Читать книгу America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind - Peter C. Rollins - Страница 5

Oklahoma State University and its library provided me with an inspiring workbench. A series of supportive department heads held my reins loosely and supported nontraditional projects over a thirty-seven year career. I am particularly grateful for a succession of Humanities librarians who helped me and my students with an enthusiasm that made up for gaps in the collection. As one of them, Terry Basford, explained to a graduate class, the interlibrary loan service was like the Colt .45 for the cowboy West: it made everybody equal. The trick was to stay at the task and to be productive. Electronic developments have only made their tool box more comprehensive, but I still rely on the librarians themselves when I am stumped—which is often.

Ray and Pat Browne, founders of the Popular Press and devoted leaders of the popular culture movement, did all within their powers to advise and to exhort thousands of us to keep looking for America reflected in areas so often ignored by Academe prior to the 1960s—especially in media, popular fiction, and material culture.

The Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore has been a constant source of inspiration. From the first day I set foot on the property in 1972, I have received enthusiastic support. There are many more articles, books, and films to be written about Will Rogers and I hope others will tap this indispensable resource supported by the State of Oklahoma. Steve Gragert, the current director, is a knowledgeable guide to the collection and always has been ready to work with serious researchers.

In the late 1960s, Mrs. Celia Peckham Whorf invited me into her home on a number of occasions where she shared her personal knowledge of the more metaphysically ambitious half of the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.” No researcher could be more grateful for the generosity shown by Mrs. Whorf, especially her sharing of unpublished manuscripts.

Work in film was encouraged and fostered by John E. O’Connor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. The Vietnam era in academe was a frosty one for this veteran; although John as citizen was adamantly against the war, he welcomed my ideas, even when he disagreed with them. Over the years, I have striven to reciprocate his generosity.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of my Marine Corps years. It was truly a “hands on” experience with the realities of history—or at least one set of them. While I was across the globe in a distant land, America fragmented. As a scholar, I have sought to gather the shards I found on my return, fusing together their slivered reflections of identities and ideologies into a picture that is richer and more meaningful than the whole of its sometimes jagged, diverse parts—a stained glass vision of hope and faith that echoes my admiration for the Oliver LaFarge windows at Boston’s Trinity Church. In 2010, the Marine Corps Memorial and Museum in Quantico, Virginia, will include a brick in its Walk of Honor. Maneuvering within the terse limitations on text, the brick will read: “ROLLINS. Daniel G., Dan. Jr., Peter C. WWII, Korea, Vietnam” in a dedication which celebrates family, corps, and country.

It would be impossible to thank everyone who provided intellectual inspiration, but those teaching in the undergraduate History and Literature Program at Harvard and, later, in the History of American Civilization graduate program gave me inspired academic training. As for my awareness of standards, all graduates from the “Am. Civ.” program in my era are constantly signaled by a “Perry Miller satellite” circling the earth in geosynchronous orbit, telling us to work harder, to work smarter, and to remember that Jonathan Edwards was the greatest mind America ever produced—despite his many detractors and misleading anthologizers. God bless Perry Miller and his industrious disciples who have studied the American Mind!

Beginning in 1997, Deborah Carmichael became a worthy colleague and friend. We toiled endless hours together. The professionalism she brought to the journal Film & History has carried over into her current performance as managing editor of The Journal of Popular Culture. In more recent days, this collection of essays was enhanced by the computer skills and dedication of Debbie Olson. Dr. Leslie Fife devoted considerable time and talent to shaping the text for publication. In all these instances, it has been a joy to see former students evolve into productive, scholarly peers.

Susan Rollins has been a steadfast companion and helper for the last two decades and, by her watchful supervision of the medical regimen, has kept me alive for the last eight of them. I am most grateful for her caring help and want to be one of the first to thank her for creating a cadre of docent “Ropers” at the Will Rogers Memorial. No one could have predicted such an important contribution to the cultural life of our State, but we are all grateful!

A number of these chapters first appeared in scholarly journals and general reader publications, only some of which are accessible—even in the day of the Internet. Ray Browne, as Editor of the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture, published early versions of Chapters 1, 7, 12, 16, 19. The American Quarterly graciously published Chapters 9, 18. Always supportive of Will Rogers and film scholarship, the Chronicles of Oklahoma published Chapters 2, 3, 4, 32. John O’Connor of Film & History cheerfully carried Chapters 6, 14, 31. The World and I commissioned journalistic efforts that were the starting points for Chapters 10, 13, 15. Chapter 5 first appeared in the Literature/Film Quarterly. Last, but not least, the Proceedings of the Brookline Historical Society carried early talking papers expanded into Chapters 28 and 29. Chapter 8 began as a slide show for the Mid-America Linguistics Association and was published in its Proceedings. Special issues of the Journal of the Vietnam Veterans Institute carried early versions of Chapters 21, 22, 23. Many thanks to these publications for the opportunity to put them under one editorial roof. John Deveny contributed his Spanish language expertise to Chapter 24.

Like the chapters of this collection, its photographs have accumulated over the last forty years after visits to the Library of Congress; the U.S. Archives; the Marine Corps Historical Center; the Sherman Grinberg Film Libraries; the Houghton Library; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library; the Museum of Broadcasting; the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University; the Vietnam Archive, LaSalle University; the UCLA Film and Television Archive; the archives of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS; the LBJ Presidential Library; the JFK Presidential Library; the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library; the Film Archive; the Bartlett Art Library; the Cadre Films Archive; the Center for the Study of Film and History Archive. Many thanks to these institutions for their support and encouragement.