005, I won’t be at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference. I’ll be at the American Historical Association’s confab instead. (Hello, Chicago in January!) Every conference has its own style. The MLA is not the AHA is not the APA is not the [insert association acronym here]. No matter whose meeting it is, though, conference-going is a grueling experience. Germs are abundant; sleep, good food, and power outlets are not. Sessions start too early and go too late. Here, learned the hard way, are my survival tips for… Read more...