Twain’s Favorite Painting

Without a doubt, my favorite book on Art History was written by Mark Twain.  It is a splendid reference book on the European Renaissance that covers artworks displayed from Spain to Italy.  Twain, a noted expert on Western Art, wrote a series of newspaper articles as he traveled across Europe and the Holy Lands and these were collected in 1869 in a single volume, The Innocents Abroad.

After weeks of travel and study, Twain was able to wisely comment, “Who is this Renaissance?  Where did they come from?  Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?”

This is the kind of deep insight that only travel to foreign lands provides.

Naturally, Twain didn’t intend to write a textbook on art history and I may be the only person who thinks he did. Twain’s real aim was to provide a great travel book—one that would correct the many mistakes and overwhelmingly sugary prose of a popular contemporary travel volume written by William Cowper Prime.  Technically, Twain lampooned Prime’s book, but a more accurate description would be that Twain ravaged his competition like a pack of hungry wolves descending on a daycare right about lunch time. 

In particular, Twain was somewhat contemptuous of the tour guides who attempted to elevate every piece of art into a masterpiece simply because it had been around for five centuries.  And Twain was deeply puzzled by the tourists who seemed to believe everything these tour guides said, no matter how ridiculous.  Eventually, Twain summed up his feelings about the staggering accumulation of exaggerations and outright lies of the region with a single statement:

"If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in a book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn."

Actually, Twain did appreciate some art, and he even had a favorite painting—one that you have probably never heard of.

Frederic Edwin Church was a mid-nineteenth century American landscape painter who was a part of the Hudson River School of painters.  The School’s members were known for their attention to detail and their realistic approach to portraying nature.  Their goal was to be as accurate as possible while emphasizing light as much as possible in their paintings.  Usually, their landscapes were very large and depicted a tranquil while majestic view of nature.  Or to put it more clearly, imagine one huge, highly-detailed painting with half of Yellowstone Park in it.

As the name of the school implies, the Hudson River Valley provided Church with scenes for his early works, but he soon expanded his source of inspiration to places that were “less civilized” than the Eastern United States.  Besides traveling across the United States, Church made two trips to South America, in particular, visiting the volcanoes of Ecuador.  He returned to the States with his sketchbooks filled with highly detailed drawings he later used as the basis for his paintings.

The Heart of the Andes was one of those paintings.  Roughly 5 ½ by 10 feet in size, the painting depicts a large plain in front of the volcano Mount Chimborazo, with a jungle in the foreground. Completed in 1859, the painting quickly became famous in the United States.  Church exhibited the painting in several cities, always carefully arranging the painting so that it was well lit from above.  

People stood in long lines to pay a quarter for the privilege of taking their turn to stand close to the painting.  Those people later said that they seemed to be absorbed by the painting, believing that they were entering the forest.  Many of the patrons said that the experience of viewing the landscape made them dizzy and that they seemed to forget where they were.

Twain went to one of those exhibitions while in St. Louis and wrote his brother about the experience:

“Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully beautiful painting which this city has ever seen––Church’s “Heart of the Andes”––which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all the bloom and glory of a tropical summer––dotted with birds and flowers of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, and twilight groves, and cool cascades––all grandly set off with a majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture––totally new––you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first… When you first see the tame, ordinary-looking picture, your first impulse is to turn your back upon it, and say “Humbug”––but your third visit will find your brain gasping and straining with futile efforts to take all the wonder in––and appreciate it in its fulness––and understand how such a miracle could have been conceived and executed by human brain and human hands. You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections––your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something––you hardly know what––will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture––It remains with you still. It is in my mind now––and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it.”

Over the years, Twain visited the painting he said was the “most wonderfully beautiful painting” many times and even mentioned it a few time in his stories.  Today, you can judge the painting for yourself, as it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Twain never claimed to be an expert about art, and cheerfully admitted that none of the works by the ‘old masters’ impressed him.  But like everyone else, he knew what he liked and didn’t pretend otherwise.  Or, as he once said:

“It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.”

Banned Books

Boy, am I ever against censorship!  I’m willing to bet good money that I own—and have read—more banned books than anyone reading this post.  Part of the irony of that statement is that this blog is still banned in a few countries.  And the majority of my hate mail (including a few fatwahs) comes from countries that are the most active in banning access to certain books.

Without a doubt my favorite banned book is Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.  Ever since the book was published 137 years ago, it is routine that some idiot, somewhere, has come out of his mother’s basement into the sunlight just long enough to scream that the book is harmful to children.  Most of the opposition comes in two forms:  First, that "the novel contains racist language and slurs (that were reflective of the time and setting in which it was written."  To which I answer, “Right.”

Secondly, the novel addresses issues related to slavery, racism, and the institution of slavery in the United States.  Once again, my answer is “Correct—Twain is openly ridiculing the White, stereotypically negative view of Blacks in society.”  (I wonder if this idiotic criticism of the book would be different if Twain had, as he originally planned, named the book after Jim?)  

It does seem that the controversy over banned books has changed its emphasis from race to sex recently.  With the exception of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (which some teachers in the Pacific Northwest want to eliminate), most of the yammering about banning books seems to be over depictions of gay or trans young people in various books.  

My initial reaction to this controversy was to ignore it.  There is not much need to ban any book these days since it becomes increasingly and painfully apparent that the youth of today won’t read anything not operated by their thumbs.  According to the NEA, the average child today reads only about half as many books a year as children did in 1992—which was 30% less than those in the sixties read.  Perhaps the solution to the problem is to pretend to ban books so that rebellious children will discover what the inside of a library looks like.

To be honest, I’ve changed my mind about the above paragraph.  I routinely gift books to my grandchildren (including, of course, both Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird) and I try to keep up with some of the current authors of children’s books, including the current Newberry Award recipients.  While researching some recent publications, I was shocked to discover that there really are some books that schools might want to reconsider before putting them in elementary school libraries.  Remember that the average elementary school library has children ranging in age from 6 to 13 freely roaming all of the shelves.  I was reading several years above my age level by age 9 and several of the books I have discovered recently would have been profoundly confusing to me at that age.  (Hell, one of the books is still a little confusing.)

Before you rashly proclaim that all books are appropriate for anyone, consider that, from where I sit as I type this, I can spot copies of both Mein Kampf and a book containing horribly graphic photographs documenting the Rape of Nanking.  No library policy should be so rigid as to overrule a good librarian’s common sense, but it is just our unfortunate luck that common sense is not all that common.

Still, there is a great deal of press about groups banning books—particularly in Florida—so I decided to do a little quick research on my own.  In this pursuit, I relied heavily on the folks at Marshall University, who maintain an excellent website listing the most commonly banned books and the school districts in which groups have attempted to ban books.  I should point out that Marshall University absolutely does not ban any book, nor should it.  You can find its website here.  All of the books in the top ten are there because of sexual material or material  related to portrayals of LGBTQ lifestyle.

Allow me explain how I did my admittedly sloppy research.  For the ten most commonly banned books, I tabulated the states in which school districts considered banning a book last year.  I also made a list of the states in which school districts considered banning a book the year that it was published.  I must make two big warnings about the data:  First, a great many of the school districts turned down requests to ban the book.  Secondly, some of the books have been in publication for years and I did not tabulate the states in those years.  I would encourage some student in need of a major research paper to do a more thorough job of examining the data available.  

So, what patterns/fascinating facts did I find?  Florida, which has been made the poster child for being the nation’s greatest threat to literary freedom, showed up on the list for book banning last year only once, and it showed up only once on the list of states attempting to ban a book the year it was published.  A great many other states showed up on one or both lists several times, including Texas, California, New York, Virginia, Missouri, and Kansas.  States that showed up at least once included Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and Oregon.  Despite my expectations, the only Southern state in the “Bible Belt” that showed up was Texas (five occurrences) and in many cases, those attempts to ban books were unsuccessful.  

The bottom line?  I suspect that attempts by well-meaning people to ban books show up wherever people live and if one state is garnering more news coverage about book banning than others, it probably tells us more about how the news is packaged and sold than about what the people in that state are doing or thinking.

Most people are against such obvious forms of censorship and almost everyone agrees that banning a book for high school students and above is wrong and should not be tolerated.  But, there are more subtle ways to censor books.  Are you against them, too?

Recently, I accompanied a colleague of mine to the campus bookstore.  As we passed a display of recent publications, my friend moved a random book over to cover a book written by a conservative talking head—one who writes highly inaccurate ‘history’ books that I despise.  Obviously, my friend didn’t want anyone to buy any of those books, so they were “censored” from view.  Yes, that’s censorship, too.

Do you follow the New York Times Bestseller List?  Are you aware that the number of books sold has absolutely nothing to with the ranking of books on that list?  Publishers, authors, other newspapers, and almost all of the digital media have complained about that for decades and there has been no change.  Want to know how the books on the list are selected?  So does everyone else and the Times isn’t saying.  But if you read the list for a couple of months, you can see a trend that suggests placement is highly influenced by politics.  That the Times does this is perfectly okay—it’s their newspaper.  But, it’s still censorship.

Ever heard of algorithmic censorship?  This involves the use of algorithms to filter out certain content from online platforms.  For example, social media companies may use algorithms to suppress certain posts.  They don’t have to tell you why or when they censor you.  They just shut you down.  When we use those social media platforms, we’re condoning their censorship.

Then there is corporate censorship:  This occurs when businesses use their power and influence to silence dissenting voices or to restrict access to information.  For instance, a media conglomerate might pressure its journalists to avoid reporting on certain topics, or it might use its financial clout to suppress unfavorable coverage of its business practices.  When we do business with those companies, we become their partners.

Censorship is all around us.  Perhaps we should stop worrying about a few parents who are a little overzealous about trying to protect their children until we have examined how much censorship we, ourselves, are partners in.

The Greater Fire

The devastating fire started on October 8, 1871.  Though there were several ludicrous theories about how the fire started—including a cow kicking over a lantern and a theory about flaming meteorites caused by a passing comet—the probable cause of the fire was simply high winds fanning a small fire during a year’s long drought that had turned the entire Midwest into a tinderbox that was just waiting for the smallest spark to ignite.

Whatever the cause, the flames spread and the fire quickly became uncontrollable, forcing people to flee.  While firefighters tried valiantly to extinguish the blaze, their task was complicated by lack of communications, by lack of professional training and by a shortage of equipment for those fighting the fire.  Even when firefighters raced to help other, distant neighbor firemen, they found their hoses would not connect to the hydrants or even to other hoses.

The unusually dry year, the high winds, the almost total lack of preparedness by civil authorities to be unable to fight all but the smallest of fires.  This fire, however it started, was the largest and most deadly fire in American history.  The really surprising aspect of the fire was that almost no one even noticed that it happened.  The New York Times didn’t even report the fire for three days, and even then, it was such a small story that few people even paid attention.

Oh!  You thought I was talking about that fire in Chicago?  That’s an understandable, innocent mistake, since both fires started on the same day—October 8, 1871–but I was referring to the big fire, the Peshtigo Fire, in northeastern Wisconsin…The fire you’ve probably never heard of.

In the 1870’s, upper Wisconsin was still being settled and most of the new farmers pouring into the virgin forests were poor immigrants.  The fastest way to clear the land was to fell the trees, burn them, then plow the ashes back under the soil.  This slash and burn agriculture was probably the source of the flames, but no one will ever be sure.  

Yes, some excitable people have actually theorized that both this fire and the one that torched Chicago were caused by meteorites.  We can probably ignore this theory since not only is there no evidence that such a thing happened in the Midwest in 1871, but there is not one case of meteorites ever starting a fire in history.

That night, a cold front hit the upper Midwest, bringing a temperature drop and very strong winds that  caught a small fire and turned it into a raging inferno that quickly developed into a fire storm.  When a firestorm rages through a forest, the diameter can be anywhere from 1000 feet wide up to two miles across.  With temperatures hitting 2000 degrees and traveling 110 mph across Wisconsin, this one destroyed everything in its path.  One of the reasons it took so long for the rest of the United States to learn of the fire was that it cut communications by destroying telegraph lines.  The few survivors described the swirling air rising, forming a giant flaming tornado that threw railway cars off their tracks and easily jumped rivers.

The other reason that it took so long for news of the inferno to reach the rest of the country was that there were very few survivors.  Due to the drought, there were so many fires across the Northern United States that residents had grown used to smelling smoke, waiting until they actually saw flames before responding.  The fire traveled twice as fast as the speediest locomotive and when the fire arrived at small towns and villages, it was if the little communities had been hit by nuclear blast.

The fire destroyed 1.2 million acres and 17 communities, killing somewhere between 1500 and 2500 people.

The exact number of dead will never be known.  While the state carefully prepared a list of the known casualties, along with the names of those missing, no one believes that the list is complete.  On a fairly regular basis, new mass graves have been discovered, containing unknown victims.  The hardest hit community was Peshtigo, where a mass grave contained over 350 bodies.  The primary reason that the deceased could not be identified was that there was no one left alive who could connect names with the corpses.  The town of Peshtigo was completely destroyed in an hour, with the loss of 800 souls.

It wasn't until days (or even weeks) later, when survivors and witnesses were able to reach larger cities and telegraph offices, that news of the Peshtigo Fire began to spread more widely.  The scale of the disaster and the high death toll gradually became known, but the Peshtigo fire never became a news sensation like the “Great” Chicago Fire, that had claimed 300 lives and destroyed 2100 acres.

The Chicago fire was far smaller and caused many fewer casualties than the Peshtigo fire, but it had made the news first, with graphic stories from the numerous survivors who gave detailed interviews.  Since it was an urban fire, there were lots of photos of whole streets with destroyed buildings.  By comparison, photos of burned trees—regardless of the number—just didn’t seem important.  By the time some of the horrific stories of the human losses made their way out of the Wisconsin forest, people were already bored with fires or they simply thought the new stories were about part of the Chicago Fire.  Some news sources didn’t even bother reporting the story.

Far worse, by the time the needs of the victims of the Peshtigo Fire were tallied, all of the charitable relief had gone to Chicago.  This was long before disaster relief was government-financed, so when the charitable organizations sought contributions from donors a second time, the results fell far short of need.  According to the Dictionary of Wisconsin History, there were an additional 1500 severely injured and 3000 made homeless.   

The Great Chicago Fire received widespread media attention and became a symbol of urban destruction, leading to significant changes in urban planning and firefighting practices. The Peshtigo Fire, despite being even deadlier, received less national and international attention at the time.  It is ironic that the fire that was larger and had a higher death toll—and remains the deadliest wildfire in US history—was less publicized and its victims were less provided for.

An Apology

For most of my adult life, I have believed that the reports of American antisemitism were probably overstated, a natural and justifiable reaction by American Jews to memories of the Holocaust.  Of course, antisemitism still existed, but surely such warped thinking was dying out, a lingering evil that was present only in the warped minds of people so ignorant they couldn’t spell the word.

Not being Jewish, I only rarely came into contact with that form of prejudice, and when I did, it was easy to shut it down, secure in my belief that such stupidity was an isolated and rare occurrence.  Growing up in the South, I occasionally ran across a few morons that still yearned for the South to rise again, but only among either the feeble-minded or those who resided on the political fringes.

Over the years, I saw prejudice and injustice against Blacks and Hispanics, and while I took a stand against such bigotry, in hindsight, I certainly didn’t do nearly enough.  Only rarely, however, did I actually witness any overt antisemitism, and when I did, I believed it was a rare example of aberrant behavior.  

When a friend told me that he had actually met people that believed he had horns, I thought he had found the last Nazis that weren’t hiding in caves in Argentina.  Surely such ignorance was extremely limited.

A business partner of mine from a few decades’ past didn’t want to do business with a certain company because of the ethnicity of the owner.  I laughed at my partner and said his thinking was a relic from an ancient past that never really existed.  My partner acquiesced and our two companies went on to have a profitable relationship for several years.  Today, I wonder if I should have done more or said more to my partner.  Why did I treat his prejudice as a joke?  That conversation still haunts me.

When I taught American History, I tried to the very best of my ability to portray the cruelty of slavery, the injustices of the Jim Crow period, and the struggles of the Civil Rights era (much of the last of which I had lived through with far too little self-awareness).  I still have my notes from those lectures and the points that I stressed were that I was embarrassed by the past injustices I had casually ignored, that there was still injustice in our society, and that I predicted that in the decades to come, many of my students would be made equally uncomfortable by their own lack of awareness.

That my students may have ignored what I was saying is forgivable.  What is far worse is that I wasn’t even listening to myself.  There was injustice all around me and, once again, I was ignoring it.

Of course, I lectured about the Holocaust.  I even showed my classes films so horrific that, when I was not using them, I kept them locked in the back of my gun safe because I was afraid that my own children might watch them before they were old enough to understand the documented pure evil in them.  

That locked safe may be the perfect metaphor for how I reacted to the antisemitism around me:  if I locked it away, I wouldn’t have to deal with it until I wanted to.  As soon as the worrisome details were shoved to the back of the safe, I could slam the door, spin the tumblers, and then ignore it because those injustices were not aimed at me.  

And that is how prejudice and hatred survive:  they live in the darkest recesses of society because there are not enough people who are willing to directly confront them and drag them  out into the light and demand an end to the stupidity.  Racial injustice must be actively sought out and confronted, for otherwise, it will always find another dark corner of society in which to fester.

It is not enough to simply confront prejudice when you are the target—that is as senseless as trying to stop a flood by only sweeping back the water that tries to enter your property.  Racial prejudice is something that must be confronted regardless of where it is happening, and who it is happening to.  It is not nearly enough to confront prejudice when it is aimed at you—it must be confronted when it is aimed at anyone, anywhere, anytime.

For years, I did not really believe that antisemitism in America was really a problem.  The events of the last few weeks have convinced me that not only was I horribly naïve, but that my naïveté was a real danger to my friends. It really shouldn't have taken people screaming in American streets for the death of my friends for me to see the obvious.

 In many ways, I failed my friends—Jamie, Carlos, Rachel, Victor, Andrea, and the rest of my friends—who face very real dangers that I have ignored.  I apologize.  I will do better.