http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2012/11/21/the-stammering-century-by-gilbert-seldes-a-parade-of-cautionary-tales-for-reformers-everywhere/ Sat, 18 May 2013 11:12:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2012/11/21/the-stammering-century-by-gilbert-seldes-a-parade-of-cautionary-tales-for-reformers-everywhere/#comment-4030 Mild Colonial Boy, Esq. Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:41:17 +0000 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2012/11/21/the-stammering-century-by-gilbert-seldes-a-parade-of-cautionary-tales-for-reformers-everywhere/#comment-4030 There is another review here at http://www.tnr.com/book/review/gilbert-seldes-stammering-ninetheenth-century-jonathan-edwards#. I've never heard of this book before, but now that you've whet my appetite, I really must get it.

]]> http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2012/11/21/the-stammering-century-by-gilbert-seldes-a-parade-of-cautionary-tales-for-reformers-everywhere/#comment-4029 Miss Self-Important Wed, 21 Nov 2012 07:44:21 +0000 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/helen-rittelmeyer/2012/11/21/the-stammering-century-by-gilbert-seldes-a-parade-of-cautionary-tales-for-reformers-everywhere/#comment-4029 I considered discussing Alcott in my dissertation (he was also a radical educational reformer), but then I came across the Fruitlands adventure and decided I could not sufficiently overcome the absurdity of this endeavor to treat his educational proposals with the seriousness expected of dissertations. (His school experiment lasted only a little longer than his farming experiment – we might say both were too narrow for his wide-ranging mind and he transcended them.) But it's true that, with the possible recent exception of interest in the peculiar origins of Mormonism, Americans are remarkably uninterested in the history of their quite regular lapses into utopian craziness. Maybe they're too closely associated with revivalism to look familiar anymore?

]]>