On Magazines, Space/Time (but not space-time), and Peeling Labels

I must say, I enjoyed Andie Tucher's section on Newspapers and Periodicals--I would have been cool with it being a little longer, even. (Crazy, I know.)

Tucher's "Magazines and Reviews" made it into my "top two favorite sections" rankings, at least in part due to the fantastic opening line: "Magazines, unlike newspapers, had to work hard to find love" (397). I enjoy having my sympathy evoked for a material form, and I found it intriguing--but simultaneously unsurprising--that early American magazines were seen as "pale imitations" of their British counterparts.

Unsurprising because starting with things more British and using that as a springboard to work gradually into something that is truly American rather seems to have been, for lack of a better turn of phrase, the way America and the concept of what it's like to be American came into being, on all counts.

Intriguing because, given the risky nature of running a periodical in early America in the first place, it would seem like a great form and forum in which to experiment with creating something that is, from the very start, essentially American. (If you're going to fail, fail big, right?)

But then, as Tucher tells us, periodicals did not have the same appeal to writers in America as they did to writers elsewhere. And I wonder what that says about Americans and their conceptualization of time. Did the voice of the American public sphere not find itself best heard in periodicals, as the British voice so very much did, because we did not have the same anxieties concerning temporality? British periodicals created and fed off such anxieties, but in America, spacial, not temporal, anxieties, seemed to be a bigger factor.

Certainly, disseminating a singular novel across the country was more feasible. I can only imagine the anxieties that would have arisen had periodicals here had (or maybe they did?) a Magazine Day, where all the monthlies put out their next issue. How would that issue get to everyone on the same day? An issue would have to be done and printed that much sooner to be transported to all parts of the country in time for distribution day. Just thinking about how difficult that would have been makes me anxious, and I'm here in the good ol' 21 century.

Yet I can understand the rise of periodicals for very niche readerships of which Tucher speaks--people were attempting to bring their voices into an enormous public space, so that their voices could perchance become part of the--but not the--public sphere. These publications were of the middle-class variety, but that certainly does not negate the potential for readership from people of other classes. And it is periodicals of this sort, as Tucher says, that finally helped to "revolutionize the profession of authorship" in America (399). Great American writers were getting paid to write for these niche periodicals, and it is from their readership here that their work outside the periodical realm rose in popularity and esteem.

In this sense, the transformation of periodical culture into something more American resulted in a phenomenon that could certainly be labelled "British," too. Which makes me wonder if we lose the point and the power of history when we try to label things as British or American, domestic or sensational, middle-class or lower-class, etc. One of my favorite lines from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf comes from Honey, when she's sitting drunk on the bathroom floor, peeling the labels off of bottles of alcohol. "I peel labels," she says, and in the context of the play, as in the context I'm discussing here, it makes you think of how often our labels don't hold, how they really cannot seem to get at--and in fact take away from--"The Real Thing," to borrow the title of Henry James's fabulous short story. From this perspective, labeling something and then neatly filing it away into its "proper" place really doesn't seem so proper.

Dear America,

Dear America,

I miss you. I mean, I know I live here--in Texas, one of the United States, but you're probably still upset that I seemed to break up with you, academically speaking, a couple of years ago. You see me as a formerly loud and proud Americanist who allowed herself to be wooed by those pesky English with their digestives, meat pies, and fancy hats.

Well, I'm here to tell you that I have done no such thing. (Family, friends, and former colleagues can attest: they still ask me questions and send me stuff about Hemingway all the time, and he's one of your greats!) I'm just checking out the other side of the pond, trying to see things from their perspective. Many of your finest modernist writers lived overseas back in the day; it's seems fitting that I, who aspire to be one of your finer (finest would be pushing the ego envelope) writers of scholarly criticism, then, should see what's up in that neck of the woods. Yes, yes, I've gone back to the nineteenth century, I'm a Victorianist--but my new position will help me do what they call a "sneak attack" in war, no? I've got to surprise the American modernists from behind. Trust me, it's brilliant. I've got it all worked out.

But, as you know, I had never looked back into your literary history, either: Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe (love those guys) were about as far back as I'd gone. I'm hoping you're pleased with me for taking the time to do so this semester.

I cannot, however, say that I'm as pleased with you. Richard D. Brown continues the conversation Gross started in his introduction to Extensive Republic regarding the public sphere, and I just don't like that women were so marginalized. Yes, yes, I know, it's all a process, these things take time. But why? Why did it have to take time? Why was the notion of a female intellectual so unacceptable? Why--how--did these constructed gender binaries get created? Sure, you'll say, "don't look at me--such things were in place before everyone came over here." But you know what? I am looking at you. America was supposed to be about change, about progress, about doing things in non-British ways. Why couldn't you have extended these non-British ways to your treatment of women? Seems like common sense to me, but I guess the only Common Sense you had was in the form of a pamphlet by one Thomas Paine. That was enough radical thinking for your vast terrain, ay?

What's that? Oh yes, I know, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a hot commodity--I can read Brown's chapter just fine on my own, thank you. I'm literate. But you were satisfied to let the feminist thinking of a British woman circulate--why didn't you let the voices of American women be more readily and easily heard in your public sphere? Why were they silenced?

I already know how you'll respond: you'll tell me I'm being silly, cliche, and certainly not very erudite. But I operate within a scholarly framework all the time, and I wanted to use some "rude diction," Paine-style. See where that got me.

It's only gotten me a wee bit frustrated, as I know all too well that placing blame won't get me anywhere.

Just know, America, that I appreciate the ways in which you strove to better yourself and make advancements as a nation in the 18th century. I only wish the advancement of women had been a part of your original agenda, too.

Your faithful inhabitant,
M. J. Couchon, the first.

p.s. Are you formally affiliated with Peter Simes's "America: The Blog?" If not, you should talk to Mr. Simes about being a sponsor; I really think it would help your street cred. 

A Temporal Meditation on Gross’s Introduction to An Extensive Republic (Occuring Within This Specified Space)

Robert A. Gross begins his introduction by telling readers that “An Extensive Republic charts the expansion of print culture in a new nation rapidly gaining in population and spreading across space” (1, emphasis added). He later talks about the “tyranny of distance” in regards to how long it took to disseminate information across the vast terrains of America.

But I wonder if the real culprit--though is there a culprit, really?--is in fact time; after all, distance is something that can be conquered, that technological advances can help us to overcome. We cannot, however, overcome time in quite the same sense, though time and space are, as we commonly view them, inextricably linked.

What seems most illuminating about the 50-year time span on which Extensive Republic focuses is how much growth there was in such a short temporal segment on the timeline of that intangible entity we refer to as history. And where this growth came from was (1) the exponential rise of print culture and (2) the multiplicity of public spheres that arose at least in part as a response to the rise of print culture. 

Gross expands on Habermas’s idea of the public sphere, asserting that there is also a “public sphere of civil society” (11). But I think there is more expanding to do than that—to assume and think of the public sphere as a collective—or here a binary collective—entity is simply to default back to the notion of there being one and only one way to define American nationalism, one and only one way to define American ideology. Print culture offered itself to multiple, fragmented sectors of the public that were in fact, by themselves, not so fragmented at all. Print culture helped, for instance, women to have voices. They developed their voices, however, because they made space for themselves when they saw the so-called universal public sphere was leaving them out. But even there, we could divide the category of women down by factors of class, race, and geographical location. 

Each divisional public sphere, in and of itself, existed in a fugal harmony with other public spheres; different, yes, but with the same overarching goal: to build personal and national identities, to learn about one's self and one's nation. Not being too general and offering materials that were sufficiently localized was a balancing act print culture in America had to deal with, and it dealt with it fairly well. Certainly, space was important, for, as Gross points out, Americans thrived on localism. What concern had farmers in rural North Carolina for the public sphere that existed among New York entrepreneurs? A public sphere of one’s own—that’s what Virginia Woolf would have called for had she lived in this time (and space), I should like to think. And while Gross gets closer to this idea than Habermas did, he’s still missing the mark.

In this regard, I wonder about the “campaign by many writers, editors, and artists to bring forth a distinctive literature and culture expressive of the nation as a whole” that arose in the 1830s (13, emphasis added).  Gross uses the word “expressive” instead of “representative," and I'd like to think he was savvy enough to have chosen his diction here quite carefully. A singular literature and/or culture that could stand up as a representation of America’s diverseness surely would have been difficult; if nothing else, such a representation would have taken up too much space. But an “expressive” literature and/or culture suggests a more linguistic way of signifying a nation, which, if we are inclined to agree with Bahktin’s assessment of novels (and I suppose I am so inclined), is in fact a way the varying voices of America could be heard. Assuming we're willing to take the time to listen.

Advertisements, Novels, and A Priori Ideology: A Response to Davidson, Chapters 3 & 4

In reading chapters three and four of Davidson's book, I became especially interested in the role advertisements played in attracting and influencing readers. How much power did the advertisement have in attracting would be readers and setting a priori ideological undertones for the work it was promoting and in which it was contained?

I find it telling that in the 19th century, non-novels were being advertised as novels. Obviously the novel as a genre had developed a kind of sway, a kind of power that the captivity narrative, the biography had not. And this development seems to have happened rapidly, historically speaking, as the 18th century saw novels being advertised as, for instance, "sentimental histories." I tend to think of the advertisement today as having more power than the product itself, but in early America, it would seem that the novel--as a product and as a genre--empowered the advertising industry. (I wonder what a reader would think upon opening a captivity narrative that had been advertised as a novel. Would the novel label hold? Or would the reader realize she had been duped? How much power does a predefined label have over us?)

But that is not to say that advertisements as a genre were not powerful--they certainly were. And advertisements within a particular work seemed to play a role in shaping not only that work's ideological grounding, but also the ideology behind the works in the advertisements themselves.  An advertisement for Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman within the pages of Charlotte Temple may have suggested to readers some of the novel's more feminist undertones, but Charlotte may also have suggested to readers unfamiliar with Wollstonecraft that her work would be one of a feminist slant similar to Rowson's because of the advertisement's placement. The relationship between advertisement and text, then, became one of mutual benefit, at least from the perspective of the printer/publisher. (In that respect, I wonder if Davidson would have benefited from considering the printer/publisher's role as an educator.) Moreover--if I may throwback to our friend Starr for a moment--advertisements and texts interacted with each other in a very horizontal way, mimicking the way in which the reader interacted with texts and advertisements, too (at least according to Davidson). 

It is in this light that I read Davidson's assertion that "it is necessary to ask not only who could read but what they read; not only what they read but in what context" (122). In that regard, as Davidson later says, the novel indeed "was not culturally autonomous but, rather, was contiguous with other literary forms, was intertwined with the social and political concerns of the day, and was part of the activities of the reader's life" (139). 

            One of these "other literary forms" was, as I have asserted, the advertisement. Davidson uses advertisements as a way to read the perceived target audience of a work: "The advertisements included in early American novels also indicate that they were often targeted specifically for children, women, or a new and relatively untutored readership, not for the intellectual elite" (139). 

            Her footnote on this subject is even more illuminating: "For example, in the 1794 edition of Charlotte, Mathew Carey advertised other books by Rowson as well as Wollstonecraft's The Rights of Women [sic] (for $1), suggesting that he anticipated a primarily female (and feminist?) audience. In an 1811 edition of the same novel, most of the books advertised at the back are juvenile works, as are the preponderance of books in the 1815 edition of Sarah Savage's The Factory Girl. Conversely, in a 1793 edition of Rowson's textbook, Universal Geography, nearly all of the ads are for books by or about women, including some novels" (408). 

Clearly, then, something changed between 1794 and 1811. The context in which readers were reading was different: Charlotte was not a new novel, and developments in education--as well as the advertisements themselves--suggest that Charlotte was a book readers were able to approach at a young age. (One could also go down the path of considering how the advertisements indicated mothers who would see value in their children's education as Charlotte's readers. I do not do that here, but it is certainly a worthy and most [more?] feasible conjecture.) Maybe, then, Charlotte's potential to promote its particular brand of ideology was even more powerful, as it was getting readers at an early age, when their minds were more open to new, potentially subversive ideas than an adult female reader's mind would have been. In fact, what was subversive to an adult woman may not have seemed subversive to a young reader at all, simply because she did not have the epistemological foregrounding on which to base sophisticated binary distinctions such as subversive/non-subversive in the first place. Charlotte as a children's book (dare I call it a Bildungsroman of sorts?), then, is not so much a demotion as a promotion of its star--not to be confused with Starr--potential.