David McCullough: "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-06-02/david-mccullough-greater-journey-americans-paris
Americans have journeyed to Paris for centuries – to experience its romance, style, and culture. The visits of Jefferson and Franklin in the 1780's and Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the 1920’s are familiar to many. Historian David Mccullough’s latest book explores a group of lesser-known travelers -- three generations of talented young Americans who set off for Paris in the 19th century. They went neither as diplomats nor as tourists but to study art, medicine, and culture. And they came home with new ideas about communication, architecture, and racial tolerance. Diane and award-winning historian, David McCullough, talk about the legacy of Americans in Paris.
Guests
David McCullough
Author and Historian
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McCullough reads an excerpt from his book:
Comments
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Cultural gremlin Woody Allen plays a tasteless practical joke on us with his new film "Midnight in Paris." A terrible hack writer imagines going back to the 1920s where everything is just as he expects. Honey voiced Judas goat David McCullough is commiting pretty much the same crime. Ask yourself these questions. Who went to Paris? Why did they go there?
When I was 13 Mr. Hughes decided I needed to get involved in Scouting. The first night the bourgeoisie scoutmaster told our troop how if you were a smart boy and you wanted to drink and fool around with whores and other experimentation you should arrange to do it in another town where you were not known. This was pretty much the situation Mabel Dodge, and Ernie Hemingway and other children of the wealthy experienced. But their family names were so big and fragile they had to leave the continent. Nothing shocks me: I grew up in Hollywood. But what I'm saying is that the intelligentsia needs to carouse to create. This may not be true of working people but their creativity rarely comes to fruition anyway.
Now it was good that American moral and ethical horizons and the collective imagination were expanded, but it played right into the hands of an elite that needed to commodify art and mass produce it. These homing pigeon adventurers became a vehicle to that need. And that is why when you rent a film or go to a movie house in America today the work is so formulaic and meaningless. We imported a well edited naughtiness and substituted it for self-examination. We let the immediate selfish needs of the rich debase our potential for knowing ourselves.
I enjoyed Brian Lamb's recent interview of Mr. McCullough very much on C-Span.
I would enjoy hearing from Mr. McCullough on how we can engage the younger generations in our country's history when so many distractions exist these days. Additionally, has he considered doing a weekly or monthly historical reflection in a national newspaper or magazine, etc?
Always good to hear about home (Pittsburgh)
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Time to make a donation and buy a new book.
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GRIN
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What an articulate, amazingly intellectual man. This book has just been added to my reading list for the month of June. Wow.
I was a little disappointed that Mr. McCullough did not mention Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet in the interview with Diane. An American pioneer in the education for the deaf who study methodology of "manual communication" at the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris. This was the beginnings of American Sign Language.
Mr. McCullough, discussing his book on Americans in Paris, made an observation that there were no schools are architecture or art in the United States during the 19th century. I wanted to provide a clarification on this point.
There were several art schools of substance already established during this period in the United States. The first art school founded in the country, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, officially dates from its charter in 1805, although the efforts to establish the school began in the 1790s.
The Academy sold its original buildings on Chestnut street in the latter half of the 19th century and moved to the in the Furness Building, several blocks up from city hall on Broad Street, where it remains to this day.
Many academy students, such as Thomas Eakins and Mary Cassett, did continue their studies in Paris, but their education began at the Academy. Eakins returned to teach at the institution and served as its director of the schools until his resignation over the use of nude male models in the women's drawing classes. The country may have been a bit provincial, but it was not devoid of reputable art schools even in its early decades.
I look forward to reading Mr. McCullogh's book. I've been researching the life of my g-g-grandfather, Stephen A. Schoff, who travelled at the age of 21 to Paris from Boston in 1839 where he studied in the atellier of the painter Paul Delaroche. Mr. Schoff went on to become a well respected engraver whose portaits included Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman, as well as vignettes engraved for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. While in Paris Schoff cemented relationships with Asher B. Durand, Benjamin Champney and John F. Kensett. He experienced his first operas there and was amazed at the way the Perisians enjoyed Sundays as a day of pleasure. While I'm quite certain that my ancestor isn't mentioned in "The Greater Journey", it will be enlightening to get the flavor of what he experienced so many years ago.