Jonathan Zimmerman: Mark Twain's Travels With the 'Savages'
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."]
Italians are superstitious. Portuguese are lazy. Turks are dishonest. And the French? They're fat, and filthy besides.
Welcome to the world of Mark Twain, who died 100 years ago this week. We know Twain best from his novels about life in America, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his time, however, he was more famous for documenting his adventures, overseas. He made his name as a travel writer, not as a novelist....
But Twain's travelogues changed over time, with important lessons for our own day. From the scornful, often bigoted cynic of Innocents Abroad, Twain evolved into a passionate defender of diversity. Foreigners were not automatically worse than Americans, he decided; indeed, sometimes they were better.
Yet they remained different to him. Despite his later sensitivity toward other peoples, Twain never doubted that they were - and should be - distinct. That idea continues to pervade our world, discouraging us from mixing and melding in the ways that matter most....
Even as he developed a new appreciation for different countries and cultures, Twain demanded that they stay different. A similar assumption permeates many present-day critiques of "globalization," which is allegedly drowning other traditions in a pallid Western gruel. Thanks to film, TV, and the Internet, people are becoming more like us. And we don't like it any more than Twain did.
But why not? In defending "traditional" cultures from the Western behemoth, we make ourselves the arbiters of tradition itself. And we dismiss the dreams and desires of non-Western peoples who might have their own good reasons to change.
On the centennial of Mark Twain's death, let's renew his commitment to human freedom and difference. But let's also insist that all remain free to alter their differences as they see fit. Only then will we realize the common humanity that should bind us all.
Read entire article at Philadelphia Inquirer
Italians are superstitious. Portuguese are lazy. Turks are dishonest. And the French? They're fat, and filthy besides.
Welcome to the world of Mark Twain, who died 100 years ago this week. We know Twain best from his novels about life in America, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his time, however, he was more famous for documenting his adventures, overseas. He made his name as a travel writer, not as a novelist....
But Twain's travelogues changed over time, with important lessons for our own day. From the scornful, often bigoted cynic of Innocents Abroad, Twain evolved into a passionate defender of diversity. Foreigners were not automatically worse than Americans, he decided; indeed, sometimes they were better.
Yet they remained different to him. Despite his later sensitivity toward other peoples, Twain never doubted that they were - and should be - distinct. That idea continues to pervade our world, discouraging us from mixing and melding in the ways that matter most....
Even as he developed a new appreciation for different countries and cultures, Twain demanded that they stay different. A similar assumption permeates many present-day critiques of "globalization," which is allegedly drowning other traditions in a pallid Western gruel. Thanks to film, TV, and the Internet, people are becoming more like us. And we don't like it any more than Twain did.
But why not? In defending "traditional" cultures from the Western behemoth, we make ourselves the arbiters of tradition itself. And we dismiss the dreams and desires of non-Western peoples who might have their own good reasons to change.
On the centennial of Mark Twain's death, let's renew his commitment to human freedom and difference. But let's also insist that all remain free to alter their differences as they see fit. Only then will we realize the common humanity that should bind us all.