Using Science Fiction to Teach History (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Distant Future)

I have been reluctant to use fiction in my courses.  This is despite the fact that my own high school and college educations introduced me to most of the fiction I know; as a recalcitrant and noncommittal reader of non-nonfiction, I still find it difficult to get through even the best literary prose.  But the diminutive and terrifying Sharia Isenhour got me to read Crime and Punishment and Cry the Beloved Country in 10th grade—this was a woman who was utterly distinguished by a mien somewhere between drill sergeant and Communist re-educator. My college courses, at a public university not much different from the one where I currently teach, demanded an ambitious diet of literature; at …

Frankie Fitzgibbons, the Coen Brothers, and the Free Market

Some of them want to use you Some them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused The Eurythmics’ synth-pop anthem seemed to speak for something about the 1980s—a cold, cool attitude that if you wanted it, you could find it on the free market (no matter how self-destructive it was).  Yet Annie Lennox’s lyrics also evoked a classical kind of of sexual supply and demand.  The whole system would approach equilibrium between those who wanted to abuse and those who wanted to be abused, and ultimately the market would align everyone’s interests, resulting in a kind of kinky harmony—the greatest good for the greatest number. Other …

Desperate Characters: Best of 2012 Part II

As part of ToM's Best of 2012 our contributors reflect on books, movies, music, and other pop culture stand-by's that they discovered this year, no matter when their source of inspiration originated.  That's right, it's a vaguely "objet trouvé" Best of 2012.   Art historians everywhere are recoiling. ToM's Adam Gallagher serves up our second installment.  Click here for part I. Anyone that even pays a minuscule amount of attention to current events should be given a free pass to a certain type of quiet resignation. Here are a few salient reasons why: Climate change, gun violence killing children in American schools, drone strikes killing children abroad, abject poverty, and …

Dog Days Classics: Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair’s Ideal Idler

"It was profoundly true that movements of the spirit came first, and that events of history were consequences thereof." -Upton Sinclair, Wide is the Gate Several years ago I was directed toward Upton Sinclair’s socialist-minded quasi-spy novels about a young man named Lanning Prescott Budd. The 11 books span the breadth of time from the onset of The Great War to the rise of the Cold War, but as I have been able to acquire only the first half of the series, my investigation has followed Lanny only so far as the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A New York Times reflection on the books gives a decent introduction to the protagonist: Born in 1900, he was the illegitimate child of an …

Manic Depressive Gunslingers, Presidential Vampire Slayers, and Emo-Rock Frontiersmen: Refracting History through a 21st Century Lens

When Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter hit the big screen this past summer, some critics hailed it as a surprisingly entertaining, if ridiculous, take on Lincoln, vampire movies, and American history. Roger Ebert gave the film a thumbs up, noting tongue in cheek: “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject.” Though one should probably not expect James Madison: Zombie Slayer anytime soon. The market for dead president horror films seems, well, a less than promising industry. Other writers, noting the movie occupied a region of summertime mediocrity, applauded the idea but struggled with the end result. “It's not quite …

Chasing Narrative: Jennifer Egan’s Sometimes Non-Linear Take on Time, Age, and Technology

High school didn’t leave much time for movies.  Maybe that’s not entirely true; movies were there and time for them existed, but the level of analysis one marshals as a college freshman or high school student probably lacks the kind of insight more seasoned individuals can bring to the table. In other words, it’s hard to say how much adolescents attend to issues like structure, perspective, or the relationship between audience and the art; those heady thoughts tend to come much later as successive waves of pop culture and literary canons continually crest and recede.  But it was 1994 when Pulp Fiction first introduced a new generation to the complex marriage between the visual, the …

Tapping into Your Inner Lena Dunham: Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet

Cameron Crowe’s film Almost Famous is one of those flicks I like to catch up on every six or seven years. It pushes all the right buttons for me in the just right way: it’s sentimental but not treacly.  The protagonist (a thinly veiled Cameron Crowe) has a bonafide character arch (remember those?) that slowly pulls the rose colored glasses from his eyes without an ounce of jaded cynicism. And more importantly, it’s a gushing two-hour love letter to music. When Zooey Deschanel hands her little brother the keys to the kingdom via her stack of vinyl under her bed, I almost want to stop the movie, pour myself a glass of wine, and dig out my own record collection. And yet, for all of its …

Narratives of Collapse: Melancholia, Take Shelter, and Children of Men

It is not uncommon for people who grew up in unstable homes or circumstances of economic insecurity to feel a pervasive sense of dread.  Remote yet ever-present, the feeling that disaster is never a long way off can be hard to shake.  It may take the form of paranoia, depression, or simply a diffuse pessimism—a conviction that events, whether on a scale as small as romantic relationships or as large as the future of the world economy and the environment are not likely to turn out well.  Such leanings may be found among various ideological cults, as among millenarian Christians or certain subgroups of the environmentalist faith, like the anarcho-primitivists and peak oil enthusiasts who …

Apocalypse on the Lower East Side: Zone One Zombies

I am sick of zombies. Once upon a time, I had a Dawn of the Dead poster hanging on my apartment wall and would watch Shaun of the Dead a half-dozen times. Zombies had their own little corner in my pop-culture collective.  Not a big one, but enough real estate in my heart that if I stumbled upon a late night film featuring a shambling, half-rotted actor in search of “braaaainnns” and clunky social commentary, I might have settled in for the duration. It’s amazing how fast we can ruin these things for ourselves. This year’s zeitgeist has decided that zombies are the new thing for 2012, and they are everywhere.  In fact, it seems all the things I used to love are “cool” …

Nazis, Boxers and Fish Dicks: Ned Beauman’s Noir

I am a bit of a sucker for “first” novels. There is something about the unbridled sense of possibility that a “new” author brings to the reading experience: a new voice, a new pair of eyes to slide behind and view the world. There is no “sophomore slump” to consider, no depressing self-parodying nonsense that so many bloated and self-important literary masters sadly descend into after years of unabashed praise and excess. It is a sublime comfort to me to know that at this moment, there are thousands of angry young men and women pecking away at their laptops, pouring their rage and frustration and romance out onto the screen, one hard-earned word at a time.  Out of these …