Still More Noted Things
Ken Heineman, whose book, God is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America (New York University Press), appears in a new paperback edition this fall;
KC Johnson, whose book, Congress and the Cold War (Cambridge University Press), will be published this fall; and
Jonathan Reynolds, whose book with Erik Gilbert, Trading Tastes: Commodity and Cultural Exchange To 1750 (Prentice Hall) has just been published.
Historians Proliferate! Congratulations to:
Russell Arben and Melissa Fox. Russell recently moved to Western Illinois University and Mrs. Fox is on schedule to give birth to a fourth little Fox in about six months. He'll keep us posted on all that at In Medias Res.
Richard and Leanne Bailey who are expecting a little Bailey in about six months. Richard is teaching at Indiana University, Southeast, while he finishes his dissertation at the University of Kentucky. He keeps us posted about that at Etcetera Whatever, but if you want to keep up on the little one, try Baby Bailey's Blog: A Nine Month Odyssey.
Sex: Louis Menand,"Stand By Your Man: The Strange Liaison of Sartre and Beauvoir," New Yorker, 19 September, examines the complicated sexual lives of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. This is fairly sordid stuff, exploitation parading itself as liberation. There's no question but that Sartre and Beauvoir exploited many other people. The question, says Menand, is whether Sartre exploited Beauvoir or the reverse. In any case, their exploitations became the essence of their own relationship. Scott McLemee's"Things Done in Secret," Inside Higher Ed, 22 September, reviews a new book about Harvard's star chamber proceedings against gay students in the 1920s.
What's in a Name? Stonewall Jackson & the Death of God: Almost forty years ago, Thomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer's"death of God" theology was headline news around the country. He didn't intend it that way, but briefly, in a moment that seemed near apocalyptic for lots of other reasons, as well, the"death of God" stood as shorthand for the death of many things: illusions about domestic reform and international ventures, hope for newly established third world countries, belief in the essential innocense of American influence in the world. All of those memories came flooding back when I read Brad Johnson's"A Theological Memoir" at The Weblog. The Weblog also scored a post by Altizer, himself.
But Johnson's post took me to T. J. J. Altizer's"Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir." As often as I'd seen his name, it had never occurred to me that Altizer was named for Stonewall Jackson. The Southern family, an alcoholic father, a domineering mother, a seminary diagnosis of mental illness – it rang lots of bells. But he's named for Stonewall Jackson. I've often wondered about people and their namesakes. Would we still think about Martin Luther King in quite the same way if he had retained his original name, Michael King? Or does being Martin Luther King lend the presumption of"here I stand" in our heads? Or, take another example: Huey P. Newton. It never occurred to me that Newton was a namesake until I learned that he was born in Louisiana and, after making the connection with Huey P. Long, I've never thought about Newton in quite the same way: another Southern demagogue, but now dressed in black and translated to the West Coast. It's an odd permutation.
I suspect that Altizer wouldn't put much stock in being a namesake. For most of his career, he used only the initials and undiscerning people like me saw nothing in them. I really need Mark Grimsley's help here, but I've read enough memoirs of the period to know that, for many Southerners, the death of Stonewall Jackson was the death of Confederate hope. And the tragic realization was that his own men had killed him."God is dead," said Nietzsche."God remains dead. And we have killed him."