"Democracy in America": Passages for Textual Analysis

page 204: from "Democratic laws generally tend" to "but the object it has in view is more useful."

page 211: "the government of the democracy" to "and society cannot perish."

page 243: "I am wrong, however, in saying all classes" to "A law is observed because it is a self-imposed eveil iln the first place and an evil of transient duration in the second."

page 214: "It is not possible to conceive the surpassing liberty the Americans enjoy" to "to give a constant example of temperance."

page 217: "We must first understand what the purport of society" to "to the end you have in view."

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Alexis de Tocqueville in a portrait
by Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856)

French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through the United States with his friend Gustave de Beaumont during the years 1831 and 1832. As employees of the French Interior Ministry, their trip was intended as a "fact-finding" mission on conditions in the American penal system. De Toqueville and de Beaumont landed in Newport, Rhode Island on 9 May 1831.  They traveled through the states of New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, made a foray into Québec, then into Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and D.C. before sailing back to France from New York City on 20 February 1832.

De Tocqueville was a scholar of history and politics with a deep interest in the affairs of his own country. France in his time had been embroiled in a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions. His 10-month visit to America took place during the second half of the first administration of President Andrew Jackson. When he returned to France, he set to writing what became his most famous work, De la démocratie en Amérique or Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840.

Democracy in America was and is much more than a report on the U.S. criminal justice system or a road trip journal. It is a deep meditation on our political system, and we Americans have ever since been looking into de Tocqueville's mirror to understand ourselves better.

 

Readings for August 27th in "Sex"

Last evening our "Money" discussion drew 20 attendees and ranged over authors as diverse as Thoreau, Marx, Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, and Barbara Ehrenreich. It was the first time in our 8 years together that we've attempted to discuss such a large number of readings (10 in all) at once.

Next month's discussion on "Sex" will focus on seven of the readings contained in that volume.  They are:

David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12:7)
"To His Mistress Going to Bed," by John Donne
Sex (selection) by Fay Weldon
"Helen of Troy Goes Counter Dancing" by Margaret Atwood
"Lust," by Susan Minot
"Love and Trust" by Louann Brizendine
"For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" by Nathan Englander

Questions about "Money"

Gentle Readers,

Our discussion of  "Vital Ideas: Money" on Monday, July 23rd, will consist of a series of comparison questions of the following selections:

• Henry David Thoreau's "Economy" and Karl Marx's "The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society"
• John Cheever's "The Housebreaker of Heartbreak Hill" and "Barbara Ehrenreich's "Selling in Minnesota"
• Harriet Jacob's "New Master and Mistress" and Zora Neale Hurston's "The Gilded Six-Bits"
• Theodore Drieser's "Sister Carrie" (selection) and Amy Tan's "Joy Luck Club" (selection)
• Thoreau and the Katy Lederer poem "The Heaven-Sent Leaf"
• Paco Underhill's "Sex and the Mall" and the Theodore Dreiser selection.

For further details see p. 149 in the "Money" book.

Have at it and have fun! 

Summer of Money, Sex

This summer we will take a hiatus from the Great Conversations I anthology and explore both classic and contemporary writings on the themes of money and sex found in the "Vital Ideas" anthologies recently published as handsome paperbacks by the Great Books Foundation.  Meetings take place at 7 p.m. on July 23rd and August 27th at the Main Library.  Discussion questions will be posted on this blog approximately one week before we meet.

“Money” has short fictional and nonfictional writings by Harriet Jacobs, an American freed slave, Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx, Theodore Dreiser, African-American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston,  John Cheever, social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich, marketing consultant Paco Underhill, Amy Tan, and poet Katy Lederer. “Listening to them, we might just make sense out of that complicated concept we call money,” writes the book’s co-editor Dana Heller.

“Vital Ideas: Sex” comprises writings from the Book of Samuel, John Donne, Andrew Marvel, Sigmund Freud, Fay Weldon, Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Mark Doty, Susan Minot, Louann Brizenine, Mona Simpson, and Nathan Englander.  In the words of editor Regina Barreca, we hear from these authors “the perspectives of those who have dared to think about sex rather than chortle or blush.”

"Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle"

Gray Catbird

Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" relates a boy's discovery of a mockingbird nest and the perceived sorrow of the male partner upon losing his mate. Here is what the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior says about the breeding habits of the mimid family of birds, to which the mockingbird belongs:

"All North American mimids are essentially monogamous; the few reports of polygyny [one male with multiple partners] are mainly limited to the Northern Mockingbird.  Pair-bonding usually occurs at the onset of the breeding season, especially in migrant species such as the Gray Catbird, but can occur at any season in some of the resident [nonmigratory] thrashers. In some species, particularly Le Conte's and Curve-billed Thrashers, pairs can bond for several years."

The poem, like many of the others in Leaves of Grass, show Whitman's long and abiding connection to the natural world.

Photo by Matthew Petroff ( http://www.mpetroff.net/archives/2012/06/11/cats-and-catbirds).

Whitman Walked These Streets

I once asked our Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes what he considered to be the most significant event that ever took place in Huntington. His reply: "Walt Whitman was born here." Our June meeting will be about Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," from his signature work, Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman is a Favorite Son of Huntington. This spring we've read him in the company of Montaigne, Pascal, Emerson.

Whitman founded the Long Islander newspaper in Huntington Village. This is what the Long Islander building on Main Street looked like yesterday. The inscription at the top reads "Long Islander, 1836, 1884, 1889"

The Long Islander is an award-winning community newspaper that still publishes weekly.  The masthead of the paper displays Whitman's portrait.

Steel engraving of Walt Whitman that appeared in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.