A Social ‘Humanist’

In the 1940s, Carey McWilliams was one of the most exciting writers in America. Besides Southern California Country: An Island on the Land, which still ranks as one of the best books on the region that has ever been published, he gave us four path-breaking studies of racial minorities in the United States which tremendously broadened our awareness of the discrepancy between the nation’s democratic ideals and its discriminatory practices. Thus the announcement a few months ago that McWilliams had written the story of his own life quite naturally caused a stir in publishing circles. Perhaps The Education of Carey McWilliams would prove to be worthy of comparison with the masterpiece which inspired its title, The Education of Henry Adams. Alas, McWilliams’ autobiography turns out to be an inhibited and un-reflective piece of work. In spite of its embarrassingly boastful talk about the brilliance of McWilliams’ editorship of The Nation, the book merely succeeds in reminding us of contemporary American liberalism’s long slide into intellectual and emotional bankruptcy.

The preface to the book warns that McWilliams is “much too discreet” to write about his private life—that in fact he lacks the “temperament” for personal confession—and the ensuing chapter on his boyhood in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where his father operated a large and successful cattle ranch, is a frustrating example of his guardedness. In a remarkably abstract and antiseptic paragraph, we are informed that McWilliams’ parents were “deeply devoted to their two sons,” but we are never permitted to see what the life of the family was really like. Consequently, when McWilliams ascribes the dawning of his political nonconformism to his father’s loss of his business and sudden death in the years immediately following World War I, we lack the means for deciding whether there actually was a connection between these events, or whether McWilliams has simply borrowed a handy explanation from Richard Hofstadter’s “status-anxiety” interpretation of modern American reform. The author’s somewhat bewildered admission, at the very end of this book, that he has never fully understood why he has been a “rebel-radical” for more than half a century tends to confirm the suspicion that McWilliams has not been frank with others about the vital details of his life because he himself has never grasped their meaning.

KL

About the Author

Kenneth S. Lynn

In the 1940s, Carey McWilliams was one of the most exciting writers in America. Besides Southern California Country: An Island on the Land, which still ranks as one of the best books on the region that has ever been published, he gave us four path-breaking studies of racial minorities in the United States which tremendously broadened our awareness of the discrepancy between the nation’s democratic ideals and its discriminatory practices. Thus the announcement a few months ago that McWilliams had written the story of his own life quite naturally caused a stir in publishing circles. Perhaps The Education of Carey McWilliams would prove to be worthy of comparison with the masterpiece which inspired its title, The Education of Henry Adams. Alas, McWilliams’ autobiography turns out to be an inhibited and un-reflective piece of work. In spite of its embarrassingly boastful talk about the brilliance of McWilliams’ editorship of The Nation, the book merely succeeds in reminding us of contemporary American liberalism’s long slide into intellectual and emotional bankruptcy.

The preface to the book warns that McWilliams is “much too discreet” to write about his private life—that in fact he lacks the “temperament” for personal confession—and the ensuing chapter on his boyhood in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where his father operated a large and successful cattle ranch, is a frustrating example of his guardedness. In a remarkably abstract and antiseptic paragraph, we are informed that McWilliams’ parents were “deeply devoted to their two sons,” but we are never permitted to see what the life of the family was really like. Consequently, when McWilliams ascribes the dawning of his political nonconformism to his father’s loss of his business and sudden death in the years immediately following World War I, we lack the means for deciding whether there actually was a connection between these events, or whether McWilliams has simply borrowed a handy explanation from Richard Hofstadter’s “status-anxiety” interpretation of modern American reform. The author’s somewhat bewildered admission, at the very end of this book, that he has never fully understood why he has been a “rebel-radical” for more than half a century tends to confirm the suspicion that McWilliams has not been frank with others about the vital details of his life because he himself has never grasped their meaning.