Walt Whitman, of course, is no exception. After putting my John Irving novel where it belonged – on the donation pile – I took a book I’ve owned for more than a decade down from the shelf and immersed myself for a couple of weeks in the life and times of our country’s most infamous dirty old man. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography by David S. Reynolds is my kind of history. It paints pictures not only of what the poet was doing and thinking and writing but it also frames those pictures with lore about other overlapping happenings. Before reading I thought the term ‘cultural biography’ was a bit grandiose, but I now believe it’s perfect.
Here, just for fun, are a few familiar themes, straight out of the mid- to late-1800s.
The country rallied around war back then, so the story goes, as we do today (allegedly). Walt Whitman considered the Civil War the heart and soul of not only his career but his entire life. And in a way that’s frightfully familiar to me, he considered Abraham Lincoln not only the president but the redeemer. The war, in Walt Whitman’s day, put all the family troubles into perspective and gave order and purpose to the general slovenliness that had taken hold in places like Manhattan and Brooklyn. Reading about it made me wonder if our current adventures in other lands were, in some sense, an answer to the cultural malaise that had set in after nearly a decade of ‘liberal’ presidential politics. We needed to clear our heads, it seems to me, of all that sleaze, all those blowjobs. I wonder at the perfect timing of certain incidents in terms of directing the country down a path of restored national glory. Most of all, I wondered about our not-new tendency to make heroes of the soldiers. Here’s a good one from one of the war hospitals: “While at Falmouth, he saw some of the war dead, including a soldier who prompted this line in draft: ‘Young man: I think this face of yours is the face of my dead Christ.’” [pg. 411] Holy shit, Uncle Walt.
Gay marriage was not a problem for the Christians back then. In fact, gay sex wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t considered. Besides, they were focused on something far more immediate: Masturbation. Known as ‘the solitary vice,’ masturbation “ … was a major concern of purity reformers … [with] 60 to 70 percent of twelve- and thirteen-year old boys [masturbating] with some going to what Graham called ‘the still more loathsome and criminal extent of an unnatural commerce with each other!’ (probably a reference to mutual masturbation).” [pg. 199] As they are today, the piously inclined were stuck – as if bounded there by steel and concrete – in other people’s underwear. I have never noticed before, but Walt Whitman’s poetry alludes – quite often – to jacking off, which was, of course, a big problem because it was killing young people “ … by the thousands.” [pg. 199]
Remember in 2008 when it was slowly coming to the surface that the nation’s bank account had been robbed by people who continued to receive bonuses that exceeded – by a long shot – the average annual household income? Remember how the word ‘populist’ was used to dismiss and ridicule anyone and everyone who asked: Who stole the goddamn money? Oh well, said the television experts, that’s just populist rhetoric. For three decades prior to 1865 political speeches – which featured poetry readings, the warm-up bands of yesteryear, if you will – were well attended and debated and discussed at length. “The driving forces behind oratory in the antebellum years were populist politics …” [pg. 167]. And, this: “Voter turnout in the presidential election of 1840 was a remarkable 83.4 percent, and the elections from 1848 to 1872 averaged a very high 75.1 percent, in contrast to the 1932-92 period, when it averaged only 56.3 percent.” [pg 167] Is it any wonder that the banking people who own the television people will not tolerate anything ‘populist’? People might start voting, I suppose.
One of the crudest spectacles of our time, for me, is the practice of throwing litter onto stadium fields after or during a game. Well, “Whitman would long remember the primitive early theaters, with their dark entrances and the stark rows of plain wooden benches where the audience sat … Food was brought along and freely eaten during performances. Working-class viewers in the upper tier regularly tossed bones and other dinner remains onto those seated below.” [pg. 157] I don’t go to plays much, but I have to admit that that particular tradition sounds like fun.
Finally, the business about whether or not Walt Whitman was gay – and, if so, how so and how much and how often – is something I found tiresome. The discussion of it is endless, with one theory and school of thought after another trotted out and beaten practically to death. It is fruitless, in my opinion, to try to hang on the erect penis any sort of academic theory. So I’ll get straight to it: Walt Whitman’s sexuality, in his own words, reminded me of many of the ads I see on the men-seeking-men section of craigslist. Here’s one, from a letter to a farmhand – he liked them a little rough around the edges – called Edward Catell, with whom he’d had a “brief but intense” relationship of some sort. He wrote: “There is nothing in it that I think I do wrong, or am ashamed of, but I wish it kept entirely between you & me - & - I shall feel very much hurt & displeased if you don’t keep the whole thing & the present letter entirely to yourself.” [pg. 526] Like many more recent homos I know – including myself – Edward Catell didn’t take kindly to the as-you-go rules of secrecy, so in spite of Walt Whitman’s directive, he didn’t keep the letter or its implications to himself, entirely or otherwise.
