BS: It Can't Happen Here

Subject: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 02:27 PM

I keep seeing the phrase being used over and over again, and am left to wonder how many people actually know from whence it came. How many here have actually read the book? How many understand what the author's literary life's work was that caused the Nobel committee to make him the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He received it in 1930, and his Nobel lecture can be read here (for those of you with patience and curiousity):

http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1930/lewis-lecture.html

What the author had to say about the United States and American literature those 72 years ago, most certainly is relevant to where we stand today.

What I find so very odd, though, is that there is no Sinclair Lewis for our times. That we need one is, of course, no secret.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 02:32 PM

BTW, Sinclair Lewis was also the first person to turn down the Pulitzer Prize, in 1926, for his novel "Arrowsmith".

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: NicoleC
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 03:09 PM

Unfortunately, the book really isn't that good, although it makesw some good points. You have to be very committed to finishing it to get through it. The villians are one-dimensional and Mr. Lewis views everyone with contempt.

"1984" treats the subject of fascism better, and "The Handmaid's Tale" (Margaret Atwood) is a chilling portrait of a not-so-distant future when the religious right has taken over. "Handmaid" works so well because both the cause and effect of the new society is entirely plausible.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 03:20 PM

I agree that "It Can't Happen Here" isn't Lewis' best work. I brought it up only because of the repeated use of the phrase by some participating in threads on the Homeland Security Bill, etc. I've never thought that Lewis intended the book to be anything but a one dimensional satire to begin with--I don't think the book was as serious an effort at a novel as his other works (ie Main Street, Arrowsmith).

While "1984" and "Handmaid's Tale" might be better books, I think the cautionary tale of "It Can't Happen Here" works much better metaphorically for what we are seeing today. Sinclair Lewis asks the question – what if some ambitious politician would use the 1936 presidential election to make himself dictator by promising quick, easy solutions to the depression. Indeed, what would happen if some ambitious politician would use the 2000 presidential election to make himself dictator by promising quick, easy solutions to the most spectacular attack against the US on it's own soil since the second world war?

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 03:29 PM

It's already happened. the damned shame of it all is that it could have been prevented and can hopefully be retrieved by utilizing the one weapon the American people still have in their arsenal. I refer, of course, to the vote. You may rest assured that I shall continue to vote nad that I will urge as many as possible to do the same.
   Watch and see how many of our rights erode uinder the guise of "Defending against terrorism". Mind that Bush doesn't have to do it he has people like Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft who can be thrown to the wolves if it all back fires. OF course, I suspect that Ashcroft is the driving force behind the so called USA Patriot act (Kind of like the Republican party's "Contract on, oops With America) Neil

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 03:34 PM

Another BTW: neither Orwell or Atwood are American authors. I am yearning for an American author who can write social criticism and satire in a sort of neo-social realism style, like Lewis once did. Both American letters, and American society, need writers like Upton Sinclair and Rebecca Harding David and Kate Chopin and Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Theodore Dreiser, and their descendants--Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Clifford Odets.

The American literary genre of social realism has specific social, political, and artistic characteristics that set it apart from other genres, as well as the social realist writing in other countries.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 11:09 PM

Back when those books were written, it wasn't terribly obvious what we were going through and enduring. It took literature to show us the possible ways through the quagmire----and it was sort of romantic to be shown in the mirror of fiction just what was askew and how it might could get fixed.
These days, it's pretty obvious where we went off the road and, as always, it's up to the youth to see the way clear to finding the answers. The young have the energy and the testosterone/estrogen to make good (or bad) things happen. (I know I'm too exhausted to do it.) No need for a Steinbeck to create a Joad family to tell us that homelessness is a travesty. No, the books aren't needed. Ral life is enough, now, to show us the obvious. But building huge piles of gold like the dragons of old just to hoard it away even though they had no clue what to do with it (or with captive virginal maidens for that matter). We, like those dragons, seem no more inclined to use the gold of the realm to solve our problems than they did. ------------------ The literature of our times is on the screen and not between the covers of many good books--or even of bad books. Our imaginations have become vestigial remnants that it's hard to hot-wire into starting up. Hollywood's special effects get us going a few hours at a stretch---------only to fall limp and flacid afterwards like a dream that, upon awakening, we'll never be able to recall...

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 01:06 AM

Here's a footnote from a paper I wrote about Sinclair Lewis last year in the spring:

Critic Mark Cantwell wrote of Lewis: "For although Lewis has written at least two first-rate novels, and created a dozen powerful characters, and produced a half-a-hundred masterly satirical sketches scattered throughout these books—as well as adding new words to the language and popularizing, more than anybody else, a new and skeptical slant on American life—he has also turned out as much journalistic rubbish as any good novelist has signed his name to, and he has written novels so shallow and dull they would have wrecked any reputation except his own" (111).

Lewis' literary reputation suffered a great blow at the hands of Mark Schorer, his hatchetman "biographer," who clearly disliked Lewis and spent 800+ pages to tell us why he thought Lewis was such a bad writer. Another of my footnotes:

One can only wonder at the scholarly goals of Lewis biographer Mark Schorer (Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, 1961). He is widely quoted from his 867 page study: "He was one of the worst writers in modern American literature, but without his writing one cannot imagine modern American literature." (813)

Schorer didn't recognize the work that Sinclair Lewis was asking some of his characters to do, and that in some of the instances of extremely two-dimensional characters, he had a greater goal than character development. He was a social writer, who by the time he finished with Main Street and Babbitt, his uncanny ability to state the obvious took him from revolutionary to invisible within a very few years. The obvious became, well, so obvious that it wasn't remarkable any more.
--SRS

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: NicoleC
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 12:11 PM

One might argue that literature doesn't have to be interesting to read in order to be great.

I agree with Art -- I don't think we need a great American author to write about politics. In today's world, political ideas are not spread by novel, they are spread by newspaper and commentary and internet. We no longer need an author to write a whole novel on politics, publish it, and then disseminate to to the masses. By the time that happens, it's often irrelevant. Only a very few politic writing have maintained their relevancy through the years. "A Modest Proposal" is as funny and scathing as it was when written, but no longer has the power of relevance.

On the other hand, we have a whole crop of fiction writers who's every work is imbued with politics, even if they aren't writing about it. Heinlein, Tepper, Atwood...

On the non-fiction side, we have writers like Michael Moore, and countless columnists.

There's no lack of political writing, and no way to tell which novels being written today will be as powerful and relevant 50 years later as 1984 is today.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 12:30 PM

I watched the film "Network" (on DVD) last night for the first time again since it was released in 1976, I think.

The film holds up very well, is eerily prescient, and is definitely up there in the film classic category. But as I was looking through the new DVD section at my neighborhood video store, I also noticed how many films based on Sinclair Lewis works were now out on DVD!

I do agree with you Nicole, that there are plenty of writers who include politics in their work. But I still wonder why there is so much quality social criticism missing from our public lives.

Has there been another "Network" in film or book form, since 1976? Considering the manipulative and propagandist power of television on so many aspects of our lives, and how much it skews our view of the world, it is still disturbing to me that so little social criticism for a mass market audience (such as through a book or film) exists.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From:
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 12:36 PM

The most depressing thing about the whole situation is the failure of resistance to get organized. Bush & co. probably don't labor under the idea that they have a mandate, but I think they have a very accurate perception that some combination of self-absorbed worry and narcotized indifference will prevent resistance from reaching critical mass. I blame the American people. They don't particularly want empire, but they like the bread and circuses that empire provides, and they'll do nothing so long as the VCRs, PDAs and SUVs keep coming. There is absolutely nothing preventing us from organizing the vote to remind financial power that it is not sacred, but is tolerated insofar as it contributes to the common good, and jeopardizes itself when it becomes destructive of that end (to borrow a better writer's phrase). But we will only respond to emotional, symbolic, hot-button issues (flag-burning, gun control) and not sit still to sift through serious discussions of economics and geopolitics. I found this to be the starkest difference between American and European journalism, print or broadcast, in the years I lived outside the US.

The consistency with which we vote against our own interests is disheartening; we are smug and comfy, and it can happen here because we don't mind a bit if it does. It will not be dramatic. Heck, it's gone pretty far by very measurable standards, yet we who are discussing it are wondering, only half-jokingly, whether we're being paranoid.

I have no idea what could shake us out of this complacency. If not 9-11, what? The Pax Americana looks very much like the Pax Romana. The Romans never woke up at all (not that they didn't have plenty of Cassandras. to mix my allusions), but even by the second century, some were moving to self-sufficient villas, telling the servus who could smith a little that his son would have to learn the trade so he might as well consider "smith" his name, and the dark ages had begun. Keep singing the truth to power, friends. I think folksong's headed for more importance than it's had for a long time.

Adam (glumphy on Monday morning)

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 12:42 PM

Adam, you've piqued my interest--what makes you think folksong is headed for more importance than it's had for a long time?

In my experience, European arts and letters are doing no better with social criticism about these things than the US is, unless they are critiquing someone else's country (especially the US).

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 01:00 PM

The place to look is in speculative fiction, which is considered disreputable. Unfortunately, too many people still consider SciFi to the the rockets and babes genre that became associated with it in the 50's [the so-called "Golden Age].

Analog has been producing this material since Campbell began encouraging it back in the 30's. Because it is not treated as mainstream, much of it is under the radar.

Atwood is an example of the genre who has managed to break out. There are many writers in the field who can make you think.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 02:32 PM

I agree with Adam regarding the importance of the folksong in the coming years. Remember the protest songs during the Vietnam war, those of you old enough to remember the 1960's and 70's? Protest songs don't just happen, they need a critical mass to become mainstream. Bush is just the sort to generate those songs, with his world view and choice of henchmen. The people who were opposed to Clinton when he was in office wouldn't have had much luck with protest songs--they may have disliked the man, but the stable economic conditions and the general lack of war kept critics down to a low simmer. What Bush is brewing is different, goes deeper, and will bring out the musical pundits. Heck, it might even bring Tom Lehrer out of retirement. Now wouldn't those be songs to hear! (I hope I'm not misspeaking--last I heard, he was still alive!)

--SRS

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 02:40 PM

Well, there was a great hope pinned upon the folkies for a "protest" revival under Reagan/Bush I, which never materialized. So I'm wondering what it is that makes some of you think we might be on the verge of a new revival?

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: NicoleC
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 02:48 PM

Guest, I think you made your own point. "Network" is still relevant and thought provoking. We don't need another one on this subject; any attempt to produce a "Network" for the '00's would be a pointless exercise.

Social criticism is missing from everyday lives because the media is in the hands of a very few giant corporate entities. No news program on ABC is going to do an expose on the horrid working conditions at Disneyland. The journalists who try find their stories squashed or end up in the unemployment line. CNN is not the least bit interested in giving a fair hearing to the anti-war activists, because war is great for ratings. Networks can't do stories or broadcast commentary on poor nutrition in schools that might offend a major sponsor like Coca-Coca that makes lucrative contracts with elementary schools for exclusive rights to the soda machines in the cafeterias.

In the words of a poet who's name I can never remember,

"As on altar, can it be that ye have wasted inspiration on dead ears,
dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?...
We are not free, doth freedom then consist
in musing with our faces toward the past while petty cares
and crawling interests twist their spider threads about us
Which at last grow strong as iron chains to cramp and bind
in formal narrowness, heart soul and mind?"

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 03:14 PM

Nicole, so are you saying because we had one film that worked as a social critique of television news in 1976, we don't need to be bothered with it anymore?

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: NicoleC
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 06:05 PM

Yes and no. We don't need another "Network" until "Network" no longer makes a relevant point or doesn't cover the story adequately. It still does.

Simply rehashing the moral of someone else's story isn't creating, it's copying. How many trite teenage version of Shakespeare plays can you sit through until the original impact of the story is meaningless?

You gotta say something new to say. (Or relatively new... the old adage is usually correct.) What is an artist to say -- The media is just like it was when Network was made, but now it's worse?

Besides, didn't Michael Moore cover the TV business pretty throughly in "Adventures of a TV Nation?"

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Art Thieme
Date: 25 Nov 02 - 11:03 PM

Good people,

Keep in mind that as great a novel as THE GRAPES OF WRATH was, (I've read it six or seven times) Woody Guthrie never read the book. He saw the film and went home and wrote "The Ballad Of Tom Joad". And Woody took care of the Joad family's entire trip from Oklahoma to California in one condensing couplet:

They buried Grandpa Joad by the side of the road,
Buried Grandma on the California side.

Not only had a socio-politically enlightening and society-transforming novel been condensed into an effective film, but John Steinbeck reportedly said that Woody's song told the story better than his book did.

The more things change, the more they seem to compress---like a black hole swallowing a galaxy---. Not even light can escape-----UNTIL there is another big bang. That's when the truth that IS actually the truth becomes obvious again.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Peg
Date: 26 Nov 02 - 09:08 AM

Pamela Zoline is an experimental fiction writer who wrote some biting social satire in the 1970s and 1980s. One story is called "Instructions for Exiting This Building in Case of Fire." It posits a world in which nuclear annihlation might be halted or held at bay if an unthinkable plan is put into place...quite ingenious and I think daringly provocative.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 10:02 AM

Being refreshed in relation to Dick Greenhaus' mention of this book in "The Brave New World You Ordered's Here" thread.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 06:54 PM

I read _It Can't Happen Here_ in high school, about 50 years ago. It made a strong impression on me, and quite a few bits of it have stuck in my mind: lab glassware piled outside a classroom with soldiers drilling inside; dissidents being whipped with steel fishing rods. In my recollection it was obviously meant to be a satire, not a novel with real people in it. Surely his calling the U.S. dictator Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip is evidence enough of that!

The book appeared in 1935. The satire must have been partly aimed at Huey Long.

Subject: RE: BS: It Can't Happen Here
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 10 Dec 02 - 07:09 PM

I brought up the book, not because it was great literature (It's not--it's purty good pamphleteering) because, unlike 1984 and its progenitor "Darkness at Noon" it presented a frighteningly plausible blueprint.

It was a warning of how home-grown fascism could take over the US.