ATDTDA (2): "regular Americans" (50.34)

[Paul Nightingale]

Something odd, indeed.

Throughout the novel to date anarchism has been broached as a threatening
Other, the topic raised to be put down abruptly. Lindsay's reference, "a
sinister affliction" (6) sets the tone, significantly enough in connection
to James' The Princess Casamassima, a novel in which anarchism is forever
out of reach of the main characters. Then Nate denounces "that gang of
anarchistic murderers" (25), and even "anarchistic scum" (43).

In America's Culture of Terrorism, Violence: Capitalism and the Written Word
(University of North Carolina Press, 2003) Jeffory A. Clymer describes
"cultural narratives spun out to represent and make sense of sudden
violence" (38). In the chapter on Haymarket he continues:

"In the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing, the mass mediation of disaster
that the telegraph and new printing technology helped to make possible
intersected in clear, material ways with the prosecuting attorney's desire
to produce a national culture that had no space for radical anarchists, bomb
throwers or not." (41)

It is this writing of terrorism that AtD deals with, and Lew's function is
to challenge the dominant narrative. Repeatedly, he claims (37, 43,) to know
nothing of politics and/or anarchism; and Nate suggests he "get educated"
(43). Which, one might say, is what does happen.

For the first time, then, the text offers us a reading of anarchism that
doesn't quote the culture of terrorism; it offers a reading that does
challenge, while adopting Lew's pov, the "general assumption ... that
labouring men and women were all more or less evil, surely misguided, and
not quite American, maybe not quite human" (50).