The American Mind: The E. T. Earl LecturesPerry, Bliss
History
The American Mind: The E. T. Earl Lectures
Perry, Bliss
American literature -- History and criticism; National characteristics, American
See how the moralistic note is struck in the field of political satire.
It is 1866, and "Petroleum V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit X Roads,"
Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's views on education. "He didn't bleeve
in edjucashun, generally speekin. The common people was better off
without it, ez edjucashun hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He
had seen the evil effex ov it in niggers and poor whites. So soon ez a
nigger masters the spellin book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes
dissatisfied with his condishin, and hankers after a better cabin and
more wages. He towunst begins to insist onto ownin land hisself, and
givin his children edjucashun, and, ez a nigger, for our purposes, aint
worth a soo markee."
The single phrase, "ez a nigger," spells a whole chapter of American
history.
That quotation from "Petroleum V. Nasby" serves also to illustrate a
species of American humor which has been of immense historical
importance and which has never been more active than it is to-day: the
humor, namely, of local, provincial, and sectional types. Much of this
falls under Bergson's conception of humor as social censure. It rebukes
the extravagance, the rigidity, the unawareness of the individual who
fails to adapt himself to his social environment. It takes the place,
in our categories of humor, of those types of class humor and satire in
which European literature is so rich. The mobility of our population,
the constant shifting of professions and callings, has prevented our
developing fixed class types of humor. We have not even the lieutenant
or the policeman as permanent members of our humorous stock company.
The policeman of to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. The
lieutenant may go back to his grocery wagon or on to his department
store. But whenever and wherever such an individual fails to adapt
himself to his new companions, fails to take on, as it were, the colors
of his new environment, to speak in the new social accents, to follow
the recognized patterns of behavior, then the kindly whip of the
humorist is already cracking round his ears. The humor and satire of
college undergraduate journalism turns mainly upon the recognized
ability or inability of different individuals to adapt themselves to
their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. A freshman must
behave like a freshman, or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave as
if he were nothing but the automaton of a freshman, or he will be
laughed at more merrily still.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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