No place of grace : antimodernism and the transformation of American culture, 1880-1920

404 Pages·1981·57.968 MB·English

by  T. J. Jackson Lears

NO PLACE OF GRACE
THE SAME AUTHOR
Y
The Culture ofConsumption: Critical Essays
in American History, 1880-1980
EDITED BY RICHARD W. FOX AND T.J.JACKSON LEARS
1 J
vr>111n-n11 1n-nI'llfn•-)1\'c^:7^\\'f7:7:^\yr:r::r;\yr=:::^\rcr^j
NO
PLACE
OF GRACE
Antimodernism
and the
Transformation of
American Culture
1880--1990
T. Jackson Lears
J.
Ininf
PANTHEON BOOKS: NEW YORK
(O.i^11(^.ij)11(^.Lf)11(^J.u^11(-^J.uj11g::!^^I\(:^d^
c:^;^' CvTOl 'CvT^i'Cvi^ CnV? KoV>' Uo'Or^Jl<<Vo?Jl^Vo?
©
Copynghl igSi by T.J.Jackson tears
All nghts reserved underInternational and Pan-Amencan Copyright
Conventiotis. Published m the United States by Pantheon Books, a division
ofRandom House, Inc., Xew York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random Home ofCanada Limited, Toronto.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to thefollowingforpermission to repnnt
previouslypublished material:
Harcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd.: Excerptsfrom the
poetry ofT.S. Eliot,from his volume Collected Poems 1909-1962. Copyright
©
19^6 by Harcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc.; Copyright ig6}, 1964 by T.S.
Eliot. Reprinted by permission ofHarcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc., and Faber
and Faber Ltd.
Houghton Library at Harvard University: For materialfrom thepapers ofHenry
Adams, Charles William Eliot, Charles Eliot Norton, Barrett Wendell, and
George Woodberry. Reprinted bypermission.
Houghton Mifflin Company: Excerptsfrom "Prayer to the Virgin ofChartres"
from Letters to a Niece by Henry Adams. Copyright 1918 by Massachusetts
Historical Society. Copyright renewed 1946 by Charles F. Adams. Reprinted by
permission ofHoughton Mifflin Company.
Massachusetts Historical Society: For materialfrom thepapers ofHenry Adams
and George Cabot Lodge. Reprinted bypermission.
Random House, Inc.: For materialfrom The Education ofHenry Adams by
Henry Adams. Published by Random House, Inc.
Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
tears, T.J.Jackson, 1947-
Noplace ofgrace.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United States—Civilization—186^-1918.
2. United States—Intellectual life—186^-1918
I. TUU.
II. Title Antimodemism and the transformation of
American culture, 1880-1920.
E169.1.L48 1983 973.S 83-42880
ISBN o-394-yin6-^ (pbk.)
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
First Pantheon Paperback Edition
Book design: Elissa Ifhiya\u
For Karen Parker tears
surrealist, seer, co-conspirator
EndowedwithmeansthathadbeenreservedforDivineProvidenceinformer
times, theychanged thepatternoftherains, accelerated thecycleofharvest,
and moved the river from where it had always been and put it with its white
stones and icy currents on the other side ofthe town, behind the cemetery.
For the foreigners who arrived without love they converted the street of
. . .
the loving matrons from France into a more extensive village than it had
been, andononegloriousWednesday theybrought ina trainloadofstrange
whores, Babylonish women skilled in age-old methods and in possession of
all manner of unguents and devices to stimulate the unaroused, to give
courage to the timid, to satiate the voracious, to exalt the modest man, to
teach a lesson to repeaters, and to correct solitary people.
. . .
"Look at the mess we've got ourselves into," Colonel Aureliano Buendia
said at that time, "just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas."
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQ^UEZ
One Hundred Years ofSolitude (1967)
For ofthe last stage ofthis cultural development, it might well be truly said:
"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that
it has attained a level ofcivilization never before achieved."
MAX WEBER
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism (1904)
1 7
Contents
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
xi
PREFACE
XV
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
1. ROOTS OF ANTI MODERNI S M : THE CRISIS
OF CULTURAL AUTHORITY DURING THE LATE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
3
A Pattern ofEvasive Banality: Official Modem Culture in Industrial
America 7
A Social Cnsis: The Republican Tradition and the Radical Specter 26
Unreal City: Social Science, Secularization, and the Emergence of
Weightlessness 32
A Psychic Crisis: Neurasthenia and the Emergence ofa Therapeutic World
View 47
THE FIGURE OF THE ARTISAN! ARTS AND
2.
CRAFTS IDEOLOGY
59
Origins ofthe American Craft Revival: Persons and Perceptions 66
Revitalization and Transformation in Arts and Crafts Ideology: The Simple
Life, Aestheticism, Educational Reform 74
Reversing Antimodermsm: The Factory, The Market, and The Process of
Rationalization 83
The Fate ofthe Craft Ideal 9
THE DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENT: MODERN
3.
COMMERCIAL SOCIETY AND THE MARTIAL
IDEAL
97
From Domestic Realism to "Real Life" 103
Class, Race, and the Worship ofForce 107
The Psychological Uses ofthe Martial Ideal: The Cult ofExperience and the
Questfor Authentic Selfhood 11
The Psychological Uses ofthe Martial Ideal: Guiney, Noms, Adams 124
Contents
THE MORNING OF BELIEF: MEDIEVAL
4.
MENTALITIES IN A MODERN WORLD 141
The Image ofChildhood and the Childhood ofthe Race 144
Medieval Sincerity: Genteel and Robust 149
Medieval Vitality: The Erotic Union ofSacred and Profane 160
The Medieval Unconscious: Therapy and Protest 167
THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY: CATHOLIC FORMS
5.
AND AMERICAN CONSCIOUSNESS
183
The Rise ofCatholic Taste: Cultural Authority and Personal
Regeneration 185
Art, Ritual, and Belief: The Protestant Dilemma 192
American Anglo-Catholicism: Legitimation and Protest 198
The Poles ofAnglicanism: Cram and Scudder 203
FROM PATRIARCHY TO NIRVANA: PATTERNS
6.
OF AMBIVALENCE
217
The Problem of Victorian Ambivalence: Sources and Solutions 220
The Lotus and the Father: Bigelow, Lowell, Lodge 225
William Sturgis Bigelow 225
Peraval Lowell 234
George Cabot Lodge 237
Aesthetic Catholicism and "Feminine" Values: Norton, Hall, Brooks 241
Charles Eliot Norton 243
G. Stanley Hall 247
• Van Wyck Brooks 251
FROM FILIAL LOYALTY TO RELIGIOUS
7.
PROTEST: HENRY ADAMS
261
Early Manhood: The Meandering Track ofthe Family Go-Cart 263
Husband. Historian, Novelist: Adams's Crisis ofGenerativity 266
The Antimodem Quest: From Niagara to the Virgin 270
Between Father and Mother, I: The Virgin, The Dynamo, and
the Angelic Doctor 279
Between Father and Mother, IL The Antimodem Modernist 286
•V i i i