March, 2003

Reading last night, a low fire burning comfortably in the fireplace, isolated in this small Czech village and snug (smug?) in the vastness of my personal comfort. A small part of my mind occupied with whether to or whether not to slip downstairs to the basement for a smoke.

This, from the book on my lap---

"No doubt all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, have a tendency to be not only dull, but mean, bitter, infested with curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming or Indiana these timidities are inherent in isolation.

"But a village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance." I perked up---the scene is set in small-town America. "It is a force seeking to dominate the earth,, to drain the hills and sea of color, to set Dante at boosting itself, and to dress the high gods in Klassy Kollege Klothes. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius.

"Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in Fords, to make advertising pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors."

Having a smoke won out and I trundled down to the basement, my Labrador trailing behind to sniff out the nighttime world beyond the basement door. I smoked and thought.

The quoted passage was written eighty-three years ago by Sinclair Lewis, appearing on page 261 of my copy of "Main Street." Some things change, some don't. But it was a shock to me, seeing in my present-day America such a sameness and doggedness of purpose. A sort of national parade in which each of us steps to the regular beat of the base drum, in cadence with the brass section and captured, perhaps seduced by the music. Music is a seducer and political rhetoric is made to sound like music, to thump against your chest, give you a hard-on or make you wet while your brain is busy elsewhere.

They say that's why people make such lousy decisions while in the mating game---all that essential blood directed elsewhere, so there's not enough to support sex and thinking at the same time. Possibly why Bill Clinton was less warlike than W---getting a little in the corridors might be a hell of a bargain instead of grounds for impeachment.

But when I read what Sinclair had to say more than eighty years ago and measure it, compare it, cogitate over it and look for parallels, it seems that our pants have long been pressed in the American crease. "not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in Fords"

Uh huh . . . right on, Sinclair.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today