Years as Signposts
The other day I picked-up the most recent issue of Alta (Journal of Alta California) at our local bookstore. This was the first time I had purchased this magazine. What caught my eye was the headline, “Can the LA Times Be Saved?”. Instead of reading that article, however, I found myself glued to page 48 reading about the year 1919, the cultural annus mirablis for Los Angeles. I was floored. In that year each of the following occurred:
Henry Huntington chartered the Huntington Library
William Clark funded the LA Philharmonic
UCLA was founded
United Artists was started by Charlie Chaplin, Nancy Pickford, D.W. Griffith & Douglas Fairbanks.
the creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, develops the first of many “suburban” communities in LA – Tarzana
While a few of these are more the stuff of LA lore, certainly the Huntington, UCLA and the LA Phil marked the founding of world-class institutions. Why 1919?
On my Wall, my reading preferences and my choice of books shape the density of the notes first and foremost. That might be 80% of its shape. I think, however, that the other 20% might be the time itself. My book notes cluster like stars around 1517 or 1588. Later, it is 1848 or 1900 that create small constellations of historic activity. Single dates morph into decades and centuries as you get farther back in history; however, the phenomena holds, the clusters take shape. On the modern side of the wall’s chronology, no date has such a density of activity as 1919. In fact, it is the black hole of big years. The following is an abridged inventory of book notes with that date on them:
The Treaty of Versailles … enough can never be said. It guarantees World War II. Its League of Nations is vetoed by the US. It reshapes the Middle East into the mess that it is today. It virtually ignores whole parts of the world seeking freedom under the ideals of Wilson’s 14 points. It isolated the USSR. It was the closest to a template for a century as you can find. (see Margaret MacMillan’s extraordinary Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World)
The Red Scare begins in America triggering 1st Amendment violations, deportations and the return of isolationism and religious conservatism.
Prohibition is launched. Quite likely the greatest legislative failure in US history. Its legacy ranging from increased per capita consumption of alcohol to the rise of organized crime. It was the undertow of the Roaring Twenties. (see William Leuchtenburg’s The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932)
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is proven. Enough said.
Indians are massacred by British troops in Amritsar signaling the beginning of the end of the Raj … the jewel in the crown of the British Empire.
The Reds will defeat the Whites in Russia, securing Bolshevik control, ravaging the country and sending the nation into the first of many famines killing untold millions.
Fascism emerges in Italy … will surge through Europe and find another home in Germany. Over 60% of Europe’s Jews will be exterminated under the fascist flag.
After 1919, nothing will be the same. The USSR will create both an international communist movement (first meeting of the Cominterm was in1919) and a totalitarian killing machine. The US will swing to the right, rush into a debt fueled economic and cultural binge as it embraces “normalcy” and international myopia. Europe will flirt with communism; replace imperialism with fascism and reignite. Meanwhile, cars will proliferate, night will be lit and entertainment and leisure will become entitlements. Not all this happened in 1919, of course, but it was the starting block. Just as UCLA, Tarzana, the Huntington and United Artists served as starting blocks for the debut of what will become one of the world’s great cities.
These years require hindsight in order to be identified and discussed. Everything seems pretty urgent the closer it is to the present. However, it is hard to avoid 1945 - the Bomb and Pax Americana. How about 1968 with its riots, assassinations, Vietnam and the rise of the “silent majority”? The Fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1989? Some might toss 2001 into the ring or 2008 with the financial panic and the election of a black man as President of the United States. Some might even peg the launching of the first true smartphone in 2007 and all that has tumbled after it. Not a few will be pointing to 2020 …
The Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”, is … interesting. I used to wonder why it is even a curse. Isn’t it a good thing to live in interesting times? We certainly try to make our lives as interesting as possible and seem terribly interested in what we perceive to be the interesting lives of others. Maybe, however, the Wall does reveal the truth in the curse. The dates that collect the book notes are not necessarily the years, decades or even centuries you might choose to live a whole life in. They make good history and they shape the Wall; however, they might be best appreciated from a distance.
The Sixties, in particular, seem to attract this type of structure with a myriad of books employing 1968 as their epicenter. There was nothing nice about 1968. It was certainly the year to read about but maybe not to have fully felt. However, history is chaotic and disturbing and no more so than in the Sixties of America. Keeping it organized around 1968 is comforting. It gives structure to a terribly difficult and almost inchoate story. It was, remember, a terrible year. Things seemed to have concentrated. The counterculture got lost in its commercial success and the swelling anger over the war. Personal liberation merged into student and racial radicalism. The right responded as it always does. It organized politically, brought in hate speech, the “silent majority” of Richard Nixon and the 16% vote for George Wallace. The alternative voices of Robert Kennedy and MLK lay silent and dead. The Vietnam War, that will forever be the first Peloponnesian moment in the American “Century”, felt unwinnable at the very moment we could have won it – if such a victory was really possible or sustainable. The cities burned. Crime was reaching all-time highs. Cops were pigs and mass domestic murders were beginning to become part of our life. The Great Society was invisibly importing the oil and the inflation that would end the Seventies and the great postwar boom. Our cars sucked, our rivers burned and LA averaged over 150 killer smog alerts a year. 1968 witnessed all of this in one form or another. Let’s use the date. It is a way to remember. It pops the “yellow submarine” balloon of flower power nostalgia. It makes the past more viscerally real and by doing so makes our present day more worthy of our respect and care.
NOTE: I am tempted to throw in 2008 only based on the fact that contemporary history (see Crashed by Adam Tooze) suggests the date will be the starting gun for much of what has followed both domestically and internationally - Brexit, Trump, authoritarian superpowers, populist nationalism. The stage is vast and we are in the middle of it so identifying dates as long term historical markers is premature and a bit facile. Instead, I am more comfortable cheating a bit and throwing 2007 and 2008 together. It is irresistible. The financial tsunami is coming ashore while the smartphone begins changing how we are wired. A black man will be leading an only recently racially “liberated” superpower while the Tea Party responds with fake news and gun hording. The world will collect a whole new set of economic and social resentments at the very moment the technology arrives that can disseminate and propagate them with consequences we are only beginning to feel. The events concentrate and so do the people. 2007 is the first year in human history that more people live inside a city than outside it. The two years feel tectonic and they are only ten years ago. Everything in our lives is accelerating, why not history. Those big years may no longer be separated by decades. Too bad.
