Re: No more Twain? -- Northwest Nerds Bookclub

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Date Posted: 09:50:13 06/08/00 Thu
Author: Marla
Subject: Re: No more Twain?
In reply to: David 's message, "No more Twain?" on 15:13:46 06/06/00 Tue

You raise some interesting points, Dave. I think that it's next to impossible to write as a passive, objective observer when traveling in other lands because so much of what you see, hear, smell, and taste as an outsider is infused by subjectivity. Even professional journalists struggle to maintain their objectivity when reporting on world events and are invariably criticized for projecting too much leftist or conversative commentary into their stories. Even the choice of one adjective or verb over another (Remember Thurmond's "railing"?) can come back to haunt the writer if his/her readers hold different political/social philosophies and are particularly sensitive to the issue being discussed. I don't necessarily think that Twain actively extends the strong arm of colonialism by being so blase in his observations about class. Instead, I think he's reporting what he witnesses through a filter of skewed objectivity. We all do it, no matter how much we try not to.

I think some of us are still working on Twain (Court? Cat?), though I don't think anyone else plans to read the whole thing. I think we should begin Saramago (Dave's choice) later this month...say around June 21? I picked it up last week and it looks fascinating. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Next up after that will be Shaara's "The Killer Angels" (my choice), followed by Chris' pick. We can determine start dates for those books later this summer.

> So, is everyone who actually read Twain through with
> it? Anything more to add? Court, didn't you pick it?
>
> I skimmed it in the few weeks that I was home, and I
> do not have it with me here in Madrid to quote, so I
> don't have a very detailed response. I see where
> Chris and Marl are coming from--Twain's contradicted
> in the way that he identifies elements of
> �civilization� among the Other People he visits as he
> mocks their �barbaric� habits. The best way that I
> can make sense of this is that he's just as conflicted
> about his fellow North Americans. The irony we've
> been talking about comes in very handy when he subtly
> hints that �we� are just as barbaric as �they� are.
> That's really the only way that I can plug in this
> writing to his later activism as an anti-imperialist.
> But I think the book makes for especially good reading
> today, when so many people hail globalization and the
> interconnectedness of people around the world. This
> kind of a worldview uncritically paints a rosy picture
> that assumes that the power relations within those
> interactions are always equal. It's clear reading
> Twain (and other travel writers from the nineteenth
> century) that they never have been. Lots of
> �post-colonial� scholars today are pretty uniformly
> critical of Twain and his cohorts who actually
> bolstered U.S. (and European) imperialism through
> their travel writings: they use ideas about
> linguistic colonization and the imperial �gaze,� or
> worldview, that worked quite well with more aggressive
> and political efforts to exploit the lands and peoples
> visited (many readers in Twain's day may not have
> picked up the irony of civilization/barbarism that I
> raised above). It's something I have to think about a
> lot, because in a sense I'm doing the same thing. At
> the same time, I still think it's possible to travel
> and write about other cultures without necessarily
> �colonizing� them. What do you guys think? Does
> writing like this challenge or uphold ideas of
> racial/national superiority that have historically
> underwritten colonizing ventures?
> Just a thought. When does everyone want to start the
> next book?

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