I have now completed my research and plan to spend the remainder of my time here (one day) exploring the house of President Andrew Jackson. Tonight I am taking a few moments to record some thoughts about my time and my research.
I arrived at the Nashville airport at almost midnight, exhausted from a full day of travel, I boarded a shuttle to take me into the city. I was the sole passenger aboard a large bus, so it was not long before the driver began asking me where I was from etc. Minutes later I found my self listening to an animated lecture on American politics, specifically the driver's dislike of Obama. The driver (lets call him Bob), explained to me how the book of Revelations warns of an anti-christ and that Obama and his presidency apparently fulfilled many of the prophecies found therein. Bob was also highly suspicious of Obama's Muslim and unAmerican origins. I couldn't help smiling to myself in the dark — I had arrived in the South. As we entered the downtown area Bob began to point out the various honky tonks with obvious pride and he told me of all the places that I simply had to visit. Arriving at the door of my hostel I thanked him, and he wished me a happy stay in Nashville.
The next day was sunny. Coming from Oxford, sun was only something I vaguely remembered like a far off dream, so I took full advantage of it and walked many miles to a park. I bought a coffee (I'm sorry to say at a Starbucks), plopped myself down under a tree and opened a book on the thought of Andrew Lytle, the character who was to consume my waking hours for the next little while.
Andrew Lytle was primarily a novelist, but he also wrote some social critique. This is the aspect of his writings which I am focusing on. Lytle took pride in his Southern origins and wrote of the distinctions between northern and southern culture, as he perceived them in the 1930s. Lytle grew up in a happy farming family and this background had an immense effect on his outlook and philosophy. Moreover, Lytle's grandmother had lived through the Civil War and reminisced over her experience of it to Lytle. In his writings Lytle warned of the dangers of industrialism, as the South he knew and loved became less and less of a farming culture and 'embraced' more and more the modern world. Lytle longed for, and called for, a return to a more communal and family ordered society in which neighbour knew neighbour and all men respected nature, instead of destroying it in the name of progress.
Lying in the park, contemplating all these ideas, I was struck by the contrast between them and those which my environment reflected. The park in which I say was beautiful. Behind me was a replica of the Parthenon, constructed in 1897 for the Exposition, and in front was a busy road, overloaded with SUVs and suburbans, fronted with Starbucks, high rises, and other 'necessities' of the American suburb. This was a more well off part of Nashville, developed around Vanderbilt University. However, I had walked through almost slums to get to it. The disintegration of community and the evidence of an extreme capitalist society — the very things Lytle warned of— were all around me. The grace and beauty of the Parthenon behind me spoke to a past age in which people took pride in good craftsmanship and the proper symmetry of architecture. Yet the reality of this parthenon was a symbol of the progress the 1897 Exposition had advertised and heralded. The 'progress' which had resulted in the view I gazed on in front of me.
This morning I missed a bus I was supposed to catch. I sat on a bench on the sidewalk enjoying my morning coffee and watching the downtown tourists pass by, decked out in their cowboy hats and boots. Across the road was a building bearing a sign which read: Acme Farm Supplies. The building was boarded up and flanked by a chain restaurant on its left. I began to analyze the building. It was beautifully built out of brick with many ornate details and perfect symmetry. It made me wonder what Nashville used to be like before it became the "Country Capital" of the world. Maybe then the town itself was filled with craftsmen working at their trades and visited by farmers coming in to get 'farm supplies' at Acme's, or maybe I am just romanticizing; probably the latter. However, I saw Acme's Farm Supplies as another symbol of the past (probably idealized), or rather a symbol of a vision of an alternative society, one of which Andrew Lytle wrote.
One of the critiques often levied at Lytle, from the few scholars who actually bother to read him, is that his critique and commentary offer no concrete solutions to the evils he observed in society. To some extent this criticism is warranted, and as I read his work I have asked myself how one would actually begin to implement (or return) to the kind of society he envisioned. I haven't come up with the answer yet, but I believe the initial steps towards such as society must occur by reestablishing relationships between people. This may sound abstract, but if one becomes established in a city, town, neighbourhood, or village, one can then begin to know the other people living there. By establishing relationships, not only with friends, but with those who run the businesses (whether chains or independent) which you frequent, the bus driver, and the gas pumper one begins to foster some sort of community. From such a foundation other initiatives may grow and develop. On a less practical level, I believe, along with Lytle, that the realization of such a society requires a recognition, by the individuals who belong to it, of who they are and for what purpose they exist.
"For Christendom had reached that crisis all civilizations suffer when they lose their awareness of the supernal. Belief in a divine order was once as necessary as bread and as commonplace. The loss of this rarely happens as a thunder clap. It wanes slowly. [...] The fall is into history. The mutual permeation of the divine and the carnal gradually drew apart. Eyes lowered to the ground, no longer in prayer but out of curiosity about matter, which the mind began to divide into elements as a means of power over it."
"Power replaced charity." — Andrew Lytle, A Medley. History, and Myth and the Artist.
Andrew Lytle was primarily a novelist, but he also wrote some social critique. This is the aspect of his writings which I am focusing on. Lytle took pride in his Southern origins and wrote of the distinctions between northern and southern culture, as he perceived them in the 1930s. Lytle grew up in a happy farming family and this background had an immense effect on his outlook and philosophy. Moreover, Lytle's grandmother had lived through the Civil War and reminisced over her experience of it to Lytle. In his writings Lytle warned of the dangers of industrialism, as the South he knew and loved became less and less of a farming culture and 'embraced' more and more the modern world. Lytle longed for, and called for, a return to a more communal and family ordered society in which neighbour knew neighbour and all men respected nature, instead of destroying it in the name of progress.
This morning I missed a bus I was supposed to catch. I sat on a bench on the sidewalk enjoying my morning coffee and watching the downtown tourists pass by, decked out in their cowboy hats and boots. Across the road was a building bearing a sign which read: Acme Farm Supplies. The building was boarded up and flanked by a chain restaurant on its left. I began to analyze the building. It was beautifully built out of brick with many ornate details and perfect symmetry. It made me wonder what Nashville used to be like before it became the "Country Capital" of the world. Maybe then the town itself was filled with craftsmen working at their trades and visited by farmers coming in to get 'farm supplies' at Acme's, or maybe I am just romanticizing; probably the latter. However, I saw Acme's Farm Supplies as another symbol of the past (probably idealized), or rather a symbol of a vision of an alternative society, one of which Andrew Lytle wrote.
One of the critiques often levied at Lytle, from the few scholars who actually bother to read him, is that his critique and commentary offer no concrete solutions to the evils he observed in society. To some extent this criticism is warranted, and as I read his work I have asked myself how one would actually begin to implement (or return) to the kind of society he envisioned. I haven't come up with the answer yet, but I believe the initial steps towards such as society must occur by reestablishing relationships between people. This may sound abstract, but if one becomes established in a city, town, neighbourhood, or village, one can then begin to know the other people living there. By establishing relationships, not only with friends, but with those who run the businesses (whether chains or independent) which you frequent, the bus driver, and the gas pumper one begins to foster some sort of community. From such a foundation other initiatives may grow and develop. On a less practical level, I believe, along with Lytle, that the realization of such a society requires a recognition, by the individuals who belong to it, of who they are and for what purpose they exist.
"For Christendom had reached that crisis all civilizations suffer when they lose their awareness of the supernal. Belief in a divine order was once as necessary as bread and as commonplace. The loss of this rarely happens as a thunder clap. It wanes slowly. [...] The fall is into history. The mutual permeation of the divine and the carnal gradually drew apart. Eyes lowered to the ground, no longer in prayer but out of curiosity about matter, which the mind began to divide into elements as a means of power over it."
"Power replaced charity." — Andrew Lytle, A Medley. History, and Myth and the Artist.
