Comments On "Dreaming Up America" by Russell Banks

I just finished Russell Banks' first work of non-fiction, Dreaming Up America, (June 2008). It's a slim work, 127 pages. The New York Times didn't review it, but I found a favorable review on The Daily Kos, by SusanG.

The text is really the cleaned up transcript for a French documentary Banks was asked to provide narration and commentary for. The film, "Amérique notre histoire," is "about American history as told by American cinema - from 'The Birth of a Nation' to 'Black Hawk Down'," and is directed by Jean-Michel Meurice.

I haven't read any of Banks's 16 works of fiction, so I didn't experience the jarring unfamiliarity that Susan reports in her review (although I've seen both films that were made from the novels).

Dreaming Up America is the focused narration (almost ruminations) of Banks's well-informed and well-read view on America, and I found it pretty interesting. However, I do have some disagreements with it.

But let me start with some things I really liked.

Banks begins with the colonization of North America, and he reminds us that immigrants came as different groups from different European countries and with different goals. "The English colonists came to New England in search of religious freedom" - although not for others, I might add. They just wanted it for themselves. "The Dutch came to...New York, Manhattan, the Hudson Valley - strictly for commercial reasons...not for reasons of religion or freedom or politics." And finally, "The Spanish sailed into the Caribbean, to Florida, to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and into Mexico for gold, and had no particular ambitions to make a community or colony."

I like to remind my students that the English came as families, with women and children, and intended to make new lives for themselves, while the Spanish came as conquistadors, soldiers and mercenaries, and were just after wealth to bring back to Spain. (Anyone interested in this should read Bartolomé de las Casas A Short Account of the Desctruction of the Indies, which he wrote in 1542.)

So I heartily agree with Banks when he asserts that "when we speak of the values of the first colonists, we cannot lump them together. It depends on who we're talking about."

I start to diverge with Banks when he posits a major proposal: "We can think of there being three braided strands, or perhaps three mutually reinforcing dreams: one is of a place where a sinner can become virtuous, free from the decadence of the secular cosmopolitanism of old Europe; another is of a place where a poor man can become wealthy; and a third is of a place where a person can be born again." He thinks the last is the most powerful dream for today: "It's essentially the dream of being a child again."

With this proposal we have the dream of Cortez and de Leon (both Spanish conquistadors), and one from the English, the Puritan dream of the City on the Hill.

Certainly we can see Ponce de Leon's yearning for the Fountain of Youth in sub-groups of Americans today, Hollywood and various vain persons. Is this our strongest drive? I don't think so. I think it is the Dutch that he mentioned earlier and then forgot. With the Puritan work ethic, it seems to me that the Dutch and the English have given us the American Dream and our drive to work hard for our homes and our families, or to go into business for ourselves and succeed.

The part of the Puritan dream of "living a holy life under the eye of God" (p. 6), I believe is largely lost today. Maybe I've been jaded by all the recent reports of infidelity by sports figures and politicians. Mabye our society is better than that - and better than the reality TV shows portray. (When I think of contemporary Puritanism, I think of Marilynne Robinson and her collection, The Death of Adam: Essays On Modern Thought (1998). It's worth reading - and rereading.)

I've run out of time today, so I'm going to have to finish my thoughts on Dreaming Up America tomorrow.