The Great American Novel: The Last Hurrah

Definitions

The Great American Novel (GAN) need not be a literary novel. It must be of what is (was) America. The GAN, which is Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, must be about politics, if it is about “America”, and about elections, and preferably about reelections. It need not be instances of the human or inhuman condition à la Malraux or Bõlano or Grossman, or as an author “engagé” concerned with, for example, about the rich get richer while the poor get poorer and how the distance between the rich and the poor never will be closed. In addition, the GAN need not be a catalog, Dos Passos, or a humankind depicted as technological tissue, Pynchon, or summed by a passion mutated from Nature until it is too intense.

Once we had more than hope, it was an opportunity though very rarely achieved for traversing the distance between poor to rich. To contain such insanity is only, if devastation is to be avoided, via politics – democratic participatory democracy. As always, the person in the street, the one on the barstool, the hick in hay or those with faces aglow from computer use, are the hope for change. But most recently on the massive historical scale, the Marxists, if honest with themselves, found that the commoners do wish to remain common-like, as the few Iowans who prize mediocrity. It is safe and assured.

Buell in his book about the GAN shows how sectionalism was not a characteristic of a great American novel. But as America became more like vanilla, he entertains notions of transnationalism to such an extent that the GAN could be written in the Congo, at Mbandaka. Wherever it is written, Buell asks if it should be about the “American way of life”. Academic projects in creative writing courses gave to the supposed GAN the taint of the “serious” like from Barth, DeLillo, Pynchon, and Wallace. Some ambitiously attempted construction of monumental human socialism to be negated by using technology without science. The smashing together of many cultural domains during the 60s-70s according to the rules of cinema led to bewildered unaccepted and unanticipated ignorance founded on relating them by means of attempts at reducing the tension between helplessness and prodigious knowledge through welcomed apocalypses that, unfortunately, needed coded competencies to restrain the constantly receding End of It All…and so on.

This is a long way from De Forest’s 1868 essay that called for how to pick a GAN. He was already beaten to the punch by the publisher of Rebecca Harding Davis’s 1867 book who proclaimed it the great American novel. De Forest presumably gave it a more formal consideration, and it could spark a quest for the GAN. But P. T. Barnum preempted both by ridiculing publishers concerned with having on hand the “Great American novel”. De Forest was not a huckster. He wanted a book that could display ordinary American values in manners and emotions. He wanted an entire geographical range for the book’s contents.

Those contents were not to be a geographical entity – the United States – but about an America, a political entity first and foremost about the socialism of political freedom, or so others have realized. They came later after America ended in the years 1963-1975. Before them, when the GAN was more of a concern – 1860s to 1920s -  they wanted it to be of many pages and be a summation, implied or direct, of America. Of course such a summation would have to be a work of literature. Never mind that literature is making the commonplace enlightening, they wanted its theme not to be based on the everyday and ordinary. Accelerating away from such a reality where we are known all too well by people not of our choosing, they got smothered by pompous almost lyrical reflection, dictates of a pseudoism flowing hot and fierce along the causeway of objectivity in service to their subjective reality as agreed upon by a like-minded group that was being protective of their self-realized symbolic status… and so on.

All of this could be packed into a supernovel or perhaps a series of meganovels and there end it. Truly? If someone could write it or them and their intention be made known, wouldn’t others attempt to stop it? If brought to completion what else would there be to write? Read? What could a publisher do for an encore? Might as well launch the nukes.

Before involuntary radiation-soaked baths are the last of life’s events, should we then endorse lesser efforts made to secure the identity of the United States? Henry James in 1880 called it, lesser or greater, the “GAN”. In his time “USA” and “America” were the same or at least connected. There is no America now. There is not enough order and decency. The GAN must have a Christian element, at least a nod to it – to faith, belief, and denying power as the last resort as Dostoevsky concluded. This Christianity contributed to order and not to a Hobbesian draconian cage but for disciplined, hard-working, and simple, moral humankind, though fallible. They sometimes knew truth and beauty with tolerance and humor. Certainly they mourned brutality and vulgarity. Life was precious, most of the time, and when it wasn’t, births were encouraged to possibly curtail irrationality and give strength to those facing the ordeal of harsh reality. There was morality, and it wasn’t a convoluted personal morality. United they were, even loosely, in punishment for misconduct and in avoiding the most obvious and anti-social evils.

Evils there were but the Americans were sustained by an experiment in representative democracy. American religion and American morals upheld their liberty even as mental superiority was resented and equality and being the same became confused. A whiteout from a blizzard of legal empowerment threatened loss of sight of what opinion embedded in the masses was subverting – the flip side of the consciousness of Puritanism (partly Calvinistic and partly Augustinian) – self-reliance, diversity, less “equality”, more freedom in an energetic progressivism that included less individuals and more of a family life.

Which is to say, this is obscene to those who wrote literary tombstones for the Lincoln republic. As consumers, tech-directed, we want what Polybius advocated in a different way – no erosion of polity while Aristotle thought that clearly moneymaking, not money, like acid eats into the social order and disfigures the face of society. It makes monsters of the common people in that they are devoid of common sense. They can’t then be trusted. Aristotle also put down that reasoning leads to happiness. Politics itself was not philosophy, sociology, or history. It was best, according to Aristotle, to not have too much leisure and this would help to avoid tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy. In each case they, whomever, govern or rule in their own interest. This is furthered by a lack of common morals, giving up our distinction from beasts, and ignoring we are only able to choose among evils.

In any event, we came to think we were more animal than human. Effective amoral violence became the only way, then, to political success. Make the animals into consumers and workers and name them always in personal terms and never can they be citizens. Use the Therapeutic Approach to keep them disengaged from polities. They are as they are because of society. Be careful out there; it may not be quite yet a jungle, but it isn’t a sensible civilization. In the jungle Rousseau found the missing link, the orangutan. So how did the orangutan’s relatives come to live in Paris? Probably they got divided into rich orangutans and poor orangutans along the way. They became two societies, the rich one vs. the poor one.

In America, there had been trust in the commoner. The commoner wasn’t rich or poor. There was equality of opportunity. It was a belief. We no longer believe. American writers asserted a fundamental moralism within the bounds of the United States. They knew we had fought for a distinct political way of life synonymous with the American way of life. There was present a chance the commoners could prevent the subversion by the rich but the commoners fell into the poor, and they offered no hope. No poor became rich. After all, there became only two ways of being -  rich or poor, a few vs. the masses. The dreadful boredom of the poor’s works and days could become intolerable so they were allowed diversions. One of these diversions, regarded as an essential American political novel and a GAN, is All the Kings’ Men.

All the King’s Men

All the King’s Men is about a demagogue on his way to dictatorship. Though the novel has been called “the essential political novel”, it is not primarily about politics. The politics described in the book use the characters like Willie Stark (better named as Talos thought the author, Robert Penn Warren, the pitiless and brutal character in the Faire Queen). Jack is to realize the meaninglessness of the quasi-religious Big Twitch to significantly account for undated activity. Neither can pragmatism nor idealism consistently clarify the mix of good and evil and so morality is a lost cause. It is all only what happens, one thing after another in a hard-boiled noir that Warren controls in a Machiavellian manner with a manipulating subjective blow-by-blow agenda. This is the really “real” without a continuum. Fractions only add up to more fractions. Endeavors are not completed. Perhaps some sophisticated mathematics with what little expository force that could be mustered might produce acceptance of the arbitrary in all human affairs. Pascal’s Wager, for example, has no place in such affairs. The Wager is nothing more than an exercise in probability.

Many times there is sweat in the hot South of All the King’s Men. But there is never any stink. After rereading and reading, the novel wasn’t as interesting as on the first read. Burden was a burden. Sensationalism in a tight circle of people got to be annoying. Warren gives the impression of having the plain truth bolstered by melodrama. It is asked if Stark winked at Jack. Who cares? More important, was Warren winking at us? He can’t leave it alone. In the book “it” gets put out in a wise, if not profound and arty manner. One is reminded of Freud’s banana or cigar – that a banana or cigar is sometimes an inclusive banana or cigar.

Warren has trouble with the identities of his characters. He makes an uncertainty about them. But, he must “place” the characters; he does not want to do it if it unduly clarifies their identities. It’s what Warren, not a reader, wants. Not what a reader would want unless dominated by Warren. As if one can only appreciate the book if subservient to Warren, not “under a spell”. This is naked force, brutal. Warren thinks people and ideas can’t be realized enough, but they can for a time, then gone, the memory fades. A bright vivid, recent memory restores what was, for a time. Warren can’t accept the present because it is just not now, barely just, quite close in time, gone, always a memory and so identity cannot be ID’d, not truly. So? What is it? Nothing else but reality. Warren didn’t have to write like he did, but since he chose to do so, he should have found meaning without jargon, accents, sensationalism, and melodrama and twisting facts of the plot for the sake of obscurity, which is the truth, such as he found it. A wavering uncertain dim state without stages of process is the result.

It gets boring how Jack knows so much but remains ignorant. He would have stayed in Long Beach. He was enough of a Californian already. Warren gives him an uncertainty then denies placing the character if enough uncertainty about him could arise, so he wouldn’t be unduly clarified. Warren affirms contradictions in clarity, but denies them too and reaffirms them marginally altered. There can be an exasperation with this wordplay. He opens slots about who are the characters and what they do and fills them with this and that and, like enough monkeys with typewriters, you get significance. But why stop? If the monkeys were to continue, they would get back to obscurity. Warren’s obscurity came from the novel’s start as a play, his preoccupation with verse, and then a need to use the jargon, accents, and melodrama twisted by facts into obscurity, which is the “truth”, forget the facts.

The Last Hurrah

In contrast, in The Last Hurrah appearances are not deceiving. The truth is made of facts, except as Frank Skeffington related about political writers who have an occupational distrust of facts when writing about him. Skeffington, a crook, was the mayor of a city never named. His political base was mostly Irish Catholics. For them politics was a part of life. Politics was dramatic and, at times, comedic. It was accepted without doubt that it was entertaining. His supporters played roles, some assigned, and gave the best performance they could as parents, offspring, voters, and office holders. For them, family came first. They knew only what could be attained and that was an attempt at preservation of dignity with responsibilities set for the common good. Common sense was not yet the individualist’s banalities. Willful misinterpretation of facts was not in their ken. For them there was not a focus on clear-cut grand themes of human existence. The mysteries were Biblical, aided and abetted by the Church. Many of them were witty, decorous, caving sociability, and found a place even if they were forced into displaying a capacity for lacking the definitive.

They were sociable at a wake, for example at the wake of Knocko Minihan (those names never to be emulated again). A wake was a social event. Most in attendance were poor, worked hard (at a time when the expression didn’t apply to one and all), not often given a chance to be sociable, not much diversion. Otherwise, it was a dreary life. A grand custom was a wake. They were to be entertained. They deserved to be since they were unique and entertainly so – the most entertaining group in Europe transplanted to America. They had suddenly made the city three times its former size. Those already present belatedly realized that the savages, the Irish, had arrived. They came in uninvited. How they got in was not pretty.

Now it was the Italians on their way in. Going away were these Irish. Gone as a cohesive political force. A fading Eden, such as it was, Post-America was not far away. There were Italian songs at the 9^th Ward Democratic Club’s Spring Dance. Portraits in the hall were of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, and Skeffington. Open bar, formidable buffet, costly orchestra, and a chance for business.  A part of the business was Camaratta from the waterfront, soon to be deposed. There was no open hostility toward him, it would be ultimately pointless to have done so. Pointless then and at other times. Pointless in regard to Camaratta or anyone else. Here there were none of the gang of anthropoids in the State House and none from the western part of the state who were absolutely depraved, worse than the famous South.

Milder appearing depravity was not so far away. A prominent Republican attorney general had refused $10,000 to defend a notorious criminal. This was taken as a noble gesture, and he earned the nickname of “Honorable”. Much later it was discovered that he had refused the $10,000 because he had wanted $20,000. He was cremated. One person said it was like he was burned with the Sunday papers. He could have been put in an ashtray. Other Republicans painted the political landscape in complementary colors. Such as the Governor who was a well-born turd, a complete reactionary, he had a mind from the 19th century and it wasn’t an apt one. Progressivism for him was doing away with the use of the cat-of-nine-tails on a regular basis in the penal system. Going any further would have been too dangerous. The governor’s allies would help the poor, if down on their luck when they couldn’t be used by as allies. Then and only then did the poor have rights. In effect the Republicans didn’t want public baths for the poor, let them stink, and at a good distance from their betters. The poor can take a bath at the start and at the end and use talcum powder in between. The Republicans had a vested interest in the talcum powder industry.

Mostly likely Skeffington had no holdings in the talcum powder industry. But however his politics could be analyzed, there was no ignoring his recognition of the poor or those not so poor. He realized the ease with which people could be bought. Enormous wealth engenders yet more wealth to those who already have it. They have no answer to the fundamental question – how much is enough? For those at zero, they can be bought, have they any choice? But those at greater than zero, even if only a little can say, with Nancy, just say NO. In that NO, or from it, resides morality, the only way, unsure as it is, to stop the rich from taking us all for a ride and winning our lives. But one impertinence – what is meant by “zero”?

All Skeffington needed to hold them off, keep the rich at bay, was a plurality. The size of the plurality hardly mattered; a plurality is, as Skeffington said, like the color of your raincoat in a typhoon, what difference does it make? To obtain a plurality now and before, Skeffington in his campaigns entered differing cells of the city. These places were not just about race, money, religion, and sex. Broad categories of voters had within them these cells. All cells were in common in that what they said they wanted was apart from what they would settle for. Skeffington promised them the first, and he knew he had to deliver on the second.

All these cells were known to Skeffington building by building though to others they could be parts of villages on the steppes of Asia. He was, of course, among the Irish, but also he was immersed in Italians, Greeks, Syrians, and Chinese. Among these groups, Skeffington visited a slum building owned by one of the Opposition, who wanted to keep it as it had been. This was preserving his inheritance, so no paint or plumbing or electricity improvements were allowed. The only thing that changed was a steady increase in rent. This was obviously a combination of sentiment and good economy.

Among some of his voters, Skeffington knew he must reiterate that all Ireland must be free and that Trieste belonged to Italy. He could not possibly affect any changes in regard to these issues, but they wanted to hear it. Also, some wanted another statute of Columbus. Skeffington noted there were enough pigeons already pooping on enough statues. But the Sons of Italy wanted a statue of someone else, some lunatics wanted one of FDR, and Monsignor Tancredi wanted one of Monsignor Tancredi. Skeffington wanted to avoid making enemies he would have forever so he did the cynical, outrageous, reprehensible, and sensible thing and picked Mother Cabrini.

Appearing less outrageous and entailing much more than a statue was a televised evening with candidate McCluskey, Skeffington’s opponent in the race for mayor. A statue as one representation of one dead person to be seen by a handful of people didn’t begin to compare with the thousands that saw a key feature in our transformation from a political democracy into a social one – McCluskey’s TV spot. It was done at his home with wife, kids, IRISH setter (rented), milk and cookies, bookcases, divan, spinet, and large painting of Pope Pius XII in evidence. This was turning ostensibly private matters into public ones and did not involve a genial sin but one as cause for the end of acceptance of independence and association by those viewing, as voters, as a mass to be manipulated on ever greater stages as TV assumed ever greater importance. Their fare was intended for uncorrupted ordinary (where are they today?) people whose morals were to be ruined by TV’s programs and ads and “news” about sensations, fad, fallacies, fashion, gossip, personalities, and a feeble education being only what TV showed them.

McCluskey’s TV show was in the vanguard charged with destroying America. Never had certain outcomes guaranteed the best, the right or correct occupants of political office. TV made any such concerns irrelevant. Of more concern was did it sell, would they buy, what entertained and what did not? On such a scale, McCluskey was rather low on the totem pole. The religious tinge to his presentation would soon enough be dispensed with. One might as well rent the wife, kids, and order a platter of food and, okay, buy the candidate too or “rent” the candidate. Such goings on weren’t far off.

Obedience of the masses was gained by promising more pie though it always tasted like crap, always. More rights were to be upheld. Keep them focused on the individual uber all and deny avoidance of the most obvious evils. Tell them politics is dirty and about power and overt obedience will not be enough, since there was the possibility of heresy. Public opinion rules and it is made by those in power. Checks and balances cannot rein in public opinion pushed by the guardians of social communications. There are the means they determine to get the ends they determine. The future is nowhere, the past is dead, and of the present they are in control. They control of what freedom consists. It is in their realm that they have made. Any pains or ills in that realm are treated as boredom. Once there, in that state, the mass are never out of it. Meaning is lost and pseudo-meaning is put in its place, placebos are issued, social placebos for political needs.

So we become headed to a future (nowhere) less safe, more brutal, less rational, more hurried and harassed, less of sense and sensibility, with less honor or duty or decency; therefore, boredom prevails and, they counter with entertainment composed of torture, horror, sexual oddities, cruelty of any kind, suffering, murder, less disciple, no tradition and cohesion, and obviously lesser families. More families were prosperous in 1952-1956 as The Last Hurrah was being written and published. “Reet!”, as Fats Citronella says more than once during his reception of the keys to the city from Skeffington (who notes the keys and recipients had become of lesser quality), was based on that prosperity within one spending group. The youth as themselves were a consumer class and not of a family. There was a pent up suppression of incomes in the Depression and then WWII. The rush for economic betterment had only old social referents, not suitable or well-presented and integrated with the new youth. Constant self-assertion was to bully society into not placing any guides at large, no distant antecedents, and only incestuous standards to ensure the increase in the vulgarity of popular culture.

Vulgarity and dignity could not coexist. The family could have had some dignity in its repertoire when it had preserved limits and responsibilities in relation to the common good. Outside it, individuals drooled on an unawareness of the seriousness of history and how a just society could be maintained. Abundant slobber or a well-measured way of life – drool and drivel or deny the realm’s contrivances in order to render oneself composed. Being then, in their realm, in their control, an English-English dictionary is needed to figure out ones’ place, how to fit in. The realm lacks short condolences, soft compliments, quiet recognition, mild regret, and muted grief. The obverse is perfunctory, if accomplished, and done according to a script. As done in a TV program or if they have been done many times, then they are realized or otherwise to know how to do any of them is lost.

Within The Last Hurrah, Skeffington’s adversaries found some of this public utterances, which could include the Bible or Shakespeare as sources and apt as sources go, to be in an alliance with an awesome and hardly attainable ideal like chastity or telling the truth. O’Connor wrote The Last Hurrah with Skeffington central to it. Of course, it was not only Skeffington’s life that passed away. Skeffington gave no plea to Caufield; it was not an explanation in referring to an end even though something anew would transpire, but it would be a lesser truth, more lies. O’Connor wasn’t “political”, he needed to wrap the political matters he presented, such as they were, tightly around the Irish-Americans of Boston and their inseparable Catholicism. Without that wrapping, his story would have been diffuse. In addition, the story would have been too close to the future. Otherwise it could not have been as clearly written, calmly done, not overly profound (or any other attempt at a synonym for literary output) yet he depicted much that was lost. O’Connor was at the end of a very large group of writers who knew America was fundamentally moralistic. Whatever O’Connor thought of this disaster, he did not write much about it. If greatness must be what is said, how vastly inferior is what isn’t said? If greatness always lies in what is written in full, what can be found of worth in knowing that few words in number can add up to an incalculable effect?

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