emilygs's blog

Historic View of Boston

I have to say first and foremost that my home state of Texas was not included in the archive of WPA travel guides. Apparently, even the 1930s Texas was not a bastion for national travel, and I understand why. By today’s driving standards, it takes approximately twelve hours to drive east/west across the state; I can therefore only imagine how many days it might have taken in the 1930s.

As a compromise, I decided to spend some time reading the “Here’s New England!” guidebook instead. My sister lived in Boston for many years and I spent quite a bit of time there being every bit the annoying tourist. One thing that really struck me about the Boston section of this guidebook was how very little has changed. Boston is of course one of the oldest and earliest cities in this country. But considering most of this nation’s track record for historic preservation, I would not necessarily expect the walking tour described in the guidebook to be practically verbatim the one still handed out in Boston Common at the tourists’ center. I have walked a historical walking tour of Boston, and therefore seen almost everything mentioned by the WPA writers.

Paul Revere House

From the State House to the Park Street Church to the Old State House to Faneuil Hall; even the miscellaneous burial grounds and cemeteries in between still exist. Clearly, Boston has always held its history in high esteem. The municipal government even seventy years ago felt these historical buildings and sites were important enough not only to save but also to preserve for future generations. I come from a city where a twenty-year-old building is too old, and certainly New York City has had a long and rough battle with the preservation of landmarks. I am so thoroughly impressed with Boston for being so ahead of the curve, even if it did not purposely initiate a doctrine of conservation. I am also so glad to know that if I return to Boston tomorrow, all the same buildings will still be there to tour again. And hopefully that will still be the case for Boston tourists in another seventy years.

A link to today's Boston Walking Tours.

Michael Berkowitz’s essay entitled “A New Deal for Leisure” really made me rethink my own personal desires to travel and see not only America but the world. The way the author describes the creation of the U.S. Travel Bureau in 1937 seems almost like a conspiracy theory of the federal government to fight communism. The belief that “recreational travel could make Americans better citizens” (Berkowitz, 204) is actually frightening. “To become America-conscious” could actually have a remarkable number of effects on the civilian population of the U.S. For many, traveling across the country and witnessing the incredible hardship of so many during the Depression and continuing into WWII might actually produce the opposite effect. Why not look around and say, clearly my government is not helping these people so why should I continue to support this government?

Additionally, it seems incredibly odd that so many other countries were already advertising for tourism in the U.S. before the country of this government got into the scene. America is still a relatively new country, of course, and it took a long time for a distinct kind of culture to develop here. Perhaps it also took a long time for someone to realize there are things in this country that other people might be interested in seeing? For so long, the only national priority of tourism was the national park system, and as Berkowitz points out, parks were a place for primarily middle to upper class tourists.

All my life I have wanted to travel. Even now, as soon as I graduate I plan to pack a bag and hit the road, either in this country or elsewhere. But Berkowitz’s article really makes me think why I want to do that. Clearly travel has not always been a hard and fast part of American culture, but today it is almost indistinguishable from our lives. We judge people based on how ‘well-traveled’ they are and what that says about their intelligence. We gasp in awe as friends tell us about their amazing African safaris or cross-country road trips. However, somewhere along the way, someone convinced us that this is how our society should operate, and that somewhere appears to be early 20th century America. The fact that we can all be so manipulated is startling.

Van Gogh's "Portrait of a One-Eyed Man"Nathanael West’s A Cool Million is described by Harold Bloom as “a permanent work of American satire” (Walden, 1994). While it is very clear in reading the novel that West is playing with many aspects of American life and thought, he reverses his own position so many times it almost becomes difficult to find what exactly he is satirizing. At one point Shagpoke Whipple strikes out against both Capitalism and Communism in the same breath, saying, “These two archenemies of the American Spirit, the spirit of fair play and open competition, are Wall Street and the Communists” (West, 1934). In almost everything we have read thus far the author is in favor of either capitalism continuing or a communist overthrow. This moment might be the first example of an author truly throwing the popular ideas of the day to the wind.

Whipple advocates for a new dictatorship in America with himself at the helm and supported by white, non-Jewish, Protestant men. As Walden notes, “That his [Whipple’s] minions resemble those of Mussolini or Hitler is no coincidence” (Walden, 1994). And as we see at the end of the book Whipple does indeed achieve this vision. But at what expense? In order for Whipple to realize his new dream Lem Pitkin has his teeth removed, loses an eye, a leg, his scalp, and is ultimately shot in cold blood. Pitkin must first become a martyr for Whipple’s cause in order for it to finally succeed. All along the mythic narrator describes Pitkin as willingly going along with everything Whipple tells him in a naïve and adoring way. Whipple is the one who first sends him out in the world, and Whipple is the one who causes his demise. As Walden writes, “The Horatio Alger myth is more likely to destroy the individual than reward him” (Walden, 1994). This observation is clearly true in the sad case of Lem Pitkin.

Is West satirizing ever myth of American culture that ever took hold in society? It appears indeed that he might. He holds no prisoners and criticizes every aspect of America.

Tom Kromer’s Waiting for Nothing is by far my favorite book that we have read in this class. His literary style and language really makes the book come alive off of the page and become a whole world unto itself. The book’s afterword entitled In Search of Tom Kromer says “most of Waiting for Nothing was written during his [Kromer’s] stay at Camp Murphys” (267). Camp Murphys, we are told, we part of “the California branch of Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps” (267). After its completion the author immediately sought out a publisher for his piece. My one question, then, has to be, for whom did Kromer think he was writing this book? Who is the intended audience?

If we take In Search of Tom Kromer at its word, then clearly Kromer did not intend to write this book merely for the sake of writing. It was neither an effort to preserve his memories nor a way to cope with his situation on the bum. He wanted to people to read this book. However, “reviews were attentive and serious though no wholly favorable…Waiting for Nothing was a commercial failure and did not even sell out its first printing” (269-70). If the larger American, and presumably middle-class, public was Kromer’s target audience, he failed to achieve his goal. Critics may have enjoyed it, but the work did not even come close to achieving commercial success.

So I ask again: whom did Kromer think would read this book? It is dirty, graphic, and difficult to swallow in some parts, although taken as a whole I find it brilliant. In a time period where many people who were not being directly affected by the Depression were also able to ignore it, I find it not at all surprising that most of America would ignore this book. It is almost too real. How could a person be exposed to such horrors and still maintain a peaceful, happy, prosperous lifestyle? How could someone read this and not feel guilty about their better situation in life? Almost seventy years after the fact, I felt guilty reading this book from the comfort of my good university education.

1930s Hope MissionWaiting For Nothing really encapsulates all of the themes we have been exploring so far this semester. He is a writer on the bum, hitch hiking or riding the rails, searching for food or a flop wherever he can. I enjoyed this novel better than any of the others so far, and I think that has a lot to do with Kromer’s incredibly direct and honest writing style. One of the things that really stuck with me from this novel, however, is the recurring account of life in missions.

Kromer’s description of mission existence is bleak at best. He really gets at the heart of what I see to be one of the biggest issues we have encountered thus far: the inability or lack or willingness from organized religion to help those affected by the Depression. Guthrie touched on the same theme in his autobiography, but Kromer really makes it an integral part of his narrative.

The primary place where the narrator receives a bed to sleep in or slops to eat is at religious missions. Some of these places he describes as having forty beds in a room; in another he claims there are thousands. The missions he visits put out rotten stew and stale bread for their patrons. While it may seem that they have enough space to provide shelter, they will only give a bed to those who attend church services and accept the doctrine being preached. In the final chapter Kromer is staying in one of the larger missions. Of the men outside, he says, “There will be no flop in this joint for them tonight. They are too late. There are plenty of beds left in here, but they are too late. You have to come early and listen to the sermon if you want a flop in this joint” (Kromer, 123). Although this may be a good tactic to accrue converts and churchgoers, the men who attend these services are smart; they only attend for the promised bed at the end. For most of them, it seems, the religion has nothing to do with it. The churches in question may or may not be wise to this scheme. However, one of the most essential tenets of Christian faith is mercy, and these missions, if showing any mercy at all, are doing so in a totally hypocritical way. In another example, Kromer says of the mission soup lines, “They keep us standing out in the cold for advertisement. If they let us in and fed us, where would the advertisement be? There wouldn’t be any. They know that. So they keep us out in the cold so these people on the curb can have their show” (Kromer, 87).

If these missions had the capability to feed and house all these men, why couldn’t they do so out of the kindness of their hearts? After all, they were probably gaining very little from preaching to these bums; maybe a convert here or there but certainly not any monetary gain. In times of need, it is a comfort to many to know that their faith will always be there for them. That may be true, but their religious institution will not.

Boxcar Bertha

I feel particularly drawn to Boxcar Bertha’s early account of life as a hobo before the Great Depression. We have read so much literature about the “new” migratory culture of the 1930s, and in many ways it was new. The Depression forced more people to travel for work; cars were more prevalent; leisure travel was just becoming popular with the middle class. However, at the start of the work, Bertha says she has “been a hobo for fifteen years, a sister of the road…which has increased its membership so greatly during the depression” (7). Obviously, then, some form of a nomadic society was already in place before the Depression hit.

Moreover, the description, “a sister of the road,” grabs me. As Bertha herself says, “there were few women hoboes those days…only two I remember” (11). Female wanderers were therefore few and far between, and yet Bertha still describes them as being part of a “motley sorority” (7). In many ways, the lack of women on the road probably brought the few that were out there closer together.

Bertha’s mother also seems to experience a huge amount of freedom and independence that the majority of the women at the time would never have even dreamed of. She decides who she wants to be with, who she will or will not marry, where she goes, what business she runs; she is an incredibly autonomous women. She also clearly seems to understand her place in the world in relation to the men around her. She tells her daughter: “Bertha, as long as you can keep men clean and well fed and love them a little, they’ll be perfectly satisfied. They’re all babies. They need to be looked after. Teach them to depend on you. But never let them make a slave of you” (9). Mother Thompson had a very clear view of the world, one that Ma Joad also shares even if she doesn’t articulate it quite as clearly. Both these women understand on a very basic level that the day to day operations of women really made their men function.

Bertha’s childhood view of life as a hobo also offers a rare picture among the literature of the 1930s. She enjoys her life! And as she says, she has never known anything different. Someone getting arrested was an everyday occurrence; someone going hungry was a common theme. I find myself pitying her and yet admiring her. She may be a fictional character, but she has strength and courage that I wish I could emulate.

Image by Margaret Bourke-White

James Goodwin’s article regarding black and white photos of the Depression era truly made me reconsider the way I viewed those very same images. As I looked through some of the photo books the first time around, I found some of the pictures strikingly beautiful. Almost immediately, however, I felt guilty for thinking so. These pictures depict the hardship and struggles of an entire class of Americans, yet I was looking at them as purely art for art’s sake. Goodwin’s article helped me put that naïve way of thinking aside and discover some of the deeper motifs and techniques being employed.

One seemingly obvious motif that runs across many of the works is that of the juxtaposition of middle class luxuries with working class adversity. Goodwin cites “Belmont, Florida 1936” by Margaret Bourke-White, however I feel another of her pieces better reflects the theme, her image of a long line of men and women, the majority of whom are black, standing in front of a large billboard depicting a happy white family in their car. The ad says, “World’s Highest Standard of Living; There’s No Way like the American Way.” The irony in this photograph is almost too painful to bear. Here are these poor, miserable people lined up presumably for food given the baskets they are holding standing directly in front a reminder of how hard their lives are. The people in this line will probably never reach that “Standard of Living” advertised. Bourke-White seemingly composed this picture to make her viewers rethink the way different people in America are eligible for very different opportunities and ways of life. As Goodwin writes: “Several photographers exerted editorial direction by embedding discursive contexts within their images. Ready at hand for this purpose were…billboards…and in icons of material life such as the automobile” (Goodwin, 274).

Goodwin also refers to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as an example of how photography properly represents automobile life in a way the written word offer got wrong. He writes, “Even when a migrant family is shown to possess an automobile, its members still display a haggard, vacant, and futureless aspect. Their expressions are a sign of social disrepair” (Goodwin, 276). The Joad family grows to cherish their make-shift truck as their new home and center of family life. Goodwin points out that Dorothea Lange’s images of migrant families in their cars more accurately displays the realities of a nomadic lifestyle. It does make sense that photographs would better capture life’s day-to-day authenticity; however, photographers still have artistic control over the images they produce. If a photo is staged, as in many ways a work of fiction is staged, then is it really truthful at all?

Hitchhiker Chic

The excerpt from Louis Adamic’s My America, “Girl on the Road,” really epitomizes many of the travel themes we have discussed in class so far this semester. First and foremost, the piece involves a first person account from the writer himself, who was “goin’ ‘round the country for a magazine, writin’ things up” (Adamic, 505). This fact is indeed true regarding Adamic’s career; he worked for several magazines including Harper’s Bazaar as well serving as the editor of Common Ground. Like so many other artists during the Great Depression, Adamic quite literally took to the road to discover the hidden truth about life in America. In picking up hitchhiker Hazel Leyton he probably got a little more than he had bargained for.

Hazel has a typical travel story of the 1930s. She lost all her money to her deadbeat husband and then was forced to ‘go on the bum.’ Her first thought after escaping a house for wayward girls was “to go California. I always heard California—Los Angeles—Hollywood—what a swell place it was” (Adamic, 510). This cross-country migration echoes countless other pieces of travel literature from the period. Just as the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath believed, Hazel thought she was going to a new Eden. So she hitchhiked, alone, all the way across the country. This aspect of her story deviates slightly from the usual migrant myth. The distinction that sets Hazel’s story apart is the mere fact that she is female. Her travels place her neither in the plebian novel genre nor in the typical migration saga. In a period before the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, a woman traveling alone like Hazel was automatically assumed to be a prostitute. The writer indeed first questions if Hazel is working the Mann Act, which “banned the interstate transport of females for ‘immoral purposes.’” Perhaps because of the vast reach and influence of the Mann Act, artists were less likely to write about female hitchhikers or female lone travelers for fear of prosecution.

Another aspect of Hazel’s story that is very reminiscent of others from the Depression era is her inability to actually get into the state of California. “Everybody said no use tryin’ to cross the line to California—the LA bulls was sure to get me” (Adamic, 512). But she tried anyway and was forcibly removed from a truck and beaten just outside the state line in Arizona.

Finally, Hazel is classic character in her insistence that she would not take charity or any handouts. She describes in depth the lengths to which some people went to slip her money or help her out unawares. Even the author practically coerces her into taking money from him. The men and women in The Grapes of Wrath were also too proud to accept direct handouts from people. And also like the Joads, Hazel repeatedly insists that she is tough and that she will make it on her own, no matter what.

Gleaners

I have finally reached the end of The Grapes of Wrath, and the one thing I am really stuck with is a morose feeling of hopelessness among men as humanity and species. I acknowledge that book does seem to end on a relatively positive note: Rosasharn has learned the true lesson of family and taking care of one’s people that Ma has been demonstrating throughout the novel. While the reader is left with questions regarding the family’s future, it appears that they will at least be okay in the emotional sense if not in the physical. However, that denouement only holds true for the Joads. Steinbeck could of course not have foreseen the end of the Depression when he wrote his book and does not conclude the work with happiness and a full belly for all. He is a realist writing in a documentary fashion. It is along those lines that I take great sadness from the book.

Ma sums it up best when she says to a shopkeeper: “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones” (Steinbeck, 376). It amazes me that throughout the book, and probably in the actual Depression as well, those who had a surplus of food, money, and goods did not attempt to help those suffering around them. Where is human compassion when it is most needed? Everyone in the book is a Christian, and I do believe charity for the poor is a tenet of the Judeo-Christian doctrine. Tom even quotes the preacher’s scripture from Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12, which among other things says “woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.” The people in the Hoovervilles and working in the fields understood the need to help their fellow man, whether it be leaving money for a proper burial or pitching in to build a dam against flood waters.

Often times in the book characters discuss the relationship between men and beasts. For instance, those people in government camps are said to be too accustomed to being treated like actual human beings. They will forget their proper place in the social hierarchy among deputies and farm owners if given things like hot water and dances on Saturday nights. One of the most heartbreaking moments in the book for me comes almost at the very end in one of the anonymous man chapters. Two men are talking. One says, “Fella had a team of horses, had to use ‘em to plow an’ cultivate an’ mow, wouldn’ think a turnin’ ‘em out to starve when they wasn’t workin’.” The other man responds, “Them’s horses—we’re men” (Steinbeck, 434). The implication here is that the horses are more valuable to the farmer than the men who pick his crops, and that just goes against everything I believe in about the goodness of mankind. It’s as if the Okies in the book are a race unto themselves that well-to-do men and women of the 1930s scorned and ridiculed in the same way racist people so often do.

Migrant Car

John Steinbeck wrote a novel, and I am pretty sure he would be the first person to admit that. He did not set out to tell the most truthful, documentary tale possible. He crafted a fictional family, the Joads, and interspersed truths he had learned in his own travels among the story of theirs. The author realized something major was going on around him in America and he wanted to capture as close of an understanding of the situation as possible. And, for a while, he wrote an article for a San Francisco newspaper chronicling his findings. These articles should probably be taken for fact as seen through the eyes of John Steinbeck. The novel he wrote later based on this emigrational experience, however, should not.

Keith Windschuttle’s work Steinbeck’s Myth of the Okies manages to point out every single historical discrepancy present in The Grapes of Wrath. Windschuttle writes:

“Although it is about the experiences of the fictional Joad family, The Grapes of Wrath was always meant to be taken literally…Steinbeck interspersed his fictional chapters with passages that gave a running account of the prevailing social, climatic, economic, and political conditions…Unfortunately for the reputation of the author, however, there is now an accumulation of sufficient historical, demographic, and climatic data about the 1930s to show that almost everything about the elaborate picture created in the novel is either outright false or exaggerated beyond belief (Windschuttle, 2002).”

To which I have to respond, who cares?

Ok, so “dust storms in the Thirties affected very little of the farming land of Oklahoma.” And the majority of people who moved from Oklahoma to California did so in post World War II boom times; and of those people, the majority were actually quite young and moved from cities to cities, not from farms to other rural areas. Windschuttle also argues it was not the banks that killed agriculture but Roosevelt’s New Deal policies that forced the tenants of the land. But beyond these blatant discrepancies, Windschuttle points out that of the people who did actually go to California before 1940 to work the land, the majority was successful and prospered.

Windschuttle thinks the only enduring quality about Steinbeck’s work is his use of the biblical theme of the Exodus. The Joads are a typical American family experiencing an event of biblical proportions. Apparently, that detail and that detail alone makes The Grapes of Wrath the seminal book of the American Great Depression. But this entire view is so narrow-minded. While we may have the equipment to look bad and realize Steinbeck’s book is less than 100% truthful, we should not even bother. A novel is fiction for a reason: so an author can make a story up or take licenses with one he or she may already know. So Windschuttle, cut the guy some slack.