Being a lifelong sports fan, and especially a baseball one, when I read that Father was going to take his son to a game I was very excited. I expected none other than Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb to come marching in to the Polo Grounds, and just so happen to talk to Father and the boy. Instead, we get a rivalry game between Boston (pre-Ruth) and the Giants. Father only picks up on the ugliness of the sport, the fighting, the cursing, spitting, etc. Attention is specially paid to the team "mascots," Boston's midget, and New York's fool. Charlie Faust, the Giant who is mocking the game delusionally was actually a real member of the Giants in 1911 by the way. Towards the end of the game Father thinks to himself that, "What he saw was not baseball but an elaborate representation of his own problems accounted, for his secret understanding, in the coded clarity of numbers that could be seen from a distance" (231). And I think he is right, in part.
I too saw the connection of this game to Father's life, though more so in the events of the game than the numbers they created. Essentially, the way Father describes it, fans are paying to watch the violent intensity of the game. They egg on the players, cheer when one side draws the blood of the other, and will go home happy when a hard fought (literally) game was put on for their amusement. Indeed sports have often been explained as a metaphor for war, only one more socially acceptable than say gladiators fighting to the death. Is this not what is happening in New Rochelle? Coalhouse starts things off by attacking the Emerald Isle Fire Station. After that the other side responds with a manhunt. But things really start once the press gets involved. Coalhouse saves one of the firemen in an attempt to extract Conklin's location. But this also allows him to report the events in detail to the police, and the press. Coalhouse also delivers two letters to the press within the hour of the attack. He wants the public spectacle, he wants "the crowd" cheering him on like they do during the baseball game's fight. After his second attack on Fire Station No. 2, the New York press come into town to cover the story. Here the tale of the vengeful Coalhouse reaches national notoriety, much like say a big baseball game.
Ultimately the game serves as a tangible representation to Father of the two sides of the fight that he is watching unfold right in from of him. There is Willie Conklin, the home team, who abuses his authority under the belief that the fans will "root, root, root for the home team." Then we have Coalhouse as the away team interloper, upsetting the balance of New Rochelle. When Conklin overplays his hand, the townspeople abandon him, and then only focus on the violence, locals living in fear of it, nonresidents watching in earnest. It would seem Coalhouse defeats the home team, but then they both go to the New York for a continuation of The Series, this time on Coalhouse home field. Who's going to win the pennant? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
A Portrait of the Explorer as a Tourist Man
In Ragtime, Peary's journey to the pole is fictionalized with Father being our eyes and ears into that adventure. Here is one of the canonical events of American exploration, right up there with Lewis and Clark and the Moon landing. Doctorow is writing in the early 1970s, a very patriotic time because of the bicentennial, though with the Vietnam War still fresh in the American Conscience, triumphs like these, battles against nature not man were less divisive things to wave the flag over. Yet Doctorow makes this triumph of American will and spirit into a scene from Apocalypse Now only older and colder. I admit I don't really know what happened on the expedition, and that I'm not wholly discounting Doctorow's version, but I do think it's important that we recognize that Doctorow is trying to do something here beyond tell the story of the expedition.
This is really a story about Father, Doctorow could have chosen to set the chapter framed from Peary or even Henson's point of view, but instead it stays with Father. This is to accomplish his goal of showing the 20th century man. We've seen Tateh representing the immigrant man, we've seen Mother's Younger Brother as a Septimus Warren Smith-esque young man, but Father is the missing piece of manhood, the distinctly American part (so much so that he owns a patriotic supplies shop). Father is our more stereotypical image of the American turn of the century man in his moral views and appearance. In this chapter though, we see the Teddy Roosevelt image being shown as just a front. Father isn't a Rough Rider, as Peary explains to him "This was from no lack of heart...but from the tendency of his extremities to freeze easily" (79). His reason for being there is laughable, his society donated enough money so Father got to come along, as essentially a dressed up tourist.
The short talk between Henson and Father over who will go with Peary to the Pole is also telling. Father admits to himself that Henson has a right to that honor probably more so than anyone else. He relates his skill in building shelter and driving the dogs. Yet he resents him for his confident nature, compounded by the fact that he is African-American. He never says this as such, though it seems clear to me because in the same sentence that Father tells us of his resentment over "Henson's presumption" that he challenged "the Negro" over why he thought it would be him (77). We knew Henson was African-American already so this isn't telling us something we didn't know, only something that clearly matters to Father. Father's racism also carries over to the Eskimos, more so actually. He treats them not as people but as animals. They're used as unnamed assistants, indeed the Eskimos were always going accompany Peary to the Pole yet he still said he was going to do it alone. Then there's Father watching two Eskimos have sex in the same way someone might at a zoo of two caged animals. Later, when Father tells of his relations with an Eskimo woman he refers to her as "the stinking fish" (111). This fills in our picture of the American man as Doctorow shows him--racist and fake.
This is really a story about Father, Doctorow could have chosen to set the chapter framed from Peary or even Henson's point of view, but instead it stays with Father. This is to accomplish his goal of showing the 20th century man. We've seen Tateh representing the immigrant man, we've seen Mother's Younger Brother as a Septimus Warren Smith-esque young man, but Father is the missing piece of manhood, the distinctly American part (so much so that he owns a patriotic supplies shop). Father is our more stereotypical image of the American turn of the century man in his moral views and appearance. In this chapter though, we see the Teddy Roosevelt image being shown as just a front. Father isn't a Rough Rider, as Peary explains to him "This was from no lack of heart...but from the tendency of his extremities to freeze easily" (79). His reason for being there is laughable, his society donated enough money so Father got to come along, as essentially a dressed up tourist.
The short talk between Henson and Father over who will go with Peary to the Pole is also telling. Father admits to himself that Henson has a right to that honor probably more so than anyone else. He relates his skill in building shelter and driving the dogs. Yet he resents him for his confident nature, compounded by the fact that he is African-American. He never says this as such, though it seems clear to me because in the same sentence that Father tells us of his resentment over "Henson's presumption" that he challenged "the Negro" over why he thought it would be him (77). We knew Henson was African-American already so this isn't telling us something we didn't know, only something that clearly matters to Father. Father's racism also carries over to the Eskimos, more so actually. He treats them not as people but as animals. They're used as unnamed assistants, indeed the Eskimos were always going accompany Peary to the Pole yet he still said he was going to do it alone. Then there's Father watching two Eskimos have sex in the same way someone might at a zoo of two caged animals. Later, when Father tells of his relations with an Eskimo woman he refers to her as "the stinking fish" (111). This fills in our picture of the American man as Doctorow shows him--racist and fake.
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