My dissatisfaction with Thomas Hine’s Rise and Fall of the American Teenager prompted me to reread Grace Palladino’s TEENAGERS: An American History which confirmed my memory it was a better book.
Like Hine, Palladino sees the development of universal high school as the thing that transformed teens from simply “young people” to a distinct demographic with a separate culture, whether that culture involved swing music, Sinatra, going steady, rock-and-roll, Beatlemania or student protest — not to mention pushing back against adult standards and hypocrisies. And in general, showing that contrary to nostalgia there was never a time when teens did as they were told, minded their elders and never talked back.
As with Halberstam’s The Fifties, however, rereading makes me aware of what Palladino doesn’t cover. Nothing about gays, not much about high school sports and not much on any form of pop culture other than music (other than nothing that TV teens weren’t terribly realistic). I’m also not sure that rebellion is the essence of teenager — for every hip teen there was probably one who played by the rules (Palladino doesn’t seem to think those existed). Overall, though, worth reading.
EJACULATE RESPONSIBLY: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Blair argues that rather than telling women to avoid pregnancy by keeping their knees together, we should be telling men to keep their pants zipped. Condoms properly used are highly effective and have fewer side effects than IUDs or birth control pills; vasectomies are simply surgeries and easier to reverse than a woman having her tubes tied (and doctors have much less hesitation about granting a man’s request). And unplanned pregnancies and abortions result 100 percent from men ejaculating into a woman.
The problem, of course, is that our culture puts all the responsibility on women and none on men. Even a slight inconvenience for men is more objectionable than women suffering serious pain (from giving birth, from IUD problems). And men’s responsibility, personal or financial, for the baby, isn’t enforced the way women are. So while I think Blair’s argument make excellent sense, it’ll be a long, uphill slog making them happen.
AMERICAN VIKING: How the Norse Sailed Into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock looks at the history of Norse exploration of North America (both the archeological facts on the ground and the speculation based on Norse sagas) and how Americans began embracing Leif Ericson and similar Scandinavian figures as early discoverers and therefore founding Americans (though the concept of “viking” was as much a pop-culture image than historical reality).
As Whittock explains, the colonial era accepted early English explorers as the important visitors to North America, then began favoring Columbus when the revolution made Englishness less desirable. When Italians began emigrating to the US in the 1800s, anti-immigrant sentiment made Columbus as a founder equally unappealing — but Vikings, you couldn’t ask for a more WASP figure than them!
And this leads us into the different ways different Americans have embraced their supposed Viking heritage, from supposedly authentic Viking runestones turning up in the Midwest to the far right’s embrace of Odinism (the Vikings serving as a Virginia Dare-like symbol of racial purity) to assorted marketing efforts cashing in on the Viking reputation for courage and manliness. Worth a read.
Covers by Nick Cardy (top) and Joe Kubert (bottom). All rights to covers remain with current holders.
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