The People's History & the Cold War

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown
>
> romantic escapism, can experience vicariously. Melville is a good
> crank. Early on he is a bit of hack too. He, like Bartleby, copies,
> though he often gives credit. But Melville never claims a history
> degree or a teacher's tenure; he is but the Usher to a Grammar School,
> a Sub-Sub Librarian. In Nabokov's terms, a major writer not a minor
> one. For Melville, like Pynchon is an enchanter. Zinn is a political
> dunce next to these men. Wy then we know what we are about here.

there is that.

there might be more insight in Zeitsuss exhorting the alligator
hunters than in a People's History account of a labor movement,
although I can't say, not having read the latter...

I do know that the Zeitsuss passage stays with me, and branches out
nicely to provide a framework and shelter for some of my views on
labor...

-- sitting and thinking about it, there's a something there that for
my money is different from a slew of facts, not really a viewpoint,
not an emotional reaction either, there's a twinkle in the eye that
comes from contemplating how Profane and the bums are an audience for
a labor organizer deprived of his perquisites...

the very real slings and arrows they suffered on their long path to
the alligator hunt, described succinctly one by one, the succinct
descriptions knitted together into the Long Sentence leading into the
passage...

the leadership Zeitsuss evinces bent onto the framework of simply
ensuring the parceling out of the duties at hand without the
additional satisfaction of the other facets of being a leader,
presiding over a growing workforce, negotiating for improvements,
building solidarity

the unreal nature of the task somewhat similar to so many of the
enterprises that absorb people's labor and intelligence sending them
to be surrounded by alligators (after setting out to drain the swamp),
to create things of dubious (or even negative) utility, to respond to
fanciful threats with real force...

the turning away from the labor message on the part of the workers
toward intoxication and foolish pleasures

just to list inaccurately a few of the associations...(without
conveying the pathos and humor) ...but if Zinn throws out a list of
facts without a similar richness in his thought-structure, still like
Profane's birth in a Hoovertown shanty, isn't it worth something to
put them out there?