November 12, 2025 • 56 mins
We explore how Mark Twain’s writing, not his public persona, teaches a demanding civic balance: democratic equality joined to a living culture of excellence. Through Huck Finn and Connecticut Yankee, we trace how humor, empathy, and imagination form judgment without sliding into cynicism.
• distinguishing Twain the persona from the unified teaching in the work
• equality, liberty and the cultivation of greatness in tension
• Connecticut Yankee as a parable of science, soul and trade-offs
• Huck and Jim’s shared fate and moral growth
• literature as civic education and imagination-building
• satire that critiques pretension while honoring the noble
• teaching Twain in class through short forms and humor
• America 250 as a moment to reread Twain
• patriotism as rededication, not reflex; moderation over hubris
• warnings against technocratic certainty and the loss of the human
Listeners, I will be putting a ton of links into the show notes to make sure that everything that we've talked about is available, as well as Dr. Dobski's books.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:52):
All right, welcome everyone.
I am very excited to have ourvisiting professor, Dr.
BJ Dobsky, with us.
And we're gonna talk about MarkTwain.
And a little backstory.
Um, I attended a facultymeeting.
I kind of talked about thepodcast we were doing, and BJ
and I met.
Um, and at first I was like,what does Mark Twain have to do
(01:14):
with anything?
I mean, I've read Mark Twain,um, but the more we talked, the
more I got excited.
And when we hopped on our calltoday, you know, I told BJ, I am
so excited to talk about thisbecause this is stuff I didn't
even know.
So we're gonna start with onequestion, BJ.
So Mark Twain is I mean, he'sone of the most famous Americans
(01:38):
of the 19th century, right?
Like people know who Mark Twainis.
So, from your perspective, whatdoes Twain's work reveal about
the American character um andalso our democratic experiment?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (01:52):
So uh first of all, Liz, thank you for having me on.
I'm thrilled to be here.
I'm of course I'm delighted tobe in sunny tempe and uh and and
and you know, while I'm missinga little bit of the the New
England fall back inMassachusetts in a couple of
weeks, I will not be missing thethe freezing rain followed by
snow and ice.
So I'm I'm thrilled to be hereand and of course thrilled to be
(02:14):
on uh on your podcast.
This is really terrific what youguys are doing and happy to
contribute to it.
Um I guess the first thing Ireally want to say in response
to this is I'm delighted thatyou you make this distinction
between Mark Twain and MarkTwain's work.
Um, because there are a lot ofpeople say, well, what does what
does Twain the man have to say?
And uh the life of of SamuelClemens, right?
(02:37):
So we all know that Mark Twainis the the pseudonym, the pen
name for Samuel L.
Clemens, it's you know, this issomeone who deliberately
cultivated, deliberately, okay,I can't stress that enough,
cultivated many differentconflicting views of himself and
of his work.
Um, so that if you try andunpack what Twain the uh
(03:00):
Clemens, the man, thought aboutsomething.
I mean, aside from just the kindof natural evolution that
happens in a person's thinkingor over the course of a person's
life, there's the fact that hewent out of his way to
contradict himself, um, to hidethings, to refuse to comment on
a number of things.
Uh, if you this is true of hispersonal correspondence, it's
(03:23):
true of what you might find inhis marginalia.
It's, you know, his life is, youknow, what what so many, um, you
know, this guy Ron Chernow ishis book on biography on Mark
Twain um out now.
And and he, you know, he, by theway, self self-promoting plug
here.
I'm I have a review of that bookcoming out uh tonight with the
(03:43):
public discourse.
And if you believe someone likeChernow, you know, his his this
is someone's life who is justfilled with contradictions.
Um, Mark Twain was simply toobrilliant for that.
And as other scholars haveshown, he did this
intentionally, right?
So if you if you simply try andadduce what Twain or Samuel
Clemens, the man, thought bylooking just at his life or his
(04:05):
correspondence, his travels, hisbusiness dealings, all that
stuff, you're not going to getvery far.
So focusing on the work is adifferent thing entirely.
And that's very importantbecause the work, I mean, look,
the work is cage enough on itsown, right?
It's very artful.
Um, Twain says in a number ofplaces that he wrote
esoterically, uh, that he wentout of his way to teach and
(04:27):
preach, but that teaching andpreaching could only be
effective if you did soindirectly.
Um, he says that, you know,genuine biography, genuine
humor, genuine parity, all ofthat has to work through subtle
indirection.
So piecing Twain's work togetherto pull out its wisdom is tricky
business, right?
But there's plenty of evidenceto suggest that there's a unity
(04:50):
at work in his work that may notbe detectable in his life or his
personal correspondence or hisrelations with his wife Livy or
his daughters or anything likethat.
So the the work is where to go.
The work is where to go if youwant to uh uh really kind of
grapple with what Twain thinksabout America, uh American
character and American politics.
(05:13):
Uh now, if I were to, if I wereto boil it down, right?
I mean, we could we we could behere for a long time.
If I were to boil it down, I'dsay, look, I think the most
important thing, or arguably themost important thing that Twain
reveals about America andAmerican character, is that uh
our community, our democracy,our regime uh has the potential
to do what almost no regime everin the history of politics.
(05:37):
And I'm here to tell you, Twainread everything, right?
He read everything.
He was familiar with with if ithad been printed, he was
familiar with it.
Okay.
Um, so I fair I feel fairlyconfident in saying that he he
could judge.
Look, we this this country cando, this regime can do something
that no other regime orpolitical order has effectively
(05:59):
done ever, which is effectivelymarry a kind of commitment to
democratic pol, uh democraticequality, um to political
liberty and popular consent, tocapitalism, uh so the spread of
wealth that's attendant uponthat, and a commitment to kind
of uh the scientific enterpriseand the all of the fruits of the
(06:20):
material comfort that thatproduces.
Our regime can marry all of thaton the one hand, right?
Um with a kind of openness toand cultivation of aristocratic
culture, on the other hand, akind of aristocratic taste for
greatness and individualflourishing, right?
(06:42):
So that there's this there'sthis kind of marriage of popular
politics and cultural uharistocracy.
It's there in Twain's work,right?
There's a lot of caricature thatgoes on about Twain's work that
I think would miss this, right?
And and one of the unfortunateeffects is Twain then becomes
subject to audience capture,right?
This phenomenon of audiencecapture.
(07:02):
But if you're if you're able todistance yourself from that, to
liberate yourself from audiencecapture, it's there and it's
it's kind of shocking, right?
Um now, striking a balance oraffecting a balance between a
commitment to democraticequality or egalitarianism on
the one hand and culturalaristocracy on the other is is
(07:24):
extremely difficult.
Um, but I think Twain thoughthis literature was something
that could affect this, right?
Um, that could pull this off.
Um, you know, I think what hewhat he had had in mind was
America at its best, would be apolitical order that guaranteed
widespread political equality,including maybe not universal
(07:49):
suffrage, but something close toit, with um with a real openness
to human greatness, because onlythrough the universal suffrage
could you remove those kind ofarbitrary and sometimes
irrational obstacles that impedethe flourishing of other human
beings and their ability, bethey male, female, white, or
(08:10):
black, uh to contribute to thekind of elevation and refinement
of our of our social, political,intellectual, and spiritual uh
lives.
Uh, I'll just give you one quickexample from his literature that
that might be helpful here,right?
And by the way, while we'retalking about this, uh I'm not
sure how familiar your audienceis with Twain's body of work,
(08:31):
but I'm here to tell you it isenormous.
It is, it is, it's absolutelymassive, right?
I mean, you you, you know, yeah,you got the famous stuff, the
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, andyou know, but you've got four
massive travelogues.
You've got um uh you've you youyou've you've got uh nonfiction
(08:53):
works on Christian science.
You you you know, you have a tonof short stories, you have tens
of thousands of letters, you'vegot uh thousands of speeches
that the man delivered, youknow, at the end of his life, he
has all of this unpublishedwork, massive book-length pieces
that have not been published,you know, three piece 3,000
(09:15):
years among the microbes, youknow, that what?
I mean, and and and reallyinteresting stuff, Adam and
Eve's diary and so on and so on.
This is just it, it's amazing.
And the range of this man,right?
He defies the simple kind ofclassification as a social
satirist or a humorist, right?
He's got this, uh, he's got thisdialogue.
It's almost like a platonicdialogue called What is Man um
(09:37):
on material determinism.
It's it's simply amazing.
But anyway, to go back to thepoint at hand, right, is this
book that that many uh in youraudience may know of called King
Arthur's Connecticut Yankee andKing Arthur's Court.
And uh this, I think, when readproperly, right, um, when you
refuse to simply identify Twainwith the lead character, uh and
(10:01):
he goes out of his way, I think,if you're again paying attention
not to identify himself with thelead character with the
Connecticut Yankee, you'll seethat you have two different
kinds of souls at work in thestory.
You have the character and thesoul, uh the uh the political
character of the Yankee, uh, whois embodies our commitment to
kind of democratic equality, tothe advancement of science and
(10:22):
learning, uh, to the rule ofsecular materialism, the spread
of material prosperity, and soon.
But all of that, and Twain showsthis in this book, all of that,
which we identify as kind ofquintessentially American, comes
at the expense of humanhappiness in many ways, comes at
the expense of individualflourishing, comes at the
expense of our spiritual lives,um, comes at the expense of any
(10:46):
kind of development of our moremoral and spiritual deepening, a
failure to appreciate poetry,artistry, right?
Love, friendship, right?
His lead character is aremarkably friendless man who
has no real attachments toothers.
And then you have on the otherside, right, King Arthur.
And everything that Arthurstands for, right?
(11:06):
He he's the opposite, right?
So in Arthurian England, right,uh his regime makes possible
everything the Yankee seems toundermine, family life, um, a
profound religious uh uh belief,healthy religious belief, moral
virtue, right?
Um, a testament to great art andand beauty uh and devotion and
natural greatness, right?
At one point the Yankee is evencompelled to say, you know, Ever
(11:29):
the Cynic, the the Yankee iscompelled to say he he's
naturally great.
He is a man.
I used to think it was alltrappings of his uh of the court
life.
No, he is he's naturally great,right?
But the problem with King Arthuris that that kind of community,
feudal England, could onlyachieve this at the expense of
(11:50):
political inequality, right?
Or uh requiring politicalinequality by by uh restricting
human learning, by forcingothers to endure an almost
unimaginable material privationand suffering and so on.
So, you know, you you mightthink that Twain is kind of a
pessimist.
And there are a lot of peopleout there who think he's simply
pessimism.
I think that's more opposed thananything else.
(12:12):
I think what Twain thinks is theAmerican character is broad
enough, expansive enough, andgenerous enough to include both
of these elements, and that thebook is really an invitation to
America to say, look, you have alot of good things, but those
things come at a cost.
The things you would reject alsohave benefits.
(13:20):
So there's these trade-offs.
You need to do your best tobring them together.
Now, I don't think Twain is sosimple-minded as to think all
good things go together, right?
No, of course not.
There's tension here, there willbe trade-offs.
But, you know, like greatliterature, great politics is
not easy.
Right?
Healthy, free politics thatrespects the fundamental
(13:42):
equality of human beings whilealso recognizing the
possibilities of humangreatness.
That's not easy.
But Twain seems to think it'spossible.
And that that book, ConnecticutYankee and King Arthur's Court,
seems to be part of his broaderinvitation to get Americans to
take this stuff seriously.
(14:02):
So that would be my openingresponse to that excellent
question.
SPEAKER_00 (14:07):
I I love that you're talking about literature and
politics because you know, uh,coming from a teacher point of
view, I taught both English andsocial studies, uh, my main
thing being social studies.
And I I wish that more peopleunderstood the marrying together
that literature and politics canhave.
So my next question is kind ofyou know, on that political
(14:28):
wisdom in literature.
So you've written on thinkers uhfrom uh and I can never say this
right, is it solidities?
SPEAKER_01 (14:41):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:43):
Um so you've written on him, Shakespeare and Twain.
So what does literature uniquelyoffer us in terms of
understanding political wisdomthat maybe like political
science alone can't?
SPEAKER_01 (14:56):
Right, right.
No, that's that's a greatquestion.
And and I think it's somethingthat really, you know, more
people who are interested inteaching civics and teaching
political, um uh teachingpolitics and political wisdom,
conveying political wisdom,should make greater use of our
literary tradition because it'san extremely rich one, both both
speaking broadly in terms of thekind of Western literary canon,
(15:19):
but also American novelist.
Um, it's an extremely rich uhresource for conveying wisdom,
but also shaping character,right?
And and this is, by the way,something that I didn't quite
anticipate would happen in mycareer as I got started was that
thinking about how literaturecan help shape American
(15:41):
character, um, how thedevelopment of a political
imagination is so critical tothe shaping of character.
But that is, in fact, whatreally great literature does.
So, so I would just say a coupleof things.
I've I've I have a few points inmind that uh uh I think speak to
your question.
The first thing is uh there'sjust a great joy and pleasure in
(16:03):
reading literature that youcan't, you know, set aside
political science textbooks, setaside, you know, academic jargon
and academic analysis.
I mean, even just picking upsomething like um, you know,
Aristotle's politics.
Whoa, boy, that, you know, I Ifind it incredibly meaningful uh
and incredibly fulfilling, but II do not, you know, my first
(16:24):
encounter with it is notpleasure.
I hate to say, you know, maybethat says more about me than
Aristotle, but but the firstthing I would say is, you know,
good literature should induce akind of pleasure.
There should be an experience ofpleasure here.
Um and and I think that's truebecause human beings just take a
natural joy in seeing theirtheir nature displayed for them,
(16:47):
right?
I mean, they're not conscious ofit when they're experiencing it,
but you know, people like to goto plays.
Why do people like to go toplays?
Because they like to see theirhumanity staged, whether it's
outrageous situations ortouching situations, triumphs or
tragedies, whatever.
They like to see their humanitystaged.
And there's this kind ofspontaneous delight we take in
that.
(17:07):
And this is important toliterature's ability to convey
something important.
Uh, I often think of the T.
S.
Eliot when he was asked aboutthe difference between prose and
poetry.
And he says that you know,genuine poetry communicates
before it's understood.
And that really strikes me asbeing, I mean, it's absolutely
true, right?
That you just before you sitdown and you parse a great poem
(17:29):
and you try and work it out, youyou just kind of get it, right?
There's something you justunderstand about that.
And and so literature can dothis too.
And great literature does thispartly by drawing us in, right?
We we we lay down our guard,right?
We we set aside rationalobjections, right?
If if I start a course withsomething like Locke's second
(17:51):
treatise of government, studentsare automatically going to start
objecting, right?
Ah, that's not right.
This guy's claiming to teach mesomething, and I can disprove
him or I can refute him.
But literature, you don't startthat way, right?
You set your guard down.
You don't start with, uh, howdare you try and teach me
something, right?
But that's what they do.
They get you to care about, say,a character.
If you're reading a novel,you're you get to care about a
(18:11):
character.
Maybe you love them, maybe youhate them, right?
But you now care about them.
And and you maybe you want tosee them succeed or see them
fail.
And once the author's got youattached to the character, to
the situation, now they can goto work on you, right?
And before you know it, you'reyou're being educated, you're
being transformed in a decisiveway.
And you know, you get done witha book, you're not the same
(18:33):
person you were before.
You you've been transformed.
And this, by the way, I wouldsay is is another reason why
literature is so important tokind of uh what elevating or
refining our aesthetic judgment,right?
Uh I uh you know, you you wannayou want to improve students'
tastes in the beautiful.
Don't give them a discourse onbeauty or a treatise on beauty,
(18:57):
show them something beautiful.
And so literature is veryimportant.
So that's that's the first thingI would say.
I'd focus on the the thepleasant aspect of literature.
Um, but related to that, right,is that literature gives you
models of excellence, um, uhmodels of villainy that we may
not have readily available inour everyday life, at least in
(19:18):
many cases, I'm glad we don't,um, since some of them can be so
bad.
Um, but they they, you know,they give us examples of people
we can emulate or or cautionarytales to avoid.
So when we think about somethinglike when I'm trying to teach
statesmanship or greatleadership, and what does it
look like?
If I'm thinking aboutThucydides, right?
Well, well, here's a picture ofThemistocles, or here is a
(19:41):
portrait, right?
A dramatic uh presentation ofPericles.
Do we want our leaders to belike them?
Is that great statesmanship?
Or someone like Alcibiades orCleon, right?
We could think of that.
Or if we're thinking aboutShakespeare, you know, we said,
should we model our politics ona Henry V or a Prospero or a
Theseus?
Or, you know, what aboutCoriolanus, the Roman Coriolanus
(20:02):
or Othello or Richard III,right?
Uh uh uh so you know, E.
Gabs, Richard III.
No, we don't want that, right?
So they they give us thesewonderful models uh that we're
not likely to have in ourordinary uh experience.
But but maybe I could give youan even different example.
Uh so I I uh back at Assumptionuh University, my home
(20:23):
institution, I teach this coursecalled political mass murder.
And, you know, one of the one ofthe sad lessons about that is we
spent a lot of time focusing oncommunist regimes and and all of
the the mass murdering of theirown citizens that communist
regimes um have engaged in overthe over the 20 century.
Now, if I wanted to teachstudents the true horrors of
(20:45):
communism and the crimes ofcommunism, I could, say, on the
one hand, take them through DasCapital or the Communist
Manifesto and and go through itline by line by line.
Or I could have them readselections from uh Alexander
Solzhenitsyn's The GulagArchipelago, which is his
firsthand account of his ownexperience in the gulag.
(21:06):
Now, what do you think is morelikely to leave an impact on the
on the student?
What's more likely to influencethem, right?
This kind of academic uh uh uhuh commentary on the communist
manifesto, or getting them tolive with Solzhenitsyn in the
gulag, right?
I my vote's on the ladder.
(21:27):
And I think that's by the way,another reason why it's so
critical for our students whoare going to be the citizen
rulers of America's future, tohave this really rich background
in in literature, right?
They need to have theirjudgments formed by good
literature, right?
(21:48):
Oh, two more points.
If I know I'm I'm going to go.
I'm like, you can keep talking.
SPEAKER_00 (21:54):
I am I have honestly, I got my little
notepad out and I already amlike filling things up here.
SPEAKER_01 (22:01):
So so right, one of the other great things about
literature area is it it promptsus to live the lives of others,
right?
To live along with them.
And when we do that, we get toevaluate their decisions.
Would we have done that?
No, don't do that.
We say, you know, uh, stop.
No, this is you're making thewrong choice, you're picking the
wrong guy, whatever this is,right?
Someone um uh these certain lovestories we have, right?
(22:23):
Now that gives us an experience,again, we might not ordinarily
get.
And in fact, it gives us anexperience we might not want to
have, to have to learn from,right?
There's certain things we justshouldn't have to learn on our
own because it's simply tooexpensive.
So, again, you know, well, thinkof Shakespeare, right?
Um, do you really want to haveto live the love affair of Romeo
(22:44):
and Juliet or or Anthony andCleopatra just to learn that
this leads to disaster, death,and misery?
No, it's too late, right?
Don't do that.
So, so literature gives you thiscounter experience, right?
It gives you this experience sothat you can save yourself.
(23:05):
You can learn from their theirfailures, right?
You you don't want to have tolearn firsthand what it's like
to have a friend like Iago toknow that it's bad to have an
associate like Iago, or, or inthe case of Thucydides, to turn
your political community over toa guy like Nickyus or even
Cleon.
Bad idea.
Don't do it, right?
So that so I think that'simportant.
(23:25):
And then finally, you know, I'mthinking, um I'm thinking about
thinking a lot lately about thethe cultivation of political
imagination.
And in some ways, it's justsimply important, right?
It's just simply important.
Like if if if you take a Platoor an Aristotle or Shakespeare
or Twain, they're wiser thanthan we are and wiser than we
(23:47):
can hope to be.
And that presents a kind ofchallenge for us because if we
simply go to their workthinking, you know, okay,
they're just going to take allthis wisdom and just dump it
into our heads.
But it doesn't work like that,right?
It's not knowledge in that way,it's not content in that way.
You can't just dump it intosomeone's head or transfer it
(24:09):
through writing this this downand have this people read it.
You you have to to bridge thatreally almost seemingly
unbridgeable gap between thosewho are truly wise and those of
us who yearn for wisdom.
You have to have thisintermediary, and that's
imagination.
I mean, imagination really helpsbridge that that gulf.
(24:30):
That's huge.
Um, so fortunately, we canbenefit from their wisdom
without having to be as wise asthey are, which will never
happen.
That's really important for usin America, right?
Um, why?
Well, because America is aparticularly imaginary kind of
community.
I mean, you think about it, ourour our our whole political
(24:52):
order is founded in ideas aboutthe human person, about the
rights we have, about whatconstitutes legitimate
government.
The founding of our governmentwas was done by argumentation,
right?
These are people engaging inrational deliberation with each
other.
So we got these founding ideasthat we're arguing over.
(25:14):
Um, you know, one of the thingsI really love about America that
continues to just give megoosebumps, even in my ripe old
age, is that anyone in the worldis in is is a potential
American.
And that's important because itmeans America isn't just
reducible to a place or anethnicity, uh, or a race or a
(25:35):
tribe or religion, right?
It it is very much a conceptualthing that one can enter into
rationally and has to enter intorationally, right?
And and so that that means thenthat if you're gonna have a an
American civic body that is upto the task of preserving its
liberty, it's gotta have a goodpolitical imagination, right?
(25:59):
It it has to be not just so it'sthat, not just so that it's
peopled with good models toemulate and bad models to avoid,
but so that it can actuallythink well about what America is
and can be.
And so again, literature doesthis in a way, it builds that
imagination that's absolutelyindispensable to this to the
(26:21):
success of the Americanpolitical order.
SPEAKER_00 (26:25):
I love that.
So if we're looking at civiceducation through kind of this
lens, how could Twains or howmight teachers use Twain's humor
and satire in their classroomsto teach students about
democracy, equality, andcitizenship in ways that
resonate with them?
Because I appreciate that yousaid you can't just be like,
(26:45):
here's Play Doh, dump it intoyour head and now you know it,
right?
Because I am an avid reader.
I actually have um reading BraveNew World with my CEL 100 class.
We've we've done Rousseau, we'vedone Locke, we've done Play-Hoh,
but I wanted to bring in some,you know, fiction for them
(27:06):
because it it does brighten upyour world.
So how can we use this inclassrooms, especially the humor
and satire?
Because I think that that is akey for students.
SPEAKER_01 (27:19):
Yeah.
So the first thing you got to dois actually assign the twain,
right?
I mean, that that's that'sreally important.
Yeah, in my lifetime, right?
When I was growing up, you couldreliably count on young people
having read some twain.
Uh, whether it was the thecelebrated jumping frog of
(27:39):
Calaveras County or Tom Sawyeror Huck Finn, by the time you
know young people had graduatedfrom high school, they had
encountered some some um uhamount of twain.
Uh so first thing you gotta dois assign it.
Start with that.
You can't do that enough.
Um, and there's a lot of stuffout there that is assignable.
Uh, not everything deals withrace, right?
(27:59):
Um, not everything is 2,000pages long, right?
I mean a lot of short storiesout there that you can assign.
So assign it.
So that's the first thing.
Second thing is you got to teachstudents how to read well,
right?
Which means tending to hisliterary artistry, which, you
know, there's a there's a lot ofwork there.
But it also, I mean, think thatthis is really quite important,
(28:20):
is teaching them how to readliterary humor, right?
That this is this is reallyimportant.
I I think uh it's important notonly intellectually, but it's
morally important, all right.
It's it's it's really importantfor the kind of cultivation of
our civic character.
Uh, I'll give you an example,right?
So I think Twain's comedy is isterrific because we we one of
(28:43):
the things you can say aboutcomedy in general is that it it
tends to bring the high down tothe low.
You know, you think of theMonopoly guy, Mr.
Monopoly with his monocle,right?
Monopoly guy slipping on abanana peel, right?
And we all laugh at that and wego, okay, well, that that that
rich so-and-so is just like us.
See, he thought he was so good,right?
But now he's just like us.
(29:04):
He too can slip on a bananapeel.
Um, and that that's somethingthat comedy, all comedy does.
But Twain's comedy, and I thinkthe best kind of comedy,
doesn't, I mean, it puncturespretentiousness, yeah, but it
punctures a kind of falsepretentiousness.
It exposes false pretentiousnessfor what it is, while preserving
(29:25):
a respect for kind of genuinegreatness.
So it's not simply uh criticalor simply destructive.
It's not mockery for the sake ofmockery, it's not derision for
the sake of derision, which iswhat I think we see all too
often in kind of contemporaryhumor.
Let's just mock the livingdaylights out of things.
So one of the things I thinkTwain's comedy teaches us, and
(29:46):
that students would benefit fromlearning, is it teaches you to
be critical without becomingcynical.
And I think that's reallyimportant.
You can be a critic withoutbecoming a cynic.
And so his critical comedypreserves this uh uh uh respect
for something high, forsomething noble, for something
(30:07):
elevated.
Um Twain's comedy alwaysinvolves something absurd.
Now, absurdity again might leadus to think, well, it's uh it's
a negative thing.
We can, it's a destructivething, it's a thing that allows
us to reject the thing which isbeing exposed as absurd.
But that's not what I think istrue about Twain, right?
(30:28):
I I think one of the things hedoes is you know, he gives us an
experience with the absurd thatdoesn't make us jaded or
cynical, but moderate.
Because when we've had some anabsurd situation exposed to us,
we cease to make the samedemands that we did before that,
(30:50):
that maybe human life mustalways be super dignified, or
human life must always behyper-rational, or that we must
always be right in all things atall the time.
This again is I think critical,the really divided time we live
in, right?
An inability to kind ofrecognize the common fate we're
(31:13):
all allotted.
We all have to participate in akind of again, uh maybe absurd
is too strong of a word here,but but uh you know, I'll give
you an example from from what'sconsidered to be the great
American novel, Huck Finn.
Although from from Twain'sperspective, his his greatest
novel, his best novel was his uhthe last complete one he wrote,
(31:35):
which almost no one reads.
Reads, personal recollections ofJoan of Arc.
Right.
There's another example.
I'm not sure how familiar peopleare with.
The fact that Twain's longest,most longest complete and last
work was dedicated to thisFrench Catholic saint.
But Huckfin, right?
And here I have to give creditwhere credit's due.
(31:55):
I have a colleague in Australia,uh Ivan Keneally, who has
written a wonderful review of umPercival Everett's book, James,
which is a reworking of Huckfinfrom the perspective of Jim.
And uh anyway, uh Ivan Keneallyhas this wonderful review.
It's going to be coming out in aforthcoming issue of um County
(32:18):
Highway.
It's a print magazine.
They still exist, believe it ornot.
It's a print magazine publishedby Walter Kearns and David
Samuels.
Anyway, um one of the thingsthat Keneally's in reading of
Huck Finn shows is you know,both Huck and Jim share a common
(32:39):
fate.
And part of that common fate isthat their their conscience has
been shaped by the world theylive in, which is a slaving
world, right?
So their conscience has beenshaped by the political
community of a the slave-owningSouth in America.
(33:01):
And so, you know, Twain wouldnot deny, hey, look, we we we
are free agents, but we are alsoshaped in in really important
ways by our environment in somerespects.
And if that were true, simplyHuck and and Jim should loathe
each other.
They should really hate eachother.
But you read the novel and yousee they don't come to hate each
(33:22):
other at all.
Right?
They they see beyond or getbeyond the deforming effects of
their conscience as thatconscience had been shaped or
misshaped by reigning socialcodes.
And so they learn to testify tothe fundamental humanity that
belongs to both of them.
Now, to be clear, Twain doesn'tthink we should simply get a
(33:43):
right get get rid of all uh uhsocial conditioning, right?
You know, man is not by naturegood, right?
We are not by nature morallyvirtuous.
We require uh civil society forthe cultivation of our moral
virtue.
But that that civil society, asthe novel shows, can be
profoundly um deforming,distorting, corrupting.
(34:07):
So there, so there's you know,the the human person is caught
between the need to depend onsociety for its moral
cultivation and moral disciplineand moral structure, and the
human person has to push backagainst that too.
(34:28):
They have to to to strive toachieve some liberation from the
deforming and distortingelements of that.
Both Hawk and Jim have to dothat.
So there this is the absurd,this is what I mean by calling
the situation kind of absurd.
You need society to helpcultivate and provide some kind
of moral discipline to man'snature, but man's nature to be
(34:52):
to reach its true flourishinghas to push back against that
forming uh uh social effect.
And and so you know, both bothHuck and Jim, I think this is
part of the the the corerecognition of their humanity,
they realize they're both inthis situation together.
And and they, you know, theythey have to recognize it as as
(35:16):
as an absurdity.
And in doing that, there's akind of m mercy and
reconciliation that that becomespossible.
So, you know, you know, if ifyour audience is hoping for some
pat answer here, I don't haveone except to say that I think
we live in this incrediblybitterly divided time, right?
(35:39):
And and Twain is living in a farmore uh writing about a far more
bitter time than we have, right?
He's writing in the wake of uhuh a terrible civil war and
showing how we might see thekind of grounds for recovering
our our humanity and our humanerespect for each other, despite
the fact that both Huck and Jimin some ways should, you know,
(36:03):
should loathe each other, right?
Um maybe, maybe not Huckloathing Jim, but you know, I'll
say this at the end, despite hisnobility, right?
Despite his noble efforts tohelp Jim uh free himself, Huck
still says, I don't want peopleto know the role I had in
liberating this guy.
I mean, they he can't fully orhas yet to fully free himself
(36:26):
from the distortion andprejudices of the society in
which he was raised.
So, you know, there is a way inwhich, you know, I think we have
to exercise some grace here too.
When we think about Hawk and wethink about Jim, we think about
Tom Sawyer in the novel.
They're not perfect.
But if if Twain is doing his joband effectively draws us into
(36:49):
their lives and puts us in thatsituation, I think we're gonna
be hard pressed to go, I wouldhave done something totally
different, I would have stood upand done the right thing.
I think it would force us torecognize these are extremely
difficult choices to be made.
They're choices we all facetogether and we do not always
choose correctly.
And so there's a kind of, Ithink a kind of grace that we
(37:12):
need to extend each other as aresult of that.
Now, if conveying that lesson tofifth graders or eighth graders
or high schoolers, I mean it'stough for adults, right?
But when you see that, when youwhen you have as a base of your
education these kind of moralexemplars, that's really
(37:33):
important.
That's really important becauseit allows you in time to develop
that capacity for for grace andreconciliation and forgiveness
without sacrificing judgmenteither, right?
I mean, that's that's the othercrucial thing.
We don't we don't leavesomething like Huck Finn
suspending all judgment andgoing, well, you know, who's to
say?
We go, whoof, boy, that was thatwas tough.
(37:56):
That was tough.
We can understand why they didwhat they did or why they didn't
do what they didn't do, andstill go, they chose well here
and badly there, even though I'mnot sure I would have done much
different given the given thebackground they had.
SPEAKER_00 (38:09):
Well, and I think with students, especially when
you're talking about like theupper elementary, middle school,
even high school, havingliterary characters to utilize
as models, like students aremore empathetic to them.
They they do give more gracethan they would somebody who is
a real life person.
And it's because they candistance them, like they create
(38:31):
that person in their head,right?
And I know, I mean, I I love toread and I I love to read
because I can create the moviein my head, right?
Right.
And that is, I think forstudents important too, and it
allows them the empathy andallows them to have these models
(38:51):
without it being somebody whois, you know, somebody they see
on TikTok or whatever else,right?
Right, yeah.
I mean, I was excited about thispodcast for many reasons, but I
love talking about literaturebecause when I was in the
classroom, I used children'sliterature.
I mean, I think that especiallyin civic classrooms, uh,
(39:13):
literature is wildly underused.
So I have James on my readinglist, and now it's gonna get
bumped up.
And probably as soon as I canget to change a cans bookstores,
I'm gonna grab it.
But I I love that there isthere's so much complexity in
the characters, yeah, but italso allows us to create empathy
(39:35):
and grace and models for youknow what we'd like to see.
So as we're approaching America250, you know, the anniversary
of America's founding, why doyou think that Twain's
reflections on politics, humannatures, and democracy are
particularly relevant?
SPEAKER_01 (39:54):
Right.
So so the long answer, which Ican't give here, would would
require us to say somethingabout like what what is America
to Twain?
unknown (40:03):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (40:03):
What is America to Twain?
And and we just can't do thathere.
The short answer would besomething like well, Twain's
relevant because he he teachesus who we are and who we can and
should be.
That may be too brief, so let'sunpack this, right?
So 250th birthday is a big one.
And uh birthdays have uh thistendency to invite us to look
(40:29):
back and say, you know, well,how far have I come or how far
haven't I come?
You know, is my life kind ofwhat I wanted it to be?
Have I done the things I wantedto do?
Have I, you know, do I have alot of regrets?
What you know, it is these areoccasions for for looking back.
So, you know, America at the the250th is, you know, same thing.
(40:51):
Um have we strayed from ourfounding vision?
If we've strayed, can we coursecorrect?
Uh, should we course correct,right?
How do we feel about thefounding vision?
Um I think Twain is helpful withthis because partly because um
Twain's story, the story ofSamuel Clemens and Twain's
(41:14):
stories, the stories he writes,are the story of America, right?
They tell the story of America,his life and his stories tell um
our story.
Uh, you know, so Twain is bornin what, 1835, right?
So America's just over 50 yearsold.
But his his professional writingcareer, his national claim to
(41:37):
fame doesn't come until 1865.
Right after uh in the monthsafter um the the war has ended,
the the North and South aretrying to figure out how we're
gonna reunify this thing and andmake this thing work if it's
gonna work at all.
Right at that time, Twainpublishes his first big short
story, which is the celebratedjumping frog of Calaver's
(41:59):
County.
Now I read that first piece askind of Twain's opening bid to
be kind of America's poetlegislator.
He's gonna provide the the theliterary rhetoric to bring our
country back together.
And I think his careersubstantiates that effort, that
he continues to engage in thateffort for you know, whatever it
(42:24):
is, the next 65 years or 75years, right?
I mean, this is this is what hehe's trying to do.
Um uh and so we have this, youknow, we have this guy who is
born to a not terriblydistinctive or distinguished
(42:44):
family.
He's unlettered, uh, has doesn'thave a lot of money, right?
And uh he rags to riches kind ofthing, right?
Um, you know, we've got this guywho is uh uh what the the
creator of our democraticvernacular, he is the the the
the defender of the common manand yet goes on to dine with
(43:07):
royalty and befriends presidentsand is you know uh worshipped by
generations of of readers.
And you know, he's got thesephilosophers are dying to meet
him and chasing him around, youknow.
Um his story is kind of likeAmerica, right?
America starts off as this kindof backwater western upstart,
(43:28):
and and and right by the end ofthe 19th century, we're one of
the major players in globalpolitics, right?
So so Twain's life kind of dovedovetails nicely with the growth
of America.
So I think in many ways, youwant you know, studying America
just seems like such a massivething to do and hopelessly
large.
Fine, narrow it down.
Let's study one man, this man,right?
(43:50):
As I say, you know, he was hewasn't just rags to riches, he
was rags to riches to rags backto riches.
I mean, this guy was all overthe place, right?
Um so when we're thinking back,you know, how far have we come,
America?
How well have we done?
Well, let's look at Twain andlet's ask ourselves, you know,
did Twain give us a pathway torefound ourselves in the wake of
(44:14):
the North-South conflict?
Did he show us a way in which wecan marry successfully or
effectively our concern withdemocratic equality to a kind of
appreciation for individualhuman flourishing, individual
excellence, true greatness?
Did he provide us that pathforward?
So I I mean, you know, look, I'ma professor of politics.
(44:37):
I think about America's 250th,and I I get very excited as a
citizen, but as a professor, I'mlike, oh, this is overwhelming.
How do we break this down?
And I think again, Twain'scareer provides Twain's career
and Twain's story reallyprovides a useful way for
thinking about that, right?
Again, he's he's getting startedat a time when it didn't look
like it was going so well,right?
(44:58):
There's real questions.
Is this is this we just came outof a nasty civil war?
There's no guarantee we're notgonna have another one, and
that's gonna be the end of it.
His literature provides a pathforward.
You know, we can think about howwell do we do we follow that
path forward?
Should we path forward, followthat path forward?
I will just say this if if whatI'm recommending here is America
on our 250th birthday shouldreread Mark Twain, or should
(45:21):
read Mark Twain perhaps for thefirst time, then I can't think
of a better birthday presentthan that.
Go read this great literature,right?
What a gift.
SPEAKER_00 (45:32):
So if he was alive today, Mark Twain, what civic
lesson do you think he wouldwant Americans to take to heart?
SPEAKER_01 (45:39):
Two two big ones, right?
Two big ones that come to mindfor me.
Um kind of patriotism orpatriotic rededication to our
country and and what it promisesto be, and moderation.
Um, I I should, you know,birthdays are our occasion for
looking back, but they can alsobe an occasion for looking
(46:00):
forward.
You know, okay.
Uh how much time I had, how muchtime do I have left?
What am I gonna do with with myfuture in the time that remains
to me?
And so I think Twain would say,you know, think hard, America,
uh, about what you you know,what you want this to become,
because there's so much promisehere.
(46:21):
Um, there's there's so muchpotential here.
You know, I I mentioned earlierthat Twain has kind of read
everything.
Uh and it's true, I'm not, I'mnot being facetious.
I mean, I think if it had beenprinted, he read it, and not
just in English.
I mean, the man knew German, heknew French, uh, he knew
Italian, he had picked up someancient Greek and some Latin.
(46:42):
Uh, this is really remarkable.
Wow.
Yeah, no, it's it's reallyreally impressive.
Again, he likes to play the kindof common man aweshucks.
I'm just some, you know, avuncular fella chopping my
cigar, dropping some homespuncomic yarns on y'all.
No, this guy was a uh uh uh oneof the rarest geniuses America
(47:02):
has has produced.
Um, so so I would say, given hisreading, given his experience
with the world, he he really didhave a grasp of what kind of
rare and precious experiment wehad here and the possibility
here.
I mean, this is I thinksometimes he got very angry with
America.
Um, I don't always think thatanger was a front.
I think that anger many timeswas serious because we were we
(47:23):
were missing this reallyincredible opportunity and at
risk of throwing it all away.
And that again, opportunity islook, we you can have political
liberty here.
And that with that politicalliberty comes political
equality.
But that doesn't mean you shoulddeny the possibility of human
greatness.
And some of that human greatnessis evinced in the pages of Mark
Twain's own work.
I think he is itself anembodiment of what American
(47:46):
greatness can be and and become,um, which is again a remarkably
cultured, generous, refined,elevated human being without
without being the monopoly man,right?
Um so I think Twain would saysomething like, I want you to
try and defend that, preservethat, love that, right?
(48:07):
He was a huge critic of thiskind of thoughtless patriotism,
the my country right or wrongkind of patriotism.
He was a savage, relentlesscriticism of that.
But when it came to what Americacould be, the promise it
contained within itself, uh, Ithink he would say rededicate
yourself to that.
And again, this is reallyimportant at a time when so many
(48:27):
Americans, we're seeing thisacross America today, certainly
in America's institutions ofhigher education, where a lot of
our college-educated studentsare being taught that America is
the source of all that's wrongwith the world.
And you know, we shouldn't fightto preserve it, and we should
fundamentally transform uh ourpolitical order in a direction
(48:48):
at odds with our founding visionand in a very different
direction.
I think it's profoundlydangerous.
And I think Twain would cautionus don't do that because you're
gonna throw away somethingreally beautiful, precious, and
rare.
So a kind of rededication to uhAmerica and what she represents
at her best.
Moderation, um, that's thesecond big thing I think uh I
(49:09):
would take away.
Twain would say, you guys gotyou guys gotta moderate
yourselves.
And I've talked about this alittle bit already with respect
to the kind of moderationaffected by his comic irony or
comic absurdity.
Um, so I'm not gonna repeatmyself on that here, but I will
say there's a there is a way inwhich a lot of Americans uh have
(49:29):
this unbridled, unquestionedconfidence in the possibilities
of science and reason to give usall the answers that all the
answers to the problems that weface as moral, political,
material beings.
And I think Twain would say, youknow, that is an extraordinarily
(49:51):
dangerous thing to to to havethat kind of confidence in the
power of science and modernscientific reason.
Um, you know, that that that oneof the things, I mean, look, he
was fully aware of the kind ofthe practical miracles of modern
science.
Uh he he funded a lot ofprojects that would promote
(50:15):
technological innovation.
Practically, well, he bankruptedhimself in one case.
Uh he'd thrown so much money ata particular project.
Uh so you know, he he's notsimply a Luddite.
He's not someone who simplywants to go back to the sixth
century at all, right?
This is not someone who wants toreturn, but he's also very much
aware of the limits ofscientific progress, right?
(50:37):
So, so I think he, you know, andsome of those limits um are
exposed when science eclipses,or when our obsession with
science or our emphasis onscience eclipses what makes man
man and takes away our focusfrom our moral, spiritual, and
intellectual development.
(50:58):
And so I think Twain would wouldsay, stop, stop doing that.
And again, if you go back, andyou know, he has characters like
this throughout his corpus.
Um, but you look at Hank Morganin Connecticut Yankee, and his
life is and his his fate, whichis not a happy one, um, is a
testament to this warning.
(51:20):
You know, this character has hasunquestioned confidence in the
goodness of science to answerall of the problems facing human
beings, and it ends updestroying his family, it ends
up destroying all of hisfriends, and it ends up
destroying himself and makes himmiserable because it takes away
its focus from man's moral,spiritual, and intellectual
(51:41):
development as civicdevelopment.
That's those are those areelements critical to his civic
development.
Uh so I think Twain would say,you know, love science.
I don't want to go back and livein the non-scientific world of
the the sixth century orsomething like that.
But there are dangers withmodern science, and we meet we
need to be extremely mindful ofthem so that we don't throw out
(52:02):
what makes us distinctly humanin our effort to pursue greater
material comfort and prosperity.
So those are the two things Ithink that I would really focus
on.
I mean, you know, Twain isendlessly deep.
Yeah.
He's endlessly deep.
You're you're there the youcould do a lot more than what
I've said already.
But those, you know, I think atthis present moment and the
(52:22):
challenges we're facing, I thinkthose are two things he would
come out and say, yeah, Americafalls short of the glory a lot
of times.
You know, you you want to seesome searing political
criticisms.
Read Twain on America's foreignpolicy in the Philippines.
In fact, I think there wasrecently, uh just the other day,
a piece published on America'sforeign policy in the
Philippines in the New YorkTimes that that also cited
(52:45):
Twain.
You know, he he savagesRoosevelt and he savages uh uh
American foreign policy in thePhilippines.
So he's not, you know, he's he'snot some benighted, you know,
USA, USA, we can do no wrong.
On the contrary, I mean you'renot gonna find a uh a more
upfront critic of Americanshortcomings.
At the same time, right, he alsorecognizes the greatness and the
(53:09):
promise that America retains.
And man, we can't lose itbecause you throw it away,
right?
It's not a it's not a boomerang.
You throw it away, it ain'tcoming back.
All right.
And the the history with whichhe was so intimately familiar
would have taught him this.
These things are extraordinarilyrare, they're extraordinarily
precious, they're extremelyfragile.
You break them, that's it.
(53:30):
And so I, you know, I thinkTwain would say, be very, very
careful, guys.
You're at risk of breaking this.
SPEAKER_00 (53:37):
I appreciate the um reflection piece, right?
Because I I connected with that.
Like, oh, on your birthday, youthink here's the things I've
already done, and here are thethings I still want to do.
And it's a perfect time forAmericans to think that.
And I have a list of things umI'm going to make sure are in
(53:59):
our show notes, but I will makesure to email them because you
brought up so many.
There's just so much here.
And I'm so grateful that youbrought this to us and you
brought this expertise and this,you know, love of literature and
bringing tying this all intoAmerica 250.
(54:19):
PJ, this genuinely has just beenagain, we we are at a place
that, you know, there's a lot ofpolitical thought, and I I I
appreciate all of the faculty Iget to work with, um, but I've
yet to connect with somebody onliterature.
So thank you so much for this.
(54:39):
This is amazing.
And listeners, I will be puttinga ton of links into the show
notes um to make sure thateverything that we've talked
about um is available, as wellas Dr.
Dobsky, uh Dr.
Dobsky's books.
Oh, um, there's three of them.
So I definitely want to makesure if you want to read that,
(55:01):
anything else.
But again, BJ, thank you so muchfor this.
SPEAKER_01 (55:04):
Listen, Liz, it was absolutely my pleasure.
I've absolutely had a blast.
I hope, I hope my enjoyment camethrough.
Uh, I love talking about thisstuff.
SPEAKER_00 (55:13):
It did.
I have three pages of notes now.
SPEAKER_01 (55:16):
Good, good, good.
Thank you.
All right, welcome everyone.
I am very excited to have ourvisiting professor, Dr.
BJ Dobsky, with us.
And we're gonna talk about MarkTwain.
And a little backstory.
Um, I attended a facultymeeting.
I kind of talked about thepodcast we were doing, and BJ
and I met.
Um, and at first I was like,what does Mark Twain have to do
(01:14):
with anything?
I mean, I've read Mark Twain,um, but the more we talked, the
more I got excited.
And when we hopped on our calltoday, you know, I told BJ, I am
so excited to talk about thisbecause this is stuff I didn't
even know.
So we're gonna start with onequestion, BJ.
So Mark Twain is I mean, he'sone of the most famous Americans
(01:38):
of the 19th century, right?
Like people know who Mark Twainis.
So, from your perspective, whatdoes Twain's work reveal about
the American character um andalso our democratic experiment?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (01:52):
So uh first of all, Liz, thank you for having me on.
I'm thrilled to be here.
I'm of course I'm delighted tobe in sunny tempe and uh and and
and you know, while I'm missinga little bit of the the New
England fall back inMassachusetts in a couple of
weeks, I will not be missing thethe freezing rain followed by
snow and ice.
So I'm I'm thrilled to be hereand and of course thrilled to be
(02:14):
on uh on your podcast.
This is really terrific what youguys are doing and happy to
contribute to it.
Um I guess the first thing Ireally want to say in response
to this is I'm delighted thatyou you make this distinction
between Mark Twain and MarkTwain's work.
Um, because there are a lot ofpeople say, well, what does what
does Twain the man have to say?
And uh the life of of SamuelClemens, right?
(02:37):
So we all know that Mark Twainis the the pseudonym, the pen
name for Samuel L.
Clemens, it's you know, this issomeone who deliberately
cultivated, deliberately, okay,I can't stress that enough,
cultivated many differentconflicting views of himself and
of his work.
Um, so that if you try andunpack what Twain the uh
(03:00):
Clemens, the man, thought aboutsomething.
I mean, aside from just the kindof natural evolution that
happens in a person's thinkingor over the course of a person's
life, there's the fact that hewent out of his way to
contradict himself, um, to hidethings, to refuse to comment on
a number of things.
Uh, if you this is true of hispersonal correspondence, it's
(03:23):
true of what you might find inhis marginalia.
It's, you know, his life is, youknow, what what so many, um, you
know, this guy Ron Chernow ishis book on biography on Mark
Twain um out now.
And and he, you know, he, by theway, self self-promoting plug
here.
I'm I have a review of that bookcoming out uh tonight with the
(03:43):
public discourse.
And if you believe someone likeChernow, you know, his his this
is someone's life who is justfilled with contradictions.
Um, Mark Twain was simply toobrilliant for that.
And as other scholars haveshown, he did this
intentionally, right?
So if you if you simply try andadduce what Twain or Samuel
Clemens, the man, thought bylooking just at his life or his
(04:05):
correspondence, his travels, hisbusiness dealings, all that
stuff, you're not going to getvery far.
So focusing on the work is adifferent thing entirely.
And that's very importantbecause the work, I mean, look,
the work is cage enough on itsown, right?
It's very artful.
Um, Twain says in a number ofplaces that he wrote
esoterically, uh, that he wentout of his way to teach and
(04:27):
preach, but that teaching andpreaching could only be
effective if you did soindirectly.
Um, he says that, you know,genuine biography, genuine
humor, genuine parity, all ofthat has to work through subtle
indirection.
So piecing Twain's work togetherto pull out its wisdom is tricky
business, right?
But there's plenty of evidenceto suggest that there's a unity
(04:50):
at work in his work that may notbe detectable in his life or his
personal correspondence or hisrelations with his wife Livy or
his daughters or anything likethat.
So the the work is where to go.
The work is where to go if youwant to uh uh really kind of
grapple with what Twain thinksabout America, uh American
character and American politics.
(05:13):
Uh now, if I were to, if I wereto boil it down, right?
I mean, we could we we could behere for a long time.
If I were to boil it down, I'dsay, look, I think the most
important thing, or arguably themost important thing that Twain
reveals about America andAmerican character, is that uh
our community, our democracy,our regime uh has the potential
to do what almost no regime everin the history of politics.
(05:37):
And I'm here to tell you, Twainread everything, right?
He read everything.
He was familiar with with if ithad been printed, he was
familiar with it.
Okay.
Um, so I fair I feel fairlyconfident in saying that he he
could judge.
Look, we this this country cando, this regime can do something
that no other regime orpolitical order has effectively
(05:59):
done ever, which is effectivelymarry a kind of commitment to
democratic pol, uh democraticequality, um to political
liberty and popular consent, tocapitalism, uh so the spread of
wealth that's attendant uponthat, and a commitment to kind
of uh the scientific enterpriseand the all of the fruits of the
(06:20):
material comfort that thatproduces.
Our regime can marry all of thaton the one hand, right?
Um with a kind of openness toand cultivation of aristocratic
culture, on the other hand, akind of aristocratic taste for
greatness and individualflourishing, right?
(06:42):
So that there's this there'sthis kind of marriage of popular
politics and cultural uharistocracy.
It's there in Twain's work,right?
There's a lot of caricature thatgoes on about Twain's work that
I think would miss this, right?
And and one of the unfortunateeffects is Twain then becomes
subject to audience capture,right?
This phenomenon of audiencecapture.
(07:02):
But if you're if you're able todistance yourself from that, to
liberate yourself from audiencecapture, it's there and it's
it's kind of shocking, right?
Um now, striking a balance oraffecting a balance between a
commitment to democraticequality or egalitarianism on
the one hand and culturalaristocracy on the other is is
(07:24):
extremely difficult.
Um, but I think Twain thoughthis literature was something
that could affect this, right?
Um, that could pull this off.
Um, you know, I think what hewhat he had had in mind was
America at its best, would be apolitical order that guaranteed
widespread political equality,including maybe not universal
(07:49):
suffrage, but something close toit, with um with a real openness
to human greatness, because onlythrough the universal suffrage
could you remove those kind ofarbitrary and sometimes
irrational obstacles that impedethe flourishing of other human
beings and their ability, bethey male, female, white, or
(08:10):
black, uh to contribute to thekind of elevation and refinement
of our of our social, political,intellectual, and spiritual uh
lives.
Uh, I'll just give you one quickexample from his literature that
that might be helpful here,right?
And by the way, while we'retalking about this, uh I'm not
sure how familiar your audienceis with Twain's body of work,
(08:31):
but I'm here to tell you it isenormous.
It is, it is, it's absolutelymassive, right?
I mean, you you, you know, yeah,you got the famous stuff, the
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, andyou know, but you've got four
massive travelogues.
You've got um uh you've you youyou've you've got uh nonfiction
(08:53):
works on Christian science.
You you you know, you have a tonof short stories, you have tens
of thousands of letters, you'vegot uh thousands of speeches
that the man delivered, youknow, at the end of his life, he
has all of this unpublishedwork, massive book-length pieces
that have not been published,you know, three piece 3,000
(09:15):
years among the microbes, youknow, that what?
I mean, and and and reallyinteresting stuff, Adam and
Eve's diary and so on and so on.
This is just it, it's amazing.
And the range of this man,right?
He defies the simple kind ofclassification as a social
satirist or a humorist, right?
He's got this, uh, he's got thisdialogue.
It's almost like a platonicdialogue called What is Man um
(09:37):
on material determinism.
It's it's simply amazing.
But anyway, to go back to thepoint at hand, right, is this
book that that many uh in youraudience may know of called King
Arthur's Connecticut Yankee andKing Arthur's Court.
And uh this, I think, when readproperly, right, um, when you
refuse to simply identify Twainwith the lead character, uh and
(10:01):
he goes out of his way, I think,if you're again paying attention
not to identify himself with thelead character with the
Connecticut Yankee, you'll seethat you have two different
kinds of souls at work in thestory.
You have the character and thesoul, uh the uh the political
character of the Yankee, uh, whois embodies our commitment to
kind of democratic equality, tothe advancement of science and
(10:22):
learning, uh, to the rule ofsecular materialism, the spread
of material prosperity, and soon.
But all of that, and Twain showsthis in this book, all of that,
which we identify as kind ofquintessentially American, comes
at the expense of humanhappiness in many ways, comes at
the expense of individualflourishing, comes at the
expense of our spiritual lives,um, comes at the expense of any
(10:46):
kind of development of our moremoral and spiritual deepening, a
failure to appreciate poetry,artistry, right?
Love, friendship, right?
His lead character is aremarkably friendless man who
has no real attachments toothers.
And then you have on the otherside, right, King Arthur.
And everything that Arthurstands for, right?
(11:06):
He he's the opposite, right?
So in Arthurian England, right,uh his regime makes possible
everything the Yankee seems toundermine, family life, um, a
profound religious uh uh belief,healthy religious belief, moral
virtue, right?
Um, a testament to great art andand beauty uh and devotion and
natural greatness, right?
At one point the Yankee is evencompelled to say, you know, Ever
(11:29):
the Cynic, the the Yankee iscompelled to say he he's
naturally great.
He is a man.
I used to think it was alltrappings of his uh of the court
life.
No, he is he's naturally great,right?
But the problem with King Arthuris that that kind of community,
feudal England, could onlyachieve this at the expense of
(11:50):
political inequality, right?
Or uh requiring politicalinequality by by uh restricting
human learning, by forcingothers to endure an almost
unimaginable material privationand suffering and so on.
So, you know, you you mightthink that Twain is kind of a
pessimist.
And there are a lot of peopleout there who think he's simply
pessimism.
I think that's more opposed thananything else.
(12:12):
I think what Twain thinks is theAmerican character is broad
enough, expansive enough, andgenerous enough to include both
of these elements, and that thebook is really an invitation to
America to say, look, you have alot of good things, but those
things come at a cost.
The things you would reject alsohave benefits.
(13:20):
So there's these trade-offs.
You need to do your best tobring them together.
Now, I don't think Twain is sosimple-minded as to think all
good things go together, right?
No, of course not.
There's tension here, there willbe trade-offs.
But, you know, like greatliterature, great politics is
not easy.
Right?
Healthy, free politics thatrespects the fundamental
(13:42):
equality of human beings whilealso recognizing the
possibilities of humangreatness.
That's not easy.
But Twain seems to think it'spossible.
And that that book, ConnecticutYankee and King Arthur's Court,
seems to be part of his broaderinvitation to get Americans to
take this stuff seriously.
(14:02):
So that would be my openingresponse to that excellent
question.
SPEAKER_00 (14:07):
I I love that you're talking about literature and
politics because you know, uh,coming from a teacher point of
view, I taught both English andsocial studies, uh, my main
thing being social studies.
And I I wish that more peopleunderstood the marrying together
that literature and politics canhave.
So my next question is kind ofyou know, on that political
(14:28):
wisdom in literature.
So you've written on thinkers uhfrom uh and I can never say this
right, is it solidities?
SPEAKER_01 (14:41):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:43):
Um so you've written on him, Shakespeare and Twain.
So what does literature uniquelyoffer us in terms of
understanding political wisdomthat maybe like political
science alone can't?
SPEAKER_01 (14:56):
Right, right.
No, that's that's a greatquestion.
And and I think it's somethingthat really, you know, more
people who are interested inteaching civics and teaching
political, um uh teachingpolitics and political wisdom,
conveying political wisdom,should make greater use of our
literary tradition because it'san extremely rich one, both both
speaking broadly in terms of thekind of Western literary canon,
(15:19):
but also American novelist.
Um, it's an extremely rich uhresource for conveying wisdom,
but also shaping character,right?
And and this is, by the way,something that I didn't quite
anticipate would happen in mycareer as I got started was that
thinking about how literaturecan help shape American
(15:41):
character, um, how thedevelopment of a political
imagination is so critical tothe shaping of character.
But that is, in fact, whatreally great literature does.
So, so I would just say a coupleof things.
I've I've I have a few points inmind that uh uh I think speak to
your question.
The first thing is uh there'sjust a great joy and pleasure in
(16:03):
reading literature that youcan't, you know, set aside
political science textbooks, setaside, you know, academic jargon
and academic analysis.
I mean, even just picking upsomething like um, you know,
Aristotle's politics.
Whoa, boy, that, you know, I Ifind it incredibly meaningful uh
and incredibly fulfilling, but II do not, you know, my first
(16:24):
encounter with it is notpleasure.
I hate to say, you know, maybethat says more about me than
Aristotle, but but the firstthing I would say is, you know,
good literature should induce akind of pleasure.
There should be an experience ofpleasure here.
Um and and I think that's truebecause human beings just take a
natural joy in seeing theirtheir nature displayed for them,
(16:47):
right?
I mean, they're not conscious ofit when they're experiencing it,
but you know, people like to goto plays.
Why do people like to go toplays?
Because they like to see theirhumanity staged, whether it's
outrageous situations ortouching situations, triumphs or
tragedies, whatever.
They like to see their humanitystaged.
And there's this kind ofspontaneous delight we take in
that.
(17:07):
And this is important toliterature's ability to convey
something important.
Uh, I often think of the T.
S.
Eliot when he was asked aboutthe difference between prose and
poetry.
And he says that you know,genuine poetry communicates
before it's understood.
And that really strikes me asbeing, I mean, it's absolutely
true, right?
That you just before you sitdown and you parse a great poem
(17:29):
and you try and work it out, youyou just kind of get it, right?
There's something you justunderstand about that.
And and so literature can dothis too.
And great literature does thispartly by drawing us in, right?
We we we lay down our guard,right?
We we set aside rationalobjections, right?
If if I start a course withsomething like Locke's second
(17:51):
treatise of government, studentsare automatically going to start
objecting, right?
Ah, that's not right.
This guy's claiming to teach mesomething, and I can disprove
him or I can refute him.
But literature, you don't startthat way, right?
You set your guard down.
You don't start with, uh, howdare you try and teach me
something, right?
But that's what they do.
They get you to care about, say,a character.
If you're reading a novel,you're you get to care about a
(18:11):
character.
Maybe you love them, maybe youhate them, right?
But you now care about them.
And and you maybe you want tosee them succeed or see them
fail.
And once the author's got youattached to the character, to
the situation, now they can goto work on you, right?
And before you know it, you'reyou're being educated, you're
being transformed in a decisiveway.
And you know, you get done witha book, you're not the same
(18:33):
person you were before.
You you've been transformed.
And this, by the way, I wouldsay is is another reason why
literature is so important tokind of uh what elevating or
refining our aesthetic judgment,right?
Uh I uh you know, you you wannayou want to improve students'
tastes in the beautiful.
Don't give them a discourse onbeauty or a treatise on beauty,
(18:57):
show them something beautiful.
And so literature is veryimportant.
So that's that's the first thingI would say.
I'd focus on the the thepleasant aspect of literature.
Um, but related to that, right,is that literature gives you
models of excellence, um, uhmodels of villainy that we may
not have readily available inour everyday life, at least in
(19:18):
many cases, I'm glad we don't,um, since some of them can be so
bad.
Um, but they they, you know,they give us examples of people
we can emulate or or cautionarytales to avoid.
So when we think about somethinglike when I'm trying to teach
statesmanship or greatleadership, and what does it
look like?
If I'm thinking aboutThucydides, right?
Well, well, here's a picture ofThemistocles, or here is a
(19:41):
portrait, right?
A dramatic uh presentation ofPericles.
Do we want our leaders to belike them?
Is that great statesmanship?
Or someone like Alcibiades orCleon, right?
We could think of that.
Or if we're thinking aboutShakespeare, you know, we said,
should we model our politics ona Henry V or a Prospero or a
Theseus?
Or, you know, what aboutCoriolanus, the Roman Coriolanus
(20:02):
or Othello or Richard III,right?
Uh uh uh so you know, E.
Gabs, Richard III.
No, we don't want that, right?
So they they give us thesewonderful models uh that we're
not likely to have in ourordinary uh experience.
But but maybe I could give youan even different example.
Uh so I I uh back at Assumptionuh University, my home
(20:23):
institution, I teach this coursecalled political mass murder.
And, you know, one of the one ofthe sad lessons about that is we
spent a lot of time focusing oncommunist regimes and and all of
the the mass murdering of theirown citizens that communist
regimes um have engaged in overthe over the 20 century.
Now, if I wanted to teachstudents the true horrors of
(20:45):
communism and the crimes ofcommunism, I could, say, on the
one hand, take them through DasCapital or the Communist
Manifesto and and go through itline by line by line.
Or I could have them readselections from uh Alexander
Solzhenitsyn's The GulagArchipelago, which is his
firsthand account of his ownexperience in the gulag.
(21:06):
Now, what do you think is morelikely to leave an impact on the
on the student?
What's more likely to influencethem, right?
This kind of academic uh uh uhuh commentary on the communist
manifesto, or getting them tolive with Solzhenitsyn in the
gulag, right?
I my vote's on the ladder.
(21:27):
And I think that's by the way,another reason why it's so
critical for our students whoare going to be the citizen
rulers of America's future, tohave this really rich background
in in literature, right?
They need to have theirjudgments formed by good
literature, right?
(21:48):
Oh, two more points.
If I know I'm I'm going to go.
I'm like, you can keep talking.
SPEAKER_00 (21:54):
I am I have honestly, I got my little
notepad out and I already amlike filling things up here.
SPEAKER_01 (22:01):
So so right, one of the other great things about
literature area is it it promptsus to live the lives of others,
right?
To live along with them.
And when we do that, we get toevaluate their decisions.
Would we have done that?
No, don't do that.
We say, you know, uh, stop.
No, this is you're making thewrong choice, you're picking the
wrong guy, whatever this is,right?
Someone um uh these certain lovestories we have, right?
(22:23):
Now that gives us an experience,again, we might not ordinarily
get.
And in fact, it gives us anexperience we might not want to
have, to have to learn from,right?
There's certain things we justshouldn't have to learn on our
own because it's simply tooexpensive.
So, again, you know, well, thinkof Shakespeare, right?
Um, do you really want to haveto live the love affair of Romeo
(22:44):
and Juliet or or Anthony andCleopatra just to learn that
this leads to disaster, death,and misery?
No, it's too late, right?
Don't do that.
So, so literature gives you thiscounter experience, right?
It gives you this experience sothat you can save yourself.
(23:05):
You can learn from their theirfailures, right?
You you don't want to have tolearn firsthand what it's like
to have a friend like Iago toknow that it's bad to have an
associate like Iago, or, or inthe case of Thucydides, to turn
your political community over toa guy like Nickyus or even
Cleon.
Bad idea.
Don't do it, right?
So that so I think that'simportant.
(23:25):
And then finally, you know, I'mthinking, um I'm thinking about
thinking a lot lately about thethe cultivation of political
imagination.
And in some ways, it's justsimply important, right?
It's just simply important.
Like if if if you take a Platoor an Aristotle or Shakespeare
or Twain, they're wiser thanthan we are and wiser than we
(23:47):
can hope to be.
And that presents a kind ofchallenge for us because if we
simply go to their workthinking, you know, okay,
they're just going to take allthis wisdom and just dump it
into our heads.
But it doesn't work like that,right?
It's not knowledge in that way,it's not content in that way.
You can't just dump it intosomeone's head or transfer it
(24:09):
through writing this this downand have this people read it.
You you have to to bridge thatreally almost seemingly
unbridgeable gap between thosewho are truly wise and those of
us who yearn for wisdom.
You have to have thisintermediary, and that's
imagination.
I mean, imagination really helpsbridge that that gulf.
(24:30):
That's huge.
Um, so fortunately, we canbenefit from their wisdom
without having to be as wise asthey are, which will never
happen.
That's really important for usin America, right?
Um, why?
Well, because America is aparticularly imaginary kind of
community.
I mean, you think about it, ourour our our whole political
(24:52):
order is founded in ideas aboutthe human person, about the
rights we have, about whatconstitutes legitimate
government.
The founding of our governmentwas was done by argumentation,
right?
These are people engaging inrational deliberation with each
other.
So we got these founding ideasthat we're arguing over.
(25:14):
Um, you know, one of the thingsI really love about America that
continues to just give megoosebumps, even in my ripe old
age, is that anyone in the worldis in is is a potential
American.
And that's important because itmeans America isn't just
reducible to a place or anethnicity, uh, or a race or a
(25:35):
tribe or religion, right?
It it is very much a conceptualthing that one can enter into
rationally and has to enter intorationally, right?
And and so that that means thenthat if you're gonna have a an
American civic body that is upto the task of preserving its
liberty, it's gotta have a goodpolitical imagination, right?
(25:59):
It it has to be not just so it'sthat, not just so that it's
peopled with good models toemulate and bad models to avoid,
but so that it can actuallythink well about what America is
and can be.
And so again, literature doesthis in a way, it builds that
imagination that's absolutelyindispensable to this to the
(26:21):
success of the Americanpolitical order.
SPEAKER_00 (26:25):
I love that.
So if we're looking at civiceducation through kind of this
lens, how could Twains or howmight teachers use Twain's humor
and satire in their classroomsto teach students about
democracy, equality, andcitizenship in ways that
resonate with them?
Because I appreciate that yousaid you can't just be like,
(26:45):
here's Play Doh, dump it intoyour head and now you know it,
right?
Because I am an avid reader.
I actually have um reading BraveNew World with my CEL 100 class.
We've we've done Rousseau, we'vedone Locke, we've done Play-Hoh,
but I wanted to bring in some,you know, fiction for them
(27:06):
because it it does brighten upyour world.
So how can we use this inclassrooms, especially the humor
and satire?
Because I think that that is akey for students.
SPEAKER_01 (27:19):
Yeah.
So the first thing you got to dois actually assign the twain,
right?
I mean, that that's that'sreally important.
Yeah, in my lifetime, right?
When I was growing up, you couldreliably count on young people
having read some twain.
Uh, whether it was the thecelebrated jumping frog of
(27:39):
Calaveras County or Tom Sawyeror Huck Finn, by the time you
know young people had graduatedfrom high school, they had
encountered some some um uhamount of twain.
Uh so first thing you gotta dois assign it.
Start with that.
You can't do that enough.
Um, and there's a lot of stuffout there that is assignable.
Uh, not everything deals withrace, right?
(27:59):
Um, not everything is 2,000pages long, right?
I mean a lot of short storiesout there that you can assign.
So assign it.
So that's the first thing.
Second thing is you got to teachstudents how to read well,
right?
Which means tending to hisliterary artistry, which, you
know, there's a there's a lot ofwork there.
But it also, I mean, think thatthis is really quite important,
(28:20):
is teaching them how to readliterary humor, right?
That this is this is reallyimportant.
I I think uh it's important notonly intellectually, but it's
morally important, all right.
It's it's it's really importantfor the kind of cultivation of
our civic character.
Uh, I'll give you an example,right?
So I think Twain's comedy is isterrific because we we one of
(28:43):
the things you can say aboutcomedy in general is that it it
tends to bring the high down tothe low.
You know, you think of theMonopoly guy, Mr.
Monopoly with his monocle,right?
Monopoly guy slipping on abanana peel, right?
And we all laugh at that and wego, okay, well, that that that
rich so-and-so is just like us.
See, he thought he was so good,right?
But now he's just like us.
(29:04):
He too can slip on a bananapeel.
Um, and that that's somethingthat comedy, all comedy does.
But Twain's comedy, and I thinkthe best kind of comedy,
doesn't, I mean, it puncturespretentiousness, yeah, but it
punctures a kind of falsepretentiousness.
It exposes false pretentiousnessfor what it is, while preserving
(29:25):
a respect for kind of genuinegreatness.
So it's not simply uh criticalor simply destructive.
It's not mockery for the sake ofmockery, it's not derision for
the sake of derision, which iswhat I think we see all too
often in kind of contemporaryhumor.
Let's just mock the livingdaylights out of things.
So one of the things I thinkTwain's comedy teaches us, and
(29:46):
that students would benefit fromlearning, is it teaches you to
be critical without becomingcynical.
And I think that's reallyimportant.
You can be a critic withoutbecoming a cynic.
And so his critical comedypreserves this uh uh uh respect
for something high, forsomething noble, for something
(30:07):
elevated.
Um Twain's comedy alwaysinvolves something absurd.
Now, absurdity again might leadus to think, well, it's uh it's
a negative thing.
We can, it's a destructivething, it's a thing that allows
us to reject the thing which isbeing exposed as absurd.
But that's not what I think istrue about Twain, right?
(30:28):
I I think one of the things hedoes is you know, he gives us an
experience with the absurd thatdoesn't make us jaded or
cynical, but moderate.
Because when we've had some anabsurd situation exposed to us,
we cease to make the samedemands that we did before that,
(30:50):
that maybe human life mustalways be super dignified, or
human life must always behyper-rational, or that we must
always be right in all things atall the time.
This again is I think critical,the really divided time we live
in, right?
An inability to kind ofrecognize the common fate we're
(31:13):
all allotted.
We all have to participate in akind of again, uh maybe absurd
is too strong of a word here,but but uh you know, I'll give
you an example from from what'sconsidered to be the great
American novel, Huck Finn.
Although from from Twain'sperspective, his his greatest
novel, his best novel was his uhthe last complete one he wrote,
(31:35):
which almost no one reads.
Reads, personal recollections ofJoan of Arc.
Right.
There's another example.
I'm not sure how familiar peopleare with.
The fact that Twain's longest,most longest complete and last
work was dedicated to thisFrench Catholic saint.
But Huckfin, right?
And here I have to give creditwhere credit's due.
(31:55):
I have a colleague in Australia,uh Ivan Keneally, who has
written a wonderful review of umPercival Everett's book, James,
which is a reworking of Huckfinfrom the perspective of Jim.
And uh anyway, uh Ivan Keneallyhas this wonderful review.
It's going to be coming out in aforthcoming issue of um County
(32:18):
Highway.
It's a print magazine.
They still exist, believe it ornot.
It's a print magazine publishedby Walter Kearns and David
Samuels.
Anyway, um one of the thingsthat Keneally's in reading of
Huck Finn shows is you know,both Huck and Jim share a common
(32:39):
fate.
And part of that common fate isthat their their conscience has
been shaped by the world theylive in, which is a slaving
world, right?
So their conscience has beenshaped by the political
community of a the slave-owningSouth in America.
(33:01):
And so, you know, Twain wouldnot deny, hey, look, we we we
are free agents, but we are alsoshaped in in really important
ways by our environment in somerespects.
And if that were true, simplyHuck and and Jim should loathe
each other.
They should really hate eachother.
But you read the novel and yousee they don't come to hate each
(33:22):
other at all.
Right?
They they see beyond or getbeyond the deforming effects of
their conscience as thatconscience had been shaped or
misshaped by reigning socialcodes.
And so they learn to testify tothe fundamental humanity that
belongs to both of them.
Now, to be clear, Twain doesn'tthink we should simply get a
(33:43):
right get get rid of all uh uhsocial conditioning, right?
You know, man is not by naturegood, right?
We are not by nature morallyvirtuous.
We require uh civil society forthe cultivation of our moral
virtue.
But that that civil society, asthe novel shows, can be
profoundly um deforming,distorting, corrupting.
(34:07):
So there, so there's you know,the the human person is caught
between the need to depend onsociety for its moral
cultivation and moral disciplineand moral structure, and the
human person has to push backagainst that too.
(34:28):
They have to to to strive toachieve some liberation from the
deforming and distortingelements of that.
Both Hawk and Jim have to dothat.
So there this is the absurd,this is what I mean by calling
the situation kind of absurd.
You need society to helpcultivate and provide some kind
of moral discipline to man'snature, but man's nature to be
(34:52):
to reach its true flourishinghas to push back against that
forming uh uh social effect.
And and so you know, both bothHuck and Jim, I think this is
part of the the the corerecognition of their humanity,
they realize they're both inthis situation together.
And and they, you know, theythey have to recognize it as as
(35:16):
as an absurdity.
And in doing that, there's akind of m mercy and
reconciliation that that becomespossible.
So, you know, you know, if ifyour audience is hoping for some
pat answer here, I don't haveone except to say that I think
we live in this incrediblybitterly divided time, right?
(35:39):
And and Twain is living in a farmore uh writing about a far more
bitter time than we have, right?
He's writing in the wake of uhuh a terrible civil war and
showing how we might see thekind of grounds for recovering
our our humanity and our humanerespect for each other, despite
the fact that both Huck and Jimin some ways should, you know,
(36:03):
should loathe each other, right?
Um maybe, maybe not Huckloathing Jim, but you know, I'll
say this at the end, despite hisnobility, right?
Despite his noble efforts tohelp Jim uh free himself, Huck
still says, I don't want peopleto know the role I had in
liberating this guy.
I mean, they he can't fully orhas yet to fully free himself
(36:26):
from the distortion andprejudices of the society in
which he was raised.
So, you know, there is a way inwhich, you know, I think we have
to exercise some grace here too.
When we think about Hawk and wethink about Jim, we think about
Tom Sawyer in the novel.
They're not perfect.
But if if Twain is doing his joband effectively draws us into
(36:49):
their lives and puts us in thatsituation, I think we're gonna
be hard pressed to go, I wouldhave done something totally
different, I would have stood upand done the right thing.
I think it would force us torecognize these are extremely
difficult choices to be made.
They're choices we all facetogether and we do not always
choose correctly.
And so there's a kind of, Ithink a kind of grace that we
(37:12):
need to extend each other as aresult of that.
Now, if conveying that lesson tofifth graders or eighth graders
or high schoolers, I mean it'stough for adults, right?
But when you see that, when youwhen you have as a base of your
education these kind of moralexemplars, that's really
(37:33):
important.
That's really important becauseit allows you in time to develop
that capacity for for grace andreconciliation and forgiveness
without sacrificing judgmenteither, right?
I mean, that's that's the othercrucial thing.
We don't we don't leavesomething like Huck Finn
suspending all judgment andgoing, well, you know, who's to
say?
We go, whoof, boy, that was thatwas tough.
(37:56):
That was tough.
We can understand why they didwhat they did or why they didn't
do what they didn't do, andstill go, they chose well here
and badly there, even though I'mnot sure I would have done much
different given the given thebackground they had.
SPEAKER_00 (38:09):
Well, and I think with students, especially when
you're talking about like theupper elementary, middle school,
even high school, havingliterary characters to utilize
as models, like students aremore empathetic to them.
They they do give more gracethan they would somebody who is
a real life person.
And it's because they candistance them, like they create
(38:31):
that person in their head,right?
And I know, I mean, I I love toread and I I love to read
because I can create the moviein my head, right?
Right.
And that is, I think forstudents important too, and it
allows them the empathy andallows them to have these models
(38:51):
without it being somebody whois, you know, somebody they see
on TikTok or whatever else,right?
Right, yeah.
I mean, I was excited about thispodcast for many reasons, but I
love talking about literaturebecause when I was in the
classroom, I used children'sliterature.
I mean, I think that especiallyin civic classrooms, uh,
(39:13):
literature is wildly underused.
So I have James on my readinglist, and now it's gonna get
bumped up.
And probably as soon as I canget to change a cans bookstores,
I'm gonna grab it.
But I I love that there isthere's so much complexity in
the characters, yeah, but italso allows us to create empathy
(39:35):
and grace and models for youknow what we'd like to see.
So as we're approaching America250, you know, the anniversary
of America's founding, why doyou think that Twain's
reflections on politics, humannatures, and democracy are
particularly relevant?
SPEAKER_01 (39:54):
Right.
So so the long answer, which Ican't give here, would would
require us to say somethingabout like what what is America
to Twain?
unknown (40:03):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (40:03):
What is America to Twain?
And and we just can't do thathere.
The short answer would besomething like well, Twain's
relevant because he he teachesus who we are and who we can and
should be.
That may be too brief, so let'sunpack this, right?
So 250th birthday is a big one.
And uh birthdays have uh thistendency to invite us to look
(40:29):
back and say, you know, well,how far have I come or how far
haven't I come?
You know, is my life kind ofwhat I wanted it to be?
Have I done the things I wantedto do?
Have I, you know, do I have alot of regrets?
What you know, it is these areoccasions for for looking back.
So, you know, America at the the250th is, you know, same thing.
(40:51):
Um have we strayed from ourfounding vision?
If we've strayed, can we coursecorrect?
Uh, should we course correct,right?
How do we feel about thefounding vision?
Um I think Twain is helpful withthis because partly because um
Twain's story, the story ofSamuel Clemens and Twain's
(41:14):
stories, the stories he writes,are the story of America, right?
They tell the story of America,his life and his stories tell um
our story.
Uh, you know, so Twain is bornin what, 1835, right?
So America's just over 50 yearsold.
But his his professional writingcareer, his national claim to
(41:37):
fame doesn't come until 1865.
Right after uh in the monthsafter um the the war has ended,
the the North and South aretrying to figure out how we're
gonna reunify this thing and andmake this thing work if it's
gonna work at all.
Right at that time, Twainpublishes his first big short
story, which is the celebratedjumping frog of Calaver's
(41:59):
County.
Now I read that first piece askind of Twain's opening bid to
be kind of America's poetlegislator.
He's gonna provide the the theliterary rhetoric to bring our
country back together.
And I think his careersubstantiates that effort, that
he continues to engage in thateffort for you know, whatever it
(42:24):
is, the next 65 years or 75years, right?
I mean, this is this is what hehe's trying to do.
Um uh and so we have this, youknow, we have this guy who is
born to a not terriblydistinctive or distinguished
(42:44):
family.
He's unlettered, uh, has doesn'thave a lot of money, right?
And uh he rags to riches kind ofthing, right?
Um, you know, we've got this guywho is uh uh what the the
creator of our democraticvernacular, he is the the the
the defender of the common manand yet goes on to dine with
(43:07):
royalty and befriends presidentsand is you know uh worshipped by
generations of of readers.
And you know, he's got thesephilosophers are dying to meet
him and chasing him around, youknow.
Um his story is kind of likeAmerica, right?
America starts off as this kindof backwater western upstart,
(43:28):
and and and right by the end ofthe 19th century, we're one of
the major players in globalpolitics, right?
So so Twain's life kind of dovedovetails nicely with the growth
of America.
So I think in many ways, youwant you know, studying America
just seems like such a massivething to do and hopelessly
large.
Fine, narrow it down.
Let's study one man, this man,right?
(43:50):
As I say, you know, he was hewasn't just rags to riches, he
was rags to riches to rags backto riches.
I mean, this guy was all overthe place, right?
Um so when we're thinking back,you know, how far have we come,
America?
How well have we done?
Well, let's look at Twain andlet's ask ourselves, you know,
did Twain give us a pathway torefound ourselves in the wake of
(44:14):
the North-South conflict?
Did he show us a way in which wecan marry successfully or
effectively our concern withdemocratic equality to a kind of
appreciation for individualhuman flourishing, individual
excellence, true greatness?
Did he provide us that pathforward?
So I I mean, you know, look, I'ma professor of politics.
(44:37):
I think about America's 250th,and I I get very excited as a
citizen, but as a professor, I'mlike, oh, this is overwhelming.
How do we break this down?
And I think again, Twain'scareer provides Twain's career
and Twain's story reallyprovides a useful way for
thinking about that, right?
Again, he's he's getting startedat a time when it didn't look
like it was going so well,right?
(44:58):
There's real questions.
Is this is this we just came outof a nasty civil war?
There's no guarantee we're notgonna have another one, and
that's gonna be the end of it.
His literature provides a pathforward.
You know, we can think about howwell do we do we follow that
path forward?
Should we path forward, followthat path forward?
I will just say this if if whatI'm recommending here is America
on our 250th birthday shouldreread Mark Twain, or should
(45:21):
read Mark Twain perhaps for thefirst time, then I can't think
of a better birthday presentthan that.
Go read this great literature,right?
What a gift.
SPEAKER_00 (45:32):
So if he was alive today, Mark Twain, what civic
lesson do you think he wouldwant Americans to take to heart?
SPEAKER_01 (45:39):
Two two big ones, right?
Two big ones that come to mindfor me.
Um kind of patriotism orpatriotic rededication to our
country and and what it promisesto be, and moderation.
Um, I I should, you know,birthdays are our occasion for
looking back, but they can alsobe an occasion for looking
(46:00):
forward.
You know, okay.
Uh how much time I had, how muchtime do I have left?
What am I gonna do with with myfuture in the time that remains
to me?
And so I think Twain would say,you know, think hard, America,
uh, about what you you know,what you want this to become,
because there's so much promisehere.
(46:21):
Um, there's there's so muchpotential here.
You know, I I mentioned earlierthat Twain has kind of read
everything.
Uh and it's true, I'm not, I'mnot being facetious.
I mean, I think if it had beenprinted, he read it, and not
just in English.
I mean, the man knew German, heknew French, uh, he knew
Italian, he had picked up someancient Greek and some Latin.
(46:42):
Uh, this is really remarkable.
Wow.
Yeah, no, it's it's reallyreally impressive.
Again, he likes to play the kindof common man aweshucks.
I'm just some, you know, avuncular fella chopping my
cigar, dropping some homespuncomic yarns on y'all.
No, this guy was a uh uh uh oneof the rarest geniuses America
(47:02):
has has produced.
Um, so so I would say, given hisreading, given his experience
with the world, he he really didhave a grasp of what kind of
rare and precious experiment wehad here and the possibility
here.
I mean, this is I thinksometimes he got very angry with
America.
Um, I don't always think thatanger was a front.
I think that anger many timeswas serious because we were we
(47:23):
were missing this reallyincredible opportunity and at
risk of throwing it all away.
And that again, opportunity islook, we you can have political
liberty here.
And that with that politicalliberty comes political
equality.
But that doesn't mean you shoulddeny the possibility of human
greatness.
And some of that human greatnessis evinced in the pages of Mark
Twain's own work.
I think he is itself anembodiment of what American
(47:46):
greatness can be and and become,um, which is again a remarkably
cultured, generous, refined,elevated human being without
without being the monopoly man,right?
Um so I think Twain would saysomething like, I want you to
try and defend that, preservethat, love that, right?
(48:07):
He was a huge critic of thiskind of thoughtless patriotism,
the my country right or wrongkind of patriotism.
He was a savage, relentlesscriticism of that.
But when it came to what Americacould be, the promise it
contained within itself, uh, Ithink he would say rededicate
yourself to that.
And again, this is reallyimportant at a time when so many
(48:27):
Americans, we're seeing thisacross America today, certainly
in America's institutions ofhigher education, where a lot of
our college-educated studentsare being taught that America is
the source of all that's wrongwith the world.
And you know, we shouldn't fightto preserve it, and we should
fundamentally transform uh ourpolitical order in a direction
(48:48):
at odds with our founding visionand in a very different
direction.
I think it's profoundlydangerous.
And I think Twain would cautionus don't do that because you're
gonna throw away somethingreally beautiful, precious, and
rare.
So a kind of rededication to uhAmerica and what she represents
at her best.
Moderation, um, that's thesecond big thing I think uh I
(49:09):
would take away.
Twain would say, you guys gotyou guys gotta moderate
yourselves.
And I've talked about this alittle bit already with respect
to the kind of moderationaffected by his comic irony or
comic absurdity.
Um, so I'm not gonna repeatmyself on that here, but I will
say there's a there is a way inwhich a lot of Americans uh have
(49:29):
this unbridled, unquestionedconfidence in the possibilities
of science and reason to give usall the answers that all the
answers to the problems that weface as moral, political,
material beings.
And I think Twain would say, youknow, that is an extraordinarily
(49:51):
dangerous thing to to to havethat kind of confidence in the
power of science and modernscientific reason.
Um, you know, that that that oneof the things, I mean, look, he
was fully aware of the kind ofthe practical miracles of modern
science.
Uh he he funded a lot ofprojects that would promote
(50:15):
technological innovation.
Practically, well, he bankruptedhimself in one case.
Uh he'd thrown so much money ata particular project.
Uh so you know, he he's notsimply a Luddite.
He's not someone who simplywants to go back to the sixth
century at all, right?
This is not someone who wants toreturn, but he's also very much
aware of the limits ofscientific progress, right?
(50:37):
So, so I think he, you know, andsome of those limits um are
exposed when science eclipses,or when our obsession with
science or our emphasis onscience eclipses what makes man
man and takes away our focusfrom our moral, spiritual, and
intellectual development.
(50:58):
And so I think Twain would wouldsay, stop, stop doing that.
And again, if you go back, andyou know, he has characters like
this throughout his corpus.
Um, but you look at Hank Morganin Connecticut Yankee, and his
life is and his his fate, whichis not a happy one, um, is a
testament to this warning.
(51:20):
You know, this character has hasunquestioned confidence in the
goodness of science to answerall of the problems facing human
beings, and it ends updestroying his family, it ends
up destroying all of hisfriends, and it ends up
destroying himself and makes himmiserable because it takes away
its focus from man's moral,spiritual, and intellectual
(51:41):
development as civicdevelopment.
That's those are those areelements critical to his civic
development.
Uh so I think Twain would say,you know, love science.
I don't want to go back and livein the non-scientific world of
the the sixth century orsomething like that.
But there are dangers withmodern science, and we meet we
need to be extremely mindful ofthem so that we don't throw out
(52:02):
what makes us distinctly humanin our effort to pursue greater
material comfort and prosperity.
So those are the two things Ithink that I would really focus
on.
I mean, you know, Twain isendlessly deep.
Yeah.
He's endlessly deep.
You're you're there the youcould do a lot more than what
I've said already.
But those, you know, I think atthis present moment and the
(52:22):
challenges we're facing, I thinkthose are two things he would
come out and say, yeah, Americafalls short of the glory a lot
of times.
You know, you you want to seesome searing political
criticisms.
Read Twain on America's foreignpolicy in the Philippines.
In fact, I think there wasrecently, uh just the other day,
a piece published on America'sforeign policy in the
Philippines in the New YorkTimes that that also cited
(52:45):
Twain.
You know, he he savagesRoosevelt and he savages uh uh
American foreign policy in thePhilippines.
So he's not, you know, he's he'snot some benighted, you know,
USA, USA, we can do no wrong.
On the contrary, I mean you'renot gonna find a uh a more
upfront critic of Americanshortcomings.
At the same time, right, he alsorecognizes the greatness and the
(53:09):
promise that America retains.
And man, we can't lose itbecause you throw it away,
right?
It's not a it's not a boomerang.
You throw it away, it ain'tcoming back.
All right.
And the the history with whichhe was so intimately familiar
would have taught him this.
These things are extraordinarilyrare, they're extraordinarily
precious, they're extremelyfragile.
You break them, that's it.
(53:30):
And so I, you know, I thinkTwain would say, be very, very
careful, guys.
You're at risk of breaking this.
SPEAKER_00 (53:37):
I appreciate the um reflection piece, right?
Because I I connected with that.
Like, oh, on your birthday, youthink here's the things I've
already done, and here are thethings I still want to do.
And it's a perfect time forAmericans to think that.
And I have a list of things umI'm going to make sure are in
(53:59):
our show notes, but I will makesure to email them because you
brought up so many.
There's just so much here.
And I'm so grateful that youbrought this to us and you
brought this expertise and this,you know, love of literature and
bringing tying this all intoAmerica 250.
(54:19):
PJ, this genuinely has just beenagain, we we are at a place
that, you know, there's a lot ofpolitical thought, and I I I
appreciate all of the faculty Iget to work with, um, but I've
yet to connect with somebody onliterature.
So thank you so much for this.
(54:39):
This is amazing.
And listeners, I will be puttinga ton of links into the show
notes um to make sure thateverything that we've talked
about um is available, as wellas Dr.
Dobsky, uh Dr.
Dobsky's books.
Oh, um, there's three of them.
So I definitely want to makesure if you want to read that,
(55:01):
anything else.
But again, BJ, thank you so muchfor this.
SPEAKER_01 (55:04):
Listen, Liz, it was absolutely my pleasure.
I've absolutely had a blast.
I hope, I hope my enjoyment camethrough.
Uh, I love talking about thisstuff.
SPEAKER_00 (55:13):
It did.
I have three pages of notes now.
SPEAKER_01 (55:16):
Good, good, good.
Thank you.
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