Thursday, September 17, 2009

The message of Uncle Tom's Cabin - Forgotten Classics

A superior podcast recommendation is Julie Davis's reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the podcast Forgotten Classics. First of all, she reads the story in a most excellent fashion, bringing it forcefully to life. In addition she helps the listener with special terms and with explanations and interpretations she picked up from her research. Last but not least, she engages in dialog with her audience and makes their reactions part of the evaluation of the book and the reading. Julie makes this into more than an audio book, this is the Uncle Tom experience.

The Uncle Tom experience is, for me at least, a recovery of the book. A recovery from my memory - I read the book as a child - and a recovery from the standard criticism that has been delivered to us. The book would be too obedient, too stereotype and eventually racist and not serving the cause of the suppressed slaves and their descendants at all. Julie attempts to refute that and allow the book a come-back as a piece of literature and a sincere pamphlet for the sake of the oppressed. By all means, the alleged soft and sweet romanticism of the book, is quite refuted. Uncle Tom's Cabin is quite a grim book, even if it is devoutly religious, moralistic and concealed in its references to violence and sex.

The accusation of racism is not so easy to set aside and Julie and I have been talking back and forth about the subject. As we progress in the book, I have found Harriet Beecher Stowe at times outright racist and then outright anti-racist. Putting all the ideological passages together, the overall picture is not so clear. Therefore, I would suggest to put that aspect aside and not take the book or the writer to be of superior political, philosophical insight. Rather, the quality of the book, we discover more and more, lies with the drama and the humanity.

In the latest episode, where Julie reads chapters 35 through 37 of Uncle Tom's Cabin, she makes a remark that can be expanded upon. She says of the character Cassy, that she represents the worst of the plight of being a slave. It did not help her she grew up as the woman of an estate; she was sold as a slave after all. And it did not help her to have good masters along the way; she ended up with Simon Legree and the hellish existence that went with that.

This is not just true for Cassy, it is true for all characters in the book, even those that end up well, or are not slaves at all. The brilliance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, I would argue, turns out to be that Stow has succeeded in building a multi-charactered drama in which being a slave or a slave-holder for that matter is corrupting in the end. No good intentions and humane treatment can help the ever present danger of deliverance to the downside of slavery, to the excesses. For those who are not slaves, it presents too big a responsibility. For those who are slaves, it proves an unjust fate necessarily intertwined with their bounds. This, possibly, explains why the book was such a tremendous success even to the extent it can be argued it helped abolition come about. Stowe showed the American society their was no good way around slavery.

Apart from that being a drama that is extremely well crafted, it can easily be taken into a wider social context of subservience. How is the slavery of Uncle Tom's Cabin fundamentally different from segregation, low-wage countries, poverty and other social circumstances that render parts of society or the wider world powerless and another part in comfortable denial they can alleviate the powerlessness by their humanity.

Picture: Title-page illustration by Hammatt Billings (wikimedia commons)

More Forgotten Classics:
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Forgotten Classics,
The hidden opinions of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
The racism of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Uncle Tom's Cabin revisited,
Cooking with Forgotten Classics.

Jan Wolkers - Het Marathon Interview 1986

Hij is er weer. Het allerleukste Marathon Interview uit de reeks. Ronald van den Boogaard spreekt met Jan Wolkers. Het was 1986. Het Marathon Interview was nog maar juist uitgevonden. De uitzendingen zouden 5 uur duren en niemand wist wat te verwachten. Voordat ik er de eerste keer naar luisterde (via podcast dan wel) en over schreef had ik al geluisterd naar de interviews met Kees Fens en Johnny van Doorn en daarin leken de gast en de interviewer op voorhand al moe van de lange zit en was lamlendigheid troef in het eerste uur, zodat ik het vervolg maar meteen opgaf. En daarna schreef ik over het interview met Jan Wolker het volgende:

Ik begon al bijna te denken dat 5 uur, in alle gevallen teveel van het goede is, maar toen begon ik aan het interview dat Ronald van den Boogaard in 1986 had met Jan Wolkers. Dat begint niet alleen goed, dat wordt ook steeds beter. Zo onvoorstelbaar goed zelfs, dat Cor Galis bij de aankondiging van een volgend uur de heren vraagt of het niet wat minder kan. Waarom zo'n oproep, dat snap ik niet helemaal, maar het is, hoe krom ook, wel een sterke indicatie hoe dit sprankelende radio is, die je aan je oordopjes gekluisterd houdt.

Wat mij geweldig bekoort in het interview is het onverstoorbare zelfbewustzijn van Wolkers. Hij stelt dat hij zich niet voorbereid heeft en zo komt het ook over. En zo gedraagt hij zich impromptu en zo vers van de lever is hij geweldig authentiek en authentiek geweldig. Voeg daarbij dat de interviewer zich uitstekend ingelezen heeft en Wolkers waardeert, zonder te vervallen in ademloze bewondering en de twee heren gaan geanimeerd op pad en laten elkaar niet meer los. Op zeker moment laten ook de radiopauzes (nieuws op het hele uur en een kleine storing) de heren niet meer van hun a propos brengen. Je zit er als stille deelnemer aan het intieme gesprek bij. Wat een delicaat genoegen.

Meer Het Marathon Interview:
Henk Hofland (o.a.),
Diepenhorst en andere politici,
W.F. de Gaay Fortman,
Freek de Jonge,
Het Marathon Interview - vernieuwde VPRO podcast.

Meer Ronald van den Boogaard:
Marathon Interview met Arie Kleywegt,
Ersatz TV,
Marathon Interview met G.A. Wagner,
NRC speelt Radio,
Marathon Interview met Ina Muller-Van Ast.