Just finished reading Hapgood's The Spirit of the Ghetto, written in 1902. I fully expected this to be a vaguely offensive study of how Jews -- particularly Eastern European ones -- on the Lower East Side looked, behaved, thought, conversed, and prayed differently from native-born Americans. If it weren't an anthropological treatment of the "Other," I imagined, it would be a celebration of the Jewish people for their steadfast commitment to an ancient (and oft-punished) religion; for their excitement about intellectual and political perfectability; and for their hard-working, bone-breaking efforts in climbing out of poverty.
To some extent, that's exactly what this was about. Hapgood looks at the Jews as a people with a defined culture, one that can be identified through conversation, writing, theater, art, values, and (a bit by) work. He looks at the output of this culture and critiques it -- often coming out on the side of these products being worthwhile, fresh, and, in some cases, extraordinary. He also points out flaws in narrative (in the case of writing and theater) or a tendency toward melodrama (in the case of all of the creative pieces.)
What's remarkable, if anything, about the book is the respect with which Hapgood treats the Jews, especially at a time when a huge number of Americans (Henry James, for example) preferred to see them as conniving rabble. So the questions I have to ask about this book aren't as clear-cut as they might be; rather, they need to be considered contextually, rather than simply textually. What makes Hapgood so interested in this neighborhood? What are his experiences outside of those he records in this book? How does he get there? How does he get to talk to the people he talks to? What are his motives? These questions can only be answered if I go here:
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/index.html
A couple of things I can note right now:
1) This is not exactly a "boosterism" book, but it also does not cover the aspects of the Lower East Side that many reformers would choose to emphasize -- overcrowding, illness, infant mortality, crime, prostitution, and other kinds of vice. Is this written to respond to reformers, to balance out the dire stories people are reading about the area and its people?
2) Nothing here is obviously slumming in the sense of organized tourism or self-identified uptowners visiting places of ill-repute. But there are some places in which a kind of slumming may be discerned:
p. 251 in his discussion of Abraham Cahan, "Apropos of Cahan's love of truth, and that word 'unpleasant,' a discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of Zangwill's play, The Children of the Ghetto, is illuminative. That poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy and truth; but for that very reason it was severely criticized by some uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their race which touched upon the 'holy law.' But some rich German Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for practical and social purposes to make little of their racial distinction, deprecated the literature which portrayed the life of those Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs...."
This one's good because it displays the relationship between wealthy (often German) Jews who have no interest in "slumming" and the poor (often Eastern-European) Jews who live in the slums. In this way, the fact that a native-born, non-Jewish writer is interested in depicting this community is notable, helping to identify what could prompt someone to study the neighborhood as he does. The passage also points up the class differences in the Jewish community -- Hapgood is not interested, clearly, in Jews as Jews. He's interested in poor Jews. And that's important.
p. 269-271, "In spite of the fact that the Jews have been at all times and in all countries tenacious of their domestic peculiarities and their religion, the special character of the Ghetto will pass away in favorably conditioned America. The picturesqueness it now possesses will disappear...."
Here and in a few other passages, Hapgood brings up the issue of "picturesqueness" and that's something I think is key to the bohemian interest in the Lower East Side. What the artists and writers he discusses seem to have in common (whether they live on the LES or not) is a vision of the neighborhood as picturesque in its poverty, worthy of record simply because people in poverty are more interesting to look at than other people. Note, of course, that they're talking about people and not buildings. I want to develop this more in terms of the piece I posted earlier from Pamuk on the "picturesque." Why do people like Abraham Cahan, Jacob Epstein, Bernard Gussow, John Sloan, and George Bellows find this place so rich for inspiration? I think there's something in here about realism and modernism in literature and art, but I'll need to do more reading on that to make this a fuller picture.
Another useful point in this passage is how certain Hapgood is of the Jews ability to assimilate into American society. This sentiment is pretty bold and, I think, a good piece of evidence that the study of the Lower East Side is, in some ways, part of a vision of America as capacious enough to make Americans of everyone. That's not a vision everyone shared, so it's important to call out.
p. 295, "Mr. Imber looks upon America as the 'land of the bluff' and as such admires it. But he disapproves of our reform movements. He thinks the recent attempt to reform the east side was due to the desire of the rich to divert attention from their own vices. He doesn't approve of reform any way."
I'm not sure how useful this quote is in general, but I have to agree with Imber at least in spirit, if not in fact. The rich had their own vices, of course, but they were invested in those vices being spatially separate from their regular lives. That's one reason the Lower East Side inspired the imagination -- it became a playground for the middle-classes.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Main Questions Revisited for the Umpteenth Time
I'm trying to come up with reasonable chapter outlines so I can begin moving toward a realistic research and writing schedule. After drawing up some extremely basic outlines, I'm realizing how utterly confused and unfocused I am. Which is a good thing. Which means I'm doing well by laying out these plans now before I'm, as Phil Collins would say, "in too deep."
Let's work backwards...
1) As my previous post suggests, I came to this topic because of my work at the Tenement Museum and my interest in how history was being used as a catalyst for gentrification. The fundamental question I raise from this (in relationship to my dissertation, at least) is: what makes people so interested in this impoverished, crumbling neighborhood...so interested, in fact, that they want to actually live there?
2) Next question is: and why did they even want to VISIT there? What's the attraction of this neighborhood? Well, for gentrifiers, there are obvious and easy answers to these questions in economic terms. People move to cheap neighborhoods because they're cheaper. People also moved to the Lower East Side because of its proximity to main cultural, financial, and infrastructural arteries of the city -- bridges, roads, NYU, Wall Street, the WTC, the "East Village." But they also moved there for non-practical reasons, for reasons that, in fact, defy a lot of practicality....
3) Some of those reasons are:
-- artists live there and artists bring a certain cache to a neighorhood by making it seem cutting edge, but safe. Artists also perform or display their art in these neighborhoods because they're less expensive and close to home. So those who don't live there may go to these neighborhoods simply to partake in the "culture" of it.
-- There's also what Karen Halnon calls "poverty chic." There's something about poverty that gives those who are familiar with it an edge, a streak of rebelliousness, of having looked into the mouth of hell and then having lived to tell about it. People visited the LES of ten years ago because it made them seem cool and unperturbed by "difference." They learned authenticity. They discovered new cultures and became more cosmopolitan because they experienced the dangers of the city
-- Some people, surely, were looking for bargains, as this was once the bargain capital of NYC.
-- The history of radicalism, of one's ancestors, of struggle, of an authentic past before one became suburban and American is also there.
4) All of the reasons I've mentioned above for why people visited and ultimately settled on the LES to gentrify it in the past 10-15 years have a history to them. None of these impulses are novel; they have deep roots in the growth of New York City, the rise of the middle-class, the birth of modern America, and the evolution of American "culture," both high and low.
I choose to trace these to the late 19th century and early 20th century and I characterize the practice of visiting the LES (but not living there) as "slumming." From this, I guess I can identify some main questions, but I think I'll even regroup them further after I write them down here:
1) WHO were the slummers?
2) WHAT attracted them to the slums at first? What did they read, see, experience in their own lives that made them want to go to the LES when they could have just as well avoided it? How did they get these sources?
3) Once they went to the LES, what was their experience? Were LES residents ready for these interlopers to see them? What did slummers say about their experiences? What did they write about their visits?
4) What was the larger meaning of slumming? This becomes a cultural phenomenon, but why?
Moving on, here are my hypotheses:
1) I believe the pattern of gentrification today can be seen almost step by step in the way people slummed the LES a hundred years ago. First, there are reports of the dangers, the titillation of wrongdoing, the "Otherness" of the immigrant residents. Then there are those who seek it out. Some do it for reform purposes, but I'm not interested in that unless their reports stimulate visitation that's NOT for reform purposes. But there are many who go just to see what the fuss is about, to see the dissipation, to witness "how the other half lives." These are folks on the cutting edge of fashion and they go for the same reasons we all like to be on the cutting edge -- because it gives us one up on our peers, because it becomes a badge of conquest, of knowledge, of experience.
After this first wave of slumming, there are those who see the slums as a treasure trove of knowledge about the American identity. These are people like Lincoln Steffens and Hutchins Hapgood -- and maybe even George Bellows, but certainly others -- who believe that more needs to be written and reported about the place NOT for reform, but rather to tell us more about how we can be better Americans. These people see the LES not as a sight of dissipation, but rather as a place where people are authentic and meaningful. This is a wave of writing and art that suggests the LES has lessons for us, not just dangerous thrills. Even so, this is a patently bourgeois mentality.
Then, finally, we have those who have access to the original vision, the writings of the bohemians, the reports of the first wave of cool people -- and they want to do the same thing. But this is a filtered down version, of course, because the residents of the LES are ready to package themselves in full now. Now the LES is in popular guidebooks It's on bus tours. It's got famous restaurants and shops to visit on the tour. It's now a bit pricier and maybe disappointing. As Dean McCannell might say, there's no "back region" anymore. Everything is a marked front region and access to authenticity is far more hidden.
2) This process is a process by which places become "attractions" and attractions of this sort are relatively new in American society in this period, so it's worth note.
3) The novelty of the "attraction" is also related to leisure and class, so one might argue, as I will, that the visitation of attractions is a way of performing one's class status -- and that class is clearly lodged in the middle.
4) This is also a story of culture and consumerism growing up together in America. Most texts (I should cite some) that try to identify an American culture tend to agree that it is as related to consumption as anything else.
Let's work backwards...
1) As my previous post suggests, I came to this topic because of my work at the Tenement Museum and my interest in how history was being used as a catalyst for gentrification. The fundamental question I raise from this (in relationship to my dissertation, at least) is: what makes people so interested in this impoverished, crumbling neighborhood...so interested, in fact, that they want to actually live there?
2) Next question is: and why did they even want to VISIT there? What's the attraction of this neighborhood? Well, for gentrifiers, there are obvious and easy answers to these questions in economic terms. People move to cheap neighborhoods because they're cheaper. People also moved to the Lower East Side because of its proximity to main cultural, financial, and infrastructural arteries of the city -- bridges, roads, NYU, Wall Street, the WTC, the "East Village." But they also moved there for non-practical reasons, for reasons that, in fact, defy a lot of practicality....
3) Some of those reasons are:
-- artists live there and artists bring a certain cache to a neighorhood by making it seem cutting edge, but safe. Artists also perform or display their art in these neighborhoods because they're less expensive and close to home. So those who don't live there may go to these neighborhoods simply to partake in the "culture" of it.
-- There's also what Karen Halnon calls "poverty chic." There's something about poverty that gives those who are familiar with it an edge, a streak of rebelliousness, of having looked into the mouth of hell and then having lived to tell about it. People visited the LES of ten years ago because it made them seem cool and unperturbed by "difference." They learned authenticity. They discovered new cultures and became more cosmopolitan because they experienced the dangers of the city
-- Some people, surely, were looking for bargains, as this was once the bargain capital of NYC.
-- The history of radicalism, of one's ancestors, of struggle, of an authentic past before one became suburban and American is also there.
4) All of the reasons I've mentioned above for why people visited and ultimately settled on the LES to gentrify it in the past 10-15 years have a history to them. None of these impulses are novel; they have deep roots in the growth of New York City, the rise of the middle-class, the birth of modern America, and the evolution of American "culture," both high and low.
I choose to trace these to the late 19th century and early 20th century and I characterize the practice of visiting the LES (but not living there) as "slumming." From this, I guess I can identify some main questions, but I think I'll even regroup them further after I write them down here:
1) WHO were the slummers?
2) WHAT attracted them to the slums at first? What did they read, see, experience in their own lives that made them want to go to the LES when they could have just as well avoided it? How did they get these sources?
3) Once they went to the LES, what was their experience? Were LES residents ready for these interlopers to see them? What did slummers say about their experiences? What did they write about their visits?
4) What was the larger meaning of slumming? This becomes a cultural phenomenon, but why?
Moving on, here are my hypotheses:
1) I believe the pattern of gentrification today can be seen almost step by step in the way people slummed the LES a hundred years ago. First, there are reports of the dangers, the titillation of wrongdoing, the "Otherness" of the immigrant residents. Then there are those who seek it out. Some do it for reform purposes, but I'm not interested in that unless their reports stimulate visitation that's NOT for reform purposes. But there are many who go just to see what the fuss is about, to see the dissipation, to witness "how the other half lives." These are folks on the cutting edge of fashion and they go for the same reasons we all like to be on the cutting edge -- because it gives us one up on our peers, because it becomes a badge of conquest, of knowledge, of experience.
After this first wave of slumming, there are those who see the slums as a treasure trove of knowledge about the American identity. These are people like Lincoln Steffens and Hutchins Hapgood -- and maybe even George Bellows, but certainly others -- who believe that more needs to be written and reported about the place NOT for reform, but rather to tell us more about how we can be better Americans. These people see the LES not as a sight of dissipation, but rather as a place where people are authentic and meaningful. This is a wave of writing and art that suggests the LES has lessons for us, not just dangerous thrills. Even so, this is a patently bourgeois mentality.
Then, finally, we have those who have access to the original vision, the writings of the bohemians, the reports of the first wave of cool people -- and they want to do the same thing. But this is a filtered down version, of course, because the residents of the LES are ready to package themselves in full now. Now the LES is in popular guidebooks It's on bus tours. It's got famous restaurants and shops to visit on the tour. It's now a bit pricier and maybe disappointing. As Dean McCannell might say, there's no "back region" anymore. Everything is a marked front region and access to authenticity is far more hidden.
2) This process is a process by which places become "attractions" and attractions of this sort are relatively new in American society in this period, so it's worth note.
3) The novelty of the "attraction" is also related to leisure and class, so one might argue, as I will, that the visitation of attractions is a way of performing one's class status -- and that class is clearly lodged in the middle.
4) This is also a story of culture and consumerism growing up together in America. Most texts (I should cite some) that try to identify an American culture tend to agree that it is as related to consumption as anything else.
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