madrach's blog

The Federal Writers Project gave voice to America.  By detailing small aspects of the country and providing insight for travellers the writers took on a larger project.  While reading the Philadelphia WPA Guide I was struck by how bias the writers voice was.  He documented the city of Philadelphia uncovering the history of the city. He also passed judgment of the people of the city. Not only do the guides tell about landmarks and attractions, they also tell about the people. The rhetoric that the writer uses serves to debase the subject matter, skewing the reader’s perception of the city. They talk about racial discrimination, attitudes, and brief cultural moments.  The guides therefore serve more as an anthropological catalogue of the 1930’s American culture and less as guidebooks.
            By writing guide books that told the history of the cities the writers were also writing the history of the time period.  They include modern views of the city, the interpretation of history of that city in that time, and also the political views of different places across the country.  Reading the documents carefully gives you a closer historical perspective.  Although the Federal Government sought to create a job for these writers that would restrict them from writing propaganda, they were not able to keep out a majority of the views of these writers.
            The historical nature of the WPA tour guides brings up another interesting point about the United States. Realizing that the American tourism industry was lacking in available resources, the Government commissioned these writers to make guidebooks.  History books had been written before about large events in American History, but the extensive amount of historical research and detail all catalogued in one place seems to be the first and maybe only time that such an extensive history of America had even been written.  This database of information, although limited by the time period they were written in, does seemingly contribute to American history. 
            When we travel to different countries part of our experience is manufactured by the guidebooks we read.  We rely on them for factual knowledge about the place we are staying. We rely on them to guide us to the most important attractions and sights.  By reading not only the history of the development of the WPA guidebooks but also the process by which they were written through, I have started to question my reliance on guidebooks.  The knowledge I learn from the books I use abroad may have undergone a similar process when being written. If that is true, then the opinions about the place, the choices to guide the tourist to one sight over another, my perception of the place I am traveling, has ultimately been shaped by a completely subjective opinion.  This idea transforms the mode by which we travel.  How historically accurate is the information we are being given?  Who has decided which monuments are attributed with the greatest importance?  How do we know we are really getting the authentic experience?

“The cave is something very special in the roadside life. Not quite fish and not quite fowl, it combines the art of nature with the art of entrepreneur. Yet it is pure roadside, for it is an institution built by and for the roadside.” (58 Agee)
 
If you haven’t made it to Wall Drug in the scenic state of South Dakota, don’t worry you haven’t missed much. Miles before your destination a slew of road signs alert you of the coming attraction. “Wall Drug: 500 Miles” “Wall Drug: Family Fun” “Don’t Miss Wall Drug”. Located just after 1800’s Town and right before you hit Dinosaur Land you will find yourself directly in front of one of the most fascinating roadside attractions to emerge in the United States.  Wall Drugs’ rise to fame was through simple H2O.   Small towns had not yet developed roadside restaurants, motels, and the rest of the roadside infrastructure to accommodate the influx of travelers and migrants during the 1930’s.  Those passing through Wall South Dakota were thirsty. One man understood this need and began giving away ice water. For Free. There is certainly nothing an American loves more then something free. Add that with the marketable idea of hydration and the small drug store was in business.
            Now you may be asking yourself, how does free ice water merit a family attraction? What else is there to see in this town? Not much. The entire town of Wall has now become a giant souvenir shop. Every store is geared around the idea of the drug store. Wall Drug has developed into something much more then just a drugstore. It now sells all sorts of American paraphernalia. American flags, bear heads, soda pop, tomahawks, dream catchers, and I even spotted an “I’ve been to Wall Drug” T-Shirt. The spirit of consumerism permeates the air. Commodification at it’s finest.  The entire experience is a bit overwhelming when you begin to realize that there isn’t ANYTHING worth seeing at all.
            While the New Deal certainly boosted the tourist industry and undoubtedly provided more jobs and an increased interest in nationalism, there seems to be a giant paradox here.  Americans sought to educate themselves on the countries history, yet they often fabricated or exaggerated that history.  Was there really anything so significant to historicize in the first place?  While on the surface it looks as if America was beginning to get in touch with its roots, maybe even find something “real” they were actually operating on a capitalist venture. 
            While Wall Drug turned out to be far more entertaining then The “Famous” Corn Palace (I won’t even begin to tell you about it), there was still something eerily melancholy about the place.  They were still giving free ice water but the novelty was lost.  The history was gone. There was no more authenticity. It felt like polyester when it should have been silk.

          There’s nothing like that moment when your ubiquitous elementary school teacher asks you for the first time what you aspire to be when you grow up. “You can be anything you want,” she tells you. A statement, that through its liberation procures a feeling of both excitement and anxiety. It is not until you are a in the midst of college admissions that these options really start to disappear.  It is not until your junior year of college that you realize that these options were never really there.  At this same moment you understand that the idea of personal perseverance in the face of all adversity will not always, unfailingly, lead to success. There are other factors, bigger and more powerful then yourself that determine the outcome of your success. The disillusionment of the American Dream ensues. This disillusion seems to have become a large part of the myth of the American Dream
          Through the character of Lemuel Pitkin Nathanael West depicts the decomposition of the American dream.  Using a series of narrative devices West constructs his novel in an unconventional manner that only adds to the confusion and sense of loss. First, West interjects the voice of the narrator into the beginning and end of each chapter.  His omnipresence gives us the sense that the characters are immature and that their fate is destined. It causes a sense of helplessness for the reader.  Throughout his journey Lemuel Pitkin’s physical body begins to decompose. He loses various appendages and is constantly being beaten down by others. Scenes of bloody attacks plague his journey.  Thus the decomposition of the mental apparatus of the American dream manifests itself physically on Pitkin’s body bolstering the notion of its falseness.
           What I found most interesting about the way that West explores American culture is that he interjects very symbolic summarizing symbols of American culture into the story. Each symbol explains a part of the way that we interact in society. Some of these symbols are big black limousines, West Point, the Alamo, the Democratic Party, small family farms, the train, small town bullies and other specific symbolic signifiers in America. These elements function together to bolster the notion of the myth of American Dream. By satirizing the importance of all of these specific parts of American culture, we are given an even more insightful parody of the American dream. 
           Part of the insight that WEst provides makes us look closer at what we hold as stigmas in America.  By identifying certain key elements of American culture West also questions their validity.  At the end of the novel I found myself questioning the basis of the American dream as a whole.  How does our generation view this cultural construction?  After reading A Cool Million I can’t help but thinking that for our generation the total rejection of and completely cautious nature by which we question the American dream has become part of the idea as a whole. It is no longer a pure ideal. It has been tainted by years of disillusionment and disappointment.  As children we were told we could achieve the object of our hearts desire.  Everyone one of us has come across a series of difficulties in this process, in most cases causing us to lose this sense of faith in the idea of hard work always achieving success. Plays such as Death of A Salesman ecplore the consequences of this kind of dissillusionment.  The failure to achieve the highly lauded and fabricated American dream causes strife, anxiety, and disapointment. Has this become part of modern American culture?

“Wherever he went that winter, whether in New Orleans along icy docks or on Railroad street in Baton Rouge, he saw the vast army of America’s homeless ones…” (Algren 231)
 
“The car slipped into the ditch several times, but at length we drove into the grassy yard of the house in which I was born. It was in the last stages of dilapidation… ‘let’s not sit here,’ I said impatiently. The desolation of the place intensified my dejection.” (Conroy 253)
 
The concept of home carries endless significance for every individual.  The blocks that constitute this concept are different for every person.  Home can be where you were born, where you family is, or simply the place where you choose to rest your head.  Having a home is a crucial aspect of travel because it is what differentiates going on a trip from moving, or being homeless.  In the beginning of the semester we discussed whether the homeless migrants we were reading about were traveling or doing something else and we came to the conclusion that what they were doing was migrating since they had left their home completely. When we are traveling home becomes the constant in a world of variables. It is the place which we leave and the one where we dream of coming back to. We compare our destinations to it and contrast our discomfort against the comforts of home. 
 
Reading these texts written by hobos, vagabonds, and homeless writers we rarely see mention of their homes. When they are mentioned it is not with nostalgia or longing but more with resentment or anger at having been put on the road.  Many times they do not even mention the idea of home at all and are instead cast out into the homeless life.  I find this idea of homelessness very interesting if we are to look at the homes as putting our travels into a context.  Being able to reference a certain place with certain people where you can also identify a level of social norm allows you to maintain these social norms outside of the home.  If one does not associate with any solid place and becomes an inhabitant of nowhere, forced to adapt to a transient lifestyle these social structures disappear. Homeless people are on the outskirts of arbitrary social norms and therefore are not subject to the same standards that others are because of their home. I think this is why when we are reading these texts we are often times struck by certain events that seem shocking. There are no rules of social conduct and so anything goes. They have to be built up from the ground.  I also think that this is what we mean when people say that they are trying to find something that is more “real”.  Being contained and defined by a certain place, in this case I would call it ones home, constrains your behavior by the social structures of the place you are in.  To many these habituated tendencies are not “real”.  When one is cast out of this type of society and thrown into unknown territory they are forced to rely on biological and raw emotional responses.

Yesterday afternoon I walked down Broadway towards the Wells Fargo bank on 10th street. I opened the door to the bank. Seated on the floor was a homeless women who I will venture to guess was mentally handicapped. She was lying on the floor in complete poverty, helpless and carrying all of her worldly belongings. I froze in my steps.  Here I was retrieving money from the ATM machine and here was the picture of poverty in our country in front of my eyes.  I turned around and walked away trying to reconcile these two things in my mind.  In New York we are so immune to the reality of poverty.  Walking to class I encounter at least three different people asking for money.  How many of us stop to help? I will admit that giving these homeless people money will not fix the problem. The usual hesitations arise.  How do we know what they will do with the money? How do we know they are not lying? However, as I walked into that Wells Fargo bank yesterday I could not help but wonder what I could possibly do to alleviate the tremendous amount of poverty around me.
 
Waiting For Nothing addresses the hobo lifestyle and tribulations from an honest and direct point of view. Thomas Kromer uses the language of the vagrants to draw a picture for the reader that allows us to feel as we are experiencing these events alongside Kromer. While reading the book, feeling that I was not an outside observer but a character within the story, the problems that plague our current society were brutally impressed upon me.  It troubles me to be reading stories of poverty, hunger, and homelessness with such a futile tone and realize that what happened during the Great Depression is happening in some form today.  I sympathize with Kromer because I am reading his writing from an intellectual standpoint. I can analyze what is going on from a historical perspective and view it as insightful and important. Yet, as I pass by a homeless man asking for money from my down the street I walk quickly by.  Instead of seeing their world through Kromer’s struggle I instead revert to fear, or some emotion that does not allow me to help.  I become the people in Waiting for Nothing who refuse to give Kromer money.  It is hard to blame them when I can’t put myself above their actions.
 
In the afterword the writer compares Kromer’s work to those of existentialists such as Sartre and Beckett. While I undoubtedly see the similarities between existential philosophy and writing with Kromer’s writing, I feel that viewing the situation as coming from an existential nature predisposes the problem to be unanswerable.  This is not a question that cannot be solved.  No solution has yet been fail proof but I think that in order to solve poverty and unemployment it is detrimental to see it as existential.  Waiting for Nothing bring the reader closer to the problem and thus makes us analyze the problem from a more personal viewpoint.

“In this, the fourth time that Boxcar Bertha has been reissued, we feel obliged for the first time to make it plain that this is in fact a work of fiction. This takes nothing away from the book as far as we’re concerned; it just makes it more worthwhile to know something more about the true author, who was a highly unusual and fascinating fellow” (201).
 
Reading this sentence I could not help but chuckle to myself about how backwards it seems.  The fact that Boxcar Bertha is indeed a work of fiction does completely change the story.  The story is sentimental and interjects subjective opinion as well as impresses emotional transformation on the characters.  Ben Reitman, the author, was not only male, but he also fabricated a woman out of the stories of many women he had encountered.  While Reitman does not claim the piece to be a strict documentary work, he does bring many troubles of the day onto the table and interjects his opinion about how they are managed.  How are we to gain an accurate insight into the issues of the day if we are subjected to the interpretation of the author?
 
Woody Guthrie in his work Bound for Glory relays a deeply personal tale about his time as a transient. He brings to light the issues that surrounded him while on the road. He writes from personal experience and does not claim emotional transformation in other characters. Guthrie simply writes what he heard or saw. In this way the reader is thus able to form his own opinion about the characters in question. Guthrie does not take sides when he writes about government problems. In one passage Guthrie is searching for work in a well off neighborhood when he encounters a cop. The cop tells Guthrie to get off the land and not to come back. Guthrie writes, “ And he watched me walk away, each of us knowing just about why the other acted like he did” (205).
 
While neither author is completely able to provide an objective view of the transient situation that transpired during the Depression, I prefer the personal account of Woody Guthrie to the fictional tale of Boxcar Bertha.  Reitman cannot get to the heart of the issue if he is speaking through a fictional character. It would have driven home his point more, even if it is a bias opinion, if he had written of his personal experience.  As Richard Reuss notes in his essay “Woody Guthrie and His Folk Tradition” Woody Guthrie’s music was so popular among the American people because he was able to tug at their heartstrings by telling his personal tale.  His stories resonated with many others who had experienced the same things he had.  Neither author can provide us with objective documentary evidence of the hobo culture and government relief during the Depression but Guthrie’s personal accounts evoke more emotion from the reader and personally, inspire me to act more then Reitman’s.
 
Martin Scorsese made a film of Boxcar Bertha that hardly stuck to the fictional tale written by Reitman.  As we discussed in class the other day, visuals can be manipulated to change the viewers opinion and often give a false account of reality. Scorsese’s film, straying even further from the actuality of Reitman’s already fictional work, could not have helped portray the issues of the day any clearer. The issue of visuals and how they represent history and influence our understanding of it is a constant problem only increasing in the digital age.

 
The photo-text books produced during the 1930’s raise a series of issues not only concerning the documentary content but also relating to the tumultuous relationship between photos and text.   Are photos more provocative then text? Do they engage the reader in a discourse separate from literature? What I find interesting about these photo texts is that they engage the photograph as a type of visual narrative. By taking images of the depression they are able to do something that is beyond the written word. We have often talked in class about the writers notion of going out, meeting people, and speaking for those people through their writing. Intrinsically this is problematic. The writer has already brought his own bias to the table.  With documentary writing in particular it is extremely hard to be objective or to let the reader form their own opinion.  

Photography captures a moment in time. While the photographers artistic intention does play a prominent role in the creation of the photograph, the content cannot be changed. Especially when dealing with photos before the digital age, we know that the content of the photograph was not altered. The eyes of the immigrant worker are not fabrications of the photographers artistic imagination but pictures of reality. When viewing photographs we are thus able to form objective opinions about the time and place. Although the photographer guides our eyes to an image, they are not reinterpreting the content of the image. They are unable to change certain fundamental aspects of the photo.

Reading the New York Times article “The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock” raised some interesting issues. The issues of fallacy in some of these photos is brought up in the essay. The author writes about how some claimed that these photographers brought various artifacts into their images in order to provoke a certain feeling. While they may have indeed created false images, they also created a certain discourse around the image. They were able to evoke strong emotions about the image and about the message of the narrative which the image evokes. This is the importance of those photots. When looking at the photos taken by Lange or in You Have Seen Their Faces one cannot say that the photographer set these people up. Their faces are too laden with years of work and hardship. To say this is like saying that photos of men at war were set up as propaganda. 
 

“But just as important with us, I suspect, is the fact that we can’t stay long even in the places we love.  There is no opportunity for lingering disillusionment.”  Pyle, Home Country (468 Pyle) 
 
The notion of traveling is inherently elusive.  People travel for various reasons, to different places, and for different amounts of time.  Each traveler brings his own set of expectations and different background knowledge. Each has a different goal.  However, I really enjoyed Pyle’s explanation of his time as a vagabond on the road because it is a specific type of travel that one can relate to. Pyle categorizes his trip by looking at events in hierarchical order.  He remembers places as being the darkest or the longest time spent somewhere.  I found this interesting because often this is how we look at long trips such as this.  We remember events that held some sort of large and categorizing significance and tend to forget the small things. 
 
Furthermore, I was most interested in the last few paragraphs of Pyle’s essay.  As the quote above explains, Pyle felt that the reason they allowed themselves to remain enchanted by the places they traveled was because they were not able to stay there long enough to see the negative aspects of the places they past and to let those negative aspects settle within them. They left, albeit unhappily, before this could happen and this left them able to keep fond memories of their travels and the places they saw.  I think this aspect of travel is crucial.  We stay just long enough to get the feel of the place and we leave just before we begin to resent it.  This, to me, begs the question of whether traveling allows us to gain a view of the places we visit that is based in reality or whether we impress our own perceptions onto the places we visit.  If we do not really ever feel the negative aspects of a place had we really experienced it?  Are we merely projecting an enchanted view of something foreign onto it?  Similarly, if those we begin a traveling expedition are leaving their home where they are immersed in both positive and negative aspects of, will their always be a bias to the place that they have traveled?
 
Personally, I feel that when I travel I always tend to pass judgment on the place based on a personal bias that reflects not only my education but also my projected hopes of what that place might offer.  This intrinsically sets me up for a perception of the destination that is either partially tainted with disappointment or with increased enchantment.  I do not propose this notion as one that is detrimental to the travel experience, but I think that it should be taken into consideration when traveling.

In his article “Steinbeck’s myth of the Okies” Keith Windschuttle takes issues with the lack of correct historical information relayed in The Grapes of Wrath. Throughout the article he disproves many of the details written in the book including the number of migrant workers, the reality of the dust bowl and amount of information given to the migrant workers. By collecting other historical statistics and reading various articles about the depression Windschuttle urges the reader to understand that Steinbeck’s novel is not one of historical representation laden with informative facts about the great depression but rather a story depicting the triumph of the human spirit. 
 
Reading Windschuttles article was both disheartening and also enlightening. As I was reading The Grapes of Wrath for the second time I was again struck by the enormous statistics given about the great depression.  I thought about what I knew of the historical aspects of the great depression and most of the information I had about it either focused on the New Deal or what I had created in my mind using the information provided by Steinbeck in the novel.  As Windschuttles states most of the information many of us get about the great depression until scholars and historians went searching for more information was given by Steinbeck or other writers with a tendency to dramatize or skew the information they gathered. 
 
Windschuttle also takes issue with the Marxist overtones present within The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck often speaks of the unity of man and with the government run camp Weedpatch he shows the reader how the working class has joined together for the greater good.  The group needs transcend that of the individual.  Windschuttle sites this kind of thinking as emerging from a group of artists who tended towards Marxist theories with whom Steinbeck spent time with.  I could not deny the striking prevalence of Marxist theory within The Grapes of Wrath.  The trajectory of the book moves from focus on the individuals need and experience towards the needs of the group.  The enemies are often individual who do not understand that the bond between a group of people will bring about his success.
 
Reading Windschuttles essay angered me because I am really fond of Steinbeck’s writing and what he set out to do with The Grapes of Wrath.  My initial anger was over this idea that Steinbeck had written one of the great American novels.  When Windschuttle attempted to dislodge this book from its place of importance in my understanding of American culture I was a bit shaken. However, Windschuttle uses a quote from Whittaker Chambers to describe the enduring importance of the book, “Cleared of excrescences the residue s a great human story which made thousands of people, who damned the novel’s phony conclusions, read it. It is the saga of an authentic U.S. farming family who lose their land.  It is the saga of an authentic U.S. farming family who lose their land. They wander, they suffer, but they endure. They are never quite defeated, and their survival is itself a triumph.”  (6) 
 
While you will not find the true facts of the great depression with Steinbeck’s novel what you will find is a story filled with humanistic threads of truth.  Winschuttle did not completely dishearten me, but instead showed me a more accurate way to understand the novel.




Steinbeck's myth of the Okies. Keith Windschuttle. New Criterion. 20.10 (June 2002) p24. FromLiterature Resource Center.

In the beginning of this class we talked a lot about the similarities and differences between the contemporary economic climate and the Great Depression.   After watching Obama’s recent speech to the American people about the American Jobs Act I couldn’t help but think about these comparisons.  Again, our country has been greatly divided into class stratifications. Once again, men who want to work are out of work but cannot find a job.  While the trials associated the Great Depression were technically different then those we are facing today, the fundamental problems and the way we are dealing with them are greatly similar.
 
Obama’s rhetoric and cadence is reminiscent of a preacher’s voice. His dips and lows in his speech bring about this sense of attempting to instill faith in the people.  Steinbeck describes through the character of Jim Casy maintenance of faith within the migrant workers.  Their insistence on having a preacher and their thankfulness of having him along instills this idea that the migrants still remain faithful in the face of adversity.  This spirit they never lose. Obama capitalizes on this spirit in his speeches, creating a sense of hope and camaraderie between workers.

Furthermore, Obama uses shadows of the American myth to create excitement and to describe the plight of the American people.  At one point in his speech he declares, “We have got to start manufacturing and selling more goods around the world stamped with three proud words: made in America, made in North Carolina, made in Raleigh.“ ( "Now is the Time to Act") This ownership of the land, pride in personal property and the art of personal labor is seen within Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as well. Obama is still calling on the shadows of the American dream to help support his campaign.  The notion of property and the connection to the land is still relevant today. People want the rights to property, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as set forth in the constitution. However, Steinbeck has shown us that the American dream myth is extremely faulty and often fails to produce the desired effects. 

Watching Obama speak about the current economic situation in America coupled by the devastating loss of jobs in American seems at times to be a rehashing of this prior depression in our nations history. The scariest part of all is that we have allowed history to, in whatever level of graveness, repeat itself.  Yet, as Steinbeck warns  “ Fear the time when the bombs stop falling when the bombers live… fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is distinctive in the universe” (151). As long as the spirit of resistance still resides within the people then the spirit of man still exists. There is something to be hopeful about.  While I do not think the displaced workers in America today are mobilizing in the same way we read about in The Grapes of Wrath I do think, and certainly hope that the spirit of resistance has not been lost.

"Now is The Time to Act". <http://www.barackobama.com/get-involved>.

 

 “And when the crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted or the growth. Men ate what they had not raised what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.” (36)
 
One of the main themes running throughout The Grapes of Wrath is the divide between the people and the land. This occurred and deepened as a consequence of the migrant farmers migration west in the 1930’s. I find it really interesting how Steinbeck uses food as a method to expand on this theme.  In the quote above he notes that men no longer knew where their food had come for or had any physical relation to the food they ate. This disconnect between the people and the labor of creating food has greater implications in that the food is not engendered through passion and care. No love or feeling has gone into its creation and so the consuming is no longer as personal or passionate. 
 
The mechanization of the farming process plays a great role in displacing workers from their land.  The wider implications of this disconnect are that people no longer see farmers as individuals but as larger companies or machines.  When we conceptualize something such as farming into something that no longer implies individual labor but becomes a generalized and mechanized notion, it is easier to overlook the individuals place in the process. To me this was part of the problem of the migrant workers during the depression. They became part of a statistic along with having their labor be mechanized consequently eliminating jobs.  They weren’t cared for because they were under the guise of being part of a statistic. 
 
I find Steinbeck’s mode of exploring this idea through the consumption of food to be very intriguing because eating is such a primal instinct.  However, when the process of consuming food our lives are fundamentally changed. He is able to explore a nation wide shift through an extremely personal and relatable experience. Also, because we have to eat to sustain ourselves, the act is unavoidable and so the change becomes inevitable.  Being removed from the food the characters consume in the book is an inevitable change in their culture.
 
Looking at our world today this idea has become increasingly problematic.  The problem of not knowing where our food comes from and this taking less care in what we consume has created many more problems.  Americans have become arguably more removed from their land and thus take less care in preserving it. Problems such as obesity, over-farming, and factory farms have emerged from this disconnect.  It is interesting to look at The Grapes of Wrath as the beginning of many modern problems within American maintenance of it’s own land.

Simon and Garfunkel wrote “I’ve gone to look for America” a phrase that echoes many of the writers in this weeks readings.  This constant search for the real “America” drove these writers to travel the entire continent hoping to catch a glimpse of what this country really is.  I find this idea to be extremely intriguing.  What does it mean to begin an expedition in “search” of “America”?  Why is the middle of the country more real and ingrained with “America” then the coast cities? What all of these writers seem to find along their travels is that it is not the scenery that gives them the information they are seeking but the people and the stories that these people tell which start to form this intangible “America”.  Nathan Asch writes, “And you try to live with people, and try to find that thing in them which is so typical of them that it’s not unusual, not news to them” (Asch 7). Here Asch gets to the heart of studying the people of America. Instead of probing them for their thoughts or ideas, you observe them in normal activity, trying to tie together these normal events to depict a larger picture of America as a whole.  I would have to agree with many of these writers that the only true way to come to an understanding of what “America” really is is to talk and live with the people of America. The enormous and overwhelming landscapes will entice you with the promise of something greater and more beautiful then what you already have but they will never show you what “America” is.  The people of the land are the only ones able to show you “America”. The readings for this week debrief the reader about the art of traveling in this country by telling the reader that one of the only ways to do so is by talking and living with the people of America.  As many of the authors mentioned this country is almost too big to govern and definitely to large to sum up under one single generalization. Each area has created a distinct culture, a certain way of living that differentiates it from another section of the nation.  I think this “search” for America is about discovering the common threads that bind the individual American with the rest of the country. The “truth” that so many of these authors seek is the commonality between American citizens.