New Providence Memorial Library's Online Reading Group discussion

Is anybody out there reading this with me?? I hope so. You're all too quiet. Jump in anytime. I guess we'll stick to something w/ more of a story next time.

Anyway, as I read I got started thinking about how B and deT's voices differ. Have you noticed? deT is always wringing his hands about how he misses his relatives and thinks about them more away than at home. B's letters are more action-oriented. He tells of how they've been spending their time, who's inviting them and his observations. It is possible to get a better feel for what they are seeing and doing. Whereas deT is obsessed w/ French politics and the doings of his peers, B dives in w/ his opinions and impressions. I find his letters much more informative where deT is much more interested in politics and America's lack of politics due to self-interest.

How do you all feel about B's voice vs/ deT's ?

I agree. I think deT really needed to leave France for his own good or he never would have left. For a young man, it's amazing how homesick he seems! Though probably much of it is due to worrying about what's going on in France and the safety of his family.

Just read a passage from their travels westward where one of them (the books in the car, can't check who now!) talks about the equality of social station of the people they encounter, that there are neither upper class nor lower class, just middle class. And how happy that makes people. Wish it was still that way!

I find that deT's flowery language to his sisters-in-law is just a bit too flowery. But that aside, I was thinking about something I heard yesterday in an interview w/ Ken Burns. Thomas Jefferson was the first to move towards the idea that all Americans should be able to buy and own property. Before that, land was granted by the king and most middle to lower income people rented. Something we take for granted as a fundamental privilege of living here is part of the fundamental radical idea of this country.

I am with the travelers in Boston now. The prisons there use solitary confinement, as do the prisons in the rest of the "union," and Beaumont comments that "the advantages of this system are widely recognized." Interesting as there have been articles in the press lately about the prisons in the US that still rely on this and how it is cruel and leads to mental illness in the prisoners.

And of course, since they are once again in society, there is the usual carping about the Americans poor musicianship!

Rosanne, you are so right about this music thing...it is hilarious. I've just come across another passage where deT is actually praising the heartfelt celebration of July 4, less pomp and more substance, etc. but of course he has to take the time to say "At last the ceremony ended with a hymn to liberty...It was rendered more or less badly by amateurs belting out the couplets each in turn..." That's just mean!

Am reading a letter by Beaumont where he describes what is now Mackinac Island. He & his friend climb what is now called Arch Rock. It's a nice little hill and I was amused by how the guide got dizzy. And appalled by how Beaumont lifts a relic from a burial site.

The description of settlers, French Canadians who are more French than in France was surprising. He attributes this to their not having gone through a revolution and contrasts their "French gaiety" to "American glacial sang-froid." I can't say that is something I've ever heard about Americans, that we are cool and composed. Maybe only compared to French people?

Those descriptions of the French as gay, fun loving people, and Americans as solemn surprised me too. He does say that the Americans are happy, so he just thinks they're too serious. I don't know any French people personally so don't know whether this portrayal holds up for them in the present day. I do have to admit that my family never broke out in song after meals, even holidays…...