Given that I haven’t had a chance to read the book in question, I don’t know what to make of the ongoing, and increasingly nasty, fight over John Stauffer’s and Sally Jenkins’s new history of the Free State of Jones. But it seems like the struggle over the book is pretty interesting, as it raises all kinds of questions about the intersection of historical narratives and big-time entertainment. I also think there’s probably something to be said here about the nature of scholarship. But again, without having read the book, I’m not the one to say it. At least not yet.
Anyway, the fight started here and here and here, I guess, when Victoria Bynum, who’s written her own history of Jones County during the Civil War, posted a scathing review of The State of Jones. Take a look. See what you think.
Update: Stepping back a bit, it seems to me that there are other interesting questions raised by this case. For instance, as Kevin points out in his post (linked above), how does the advent of blogging change the way that “scholarly”* books are reviewed? How do “historians”** change their writing, particularly what*** they choose to write, given the audience they want for their books? And is it okay to find motivation for scholarship in the pursuit of a big payday?
* Yep, those are scare quotes. Deal with it.
** And again. Feel free to fill out a comment card, if you’d like.
*** As opposed to how they write. Content rather than style, in other words.
The Edge of the American West 
28 comments
July 31, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Vance
Those pages on Civil War Memory and Bynum’s blog (with the comments) are pretty fascinating.
And is it okay to find motivation for scholarship in the pursuit of a big payday?
As a non-scholar, I hope I’m not disqualified from saying Yes. But it does seem from this example that the prospect of the “payday” creates incentives that are inimical to scholarship — in particular, an incentive to paint in primary colors and conform real human subjects, uncertainly known, to models of heroism. See Linzay’s comment and Bynum’s response. “Imperfections” that amount to interesting character flaws — for example, that the hero of a mystery must be “wounded” — are not the same as actual evidence of character.
July 31, 2009 at 4:46 pm
grackle
I used to turn eagerly to the back pages of the NYRB to read the back and forth food fights between reviewers and authors. Very tittilating stuff, but as in this case, very hard to tell what to think, and overall, usually, no one comes out looking very good. Bynum’s three part review has a lack of charity and a damning with faint praise tonality that gives me the impression that she is, as Stauffer and Jenkins suggest in their response, marking her territory against intruders. Perhaps this speaks to the blog venue in which her review appears, i.e. her own blog, on which it’s pretty much certain that there has been no editorial review such as one would expect in a journal review.
And is it okay to find motivation for scholarship in the pursuit of a big payday?
I think there is the school that takes pride in having the smallest possible audience.
July 31, 2009 at 7:04 pm
kevin
I think there is the school that takes pride in having the smallest possible audience.
Yes, it’s called “cultural studies.”
July 31, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Matt McKeon
“the big payday”
As Samuel Johnson remarked, only a fool would NOT write for money.
Time spent reading the reviews, and the reviews of the reviews, then the comments on the reviews of the reviews might be better spent reading the books.
No, I haven’t read either book. Why do you ask?
July 31, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Ahistoricality
I used to turn eagerly to the back pages of the NYRB to read the back and forth food fights between reviewers and authors.
I still read the “Communications” section of AHR first (and sometimes, I’ll admit, it’s the only thing I get to).
Bynum’s three part review has a lack of charity and a damning with faint praise tonality that gives me the impression that she is, as Stauffer and Jenkins suggest in their response, marking her territory against intruders.
Taken by itself, perhaps, but Levin has also dismissed the book as unworthy of the term “scholarly study. It is a fundamentally flawed work.” So it’s entirely plausible to me that Bynum was, in fact, being fair.
August 1, 2009 at 12:07 am
Ben Alpers
Yes, it’s called “cultural studies.”
I would have said “analytic philosophy”….but what’s interesting is that neither of us would have cited history or a sub-field of it. Although most of what we historians write is only read by other historians, I think the notion that we are (or could be or should be) writing for a broader, non-academic audience is part of most historians’ professional self-understanding. So we’re all very comfortable with the notion of writing for a broad audience (at least in theory). Of course, this is not exactly the same thing as “writing in pursuit of a big payday.”
Michèle Lamont suggests in How Professors Think, her fascinating recent book about the way academics evaluate each others work, that we historians have less disagreement among ourselves about what constitutes good work because we tend to define good work in terms of craft: “in history,” Lamont writes, “broad consensus is based on a shared definition of good craftsmanship in the practice of empirical research” (p. 103).
And in a way, that craft-based definition of quality underwrites both our sense that we might legitimately attract a larger audience (since abstruseness is at least not valued as a good in and of itself), and at least some of the negative academic responses to the recent Stauffer and Jenkins book (which, like ari, I haven’t read).
There are clearly many things are at issue in this dispute…and ari’s excellent questions only begin to scratch the surface. Kevin Levin seems concerned not only with the way in which blogs affect the writing of history books, but also with Stauffer and Jenkins’s failure as bloggers (quoting from the comment linked to by Ahistoricality): “From my perspective it comes down to the fact that these authors promised to use my blog as a forum in which to exchange ideas about their book. That didn’t happen and that is what I am primarily upset about.”
Then there’s the whole question of coauthoring works of scholarship with non-scholars. Is this a problem? And if so why?
At any rate, lots here to discuss!
August 1, 2009 at 2:27 am
andrew
I wonder if the New York Times has a reporter capable of covering historical disputes (remember that disappearing traditional history article a few months ago, or the Nixon tapes article?). The reporter – not the same one who wrote those other pieces, incidentally – writes:
Other accounts suggest that the response was not detailed, that it was not posted at Renegade South – but rather was posted elsewhere and linked to from Renegade South – and that the “conclusion” was really an assertion not responsive to any of the legitimate questions raised. I suppose these can be dismissed as minor problems. But it reinforces my impression that the Times produces very little coverage of books worth reading (as does another recent thread).
August 1, 2009 at 2:54 am
andrew
Looking at the response (which I hadn’t gone through above), I guess I can see how it can come across as detailed. It’s certainly longish, in blog terms. Maybe I’ve read too many forum-on-a-book features in historical journals.
August 1, 2009 at 3:27 am
Kevin
Interesting comments.
Ben,
It’s a very minor point, but I wouldn’t describe Jenkins and Stauffer as bloggers. It seems to me that their mistake was in the way they approached the blogosphere. I’ve stopped counting, but there are upwards of 30-40 Civil War blogs and I suspect that between Jenkins and the publisher many were contacted to see if they might be interested in reviewing the book and/or interviewing the authors. Their mistake was in assuming that they could use the blogosphere to market their book and interpretation rather than as a forum in which to engage interested readers. They said they were interested in such an exchange on my site, but one can discern that this was not really the case.
To the extent that I am correct in this assertion they miscalculated. First, Bynum herself is a blogger and an authority on the subject and there is a substantial community of readers who wish to be engaged rather than be seen as passive observers. It turns out that “Civil War buffs” can engage in critical thought. :)
Grackle,
I have no doubt that Bynum’s tone set Jenkins and Stauffer on edge and probably contributed to the emotion-laden response on my site, but she also uncovered a host of problems with the interpretation that Jenkins and Stauffer have a responsibility to acknowledge and respond to. That didn’t happen and that is why, after finishing the book myself, I declared it to be fundamentally flawed.
August 1, 2009 at 4:29 am
drip
I can’t comment on the effect such works or debates have on the academy and I haven’t read either book. But of course it’s OK to write for a big payday; it’s OK to find motivation for scholarship in hopes of a big payday; it’s even OK to decide to write the book in a manner (or choose its content) to increase chances of a big payday. What’s not OK is to market a book as scholarship when it is not or to write a book having made choices which compromise scholarship and complain when people point out the factual errors or inapposite conclusions due to failures of scholarship.
I comment here only to point out that such books are not fair to me and people like me — a general reader of serious literature.
I am not an historian, though I am an omnivorous reader and I expect to be able to tell whether I am reading a scholarly work or “an hilarious romp through the swamps of civil war era Mississippi”, or a “love story — he was a rich white captain, she was a slave” pot boiler. Nothing wrong with such books, I’ve read some, you should if you haven’t, but don’t complain when a scholar of Victoria Bynum’s stature questions your scholarship even if it is in her self-interest to do so. The appropriate response is “I did it for the money, deal” or “Victoria Bynum misstes the facts in her own work” or the usual NYRB bullshit. It is not appropriate to use a version of “Victoria Bynum is jealous” or “she’s mean to kittens” or some such personal insult.
The defense of the Jenkins/Stauffer book which I can make is that I have read a couple of Jenkins’ books and her work at the Post. She’s a fine writer but no kind of researcher — her book on Armstrong proved that, so I would not have expected the work to be scholarly and might discount Bynum’s review as a result. Also, as andrew points out, it’s longish (and a little defensive) for a blog review. That defense is weakened because the publisher asked Levin (and presumably other scholars to review it and because Jenkins, for herself and Stauffer, attempted to defend the book as if the work was in fact intended as scholarship. Now, if I read the book, I’ll know that it’s a story with some history and not history but without this post and a half an hour of following links, that might not have been the case.
August 1, 2009 at 6:04 am
Dr J
I saw _State of Jones_ at the OAH book exhibit in the spring and was pretty floored just to see that it existed. (I liked Bynum’s _Free State of Jones_ when it came out, and have since gotten to know her a little bit. I’m biased.) Obviously, there is no law preventing authors from writing about subjects that have already been covered by other authors, but to write a book on an identical, otherwise out-of-the-mainstream subject like this? And to add nothing substantial to the previously completed work on the subject, other than a sexier writing style?
So, if there are no written rules regulating behavior in this area, I’m curious to know what others think the unwritten rules are. I guess I more or less expect journalists to do this (but maybe not to go on the Daily Show and breathlessly report that historians have ignored the subject, as Jenkins did). But I think Stauffer has some real ‘splainin’ to do.
August 1, 2009 at 7:11 am
Ben Alpers
It’s a very minor point, but I wouldn’t describe Jenkins and Stauffer as bloggers. It seems to me that their mistake was in the way they approached the blogosphere.
A very fair point, Kevin. Oddly, I really didn’t mean to suggest that they were, or that you had suggested they were. When I wrote that you were concerned with “Stauffer and Jenkins’s failure as bloggers” what I meant was something like “Stauffer and Jenkins’s failure at blogging.”
But I hadn’t thought that what I wrote could be misinterpreted as falsely attributing an identity to S and J. Interesting.
An analogy would be the sentence “drip discusses Jenkins’s failures as an historian.” Does this sentence imply that Jenkins is professionally an historian, or merely that she has tried to write history and done it inadequately?
I guess what I’m pointing out is that while we’re used to this distinction in history (being an historian is a profession after all), it’s interesting that it has become a fact of life in the blogosphere (and I agree with Keven that it has). The price of entry in blogging is famously low. Write for a blog…and you’re a blogger! No certification required. By that standard Jenkins and Stauffer are bloggers, though apparently not very active or good ones. But like “historian” blogger has developed a kind of identity meaning: Bynum is a blogger in the sense that she maintains an active, high quality blog; in this sense Jenkins and Stauffer aren’t (just as it’s fair to say that Stauffer is an historian and Jenkins isn’t, even though they are co-authors of a work of history).
Or maybe all of this is blindingly obvious and I just need my first cup of coffee of the day!
August 1, 2009 at 7:23 am
Kevin Levin
Ben,
Thanks for clarifying. I think we are pretty close in our view of things. I just wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to elaborate on a few points.
August 1, 2009 at 8:54 am
drip
Actually Ben, you made my point rather better than I did. Maybe the confusion is that Stauffer’s participation raises the expectations of some as to the quality of the research, rather than the other way around, but Jenkins has responded as though academically acceptable standards had been adhered to. Again though, is Jenkins trying to raise her credibility by association and if so is Stauffer under an obligation to reach a peer reviewed standard? Or can ari”s forthcoming Jim Henson biography gain readers by adding JK Rowling as an author and skip the messy parts because of her participation. It’s fine with me, but don’t try to pass it off as rigorously researched, if it wasn’t.
The other issue, of course, is that Jenkins is defended, or at least portrayed positively, in the review of the dust up in the NYT article andrew cites. So where is the inquiry into the Times treating Jenkins, who is a newspaper reporter, more favorably than the mere blogger Bynum? I have come to treat all texts, written, oral, electronic, printed, what have you, on the same terms and judge them with the same standards, but as I noted above, I am not an academic, and only a part of a pretty small audience and I don’t have to deal with the standards that the academy requires.
August 1, 2009 at 11:44 am
TF Smith
Marcus Rediker gave a talk on campus a couple of years ago where he shared some of the insights he has gleaned from his research into the lives of maritime laborers in the 16th and 17th century Atlantic world; very interesting and – at least to my eyes; it is not my area of interest – very well-researched and written.
He also mentioned he has written a screenplay about pirates and pirating, and that he had tried to give it a more historical foundation than, say, Disney’s version – but he was also forthright in saying he did not see such an effort as scholarship.
Ms. Jenkins is not a historian or a scholar, and is, pretty obviously, looking for the big score in Hollywood; she was hired, after all, to write what amounts to the novelization of a yet-to-be-produced screenplay.
What seems really questionable to me in Dr. Stauffer’s involvement; whether he was brought aboard to give this effort a scholarly gloss or not, it appears he may be not have thought it through…his involvement seems more questionable than Jenkins’ in my eyes.
Caveats: I have yet to read either book (but am very interested now in doing so before the fall semester begins), but have to say Dr. Bynum’s POV seems legitimate; I also say this as someone with more than decade in daily journalism, some personal experience in academia, and with at least a passing aquaintance with the entertainment industry.
I think Faulkner’s observation about Hollywood and serious writers (academic or otherwise) still holds true.
August 1, 2009 at 4:15 pm
stevenattewell
I find this conflict slightly odd, in that I’ve always considered “popular history” as not only a perfectly valid field of enterprise, but a rather important one in terms of shaping historical memory and understanding in the general public. Which means its important not to get things wrong in ways that have a negative impact, like the Shara oeuvre and its intersection with Reconciliationist/Lost Cause renderings of the Civil War.
Now, if the “State of Jones” folks got stuff really wrong, that’s problematic, but it’s less problematic that they sexed up a romantic relationship for the sake of a film, if the film does the important work of A. reminding people that the South was not 100% pro-Confederate (and implicitly that folks in Jones County, or Winston County, or any of the other Unionist highlands, shouldn’t go around with Confederate flags), B. reminding people that the Confederacy was not some libertarian paradise with mint juleps and hoop skirts and in fact was a rather ugly and oppressive regime, which importantly reflects on the men and women who fought for or supported it., and C. presenting an interracial relationship in a good light, which is rarely done in any kind of cinema.
August 1, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Kevin Levin
Steve,
I’ve been thinking about just this issue all day and your comment brought me to write a short follow-up at Civil War Memory. I cited your comment: http://cwmemory.com/2009/08/01/another-angle-on-the-state-of-jones/
Feel free to continue the discussion if you are so inclined.
Thanks,
Kevin at Civil War Memory
August 2, 2009 at 11:22 am
Anderson
Obviously, there is no law preventing authors from writing about subjects that have already been covered by other authors
Tangentially, this makes me think of the weird way in which clusters of books appear on the same subject at about the same time — for instance, the recent rash of books on Germany in 1945, including the postwar.
My supposition is that publishers get wind of competing projects and tell their authors to hurry up and get the damn thing ready to print.
August 2, 2009 at 11:28 am
TF Smith
Given the generally poor record of Hollywood when it comes to American history, is the question really whether half a loaf is better than none?
As in does the reality that the Stauffer/Jenkins book/movie novelization may reinforce the points that A) the Civil War was fought over slavery; B) slavery was unrefined cruelty, and C) the pro-slavery rebellion of the Confederacy against the United States was opposed by many southerners (white and black), outweigh the lack of academic rigor and intellectual honesty that has been explored in great detail in the past few weeks in this and other forums? (Fora?)
I have great sympathy for Dr. Bynum, and agree with Dr. Simpson’s arguments; that being said, given the generally crappy record of popular entertainment regarding American history (the premis of Tarantino’s in-coming opus on WW II sets my teeth on edge), perhaps the pragmatic response is simply to be thankful for small favors?
As in, this is about the best that can be expected from the likes of Ross and Jenkins; but Stauffer’s involvement leaves me wondering…
YMMV, of course.
August 2, 2009 at 2:12 pm
grackle
I have great sympathy for Dr. Bynum, and agree with Dr. Simpson’s arguments…<i/"
Yet, if one is to credit the NYT account, Dr. Bynum was on the war-path against interlopers before she wrote her review: I am appalled at the manner in which these authors have written what is touted as a scholarly work. I am also deeply hurt by the manner in which they have appropriated, then denigrated, my work she is quoted as having sent around in an e-mail.
In my view that puts paid to Dr. Simpson’s protestation that she was an injured party. It also seems that Stauffer and Jenkins responded more than adequately to most of the substantive charges Bynum leveled against their work, given the hostile forum. As to the use of the word “secession” in the title, I had no idea it was a sacred amulet for civil war buffs. If it walks like a duck, etc. As usual, the cafeteria has clumps of food all over the walls.
“…this is about the best that can be expected from the likes of Ross and Jenkins…” Do you know these folks? Or something really evil about them? Or is this just an assertion of class privilege?
August 2, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Anderson
the premis of Tarantino’s in-coming opus on WW II sets my teeth on edge
Isn’t it so wacked-out that no one can take it seriously? I mean, everyone knows that Brad Pitt never took Hitler prisoner.
… More seriously, it can’t be any worse than The Kindly Ones.
August 2, 2009 at 3:13 pm
TF Smith
Anderson –
“Secession” has a pretty well-understood legal, political, and historical meaning, especially within the ambit of studies of the US Civil War; scholarly works are supposed to have accurate titles, so from the front cover, that’s a strike against Jenkins and Stauffer.
Words have meaning, after all, certainly in non-fiction..whether Jenkins’ and Stauffer’s work is non-fiction or not, which, of course, appears to be the question…
Bynum is a historian, who, from what I can tell, is the recognized academic expert on Jones County during the Civil War; from her POV as such, for Stauffer and Jenkins to write what amounts to a commissioned novelization of a screenplay based on her (Bynum’s) research and present it as a scholarly work seems pretty damn insulting…her reaction is understandable, and hardly “on the war-path” – a choice of words which itself suggests some fairly unscholarly attributes.
As far as Ross and Jenkins go, they are not historians, academics, or scholars – so other than Ross’s ability to produce films and Jenkins’ career as a journalist, I’m not sure how they are better qualified to tell the story of Jones County than Bynum.
Which leads one to Stauffer, who, it appears, got involved in something that was not a scholarly effort.
As far as Littell’s novel goes, I have to say I’d never heard of it prior to your mention; it sounds as bad as Tarentino’s idiocy.
August 2, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Ben Alpers
Very OT, but I’ve read The Kindly Ones and it is actually very good and well-worth reading. Daniel Mendelsohn’s generally admiring review of it in the New York Review of Books is, I think, on the mark in its assessment of both the novel’s strengths and its weaknesses.
Incidentally, very little of the controversy over the novel concerns the historical accuracy of its depiction of actual events, personalities and institutions. Historians have generally given Littell high marks for his familiarity with the latest literature about Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Criticisms of the book tend to, instead, focus on: 1) the very idea of writing a novel from the point of view of a Holocaust perpetrator, 2) Littell’s interest in and depiction of the psychosexual peculiarities (trying to avoid spoilers here…trust me, that’s an understatement) of the main character, 3) Littell’s willingness to place his protagonist at far too many key WWII events and sites (the Baba Yar massacre, Auschwitz, Stalingrad, the fall of Berlin, Hungary when the deportation of the Jews begins, Poznan for Himmler’s speech about the “Final Solution” etc. etc.), 4) the sheer length of the damn book (as well as Littell’s occasionally clunky writing, which is apparently worse in the original French).
A c. 1,000 page-long novel about the Holocaust told from the point of view of an unrepentant sociopathic SS perpetrator is probably a hard sell. But if such a thing interests you at all, it’s worth picking up a copy.
August 2, 2009 at 6:24 pm
TF Smith
Ben –
Not at all…but I appreciate your point.
As always, opinions differ, of course, but the Publisher’s Weekly and New Yorker reviews of Littell’s novel spotlit on the Amazon page (first thing that came up) are pretty scathing.
My contrast with Tarentino’s WW II crapfest is that at least no one has (I think) made a film of Littell’s work…
To give them both their due, however reluctantly, I don’t think Mr. Tarentino or Mr. Littrell have enlisted a Harvard academic to assist with their works…but I could be wrong.
August 2, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Anderson
Littell’s willingness to place his protagonist at far too many key WWII events and sites
That, and the too-damn-long aspect, are criticisms that apply to Herman Wouk’s two-part novel as well, though Wouk had fewer literary pretensions … and less kinky sex, even if you think that Pamela’s falling for Victor is a little too good, and hot, to be true.
Haven’t read Littell — I get the impression from the reviews of pages and pages of perversion, alternating with pages and pages of dumped note cards — but many of the criticisms have been too highminded to be terribly persuasive. “How dare one imagine being a Nazi!!!” is childish.
August 2, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Anderson
Oh btw, the secession stuff is presumably aimed at some non-Anderson commenter.
August 2, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Ahistoricality
It also seems that Stauffer and Jenkins responded more than adequately to most of the substantive charges Bynum leveled against their work, given the hostile forum.
Really? I mean, they did respond to some of them, but most of those responses were variations on “You’re not my mother so you can’t make me eat my vegetables!” or “I already did my homework and you can’t prove I didn’t!” Levin’s commentators were hostile only in the sense that they admitted that they’d read and respected Bynum’s work, and those who’d read the new book — including Levin — were unconvinced by the Stauffer/Jenkins defenses.
August 3, 2009 at 10:00 am
TF Smith
Anderson – yes, that was a response to Grackle; the threads lay out weirdly at times…