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| Book Recommendation Time! |
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| Įrašė Moacir P. de Sá Pereira | |
| 2006.09.11 14.43 | |
        My career choice seems to lead to many people asking me, often, for book recommendations. I hate doing it, and so I usually try to dodge the request.* But since this site is related to questions of Lithuanian-Americanness, if I find something that I think widely addresses certain aspects of Lithuanian-Americanness, I'll try to pass it along. So I do, finally, have a book recommendation, though it comes with a series of caveats and a few spaces that demand filling in with a bit of extra work from my end.A lot of readers of this site are probably pretty familiar with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. This work, celebrating its centennial this year, remains the sort of paradigmatic work of American literature about the Lithuanian diaspora experience in Chicago, even though the diaspora population is one distinctly different from the one that makes up the immigrant grandparents of most readers of this site. Jurgis Rudkus and his in-laws are the archetype for first wave Lithuanian immigrants to Chicago: land-owning peasants occupying the class just where education starts to become available and those even worse off. This is in contrast with the second-wavers, who at least present themselves as having been the intellectual élite of Lithuania—a group Jurgis Rudkus would never have imagined himself in. When I was chatting about the book with a young man this summer, though, he remarked that the book was good, but he was upset that Rudkus becomes a communist at the end of the novel—"it's about Lithuanians, but they're communists, so they're not the best kind of Lithuanians." Well, for those of you interested in a slightly later interpretation of the immigrant experience in the South Side of Chicago where the characters don't turn into communists, I can recommend James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy, made up of Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Judgment Day. As the name suggests, Studs is Irish. Still, this trilogy, I think, has a certain value for understanding both the first wave Lithuanian immigrants and the South Side cultural values that have crossed waves and passed through generations. A lot of the psychological attachments in these novels remain visible today. Furthermore, since the action of the novels begins ten years later and one generation removed from that of The Jungle, we get a world in which personal pyschology can be nurtured and cultivated: Studs is not constantly starving and being blacklisted, like Jurgis is. Below, I'll go into more detail about the three novels and explain why I've characterized them as "90% Marquette Park, 10% Dainava." The basic arc of the three novels is the life of Studs Lonigan from his 16th until his 30th birthday (or so). He is born in 1900, the oldest of four children. His father, Paddy, came to the United States when he was a child and grew up in Bridgeport. His childhood was far rougher than the one his painting business has provided for his children. He moved his family to Washington Park (around 58th and Wabash). His family then moves, fleeing the African-Americans moving westward into the neighborhood, to 58th and Michigan, before finally departing for the South Shore (71st and Jeffrey, more or less) in the 20s. Young Lonigan's setting is almost entirely the summer of 1916. Studs has just graduated (along with his—most likely Irish twin—sister) from St. Patrick's school, and Studs spends his time around the neighborhood, building up both his street cred and deciding whether or not to go to high school. The second novel picks up the following summer and continues until New Year's Day, 1930, with Studs in a shape many readers of this site have found themselves on New Year's Day. During this time, Studs is building up and living off his reputation while working in the painting business with his father. The novels are historically very accurate and interpenetrated by historical events, so we see Studs trying to enlist for the army in 1917, celebrating on Armistice Day in 1918, participating in the race riot of 1919, and complaining about the unfair shake Al Smith gets in 1928. Judgment Day, by far and away the most impressionistic of the three novels, picks up at some point after the New Year's party, and floats along until 1931 or even 1932—late enough for the Lonigans to complain about being shut out of patronage jobs by the Cermak administration, but not late enough to cover the Roosevelt presidency. But despite the great historical detail in the novels, what makes them appropriate to contemporary Lithuanian-American readers is how the trilogy addresses several issues that remain traces in our own ethnic understanding, along with showing how that ethnic understanding becomes pervasive in other aspects of our lives, including how males interact with females. What I mean is that Studs's allegiance to his Irishness, to the "58th St. Gang," becomes a defining characteristic of his persona. He cannot abandon it—nor does he want to. But this ethnic identification comes at a cost. At the start of the trilogy, the Irish are sitting pretty. Studs has tons of friends, social contacts, and the future is great. By the end of the trilogy, the Irish have been chased from Washington Park by their own racism and anti-Semitism, Studs's group of friends is dispersed (by death, marriage, gentrification, and social stratification), and his economic success is challenged by the opportunity of the Eastern European immgrants's being in charge of Chicago once Cermak defeats Big Bill Thompson. The closing scene of the novel—one that led me to tears—is of Paddy Lonigan, back in Bridgeport, watching a file of communists parade down the street. His Irishness, his Catholicness has created such a provincial fool out of him (and out of his son) that he cannot see past either social form and imagine a different, larger world for which he has feelings other than scorn. Their ethnicity and religion both create a template that unify him with others (especially clear during the scene of Studs's initiation into the Knights of Christopher), but they also form a border that shuts the rest of the world out. The novels do a great job of showing how that is pennywise and poundfoolish. The clannishness of the Irish in Studs Lonigan also contributes to (and maintains) a very antagonistic and stratified South Side. The trilogy is astonishing in how it portrays Studs and his friends as limitless racists and anti-Semites, thinking nothing of going to Hyde Park and beating up young Jewish boys or spitting on Jewish babies. Studs's sister dates (and marries) a Jew who converts to Catholicism for her, and even he is never welcomed fully by Studs and his friends. A class element, then, also arrives. Studs and his crew resent their friends who go off to the University of Chicago, only becoming atheists and communists over there. Studs resents the class mobility available to his sisters (who marry up), when his own class mobility is limited by choices he made as a teenager. And this resentment then remanifests itself in what I think is the most interesting aspect of the trilogy: a cycle of bitterness attached to authenticity, virility, and independence. The barriers the Irish Catholics build around their neighborhoods become barriers that the individuals build around themselves, with an internal logic that is simply untenable outside of those barriers. Studs develops a paranoia about his virility and independence that turns him into an anti-social monster. So worried is he that he'll look soft or dependent (and, hence, an actor in a society made up of others than himself) that he ends up removing himself from the society. It's really sad. And really well done by Farrell. This fixation with virility, and attaching it to authenticity and independence is, I think, still very much alive among us. I don't know if it's a feature of the experience of immigrants or (grand)children of immigrants, or what. Perhaps there's some of this excess of pride that becomes a defense mechanism. Get spit on for being a mick, and you come back saying, "yeah, and what of it?" Still, Studs's life was hitting very close to home, and the gender dynamics were mapping very closely to the dynamics I see among my own social groups, in almost all of its manifestations. The scenes of Studs hanging out in the poolroom with his buddies—sure, there's analogous scenes from my own life, but there's nothing particularly special about them. It's when Studs (and his friends) are interacting with women that things start getting far too familiar, and I'm still not sure why that is. So the pervasive implicit racism, class stratification, and ethnic isolation cover pretty much the 90% of the novel that I say is "Marquette Park." What of the 10% that is Dainava? This is harder to flesh out, since my own relationship with the church is nowhere near as deeply rooted—even in childhood. Still, the Roman Catholic Church plays a role in this novel perhaps even larger than the ethnic category of "Irish." This would make the Lonigans more of an analogue to first- (and first-and-a-half-) wave immigrants from Lithuania, from my understanding—though that's not to say that davatkiškumas is not pervasive (and disgusting) among second-wavers, but that second-wavers (and their children) have a strong ethnic bond attached to extra-ecclesiastic activities, like dance groups and basketball teams. For Studs, even the opportunity to play sports is only available once he joins the Knights of Christopher. In the trilogy, the religious life that Studs leads is presented neutrally. It's hard to imagine Farrell (given his biography—he was probably turned into an atheist at the UofC) is a true believer, but he never slides into the sort of cynical criticism of the church that's very easy to do (trust me, I know). Because of the general neutrality, it's easier to see how pervasive a role religion plays in a fellow who comes off as "normal." He is not a holy-roller, but he is full of anxiety over the state of his soul. This environment I thought was unavailable as part of the standard Lithuanian-American experience these days, but over the past few years, as we seem to be experiencing a rising surge of davatkiškumas, I'm not so sure. The only place, as a youth, where I could find something in myself that would match what makes up such a funamental part of Studs's psychological makeup (and limitations and anxieties) was in the forced epiphanic moments I had at Dainava. So I think that the Studs Lonigan trilogy, despite being about Irish Catholics in the 1910s–1930s reflects very valuably on both the imagined life of the Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago at the time as well as on the seemingly radically different immigrant experience of the second-wavers. The anxieties Studs suffers offer a window into the ethnic, male experience in a way that I think remains true to this day. As such, I can strongly recommend it to people who want to try and understand what this whole Lithuanian-American thing might be all about, at its core. As an added feature, though there are no Lithuanians in the novel, many people in Young Lonigan are referred to as "loogins." From the OED: looganThe relationship between this word and "lugan" is, at this point, unclear to me. * I hate giving out book recommendations since, in general, I "professionally" read books for far different purposes than people outside of the profession read books. That is, I don't read books that are "good." I read books that are "interesting." For me, there's usually a 1:1 relationship, but that's not going to be the case for everyone. Also, as such, what makes books pleasing for people in general (good plot, interesting characters, suspense, I don't know what else...) is not why I read the books that I do. That said, the Studs Lonigan trilogy has a great plot, interesting characters, suspense, and the like, as well as piles and piles of stuff that I find professionally fascinating. |
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| Paskutinį kartą atnaujinta ( 2006.09.11 14.45 ) |