Dreaming Up America [Hardcover]

Russell Banks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 2008

With America ever under global scrutiny, Russell Banks contemplates the questions of our origins, values, heroes, conflicts, and contradictions. He writes with conversational ease and emotional insight, drawing on contemporary politics, literature, film, and his knowledge of American history.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Best-selling novelist Banks's (Cloudsplitter; The Sweet Hereafter) first work of nonfiction was developed from a television interview with a French documentary producer two years ago, which was translated into French and is now available in English in the United States. Originally directed to a French audience to describe the history of the American people, the content is nonetheless enlightening to Americans, too. The book presents, essentially, an interdisciplinary overview of America from Colonial times to the present and America's development out of spiritual, ethical, and materialistic impulses. Banks's narrative is not always flattering, as he dissects our national myths and exposes the realities, but it may nudge readers to take an introspective look at themselves and our nation. The book is also not comprehensive, but it is a condensed and holistic construct of American history, eloquently written and highly readable. Banks ends with an implicit warning about our nationalism, which he describes as a destructive force, a fervor and mass hallucination, that can control our thinking. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.—Mark Alan Williams, Library of Congress
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About the Author

RUSSELL BANKS is the author of sixteen works of fiction, many of which depict seismic events in US history, such as the fictionalized journey of John Brown in Cloudsplitter. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes, and two of his novels—The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction—have been made into award-winning films. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, founding president of Cities of Refuge North America, and former New York State Author, Banks lives in upstate New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; Seven Stories Press 1st Ed edition (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583228381
• ISBN-13: 978-1583228388
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Russell Banks is the author of sixteen works of fiction, many of which depict seismic events in US history, such as the fictionalized journey of John Brown in Cloudsplitter. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes, and two of his novels-The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction-have been made into award-winning films. His forthcoming novel, The Reserve, will be published in early 2008. President of the International Parliament of Writers and former New York State Author, Banks lives in upstate New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dreaming Up America, November 8, 2008

By 

Barney Considine (Missoula, Montana USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dreaming Up America (Hardcover)

This is a carefully constructed critique of American culture from the time of Columbus until the present. What we do today and how we think is driven by our background. We are a new country compared to much of the world. The factors that brought our forefathers to the Americas and the ease with which the European invasion expanded across the continent are major factors in who we are today.

This book is drawn from interviews conducted in preparation for a documentary produced in France. In part, the intent was to correct images of America that non-Americans draw from popular movies. Banks has edited that material after the documentary has been translated into several languages. The maturity of the ideas in the book shows the refinement of this period of reflection. However, it still comes across at times that Banks is talking to a different audience than his countrymen. Many readers will consider that an enhancement since we too seldom try to look at ourselves as others see us.

Early in the book, Banks introduces three factors (he calls them dreams) that he believes have strongly influenced us since colonial times, and are still a strong part of our national motivation. He terms those factors The City of Gold, The City on the Hill, and The Fountain of Youth. I urge readers to keep those factors in mind as they read and reread "Dreaming Up America." Other factors are important as well. Banks considers the Constitution and Declaration of Independence to be inspired documents whose full power hasn't yet been realized in American culture. Banks joins others in seeing racial influences at the root of every aspect of American society. Consider European treatment of the indigenous American people, slavery, and how our view of other people is influenced by whether they look like us or are different. Banks calls America "a country that was invented out of many parts" and thus we think and act differently than more homogeneous populations with longer histories.

These various factors are often in opposition to one another. Thus our society is often under tension. At times this is positive; it motivates us to move ahead. Far too often it leads to violence, both within ourselves and our actions toward others.

Not every reader will appreciate Banks' perspective. It would be unfortunate if that kept them from closely examining the points that he makes. Most Americans would benefit from reading this book twice through. It doesn't take long to read but the thought and discussions that it fosters endure much longer.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Holy smokes! Highly useful "braiding," as Banks calls it, December 6, 2008

By 

W. Wilt "Stills99" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dreaming Up America (Hardcover)

To add to review #1 (which is nicely complete), what I found useful was Banks' characterization of three "strands" in American psycho-history:

1) Escape from religious persecution, found a "new Jerusalem on a hill" (North-east);

2) "Mere" capitalism, exploitation, commerce (Mid-Atlantic, Caribbean. Spanish, mostly

3) Start from scratch, build a new life, find the fountain of youth. (many Europeans, including Ponce deLeon, of course, rummaging around in Florida.

Banks calls these, in another articulation, the three Cs--Christianity, Capitalism and Civilization.

Our big problem? The wee, itty-bitty delta between what we say and what we do. I've added the paragraphs to this one-paragraph excerpt, from pp 96, 97:

Russell Banks-Dreaming Up America. 2008

p. 96 THE PERIOD we're going through right now in the US, in terms of Iraq and the Middle East particularly, in many ways isn't an aberrant period at all. It's typical of America's view of our proper relationship with the rest of the world. Not even the intensity of our involvement is aberrant. Look at Panama, at Vietnam, at Korea, Or, in the earlier nineteenth century, at the Philippines, at cuba. We are and historically have been very involved in other parts of the world, exploiting people and lands as much as any other colonial power, in Asian, African and South American countries.

But in the American imagination, we're only doing that to avoid leaving them to their own terrible troubles. So there's a conflict between the reality of the nineteenth century -- between the nature of our involvement with Mexico, the Caribbean, Liberia, West Africa, and later our involvement in the Philippines and in Asia in the earlier twentieth century , and the rhetoric and imagery we use to describe that involvement. So much of American violence arises because of the conflict between the reality of our lives and the perception of our lives, the way we imagine ourselves.

This goes back to the early colonists in New England and Virginia and the Carolinas, who were basically committing a kind of genocide against the native people, but claimed they were saving them for Civilization, Christianity, and Capitalism. In fact they were killing them and stealing their land, but they never looked at it that way. So there was a huge conflict between what they said they were doing and what they were actually doing.

And that kind of conflict in any human being, in any people, makes for a predictable explosive violence. D.H. Lawrence said, "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer." He was pointing at the consequences of the American split between perception of self and reality. The killer is someone who would rather take a life than have to resolve that conflict between self-perception and reality.

5.0 out of 5 stars It's 2011 and he is dead on, January 3, 2011

By 

SAG1999 (CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dreaming Up America (Paperback)

Indeed Banks articulated a perspective that illuminated the dark side and motives of the American psyche. Wars frighten us but we are willing to fight them on foreign soils; democracy and capitalism conflict but are married in this country; the institution of the American president is an odd one (part pope, part monarch, part CEO but none of those); and race is an underlying theme in our consciousness.

I wonder what Banks would say about what has happened to this nation/world since he wrote this book. We have an African American president who struggles to make the changes he promised, while American-wielded wars rage abroad, the economy in trouble, unimaginable government deficit, people suffering in the unemployed line, and corporations and the super wealthy continue to amass power and resources. The book explains why we as a nation is doing what doesn't make sense. (ie, if you believe in democracy then why do we have TWO parties fighting in the Congress? For the people? Not really. Name-calling and demonizing a democratically-elected black President?)