Table Of Contentm&
To My Mother and Father
with Special Thanks to
Bill Williams Lillian Frary Jon Reilly
Warren Susman Sal Sebastian Donald Hilgenberg
Paul Vanderbilt the Doanes Caroline Hoffman
Marsha Peters Morris Edelson Elizabeth Spalter
Mark Knops
can see, "the visible man," to discover "the man invisible," or
that center that is "the genuine man," that
mass of faculties and feelings which are the inner man. We
have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every
action which we see involves an infinite association of rea
sonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have
served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep
Preface
seated in the ground, find in it their end and their level.
This underworld is a new subject-matter, proper to the
historian.'
It is in fact that "underworld"-or at least a small
part of it -that this book proposes to explore. But in the
course of that exploration the author soon discovered (and
this he shares with many other creative young thinkers,
scholars, and artists of his generation) that the old forms, be
queathed by a great historical tradition developed with enor
mous skill and energy most especially over the last century,
v.ill no longer serve his purposes. The structure of experience
that most interests him cannot be captured by the logic of ob
servation, description, or explanation traditionally deployed
in the narrative (which tells a story), the monograph (which
permits systematic analysis), or even the documentary
(which records the "facts").
Many historians have become convinced that there
was a major crisis in American life during the 1890s; some
Writing over a hundred years ago, Hippolyte Taine
have gone so far as to call it a "psychic crisis" and have at
congratulated those fellow historians who had preceded him
tempted to explain its existence or, even more commonly, to
for making "the first step in history" leading to a "revival of
use the presumed existence of such a crisis as an explanation
imagination" through a reconstruction of the past, no matter
for a v.ide series of developments in American domestic and
how incomplete, that enabled them to "see approximately
the men of other days." In a particularly brilliant passage he
· Hippolyte Taine, History of English Literature (New York: .John Nurtele
now urged the ~aking of"thesecond step": using what the eye Lovell, 1873), p. 19.
international political life. But none of this interests Michael -the kind of record these people wished to preserve (itself an
Lesy; his concern is rather with the psychology of a people in important type of behavior) for themselves.
a particular time and place. Eschewing the hotter theories or For at the very time that the Frontier Myth or the
generalizations, he prefers to present what he believes to be vision of a happier agrarian America was reaching its apogee
the authentic structure of the experience of the people them (witness Turner's classic essay of 1893) there was also a grow
selves, especially that aspect of the structure that might be ing awareness of awesome problems of death, decline, delin
regru·ded as pathological. Again, in common with so many of quency, and even degeneracy as phenomena associated not
the ablest of his generation, he wishes us primarily to know only with industrial and urban America but with rural and
"the real thing" firsthand so that we may better understand. agrarian America as well. It is this consciousness that Lesy
His first obligation as an historian, he clearly believes, is to demonstrates. Many historians have concerned themselves
find the patterns and rhythms of lives and to present them in with American aspirations and hopes; few with its fears and
a manner sufficiently artful so that we too sense those pat nightmares. Lesy offers us a unique opportunity to face not
terns and rhythms. the American Dream but the American Nightmare, a night
Lesy might have opted for a method more in tune mare reflected not only in the mind but in other kinds of be
with the modes of behavioral analysis now commonplace in havior as well. It is this general phenomenon and not a set of
history and the social sciences, more particularly, the gather abstract ideas that attracts his particular method of inquiry.
ing of data about types of human behavior readily quantifia That method of inquiry is certainly not traditional in
ble so that a series of statistically valid correlations might the historical literature. It reminds me, if only by loose analo
have been attempted. In point of fact, he has not failed to in gy to be sure, of Hannah Arendt's description of the method
vestigate, and make use of, some of the kinds of records com of Walter Benjamin in her brilliant introduction to his series
monly consulted by such behaviorists. But he realized that of critical and historical essays, Illuminations. In discussing
there were other kinds of behavior-in language and gesture, one of Benjamin's more important works, Arendt says, "The
in persistent images preserved in newspapers and other writ main work consisted in tearing fragments out of their context
ten accounts, and perhaps most significantly in those extraor and arranging them afresh in such a way that they illustrated
dinary visual images captured by a local photographer. Not one another and were able to prove their raison d'etre in a
only are these kinds of behavior crucial for what we can come free-floating state, as it were. It definitely was a sort of sur
to know about Taine's "inner man" by interpreting them, but realistic montage." Benjamin's ideal, we are told, was to pro
they take on special meaning when we realize that the record duce a work consisting entirely of quotations. In a sense, this
of this behavior was not simply an accidental accounting left was Lesy's original objective also, although he proposed to
for the historians of the future but in fact represents-espe use another kind of quotation than presumably Benjamin
cially in the photographs, newspapers, personal documents had in mind and added to the very idea of quotations the use
