Nope, that is not Francisco I. Madero, pictured right, but J.J. Kilpatrick, subject of Lonn Taylor’s fascinating article in this same issue of the Journal of Big Bend Studies, vol. 29, 2017.
For those rusty on their borderlands and Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero was the leader of Mexico’s 1910 revolution– the first major revolution of the 20th century– and President of Mexico from 1911-1913. This was not only a transformative episode for Mexico, but also for Texas.
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, came out in 2014 (also in Spanish, translated by Agustín Cadena as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, Francisco I. Madero y su libro secreto, Manual espírita, from Literal Publishing.) So far so good: it has been cited already in a number of scholarly works about Madero and the Revolution.
Yes, Metaphysical Odyssey, is a peculiar title. In the article, I explain why I chose it and why, much as readers groan about it, I would not change it.
I was excited to see David A. Taylor’s Cork Wars: Intrigue and Industry in World War II, firstly because I know from his previous works that this promises to be a thoroughly researched and superbly written history; and secondly because I have some tangentially related family history with another strategic material during World War II. My grandfather, organic chemist Frank R. Mayo, was then a research chemist at U.S. Rubber Company working on the crucial task of creating a synthetic rubber that could be mass-produced in a dangerously narrowing window of time; sources of natural rubber –-essential for making automobile and airplane tires as well as tank caterpillar tracks–-had been cut off when the Japanese invaded southeast Asia. Moreover, these days I am not the only one nervously aware that as we become increasingly dependent on our computers, smartphones, and electric vehicles, we are becoming increasingly beholden to a supply of “rare earths,” many found nowhere near the United States, for the batteries (as David mentions in this interview).
Taylor’s Cork Wars has been garnering rich praise. Meredith Hindley, author of Destination Casablanca, calls Cork Wars “fascinating;” Mary Otto, author of Teeth, says: “Cork Wars captures the drama of three families whose lives are bound up with a precious forest product—and the urgency of war;” and noted biographer Douglas Brinkley calls Cork Wars “a landmark achievement!”
C.M. MAYO: How might you describe the ideal reader for Cork Wars? DAVID A. TAYLOR: The story is narrative nonfiction, so really the ideal reader is anyone who loves a good story. Because it involves espionage and World War II, that tends toward a male reader but the focus on families and how they respond to a crisis will make it interesting to a wider audience. I’ve been pleased that a wide range of readers have responded warmly to the book. C.M. MAYO: An unsung commodity turns out to be crucial for national defense. It seems to me there are many parallels to this, both in the past and the present. Can you talk about this a bit? DAVID A. TAYLOR: That’s long been an interest of mine, especially commodities that come from nature. We’ve come to know that water can be a flashpoint for conflict and security. And many of us grew up hearing “Blood for oil!” as a shorthand describing the motivation for wars fought over petroleum reserves.
But other parallels today are less well known. One is an obscure ingredient in electronics like our cellphones: minerals called “rare earths.” Your cellphone contains just a tiny amount of rare earths, but they’re irreplaceable – and China holds practically a monopoly on them. That’s why the Pentagon recently issued a report saying rare earths are a matter of U.S. national security.
That’s a factor in the current trade conflict. It helps to know these things as world citizens. And for writers, I think that holds dramatic possibilities as well. C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for your writing in general and for Cork Wars in particular? DAVID A. TAYLOR: My reading taste has been shaped by so many wonderful writers of both fiction and nonfiction. It’s hard to keep to just a few. In fiction I’ve loved the works of Alice Munro, Grace Paley, Amy Bloom, George Saunders, Kate Wheeler, Chekhov, Tagore (stories), Borges, and Machado de Assis, the Brazilian master who combines wit and poignancy. In nonfiction I’ve been influenced by John McPhee, Rebecca Skloot, Isabel Wilkerson and others.
For Cork Wars, I was very impressed by a novel by Alan Furst called Dark Voyage, set during World War II and in the Mediterranean, in which the crew of a freighter (hauling a cargo of cork for part of the voyage) figures prominently. Furst evoked a world that’s noir and world-wise with vital characters, a combination I wanted for my book.
The other novel that I admired recently – it didn’t influence me because of when it came out – was Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, which has beautiful writing and characters in that wartime atmosphere of New York harbor. C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive writer for many years. How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share? DAVID A. TAYLOR: Thanks, so have you! The digital revolution has had a huge affect on my process. Yes, the distractions – and even the requirements – of email and social media have cut a chunk out of my writing time. I still write in the mornings, right after I get up, and that helps. And at some point in the day I like to write on paper, for a different neural connection to work. But I wish I had more tricks for staying focused (apart from self-imposed deadlines). C.M. MAYO: Another question apropos of the digital revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic? DAVID A. TAYLOR: Yes, I started writing on computers but printing out to review and revise. I’ve seen research findings that reading hardcopy can help foster focus on longform reading (and revising). So as much as I write and revise onscreen, I do also edit on paper. The visceral circling of passages to move around can be satisfying.
I also read my work aloud to get my ear involved in hearing points for improvement. C.M. MAYO: Organization… Keeping the research and working library all in order is a titantic task in writing a book of this nature. What were some of the things you did for this book that worked especially well for you? DAVID A. TAYLOR: It’s interesting – have you found your own process has changed with each book? Mine has. For my first book, I used index cards to map out scenes, chapter by chapter. Later books relied on folders on the computer.
This one was challenging in terms of structure – it took a while to find the braided structure woven in three strands, with three families. As the structure evolved, the way I sorted my text, interview transcripts and images shifted.
One strength in this story’s evolution was the rhythm of research and interviews, writing and revision. The research led me to people to talk with – including Frank DiCara at his home in Baltimore, and Gloria Marsa, the daughter of a man recruited for spying by the OSS. I spoke with her often by phone in Mexico City, where she lives.
Those conversations in turn pointed me forward with search terms for more documentary research, which often yielded details that would be hard to recall, but that help the narrative. C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?
DAVID A. TAYLOR: I’ve been encouraged by the response to Cork Wars and I think there are other formats in which the story and its characters can speak to us. In earlier work, I was fortunate to have partners for adapting my book about the WPA writers of the 1930s, Soul of a People, as a documentary and later as a feature screenplay (not yet produced, but it did get some nice WGA recognition). So I’d like to explore something like that with this story.
I also have several new projects. I’m in awe of the vision of August Wilson, whose Twentieth Century Cycle is so monumental. I love the idea of imagining a vast canvas, and carving it up by decade! On my own much smaller scale, I have my Thirties story with the WPA writers, and now Cork Wars in the 1940s. So I have a few more to go.
>>Visit David A. Taylor here, and check out this excellent trailer for Cork Wars:
By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com Starting this year, every fourth Monday I post a Q & A with a fellow writer. This month's Q & A is with Lynn Downey, my fellow Women Writing the West member, apropos of the news that her book Life in a Lung Resort will be published next year by University of Oklahoma Press.
Lynn Downey is a widely-published historian of the West, with degrees in history and library science from San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. She has published books and articles on the history of jeans, the treatment of tuberculosis in California, American art pottery, and the history of Arizona. She was the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco for twenty-five years. Her biography of the company’s founder, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World,was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2016, and won the 2017 Foreword Reviews silver INDIE award for Biography. Her next book, Life in a Lung Resort, is the history of an early 20th century women’s tuberculosis sanatorium in California where her grandmother received treatment in the 1920s. In 2012 Lynn received a Charles Donald O’Malley Short-Term Research Fellowship from the Special Collections Division of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied the history of tuberculosis treatment. Lynn now works as a historical/archival consultant and exhibition writer, and is also a board member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Marin County Civic Center Conservancy. She lives in Sonoma County, California.
C.M. MAYO: On organizing research: Any lessons learned from your previous book? And lessons learned from this one? Also, are there basic mistakes first time writers oftentimes make in organizing their research?
LYNN DOWNEY: Organizing research materials -- whether for fiction or non-fiction -- is a very personal thing. And I think it depends on your life and educational experience. I'm 63 years old, and I loved researching and writing history from my very first term paper in the 5th grade. I'm also an archivist, so I like to keep paper files for the most part, and that has worked for me on all the books I've written.
My last book, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World, posed the greatest challenge because it was the longest and most detailed book I've ever written. I used to organize my research materials by chapter-- just throw all notes, copies of articles, etc. into files by chapter. But that ended up being cumbersome. So I started keeping files by subject or topic, and also kept a running list of what topics would go into each chapter. I could then put my hands on a subject easily.
But again, when it comes to research, I don't know of anything first time writers could do that would be called a "mistake." The best way to organize research is to find what works for you. That might mean doing down a few paths that lead nowhere -- like I did -- but as long as you find a method that helps you write, that's the important thing. Research must serve the writer, not the other way around.
C.M. MAYO: On research files: What happens to them when you are finished with the book? How do you store them? Do you give them to an archive? (Do you have any related advice for other writers with books that required significant original research?)
LYNN DOWNEY: I keep my research materials for quite awhile after a book is published, because I sometimes need them again: for interviews, for follow-up articles, etc. All of my files for the Levi Strauss biography will go back to the company eventually. I was the Levi Strauss & Co. Historian for 25 years and did all of my research while I was on the job. I wrote the book after I retired but the materials actually belong to the company and they will go back there once I have a moment to throw them in my car and take them to San Francisco. Once I no longer need the research files I used for my book A Short History of Sonoma I will give them to the Sonoma Valley Historical Society. My advice is to not jettison your files too quickly after you finish a book. They can still come in handy.
C.M. MAYO: What were some of the more interesting books you read in the process of writing your book? (And would you recommend them?)
LYNN DOWNEY: My book is a history of the Arequipa tuberculosis sanatorium for women in northern California, where my grandmother was treated in the 1920s. It was in business from 1911-1957. In addition to doing a number of oral history interviews with former patients, I read a lot of books about the history of TB treatment, how a cure was finally found, and about San Francisco history. The sanatorium's founder was a male doctor named Philip King Brown but his mother was Dr. Charlotte Brown, one of San Francisco's first female surgeons. She taught him to value women's health, and most of the doctors who treated the patients at Arequipa were women. I did read some extraordinary books to prepare to write. A Rare Romance in Medicine: The Life and Legacy of Edward Livingston Trudeau, by Mary Hotaling, is a great biography of the man who pioneered sanatorium treatment for tuberculosis. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine by Regina Morantz-Sanchez is a fascinating look at how hard it was for women to break into medicine. Sheila M. Rothman's Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History was a true grounding in the topic. I recommend all of these books to anyone interested in the history of medicine.
C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about your working library?
LYNN DOWNEY: I have a bookcase in my office where I keep all the books needed for my current project. Sometimes I have to pile them on the floor too, but at least they are all in one place! When I finish a project they get moved to one of the five other bookcases I have in my house, and the books for the next project go into my office. I also have filing cabinets in my office for my working files: the subject files I mentioned earlier. Sometimes I have more than will fit in the cabinet and that means I have banker's boxes on the floor, too.
C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive writer for many years. How has the digital revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, Facebook, Twitter, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
LYNN DOWNEY: The best thing about the digital revolution for a historian like me is the availability of historic newspapers online. Sites like Newspapers.com, Genealogybank.com, and the Library of Congress Chronicling America site have fully searchable databases. These are the only places that have a "siren call" for me. I have spent many hours in my pajamas in front of my computer following a research rabbit hole on these sites!
The other digital distractions really don't get to me. Maybe it's because I'm older and did not grow up with the instant availability of communication and information that we have now. After years of doing research and writing I am able to focus easily and not get distracted. I really don't know how to advise someone how to do that, though. Like research, finding a method to stay on track is very personal. Some people I know keep a timer by their computer, and they can't check email or social media until they hear the bell after an hour is up.
There's no single fix for what society throws at us, and what society expects us to do. Which I think is part of the problem. We're supposed to be constantly checking up on everyone who wants to communicate with us. But my work and my time are important. I'll check email now and then while I'm working, and if there are no emergencies I go back to what I've been working on. The joy of research, of writing, of getting the best words on the page far outweighs the need to have a constant connection in cyberspace.
C.M. MAYO: Did you experience any blocks while writing this book, and if so, how did you break through them?
LYNN DOWNEY: Honestly, I don't really get blocks. That was especially true with Life in a Lung Resort because it's a personal and family story as well as a work of history. I spent decades working full-time and commuting and only had weekends to do my writing. Blocks were not an option, and they also just didn't arise. I was so happy to be at my desk working on projects I loved.
C.M. MAYO: Back to a digital question. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
LYNN DOWNEY: Do you mean writing longhand instead of on the computer? I did both with this book as well as all my others. Sometimes when I couldn't get a topic to gel while writing on my laptop, I would switch to a pen and paper. This uses a completely different part of the brain and it always works. Once I was really stuck trying to get a difficult chapter started. I live 20 minutes from the ranch where writer Jack London lived (it's now a State Park). So I went to the ranch, sat on a picnic table near London's house, took out a pad of paper and a pen and started to write. Forty-five minutes later I had my chapter opening and a good start on the rest of it. I also collect vintage typewriters and I have one that I use now and then; again, to work another part of my brain to keep my writing from going stale.
C.M. MAYO: Do you keep in active touch with your readers? If so, do you prefer hearing from them by email, sending a newsletter, a conversation via social media, some combination, or snail mail?
LYNN DOWNEY: I haven't yet found a good way to keep in touch with readers, but I give a lot of lectures about my books and often keep in touch with people who have come to hear me speak. I am working with my website designer to make it easier for people to communicate with me, and I hope to do more when Life in a Lung Resort comes out. I am happy to hear from readers any way they like: email, social media, whatever.
LYNN DOWNEY: Women are often seen as the second-class-citizens of western writing, whether fiction or non-fiction. The West is so often portrayed as a male domain but women have so much to say about this region! When I heard about Women Writing the West I joined up right away. We have to stake our claim here, girls.
Of late American readers have been well served by a veritable cottage industry of works about the Roman Republic and Empire, and their respective falls, and various aspects thereof, and what lessons we, with our republic (or empire, as some would have it), purportedly at the precipice of analogous fiscal, ecological, military, social and/or political Seneca Cliffs, might learn from them. History may not repeat itself any more than we can wade into the same river twice, but, of course, we can step into rivers that look more than a sight familiar. Sometimes a nicely behaved river—let’s dub it the Goth Swan—turns of a sudden into a drowning horror. Indeed, a close reading of Roman history does suggest, in blurriest outlines, some analogies with contemporary trends and conundrums. But there are perhaps more valuable insights to be parsed from our own little-known and, relatively speaking, recent history. CONTINUE READING AT LITERAL MAGAZINE
"Systems analysis must become cultural analysis, and in this historians may be helpful."-- Lynn White, Jr.
Drive into Far West Texas and before you can say "pass the Snickers" you'll spy the railroad tracks, which more often than not run, seemingly infinite sinuous ribbons, parallel to the highway. Travel for a spell and you'll pass or, if at a crossing, be passed by a freight train, always an impressive experience. All of which is to say, railroads are an inescapable part of Far West Texas scenery and history, and so, for my book in-progress on that region, I have been doing my homework.
Of late: The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, a German historian and scholar of cultural studies. Originally published as Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise, the English translation came out in 1979; I read the 2014 edition with a new preface, "World Machines: The Steam Engine, the Railway, and the Computer," in which Schivelbusch asks,
"Could it be that the railway, the accelerator of the Industrial Revolution, and the computer occupy different points along / on the same trajectory of machine evolution?"
In recent weeks, this question of machine evolution, to my surprise, has begun to interest me intensely.
At first I had thought of this book I am writing about Far West Texas as a doppelgänger to my 2002 memoir of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, Miraculous Air, for the ecosystems and early exploration and mission histories of these two regions have many parallels. There are indeed many parallels, however, to start with, the literature on Far West Texas is exponentially greater and-- more to the point-- since the time I was traveling in Baja California, the experience of traveling itself has been radically transformed by the Digital Revolution. My sense of this is a compression of time and a curious elasticity of space; of oftentimes disquieting and othertimes most welcome transparency; and that constant pull to the little screens that, so it would seem, we all feel these days, whenever, wherever.
In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch opens with a detailed discussion of the history of the steam engine.
"Next to wood, water and wind power were the main energy sources of pre-industrial economic life. The Industrial Revolution, generally seem as having begun in the the last third of the eighteenth century, was a complex process of denaturalization... Iron became the new industrial building material, coal the new combustible. In the steam engine, the prime mover of industry, these two combined to produce energy in theoretically unlimited amounts."
The "decisive step" for the development of the steam engine-- and ultimately the railroads-- was the introduction of rotary motion, "a kind of mechanization of the mill race." In other words, transforming the up-and-down movement of the steam-driven piston to the driving wheel.
In his new 2014 preface, however, Schivelbusch writes: "It took me forty years and the Digital Revolution to realize that I had missed the more important point of the invention preceding it." In other words, the technological Crossing of the Rubicon, as it were, was "placing a piston in a cylinder and applying the pressure of steam... [I]t did not transfer an existing form but forced a new form of power out of combustible matter." Moreover, "the piston's up-and-down movement was no longer the analogue of any form of movement found in nature but possessed a binary-digital logic all its own." Watch a demonstration of a piston (in this example, powered by an electric motor):
Most histories of the computer's binary-digital logic that I am familiar with focus on English mathematician George Boole's An Investigation into the Laws of Thought (1854)-- the concept of binary logic. Schivelbusch's is a wondrously powerful insight.
THE MACHINE ENSEMBLE
In his second chapter, "The Machine Ensemble," Schivelbusch explores the ways the development of the railways was experienced as "denaturalization and densensualization." With cuttings, embankments, and tunnels"the railroad was constructed straight across the terrain, as if drawn with a ruler." Now "the traveler perceived the landscape as it was filtered through the machine ensemble."
And what is the machine ensemble? "[W]heel and rail, railroad and carriage, expanded into a unified railway system... one great machine covering the land."
RAILROAD SPACE
With the railroad, argues Schivelbusch, "space was both diminished and expanded." Things moved across space faster, and simultaneously, more space could be accessed. "What was experienced as being annihilated was the traditional space-time coninuum which characterized the old transport technology."
Schivelbusch quotes the German poet Heinrich Heine, writing in 1843:
Heinrich Heine, protosurrealist
"What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things, in our notions! Even the elementary concepts of time and space have begun to vacillate. Space is killed by the railways, and we are left with time lone... Now you can travel to Orléans in four and a half hours, and it takes no longer to get to Rouen. Just imagine what will happen when the lines to Belgium and Germany are completed and connected up with their railways! I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the linden trees; the North Sea's breakers are rolling against my door."
Sniffed Victorian-era English art critic John Ruskin:
"Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from being a parcel."
(I quail to imagine what might have been Ruskin's reaction to a TSA line. We airline travelers have been demoted from parcel to cattle...)
PANORAMIC TRAVEL
For me, having spent so many hours driving through the vast spaces of Far West Texas, the fourth chapter, "Panoramic Travel," was the most engaging. The opening epigraph is from Emerson's Journals: "Dreamlike traveling on the railroad." In a car, as in a railway compartment, we are enclosed from the weather behind windows, and by a roof and a floor. We rest our bodies in an upholstered seat. Beyond the window, things sail by silently, inexorably, scentlessly: hills, fences, a gas station-- it becomes a blur.
Travel by railroad induced "panoramic perception." Schivelbusch:
"Panoramic perception, in contrast to traditional perception, no longer belonged to the same space as the perceived objects: the traveler saw the objects, landscapes, etc. through the apparatus which moved him through the world. That machine and the motion it created became integrated into his viual perception: thus he could only see things in motion. That mobility of vision-- for a traditionally oriented sensorium, such as Ruskin's-- became a prerequisite for the 'normality' of panoramic vision. This vision no longe experiences evanescence: evanescent reality had become the new reality." (p.64)
Because this can be deadly boring, and necesitated being in close quarters with fellow travelers of, shall we say, possibly inconvenient social connections, bougeois train travelers took up reading. Schivelbusch:
"Reading while traveling became almost obligatory.The dissolution of reality and its resurrection as panorama thus became agents for the total emancipation from the traversed landscape: the traveler's gaze could then move into an imaginary surrogate landscape, that of his book." (p. 64)*
But back to computers. I am beginning, with fraying patience, to think of ours as the Age of Phubbing Smombies. To walk the aisle of a railway passenger car or an airplane is to catch the soundless glow of dozens of little screens... the overwhelming majority not of text but of flashing images of murders, faces, scantily clad women, roaring dinosaurs, cars and other objects hurling off cliffs (what is it with all the cliffs?).. and cartoons of the same... In sum, a mesmerizing mishmash of imagery.
AMERICAN VS EUROPEAN RAILROADS
In the 19th century the "great machine" of the railway ensemble spread across the land in both Europe and the North American continent, but, as Schivelbusch details, there were fundamental differences in the pattern and nature of that machine. Europe was already densely populated and richly networked by highways and roads; "in America, the railroad served to open up, for the first time, vast regions of previously unsettled winderness."* In other words, to quote Schivelbusch quoting von Weber, "In Europe, the railroad facilitates traffic; in America, it creates it."
*Quibble: Important regions of America's interior were not in fact a wholly "unsettled wilderness" until after the cascading demographic collapses, and later Indian removals, and the Indian Wars. There were well-established trails and trade routes throughout the continent, many going back many hundreds of years. But yes, compared to Europe, the road networks in Amreica were thin and poor and the vast desert expanses and the Great Plains were terrible, as many memoirs attest, to traverse by horse-drawn vehicles.
And while Europe's industrial revolution focused on manufacturing, primarily textiles, in America it was about agriculture (cotton, tobacco) and transport. In the early 19th century, what American industry had in the way of machines was, writes Schivelbusch, "river steamboats, railroad trains, sawmills, harvesting combines."
By the 19th century the string of older cities of the North Atlantic coast-- Boston down to Washington DC-- were linked by well-established highways, however, the rest of the continent had more primitive roads, oftentimes what amounted to footpaths and, above all, waterways: The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Hudson, various canals, and the Great Lakes. "Thus passenger travel used these waterways in the absence of highways... One traveled by water whenever possible."
Unsurprisingly, the American railway compartment took on the distinctive character of the American riverboat cabin. These tended to be broad open rooms, more comfortable for traveling long distances. European railroad compartments took their template from the stagecoach, a cozier space.
Schivelbuch argues that in American culture the railroad was closely linked with the steamer both because it was these were the first and second mechanized means of transportation and because so much of the interior landcape-- the Great Plains--was described by travelers as kind of vast ocean. (Indeed it was, in an eon past, the bottom of an ocean.)
The path of the railroad tracks differed as well: American tracks tended to curve where European tracks would be straight. As Schivelbusch points out, this reflected differences in labor and land costs. In America, land was cheap and labor expensive. In Europe then "it paid to construct tunnels, embankments and cuttings in order to make the rails proceed in a straight line, at a minimum of land cost."
Ah, so that explains the sinuosity of those Far West Texas rails.
INDUSTRIALIZED CONSCIOUSNESS
"new consciousness of time and space based on train schedules and the novel activity of reading while traveling" (p.160)
Re: The reconsideration of the concept of shock in the 19th century. Schivelbusch:
"The railroad related to the coach and horses as the modern mass army relates to the medieval army of knights (and as manufacture and industry do to craftmanship.)" (p.159)
Re: A "sinister aspect". Schivelbusch:
"...it had become possible to travel in something that seemed like an enormous grenade." (p.160)
"The train passenger of the later nineteenth century who sat reading his book thus had a thicker layer of that skin than the earlier traveler, who coud not even think about reading because the journey still was, for him, a space-time adventure that engaged his entire sensorium." (p.165)
(Thicker layer of skin!! Just turn on TV news!! The commercials!! In our day, we've all grown callouses on top of rhino hide.)
HAUSSMANN'S REDO OF PARIS AND A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS FOR A NEW CITYSCAPE
Schivelbusch covers Haussmann's remodeling of Paris in detail in chapter 12, "Tracks in the City."
"The streets Haussmann created served only traffic, a fact that distinguished them from the medieval streets an lanes that they destroyed, whose function was not so much to serve traffic as to be a forum for neighborhood life; it also distinguihsed them from the boulevards and avenues of the Baroque, who linearity and width was designed more for pomp and ceremony han for mere traffic." (p. 183)
"The broad, tree-lined streets were seen as providers of light and air, creating sanitary conditions in both a physiological and a political sense-- the latter favorable to the rule of Napoleon III." (p. 186)
MORE ABOUT PANORAMIC PERCEPTION
The final chapter, "Circulation," looks at the consequences of the changes in transportation for retail, specifically, the development of department stores.
"As Haussmann's traffic arteries were connected to the rail network by means of the railway stations,and thus to all traffic in its entirety, the new department stores, in turn, were connected to the new intra-urban arteries and their traffic. The Grands Magasins that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century were concentrated on the boulevards that supplied them with goods and customers." (p.188)
While traveling on the train put an end to conversation, so the department store put an end to haggling, for now there were price tags.
Department stores encouraged panoramic perception.
"There had to be noise, commotion, life everywhere... The customer was kept in motion; he traveled through the department store as a train passenger traveled through the landscape. In their totality, the goods impressed him as an ensemble of objects and price tags fused into a pointillistic overall view..."(p. 191)
The sources of parnoramic perception were at once speed and "the commodity character of objects."(p. 193)
THE CIRCULATION CONCEPT IN THE 19th CENTURY
"... whatever was part of circulation was regarded as healthy, progressive, constructive; all that was detached from circulation, on the other hand, appeared diseased, medieval, subversive, threatening."
(p. 195)
CIAO, GRAND TOUR
Re: The Grand Tour, "an essential part of ... education before the industrialization of travel." The world was experienced in its original spatio-temporality... His education consisted of his assimilation of the spatial individuality of the places visited, by means of an effort that was both physical and intellectual" (p. 197)
(At this thought, of the industrialization of travel, I had an evil little chuckle recalling Mrs Pofrock in Henry James' The Ambassadors.)
So:
"The railroad, the destroyer of experiential space and time, thus also destroyed the educational experience of the Grand Tour... the places visited by the traveler became increasingly similar to the commodities that were part of the same circulation system. For the twentieth-century tourist, the world has become one huge department store of countrysides and cities" (p. 197)
I would venture that a more apt analogy would now be "menu of venues for digitally realized self-presentation" -- translation from the Noodathipious Flooflemoofle: "selfies." I hear most everyone shops online these days.
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FURTHER TIDBITTY THOUGHTOID
A curious analogy occured to me, that just as the automobile allowed for more agency for a traveler vis-a-vis the railroad, so the tablets and smartphones allow more agency than the television for the consumer of entertainment.
About a century ago, after the fall of Francisco I. Madero's government in 1913, with the ensuing struggle between the Huertistas and Carrancistas, and the chaos along the US-Mexico border (in part fomented by German agents, hoping to keep the U.S. Army otherwise occupied during WWI), the U.S. Army set up a number of camps there. On ebay, my sister found these postcards, probably sent by a soldier stationed near El Paso, dated October 26, 1916.
One of the postcards shows an address in Alliance, Ohio, a town noted for its Feline Historical Museum. Thank you, Google.
Here is another GIF, this one of some cartridges I picked up-- by invitation, I hasten to emphasize-- on private property right by the Rio Grande about 20 minutes' drive down a dirt road from Presidio, Texas. Seriously, these are cartridges from the time of the Mexican Revolution (probably from target practice); they were just lying on the ground. That is how isolated a place it still is.
Cartridge circa 1916, from near Presidio, TX
One last GIF: An overcast day on the otherwise spectacular Hot Springs Historic Trail in the Big Bend National Park. The river is the Rio Grande, the border with Mexico. At sunset the mountains turn the most otherwordly sherbet-pink. Imagine this scene with a wall through it-- your tax dollars down the hole for a perfectly pointless aesthetic and ecological atrocity. (I shall now take a deep breath.)
Hot Springs Historic Trail, Big Bend National Park
Far West Texas
(Don't watch this GIF unless you are part Viking,
it will make you seasick)
Not shown in my video: the guy hiking a few minutes ahead of me on this trail wore a T-shirt that said TEXAS GUN SAFETY TIP #1: GET ONE. Well, it ain't California. Excuse me, I need to go crunch my granola.
Letras Libres, one of Mexico's finest magazines, has a special section in this month's issue which includes, I am delighted to report, my own essay on Maximilian von Habsbug, "Tulpa Max. La vida después de una resurrección". ("Tulpa Max or, The Afterlife of a Resurrection.")
It's a riff on writing historical fiction-- and my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire(Unbridled Books, 2009), which was beautifully translated by Mexican writer Agustín Cadena as El último principe del Imperio mexicano(Random House Mondadori-Grijalbo, 2010). I am hoping my Spanish has continued some progress up the steep hill toward matching my English: I dared to translate this essay for Letras Libres myself.
The novel, by the way, is not about Maximilian per se, but rather the little half-American prince, Agustín de Iturbide y Green, whom Maximilian brought into his court (true story), much to the child's parents' consternation.
Having written a book about the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution, Francisco I. Madero--Mexico's "Apostle of Democracy"--I am often asked if I have visited his native town, Parras de la Fuente. As of two weeks ago, thanks to an invitation to give talk about my book there, I can now answer, with the easiest of shrugs, why, of course.
An oasis of a mission-and-farm-town in the arid border state of Coahuila, Parras de la Fuente is one of Mexico's 111 officially-designated "pueblos mágicos," or "magical towns." Apart from its historical importance and its charming downtown, Parras de la Fuente's biggest draw is Casa Madero, the oldest winery in the Americas--at one time run by Francisco I. Madero.
If you're interested in visiting Parras de la Fuente--and for anyone at all interested in Mexican history and culture I warmly recommend it--check out Tripadvisor for information galore. (If you read Spanish, there is a very informative article about the town in the magazine Mexico Desconocido.) I won't aim to cover the gamut here, just one of several worthy attractions, La Santa Madero.
View of La Santa Madero
from the parking lot
LA SANTA MADERO
It's impossible to talk about Parras de la Fuente without making some reference to the Madero family. Not only was native-born son Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913) the leader of the 1910 Revolution, but he served as president of Mexico from 1911 until his assassination in 1913. Moreover, there was his grandfather, industrialist Evaristo Madero (1828-1911), founder of a veritable dynasty. In many ways, Parras de la Fuente is, if you will excuse my anglosajonismo, Maderotown.
Speaking of looming, perched above the little town on a bulbous hulk of rock sits La Santa Madero.
Perhaps you wonder, is that a misspelling? (Shouldn't it be El Santo Madero?) Was there a Saint Madero? Or could this be a sanctuary of some sort donated by the Madero family?
La Santa Madero, it turns out, refers to the Holy Cross, a purported splinter of which is enshrined in the early 19th-century chapel at the top of that craggy overlook.
Ring-a-ling to Dr. Jung! In the Names Department, La Santo Madero overlooking "Maderotown," this is quite the bodacious synchronicity... And this does bring new texture to a quote in my book:
As even his great admirer, Isidro Favela put it, Madero was a Don Quixote with “the fury for freedom.” Others who loved him said Madero was “made of wood for the cross.”
Starting up the hill to La Santa Madero
About half way up... sun setting through a cloud
Parras de la Fuente below
On the way back down the hill:
Sunset over Parras de la Fuente
from La Santa Madero
On the way down we passed a girl in a huge poppy-red quinceañera dress (15th birthday celebration) and her photographers-- probably brothers, cousins and friends. One of my companions on this hike, an eminent Mexican scholar, gravely remarked that with this--the girl in her fabulous dress, as much as La Santa Madero--we'd had a glimpse of México profundo.
More anon.
> The webpage for my book about Francisco I. Madero is here.
