VLVL II: FDR

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

* "And other grandfolks could be heard arguing the perennial question 
of whether the United States still lingered in a prefascist twilight,
or whether that darkness had fallen long stupefied years ago, and the
light they thought they saw was coming only from millions of Tubes all 
showing the same bright-colored shadows. One by one, as other voices
joined in, the names began --- some shouted, some accompanied by spit, 
the old reliable names good for hours of contention, stomach distress,
and insomnia --- Hitler, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, 
Reagan, Kissinger, that collection of names and their tragic interweaving
that stood not constellated above in any nightwide remoteness of light,
but below, diminished to the last unfaceable American secret, to be 
pressed, each time deeper, again and again beneath the meanest of random
soles, one fermenting leaf on the forest floor that nobody wanted to turn
over, because of all that lived, virulent, waiting, just beneath." (371f)


.... Last sentence sounds like an appealing mixture of Lovecraft and 
Proust ... What interests me here this cold sunny morning is the novel's
construction of FDR ... Must admit that I did not quite get it ... One
thing to note in the passage itself is the fact that the first and the 
last of the given names are of German origin ... (btw, is it true that 
people in New York speak the first syllable in the New Deal president's
name not like rooster yet like rose?) ... Another that the text diagnoses
"their tragic interweaving": though this doesn't make sense for all the 
names (what's so 'tragic' about the CIA?), it perhaps does for FDR, whom 
Thomas Mann called the "Anti-Hitler" who, wrote Mann, "combines the kindness
of the dove with the snake's smartness". So, in what regard could one call
Franklin D. Roosevelt a "fascist"?  For leading Amerika into the war against
Nazi Germany and Japan (cf. 77)? Hardly, imo. More sense the labeling might 
make regarding the concentration camps FDR did let build for Japanese Americans; 
taken the novel's interest in Japan it's strange that - correct me if I'm 
wrong - these do not play any role at all. A-and labor? Here the left legend 
about the fascist character of the New Deal simply has it wrong. "If large
corporations came out of World War II benifiting from a stable ordered, and
rapidly growing economy, that was no evidence that the New Deal was simply a 
'corporate liberal' plot to extend the corporate hegemony. The NRA, banking
and securities reform, and deficit spending --- all seen by radical critics 
as devices to perpetuate conservative and business strength --- were all at 
the time bitterly opposed by their supposed beneficiaries. The war, rather than
the New Deal was responsible for the restored popular legitimacy of corporate
leaders and the close alliance of the industrial-military complex./ It is not
easy to see how the New Deal could have pursued more radical or effective 
policies. The economic emergency of 1933 created constraints as well as 
opportunities. The chance to nationalise the banks was largely illusory when 
the nation's capital and cash ressources had to be unfrozen as quickly as 
possible. Corporation with businessmen in the NRA was inescapable if NRA codes
were to be implemented quickly in the interest of recovery (...) The New Deal
may have failed to disturb the basic structure of American business, but it did
appear to have facilitated the formation of a countervailing force in the trade
unions movement. The 1930s saw the largest ever growth in union membership in a 
single decade in both absolute and relative terms: trades union membership 
trebled ..." (Anthony J. Badger: The New Deal. The Depression Years, 1933-1940. 
New York 1989: Hill and Wang, pp. 116ff). So if someone can explain to me what
FDR's "unfaceable American secret" is and where the "prefascist twilight" does 
come from....this would be really helpful --

KFL +

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"The spits were joined by a bridge, as was the inner of the two, Old Thumb, with the
city of Vineland, which curved the length of the harbor's shoreline, both spans being
graceful examples of the concrete Art Deco bridges built all over the Northwest by the
WPA during the Great Depression. Zoyd, who was driving, came at last up a long forest-
lined grade and cresting saw the trees fold away, as there below, swung dizzily into
view, came Vineland, all the geometry of the bay neutrally filtered under pre-storm
clouds, the crystalline openwork arcs of the pale bridges, a tall power-plant stack 
whose plume blew straight north, meaning rain on the way, a jet in the sky ascending
from Vineland International south of town, the Corps of Engineers marina, with salmon
boats, power cruisers, and day sailors all docked together, and spilling uphill from 
the shoreline a couple of sqare miles crowded with wood Victorian houses, Ouonset 
sheds, postwar prefab ranch and split-level units, little trailer parks, lumber-baron
floridity, New Deal earnestness. And the federal building ..." (316f)