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...conclusion of “Wise Blood” seems almost tacked-on, simply to leave the reader with a sense of finality. At the end of the book the corpse of Hazel Motes is returned to his boarding house after he runs away because his landlady is pressuring him to marry her. The novel comes to a close as the landlady looks into Hazel’s eyes “trying to see how she had been cheated or what had cheated her, but she couldn’t see anything... she felt as if she were blocked...
Alexis de Tocqueville is famously taught in American middle schools and high schools as the Frenchman who loved America and who wrote the treatise “Democracy in America” in the mid-19th century. There is usually no further discussion of the man or his famous book before moving on to material deemed more important by state-standardized testing boards. The motives behind Tocqueville’s mission are therefore overlooked and any meaninful insight into his character is completely lost...
...just one or an unreasonable one, nothing is more difficult than to uproot it.” One could say Harvard Professor Leo Damrosch faces this challenge in writing “Toqueville’s Discovery of America.” In his new book, Damrosch is attempting to remedy the general American conception of Tocqueville through a meticulously-researched, accessible, and thoroughly charming account of the writer’s journey across 19th-century America. Instead of leaving Tocqueville as the flat character oft-quoted in college government and history classes, Damrosch delves into letters, journals, and accounts?...
...Tocqueville’s own words and those of his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, to construct a biography of Tocqueville. Scattered throughout the text are illustrations of Tocqueville, the people he met, and the scenery he witnessed on his journey, contributing to the authentic, accessible feel of the book. In addition, the intimate details of Tocqueville’s life—from his loss of faith to his sexual adventures—add color, humor, and warmth to the image of the social scientist...
Despite the easy accessibility of “Tocqueville’s Discovery of America” and its colorful anecdotes, the book does tend to run on the dry side from time to time. “Democracy in America” is a monumental text in and of itself, and while an in-depth account of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s journey across America lends a sense of time and place to such an important work, it drags a bit when it strays from its focus on illuminating Tocqueville’s most famous book...