American Studies (31 page)
Authors: Louis Menand
The response is where Lin starts her work as a designer. She creates, essentially, backward. There is no image in her head in the beginning, only an imagined feeling. Often, she writes an essay explaining what the piece is supposed to do to the people who encounter it. She says that the form just comes to her, sometimes months later, fully developed, an egg that shows up on the doorstep one day. She rarely tinkers with it. She is, in other words, an artist of a rather pure and intuitive type.
This makes her an outsider in the world of architecture. Her work is not witty or allusive or high-concept; it has no pop elements. She is not a modernist or a formalist, either; she does not create pieces whose elements are in dialogue only with themselves. She’s accustomed to being an outsider, or to feeling like one, and although she frets about it a little, she obviously cultivates the feeling.
It gives her the edge (carefully veiled, most of the time) that she seems to require. In one of our conversations, she told me about a sculpture that she had been invited to create for the lobby of an office building designed by the architect Helmut Jahn, in Des Moines. She requested a site model of the lobby from Jahn’s office. She received a model of the grounds, with the building represented by a Styrofoam box. The implication was that she was free to make something outside, but Jahn’s building was off limits. “Here comes this solid box, like, ‘Don’t touch me,’” she said, “and so, of course, I had no choice. Upstairs, here’s this two-story glass wall. It’s not my style. So, if I ran water down the inside of it, I could very quietly subvert his entire space without ever creating architecture.” She cracked the wall and put a stream inside. And how did Jahn take it? “He was fine,” she said, quickly. Then she laughed. “I mean, we never really spoke,” she said.
It gives her the edge (carefully veiled, most of the time) that she seems to require. In one of our conversations, she told me about a sculpture that she had been invited to create for the lobby of an office building designed by the architect Helmut Jahn, in Des Moines. She requested a site model of the lobby from Jahn’s office. She received a model of the grounds, with the building represented by a Styrofoam box. The implication was that she was free to make something outside, but Jahn’s building was off limits. “Here comes this solid box, like, ‘Don’t touch me,’” she said, “and so, of course, I had no choice. Upstairs, here’s this two-story glass wall. It’s not my style. So, if I ran water down the inside of it, I could very quietly subvert his entire space without ever creating architecture.” She cracked the wall and put a stream inside. And how did Jahn take it? “He was fine,” she said, quickly. Then she laughed. “I mean, we never really spoke,” she said.
But Lin designs buildings, too, and one of her chronic anxieties is whether she is essentially an artist who practices architecture or an architect who makes art, and whether it matters. Frank Gehry, one of her teachers at Yale, told her to forget about the distinction and just make things, “the best advice—actually, the only advice—I’ve ever been given from the architectural world,” she has said.
8
It doesn’t seem to have solved the problem, though. She admires Gehry’s work, but she says that the person who inspired her was Richard Serra, whom Gehry brought in to critique student work. “Richard was amazing,” she said. “I went through a very bleak graduate school, where I didn’t get that much food for what I was after, and that was amazing—that one moment, where there’s Richard, giving us a crit.”
8
It doesn’t seem to have solved the problem, though. She admires Gehry’s work, but she says that the person who inspired her was Richard Serra, whom Gehry brought in to critique student work. “Richard was amazing,” she said. “I went through a very bleak graduate school, where I didn’t get that much food for what I was after, and that was amazing—that one moment, where there’s Richard, giving us a crit.”
One of the few shows she has been to since her children were born (her older daughter is four) was Serra’s, last fall, at the Gagosian Gallery, in Chelsea. The exhibition drew enthusiastic crowds and for some New Yorkers marked the spiritual reopening of downtown. Serra’s huge pieces,
Torqued Spirals
, which the viewer walks into by following a dauntingly high, tilting steel wall that spirals inward, she loved for their massiveness and their sense of surprise. The artists she identifies with are all men who work on a large
scale: Serra, Smithson, Michael Heizer, James Turrell—people who make roads in the desert and turn canyons into works of art. Compared with their work, Lin’s is contemplative and understated. But she dreams of bigness. “I want to find two or three of the most toxic sites in the world,” she once said to me, “and then I could become an artist.”
Torqued Spirals
, which the viewer walks into by following a dauntingly high, tilting steel wall that spirals inward, she loved for their massiveness and their sense of surprise. The artists she identifies with are all men who work on a large
scale: Serra, Smithson, Michael Heizer, James Turrell—people who make roads in the desert and turn canyons into works of art. Compared with their work, Lin’s is contemplative and understated. But she dreams of bigness. “I want to find two or three of the most toxic sites in the world,” she once said to me, “and then I could become an artist.”
Gehry is probably right that it’s pointless to worry about whether one creates as an artist or as an architect, but if you had to put Lin in either category you would call her an artist. One of the things driving her since she left Yale has been her need to “prove” that she can do architecture; she now feels that she has made enough buildings to settle that question. It is not clear who, exactly, was putting her to the test, and it probably doesn’t matter. There is a kind of person whose indifference to what the rest of the world thinks is a spur to accomplishment: she will teach all these people in whose opinion she has no interest to have a good opinion of her. It’s a kind of Method acting. It gives a person her motivation. As Lin talked about her future work, it became clear that the artistic impulse—the impulse to make objects and place them in the world, rather than to erect usable structures—was dominant again.
Lin has had two shows of what she calls her “studio sculpture”:
Public/Private
(1993) and
Topologies
(1997-98). One of the pieces,
Topographic Landscape
(1997), is a large wooden field constructed of planks cut in undulating shapes and pressed together, so that the result looks like a landscape of hills seen from an airplane. It is sometimes exhibited with a work called
Avalanche
, which is composed from fourteen tons of broken glass, raked into a mountainous pile in a corner of the gallery, and by several wall-mounted works that were also created by shattering thick panes of glass. Lin’s biggest brokenglass piece is called
Groundswell
, created for the Wexner Center for the Arts, at Ohio State University: it uses forty-three tons of glass, raked into mounds. It is easy to appreciate these works as environmental installations (which is how Lin presents them): natural materials shaped in topological contours. It takes a little longer to see that they are also refinements on destruction—just as it takes a while to see that the Vietnam Memorial is made by repairing a tear
in the earth. The paradox of land art is that it is programmatically environmentalist and deferential to natural forms but is also an intrusion into the natural world of the most aggressive kind. It doesn’t simply stick human forms on top of natural ones; it reshapes nature itself. A certain degree of ego is needed to make it.
Public/Private
(1993) and
Topologies
(1997-98). One of the pieces,
Topographic Landscape
(1997), is a large wooden field constructed of planks cut in undulating shapes and pressed together, so that the result looks like a landscape of hills seen from an airplane. It is sometimes exhibited with a work called
Avalanche
, which is composed from fourteen tons of broken glass, raked into a mountainous pile in a corner of the gallery, and by several wall-mounted works that were also created by shattering thick panes of glass. Lin’s biggest brokenglass piece is called
Groundswell
, created for the Wexner Center for the Arts, at Ohio State University: it uses forty-three tons of glass, raked into mounds. It is easy to appreciate these works as environmental installations (which is how Lin presents them): natural materials shaped in topological contours. It takes a little longer to see that they are also refinements on destruction—just as it takes a while to see that the Vietnam Memorial is made by repairing a tear
in the earth. The paradox of land art is that it is programmatically environmentalist and deferential to natural forms but is also an intrusion into the natural world of the most aggressive kind. It doesn’t simply stick human forms on top of natural ones; it reshapes nature itself. A certain degree of ego is needed to make it.
In late spring, Lin told me that she was suddenly immersed in new projects again. She has started her long-deferred memorial to extinct species—a many-sited, global project. She has accepted a commission to create environmental art in Yellowstone National Park: she will try to put Old Faithful, which is now treated as an amusement-park attraction, back into its natural setting. And she is making a work in the Pacific Northwest connected with the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The work, intended to commemorate the expedition from an environmentalist point of view, will be about the land that was there before Lewis and Clark arrived, about the continent we have lost.
“I am starting to talk quietly to various parties involved with the World Trade Center site, from people on the architectural and planning end to some groups of victims’ families, Lin told me in June.”I’m just offering advice about what can be learned from the Vietnam Memorial.” In spite of her reluctance to associate herself publicly with the memorialization of September 11, she had, in fact, been taking calls from officials seeking her advice on the matter since shortly after the attacks. This spring, as the plans for the site started running on a very fast track—six master plans will be presented by the architectural and planning firm Beyer Blinder Belle this month, when the process for the selection of a memorial design is also scheduled to be announced—Lin began to have more frequent consultations with some of the parties to the redevelopment. She is not involved in the process as a potential designer, she told me; she’s just someone whose experience, she thinks, might be helpful.
Lin’s chief fear is that there is no unified vision for the redevelopment,
and that the final plan will be an accretion of accommodations of every group that feels it has a stake in the site—the Port Authority, the landlords, the Community Board, local residents and businesses, victims’ families, firemen, policemen, and so on. In the case of a memorial, she understands that it will be impossible to insulate the design process from the victims’ families, but she hopes that when their need has been articulated, the competition will be run by arts professionals, as it was for the Vietnam Memorial.
and that the final plan will be an accretion of accommodations of every group that feels it has a stake in the site—the Port Authority, the landlords, the Community Board, local residents and businesses, victims’ families, firemen, policemen, and so on. In the case of a memorial, she understands that it will be impossible to insulate the design process from the victims’ families, but she hopes that when their need has been articulated, the competition will be run by arts professionals, as it was for the Vietnam Memorial.
Lin is reticent about her own ideas for the site. The city has already been through two stages of memorialization, each successful, she feels, in giving form to feeling: the candles and flowers and heartbreaking “Missing” posters that appeared all over town in the weeks immediately following the attacks; and the Tribute in Light—the twin pillars of light that shone at the site this spring. “I think they’re really magical,” she told me when the lights went up. She was sorry to see them turned off after a month. But she was talking one day to a woman whose husband had died in the attack, and who complained about the lights: “We—we, the victims—don’t think it does that much.”
“It’s this ‘we’ thing,” Lin told me. “There’s this authority that’s going to say, ‘This is mine first, then it’s going to be yours, then it’s going to be yours.’” That is what happened, she believes, with the Vietnam Memorial: some of the veterans couldn’t relinquish what they regarded as their moral ownership of the piece. Lin thinks that the destruction of the Trade Center wounded everyone who watched it. “At some level, we all shared it,” she said, “and that has never happened before in history. I hope that is really taken into account.”
There is another challenge facing whoever designs a World Trade Center memorial, even if it is Maya Lin, and that is the legacy of Maya Lin. The Vietnam Memorial changed the popular understanding of what a memorial should be, and it thus set the bar very high for future memorialists. Now we expect that a memorial will be interactive, and that it will visibly move the viewer. If it doesn’t make you cry, then it isn’t working. It is Lin’s strange gift—strange in a person admittedly so self-absorbed—to know how people will
react to her art. She knew that visitors to the Vietnam Memorial would find it impossible not to touch the names chiseled into the wall. When she was an undergraduate, the names of Yale alumni who had died in Vietnam were being carved on a wall in Woolsey Hall, and she remembered that she couldn’t walk past without touching them. At the Vietnam Memorial, you are also touching the shadow of your own hand, coming out of the darkness.
react to her art. She knew that visitors to the Vietnam Memorial would find it impossible not to touch the names chiseled into the wall. When she was an undergraduate, the names of Yale alumni who had died in Vietnam were being carved on a wall in Woolsey Hall, and she remembered that she couldn’t walk past without touching them. At the Vietnam Memorial, you are also touching the shadow of your own hand, coming out of the darkness.
Lin believes that what enables her to create works that people respond to emotionally is her own emotional detachment, and that what enables her to address political subjects effectively is her apolitical posture. She has emotions and politics, obviously, but making art, for her, requires shutting those parts of herself down. A lot of contemporary culture seems to take the form of the opinion piece: you read the first paragraph—sometimes you read just the title—and you don’t have to continue, because you know exactly what is going to be said. Everything is broken down into points of view, positions on a curve. If you’re off the curve, or if you pay no attention to the curve, no one seems to know how to understand you, which is one reason that Lin has no interest in her own celebrity. She doesn’t want to represent a point of view; she wants to make things.
In March, Lin attended the dedication of one of her installations, a winter garden in the lobby of the American Express Client Services Center in downtown Minneapolis. It is not a prepossessing site. The building is on a strip of large office structures; directly across the busy street is a large parking lot. The garden is inside a three-story glass box in the front of the lobby, visible from the street. Lin has turned part of the exterior wall into a waterfall, which freezes in the winter, changing the view out from the lobby and the view in from the street. There are trees, and stone benches, which are echoed in the landscaping Lin has designed outside the building. The distinctive feature of Lin’s garden is the floor, which has been warped so that it has the contours of a hill (or a burial mound). The floorboards are the same as you would find in a bowling alley—that is, they read as level—but they have been curved to create rises and dips.
I arrived early for the dedication, and the floor was roped off. I
wandered around looking at it from inside and outside the building. It was not especially impressive—a curved surface with a few trees and benches. Eventually, Lin showed up, there were speeches, and the rope was cut and we went onto the floor. It felt, weirdly, like walking in the woods, where each step is registered differently in the body—a little higher or a little lower than the eye picks up from the terrain. You experienced the floor through your bones. I asked her what she thought of the work. “I want a bigger floor,” she said.
wandered around looking at it from inside and outside the building. It was not especially impressive—a curved surface with a few trees and benches. Eventually, Lin showed up, there were speeches, and the rope was cut and we went onto the floor. It felt, weirdly, like walking in the woods, where each step is registered differently in the body—a little higher or a little lower than the eye picks up from the terrain. You experienced the floor through your bones. I asked her what she thought of the work. “I want a bigger floor,” she said.
At noon the next day, Lin gave a presentation about the new winter garden to American Express employees in the cafeteria. There was a big turnout, and the audience listened intently. Lin showed slides, and explained how the work was related to some of her other pieces (like
Topographic Landscape
) that use similar shapes. There were questions. One was from a woman who asked Lin if she could tell them how she designed the Vietnam Memorial. Lin laughed. “No,” she said. “Not today.”
Topographic Landscape
) that use similar shapes. There were questions. One was from a woman who asked Lin if she could tell them how she designed the Vietnam Memorial. Lin laughed. “No,” she said. “Not today.”
JULY 1, 2002
The Metaphysical Club
WILLIAM JAMES AND THE CASE OF THE EPILEPTIC PATIENT
1
William James,
The Varieties of Religious Experience,
ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 407.
The Varieties of Religious Experience,
ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 407.
2
James,
Varieties of Religious Experience
, 134-35.
Varieties of Religious Experience
, 134-35.
3
William James to Frank Abauzit, June 1, 1904; quoted in “Appendix VI,” in
Varieties of Religious Experience,
508.
Varieties of Religious Experience,
508.
4
Quoted in
The Letters of William James
, ed. Henry James (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), vol. 1, 147-48 (my interpolations). The diary is in the William James Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
The Letters of William James
, ed. Henry James (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), vol. 1, 147-48 (my interpolations). The diary is in the William James Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
5
Letters of William James
, vol. 1, 147.
, vol. 1, 147.
6
Ralph Barton Perry,
The Thought and Character of William James
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), vol. 1, 322, 324; vol. 2, 675.
The Thought and Character of William James
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), vol. 1, 322, 324; vol. 2, 675.
7
Jacques Barzun,
A Stroll with William James
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 313.
A Stroll with William James
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 313.
8
Howard M. Feinstein, “The ‘Crisis’ of William James: A Revisionist View,”
Psychohistory Review
10 (1981): 80.
Psychohistory Review
10 (1981): 80.
9
Henry James, Sr., to Henry James, n.d.; quoted in Jane Maher,
Biography of Broken Fortunes: Wilkie and Bob, Brothers of William, Henry, and Alice James
(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1986), 119.
Biography of Broken Fortunes: Wilkie and Bob, Brothers of William, Henry, and Alice James
(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1986), 119.
10
Richard Poirier makes a case for this way of understanding the relative value of the two episodes in
The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections
(New York: Random House, 1987), 47-66. He relies on Feinstein’s chronology, but his analysis does not, in fact, require it.
The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections
(New York: Random House, 1987), 47-66. He relies on Feinstein’s chronology, but his analysis does not, in fact, require it.
11
William James to Robertson James, April 17, 1870,
The Correspondence of William James
, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992—), vol. 4, 405.
The Correspondence of William James
, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992—), vol. 4, 405.
12
William James to Robertson James, April 26, 1874,
Correspondence of William James, vol. 4, 489.
Correspondence of William James, vol. 4, 489.
13
William James to Charles Renouvier, November 2, 1872,
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 4, 430 (my translation).
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 4, 430 (my translation).
14
William James to Robertson James, December 20, 1872,
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 4, 432.
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 4, 432.
15
Henry James, Sr., to Henry James, March 18, 1873,
Letters of William James,
vol. 1, 169. Reading Wordsworth had been John Stuart Mill’s therapy for his youthful depression, as James probably knew, since it is a prominent episode in Mill’s
Autobiography
.
Letters of William James,
vol. 1, 169. Reading Wordsworth had been John Stuart Mill’s therapy for his youthful depression, as James probably knew, since it is a prominent episode in Mill’s
Autobiography
.
16
Miscellaneous notes, William James Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 1092.9 (4473). Quoted by permission of the Houghton Library and Bay James.
17
Robert J. Richards, “The Personal Equation in Science: William James’s Psychological and Moral Uses of Darwinian Theory,”
Harvard Library Bulletin
30 (1980): 392 n20; a longer version of this article appears in Richards’s
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 409-50. Anderson’s dissertation, “William James’s Depressive Period (1867—1872) and the Origins of His Creativity: A Psychobiographical Study,” was written at the University of Chicago. He published an article on the subject, “‘The Worst Kind of Melancholy’: William James in 1869,” in the same issue of the
Harvard Library Bulletin,
369–86. Alfred Kazin reports Murray’s remark in
God and the American Writer
(New York: Knopf, 1997), 165. Kazin’s chapter on James first appeared in the
Princeton University Chronicle
in 1993.
Harvard Library Bulletin
30 (1980): 392 n20; a longer version of this article appears in Richards’s
Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 409-50. Anderson’s dissertation, “William James’s Depressive Period (1867—1872) and the Origins of His Creativity: A Psychobiographical Study,” was written at the University of Chicago. He published an article on the subject, “‘The Worst Kind of Melancholy’: William James in 1869,” in the same issue of the
Harvard Library Bulletin,
369–86. Alfred Kazin reports Murray’s remark in
God and the American Writer
(New York: Knopf, 1997), 165. Kazin’s chapter on James first appeared in the
Princeton University Chronicle
in 1993.
18
I am grateful to Richard Lewontin and Leon Eisenberg for their assistance in making this inquiry. Eugene Taylor also attributes the denial of access to the James estate, rather than to the hospital; see Eugene Taylor,
William James on Exceptional Mental States: The 1896 Lowell Lectures
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 200 n19.
William James on Exceptional Mental States: The 1896 Lowell Lectures
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 200 n19.
19
See Abraham Myerson and Rosalie Boyle, “The Incidence of Manic-Depressive Psychosis in Certain Socially Important Families,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
, July 1941, 19. I am grateful to Kay Redfield Jamison for pointing this article out to me.
American Journal of Psychiatry
, July 1941, 19. I am grateful to Kay Redfield Jamison for pointing this article out to me.
20
Henry James,
Notes of
a
Son
and
Brother
(London: Macmillan, 1914), 254, 256.
Notes of
a
Son
and
Brother
(London: Macmillan, 1914), 254, 256.
21
R. W. B. Lewis,
The Jameses: A Family Narrative
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 188.
The Jameses: A Family Narrative
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 188.
22
Cushing Strout, “William James and the Twice-Born Sick Soul,”
Daedalus
97 (1968): 1067. Strout later said that he had been given the idea about James and masturbation by Erik Erikson; see “The Strange Case of William James: An Exchange,”
New York Review of Books
, April 8, 1999, 76.
Daedalus
97 (1968): 1067. Strout later said that he had been given the idea about James and masturbation by Erik Erikson; see “The Strange Case of William James: An Exchange,”
New York Review of Books
, April 8, 1999, 76.
23
Sander L. Gilman,
Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 74-78.
Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 74-78.
24
See Gary Scharnhorst,
A Literary Biography of William Rounseville Alger (1822—1905): A Neglected Member of the Concord Circle
(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 123—26. Oddly enough, Scharnhorst, too, took Henry James’s word for it that the Alger mentioned in the letter quoted in
Notes of a Son and
Brother was Horatio, and he constructed a complicated theory that Horatio was a ghostwriter on the biography of Forrest. See Gary Scharnhorst, “A Note on the Life of Alger’s Life of
Edwin Forrest
,” Theatre
Studies
23 (1976-77): 53-55; and Gary Scharnhorst and Jack Bales, The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), in which the Brewster incident is discussed.
A Literary Biography of William Rounseville Alger (1822—1905): A Neglected Member of the Concord Circle
(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 123—26. Oddly enough, Scharnhorst, too, took Henry James’s word for it that the Alger mentioned in the letter quoted in
Notes of a Son and
Brother was Horatio, and he constructed a complicated theory that Horatio was a ghostwriter on the biography of Forrest. See Gary Scharnhorst, “A Note on the Life of Alger’s Life of
Edwin Forrest
,” Theatre
Studies
23 (1976-77): 53-55; and Gary Scharnhorst and Jack Bales, The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), in which the Brewster incident is discussed.
25
Henry Maudsley, Body
and Mind
: An Inquiry into Their Connection
and Mutual
Influence,
Specifically in
Reference to Mental Disorders (London: Macmillan, 1870), 86.
and Mind
: An Inquiry into Their Connection
and Mutual
Influence,
Specifically in
Reference to Mental Disorders (London: Macmillan, 1870), 86.
26
Alexander Bain, The Emotions
and
the
Will
(1859), 4th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1899), 443, 441–42.
and
the
Will
(1859), 4th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1899), 443, 441–42.
27
Miscellaneous notes, William James Papers, bMS Am 1092.9 (4473). Quoted by permission of the Houghton Library and Bay James. Perry quoted from the Pomfret notes, but he deleted, without ellipsis, the sentences containing the references to B.W. James sometimes seems to have used a note pad, rather than his diary notebook, to record his thoughts during the period from 1870 to 1873; a few sheets survive, though they are almost never mentioned in works on James. Only one other page, besides the 1869 and the October 21, 1872, notes I have already referred to, is dated (May 16, 1873); none contains pertinent biographical information. In a letter to his wife, in which several of the notes are enclosed, James refers to them as having been written during his “pessimistic crisis.”
28
Henry James to Mary James, November 21, 1869, Henry James,
Letters: Volume 1
,
1843–1875,
ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 172—73.
Letters: Volume 1
,
1843–1875,
ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 172—73.
29
The editors of
The Correspondence of William James
, noting this gap, claim that an additional letter does survive from this period, a note to John Gray dated January 4, 1872. But since the note congratulates Gray on his engagement, and the marriage took place in June 1873, James probably (as often happens around the turn of the year) misdated it. He also mentions that his brother Wilkie, who, like Robertson, lived in Milwaukee, was visiting the James home in Cambridge. That visit took place around New Year’s Day 1873. It is worth noting that James suffered from eye trouble all his adult life, and was often unable to write. After he married, his wife transcribed many of his letters from his dictation. There is some evidence that his eye problems were particularly severe during the period from which we have no letters.
The Correspondence of William James
, noting this gap, claim that an additional letter does survive from this period, a note to John Gray dated January 4, 1872. But since the note congratulates Gray on his engagement, and the marriage took place in June 1873, James probably (as often happens around the turn of the year) misdated it. He also mentions that his brother Wilkie, who, like Robertson, lived in Milwaukee, was visiting the James home in Cambridge. That visit took place around New Year’s Day 1873. It is worth noting that James suffered from eye trouble all his adult life, and was often unable to write. After he married, his wife transcribed many of his letters from his dictation. There is some evidence that his eye problems were particularly severe during the period from which we have no letters.
30
Henry James,
Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Earnest of God’s Omnipotence in Human Nature
(Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1879), 43.
Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Earnest of God’s Omnipotence in Human Nature
(Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1879), 43.
31
William James, Notebook Y, 1866—67 Medical School Notes, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Quoted by permission of the Countway Library and Bay James.
32
Dickinson Sargeant Miller, “A Memory of William James” (1917), in
William James Remembered
, ed. Linda Simon (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 128.
William James Remembered
, ed. Linda Simon (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 128.
33
Mary James to Henry James, July 1, 1873, March 17, 1874, and July 6, 1874, quoted in Gay Wilson Allen,
William James
:
A Biography
(New York: Viking, 1967), 183, 190; Henry James to Mary James, July 4, 1880, Henry James,
Letters:
Volume
2, 1875—1883, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 292.
William James
:
A Biography
(New York: Viking, 1967), 183, 190; Henry James to Mary James, July 4, 1880, Henry James,
Letters:
Volume
2, 1875—1883, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 292.
34
William James to Charles Renouvier, October 23, 1882; quoted in Perry,
Thought and Character of William James
, vol. 1, 683.
Thought and Character of William James
, vol. 1, 683.
35
William James to Alice Howe Gibbens James, March 4, 1888,
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 6, 338.
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 6, 338.
36
William James to Frederic W. H. Myers, December 17, 1893; quoted in Allen,
William James
, 368.
William James
, 368.
37
William James to Henry James, January 1, 1901,
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 3, 153—54.
Correspondence of William James
, vol. 3, 153—54.
38
William James, “Introduction to
The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James
” (1884),
Essays on Religion and Morality
, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 61—63.
The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James
” (1884),
Essays on Religion and Morality
, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 61—63.
39
William James to James H. Leuba, April 17, 1904; quoted in Perry,
Thought and Character of William James
, vol. 2, 350.
Thought and Character of William James
, vol. 2, 350.
40
William James, Diary, William James Papers, bMS Am 1092.9 (4450). Quoted by permission of the Houghton Library and Bay James.
41
Gertrude Stein,
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
(1946),
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein
, ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York: Vintage, 1972), 74—75.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
(1946),
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein
, ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York: Vintage, 1972), 74—75.
42
John Jay Chapman, “William James” (1915), in
William James Remembered,
56.
William James Remembered,
56.
THE PRINCIPLES OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
1
Mark DeWolfe Howe,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Shaping Years
,
1841
—
1870
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 2. The other biographies relied on in this essay are: Howe,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Proving Years
,
1870—1882
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); Sheldon Novick,
Honorable Justice
:
The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Boston: Little Brown, 1989); Liva Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991); and G. Edward White,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Portions of this essay also appear in my book
The Metaphysical Club
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Shaping Years
,
1841
—
1870
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 2. The other biographies relied on in this essay are: Howe,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Proving Years
,
1870—1882
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); Sheldon Novick,
Honorable Justice
:
The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Boston: Little Brown, 1989); Liva Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991); and G. Edward White,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Portions of this essay also appear in my book
The Metaphysical Club
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).
2
John Pollock, quoted in Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
235.
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
235.
3
See Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill
, 245.
The Justice from Beacon Hill
, 245.
4
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Codes, and the Arrangement of the Law” (1870),
The Collected Works of Justice Holmes: Complete Public Writings and Selected Judicial Opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes
, ed. Sheldon M. Novick (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995—), vol. 1, 212.
The Collected Works of Justice Holmes: Complete Public Writings and Selected Judicial Opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes
, ed. Sheldon M. Novick (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995—), vol. 1, 212.
5
Lochner v. New York
, 198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905).
, 198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905).
6
Novick,
Honorable Justice
, xvii.
Honorable Justice
, xvii.
7
An excellent one-volume reader of Holmes’s articles, opinions, letters, and speeches is
The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches
,
Judicial
Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
, ed. Richard A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Posner confines his introductory remarks to twenty-two pages.
The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches
,
Judicial
Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
, ed. Richard A. Posner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Posner confines his introductory remarks to twenty-two pages.
8
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Frederick Pollock, April 10, 1881,
Holmes
-
Pollock Letters
:
The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874—1932
, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), vol. I, 17.
Holmes
-
Pollock Letters
:
The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874—1932
, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941), vol. I, 17.
9
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Common Law
(1881),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 115.
The Common Law
(1881),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 115.
10
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 115.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 115.
11
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Elmer Gertz, March 1, 1899; quoted in Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill
, 172—73.
The Justice from Beacon Hill
, 172—73.
12
Oliver Wendell Holmes, review of
The Law Magazine and Review
(1872),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 1, 295.
The Law Magazine and Review
(1872),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 1, 295.
13
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Path of the Law” (1897),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 393.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 393.
14
Morton J. Horwitz,
The Transformation of American Law,
1870—1960:
The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 125.
The Transformation of American Law,
1870—1960:
The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 125.
15
Holmes, review of
The Law Magazine and Review
,
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 1, 295.
The Law Magazine and Review
,
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 1, 295.
16
See, for example, Horwitz,
Transformation of American Law
, 109—143; David Rosenberg,
The Hidden Holmes: His Theory of Torts in History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Thomas C. Grey, “Accidental Torts,”
Vanderbilt Law Review
54 (2001): 1225-84.
Transformation of American Law
, 109—143; David Rosenberg,
The Hidden Holmes: His Theory of Torts in History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Thomas C. Grey, “Accidental Torts,”
Vanderbilt Law Review
54 (2001): 1225-84.
17
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 115.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 115.
18
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3,191.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3,191.
19
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 191.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 191.
20
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 191.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 191.
21
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Trespass and Negligence” (1880),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 91.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 91.
22
Holmes,
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 194.
The Common Law, Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 194.
23
Holmes, “The Path of the Law,”
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 399.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 399.
24
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. Goodman
, 275 U.S. 66, 70 (1927).
, 275 U.S. 66, 70 (1927).
25
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Address” (1912),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 541.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 541.
26
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Ethel Scott, November 19, 1915; quoted in Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
623.
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
623.
27
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Privilege, Malice, and Intent,”
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 373.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes
, vol. 3, 373.
28
Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Natural Law” (1918),
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 447.
Collected Works of Justice Holmes,
vol. 3, 447.
29
Lochner v. New York,
198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905).
198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905).
30
Schenck v. United States,
249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919).
249 U.S. 47, 52 (1919).
31
Quoted in Gerald Gunther,
Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge
(New York: Knopf, 1994), 162.
Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge
(New York: Knopf, 1994), 162.
32
Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten,
244 Federal Reporter, 535, 540 (S.D.N.Y 1917).
244 Federal Reporter, 535, 540 (S.D.N.Y 1917).
33
See Gerald Gunther, “Learned Hand and the Origins of Modern First Amendment Doctrine: Some Fragments of History,”
Stanford Law Review
27 (1975): 719-73.
Stanford Law Review
27 (1975): 719-73.
34
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Learned Hand, April 3, 1919; quoted in Gunther, “Learned Hand and the Origins of Modern First Amendment Doctrine,” 760.
35
Gitlaw v. New York,
268 U.S. 652, 673 (1925).
268 U.S. 652, 673 (1925).
36
Abrams v. United States
, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919).
, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919).
37
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Harold Laski, May 12, 1927; quoted in Baker,
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
603.
The Justice from Beacon Hill,
603.
38
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Lewis Einstein, October 28, 1912,
The Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein,
1903-1935, ed. James Bishop Peabody (New York: St. Martin’s, 1964), 74.
The Holmes-Einstein Letters: Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Lewis Einstein,
1903-1935, ed. James Bishop Peabody (New York: St. Martin’s, 1964), 74.
39
Buck v. Bell,
274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).
274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).
40
Oliver Wendell Holmes to Frederick Pollock, September I, 1910,
Holmes-Pollock Letters,
vol. 1, 167.
Holmes-Pollock Letters,
vol. 1, 167.
Other books
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WAY OF THE SHADOWS by CYNTHIA EDEN,
The Saint-Fiacre Affair by Georges Simenon; Translated by Shaun Whiteside
Darwath 1 - The Time Of The Dark by Hambly, Barbara
A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert
Turn Towards the Sun by Jennifer Domenico
Open Water by Maria Flook
Miss Murder by Jenny Cosgrove
Sad Desk Salad by Jessica Grose
