Wittgenstein used the word “serious” in an ethical and aesthetic sense. I’ve come to think that if a country lacks serious people, it can’t expect to have a serious culture.
One symptom that might indicate that American culture is not entirely serious: When thinking of the West, most Americans would think of John Wayne before R.B. Marcy. They’d think of an actor before they’d think of an explorer.
In 1854, Randolph B. Marcy, then a captain in the U.S. Army, led an expedition through West Texas, looking for the sources of the Brazos River. It’s rough country — a place where it’s possible for some explorers to die of thirst while comrades die in quicksand.
When most of the explorers got back to civilization, they reported that the place was unfit for human habitation — though they conceded it might make a good penal colony. W.B. Parker, the chronicler of the expedition, called the place “the wilds.”
Destitute of soil, timber, water, game, and everything else that can sustain or make life tolerable, they must remain as they are, uninhabited and uninhabitable.
He’s describing the place where I was born, the wilds around Abilene, Texas. I still see those landscapes in dreams.
As far as I know, there are no statues of Marcy. But he blazed trails and wrote the how-to book for pioneers who wanted to settle in the West. (California and Oregon got better reviews than West Texas.)
In a way, it’s funny that we know John Wayne and don’t know Randolph B. Marcy. But the beloved country is suffering horribly these days, and at least some of that suffering is because Americans have trouble seeing themselves in a realistic light.
• Sources: W.B. Parker, Notes Taken During the Expedition Commanded by Capt. R.B. Marcy, U.S.A., Through Unexplored Texas, in the Summer and Fall of 1854; The Texas State Historical Association, 1984, p. 173. This is a reprint of a book published in Philadelphia by Hayes & Zell in 1856.
Randolph B. Marcy, The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions, has been published by Project Gutenberg. It’s here:
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