Customer Reviews

People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (Cornell Paperbacks)

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When we train our students, we teach them to devour their elders. A deeply critical sensibility is part of the preparation of young scholars, and we only hope they gain perspective and humility as they grow more mature. As Kammen himself wrote in 1980, after telling the story of his father's reaction to this work (described in a student's review, below), "I am grateful for the reception this book has had and can only hope that it will continue to be read; critically, to be sure, but with compassionate acuity as well." There is humanity in that thought, and more than a little optimism too.

This book is one of the great achievements of American history, written by one of the finest historians of his generation. It is not an easy book, both because Kammen writes in an idiosyncratic voice and because he presumes a deep learning on the part of his reader. As liberal arts education becomes increasingly debased in our public universities, fewer and fewer of our students have the intellectual resources to read a book like this one. That is a shame, because there is real wisdom here. This is a book that repays well the effort to reread it.

You can gain a sense of Kammen at his most elegant from the final sentences of the introduction to part one: "Those of us who are historians, custodians of the past by definition, must try to recapture what Lionel Trilling once called 'the huge, unrecorded hum of implication,' because the life of the future is predicated upon the implication of the past. The historian is the memory of civilization. A civilization without memory ceases to be civilized. A civilization without history ceases to have identity. Without identity there is no purpose; without purpose a civilization will wither." (p. 13)

His topic here, in all its messy and subtle glory, is American civilization. He seeks its origin in the peculiar circumstances of the colonial period, but make no mistake about his aim--his game is bigger than the Founding, as this quote suggests. I find his conclusion, in this day and age of post-modern cynicism, betokening an aspiration that few scholars seek today: "We should recognize, as Hawthorne did, the innocense as well as the evils of our natures. We should understand, as William James did, that Americanism is a volatile mixture of hopeful good and curable bad. We must maintain, as Carl Becker pleaded, a balance between freedom and responsibility. For freedom unrestrained by responsibility becomes mere license, while responsibility unchecked by freedom becomes arbitrary power." (p. 298) Few today have the courage, or learning, to write like that.

It is a real tragedy when our best young minds cannot appreciate the deep reflection that rests behind a work like this one. But it is a greater tragedy that so few of our current custodians of the past can deploy the kind of mastery of our cultural humanism, in all its richness, that Kammen managed in 1972, thirty years ago. Maybe that is a mark of his greatness; one worries that it is a mark of our own decline.

Kammen is a brilliant historian and this work is, without doubt, one of the very best I've read about the American experience. The beginning chapters dig deep into the early colonial and pre-colonial history of the country. They may be difficult reading because of Kammen's academic style, and I've tended to skip over them. However, the last chapter is absolutely masterful, entitled "The Contrapuntal Civilization," as it describes the paradoxes of the American experience from the 1930's and afterward. The section on post-WW II America is sheer genius: the dualistic state of mind found in almost all aspects of politics and the collective American psyche. I've read and re-read this chapter so many times in an effort to understand what's become of this land, and its people.

-Tom Maremaa, Author of the Forthcoming novel "Metal Heads" from Kunati Books in Spring 2009

Anyone who has ever been to a town council meeting (or as they say in VT a Town Meeting) knows that democracy is an ugly business. The same can be said of any political institution, which is probed deeply enough. I came away from my reading reenforced in that belief. All Kamen seems to be saying is that when humans are thrown together and interests, passions and egos are invovled it is difficult to maintain social cohesion. No big surprise there, and he must be applauded for saying it in the context of American history. This is especially true in this age of BIG BOOK history, which often seems to reenforce HS civics teachings of the "Steady, Smooth Arc of American Ascendancy", which leaves many students actually believing in manifest destiny including the belief America might prevail in democartizing Iraq.

Kamen does have a deep understanding of the forces, including the peripheral, which shaped America and started me wondering what role the to-ing and fro-ing in England over the Restoration had in the minds of English settlers (but really was that insight any more paradigm shifting than when Tuchman let us all in on the joke that the Brits never really cared about the mainland that much anyway - how much timber and pitch can one Navy use - and the big show was really going on between the French and the Brits in the Carib where the big bucks in empire resided - and in a narrative that was enjoyable to read?). So from that point of view it was an intersting read. That said, the language was often impenetrable and this comes from an avowed TC Boyle fan and fellow sesquipedalian.

One wise man said language should be a catcher not a pitcher (I think it was Casey Stengel), and another wise person (allegedly Dorothy Parker but with all the drinking going on at the Algonquin who can tell?) said Brevity is the soul of wit - the Yankees probably will sign up Kamen, this poor witless pundit, to replace Randy Johnson. The tome is very unpleasant to read. Further, Kamen often lapses into the first person, which is often the refuge of the lazy or the pretensious. With respect to arcanity, Kamen also requires that the reader have an almost encyclopedic knoweldge of the 1700's to apprehend the references. In one instance, he repeatedly refers to a trial (of which I, an avid history reader, lawyer, and a Master's candidate in American Studies, never heard) which a casual reader might guess invovled either sedition or slander (the reader is left to guess because Kamen introduces it with so obscure a Latin legal reference that almost no one could appreciate it) and he then comes back pages later to say that Hamilton defended the accused, but he never really exlains anything about the trial, its signficnace or how it fits in his thesis. The reader is left with the sense Kamen is acting as if he were a child who found something special and had to run around the neighborhood trying to impress all his friends. It is unlikely that one small obscure trial really was the fulcrum upon which rested the entire course of American democracy - even in this age of "HOW THE [fill in the blank] SAVED/CREATED/ALTERED THE [fill in the blank]" books it is a risible assertion. Kamen might be brillaint and the Pulitzer committee might really have enjoyed it, but as I tell my wife about people who feel compelled to obfuscate unecessarily, it was all "Inside Baseball". It seems Kamen really just wants us to admire his intelligence and fuel his ego because I was left with the impression that he really has no interest in conveying information in a manner which is digestible to any other than his exalted peerage.

...were pickings slim that year, or did the judges owe him favours? Be afraid; be verrry afraid!
Kammen's father actually asked him why he didn't write the book in English, and initially I agree with Dad. Being a voracious reader, and history buff, I am shocked to realize that this is the first book that I have utterly loathed. And, paradoxially, I have to write a paper on it for a prof who apparently idolizes the book and writer. Throughout the book I kept saying to myself "OK, ok! I get it- enough already! Where are you going with it and why?" and "Dear sweet Jaysus, when will it end?"
Perhaps he is like Joe Pesce who gets paid by the word (Joe's is f**k); this book could have been written far more succinctly and still have gotten whatever his point might have been across without losing the reader in grandiose vocabulary and name dropping. His "American Culture American Taste" is a much better read, and by the time you finish it, you will at least know what it is about, unlike People of Paradox.

I have died in Viet Nam But Ihave walked the face of the moon

I have watched children starve from my golden towers. But I have fed half of the earth

I am ashamed But I am proud. I am an American.