Mavericks, Mystics, and Misfits: Americans Against the Grain by Arthur Hoyle

At first glance, this book may strike a potential reader as simply an "American lives" collection, which, in a sense, it is. But it is more than just a collection of lives of Americans, some famous, some not. (I recognized the names of only five of the 10 subjects of the book, and I suspect that my rate of acquaintance with the subjects won't prove unusual.) The subjects run the course of American history from the Puritans Roger Williams and Anne Bradstreet to contemporary Californians Judith Baca and the husband-and-wife team of Warren Brush and Sylvia Harvan-Brush. Each of the individuals or (two) couples are the subjects of chapters that address their lives, their works, and their aspirations. Hoyle treats both his historical subjects and his contemporary subjects with equal care and adroitness. Each chapter captures the gist of the project (or projects) of each individual or couple and their place in the course of American history. Each chapter represents describes a snippet of the diversity of the American experience: Puritans Williams and Bradstreet; the agitator for revolution Thomas Paine; the western explorer Josiah Gregg; the escaped slaves-turned-abolitionists-turned educators of post-Civil War freed slaves, William and Ellen Craft; the unsettling academic Thorstein Veblen; the immigrant, worldly mystic Thomas Merton; the Pawnee soldier-artist Brummett Echohawk; the artist-activist Judith Baca; and the environmentalist couple Brush and Harvan-Brush. Quite an eclectic list! 

I should note that each chapter is a succinct and well-written mini-biography of the subject (or couple). And each chapter is framed by a brief introduction that frames the chapter within the context of surrounding events. 

But the source with the book's success with me comes from what is, at least for some, an unexpected place: the Introduction.  And a piece of advice: read the introduction to a book! 

In this book, Hoyle, in three pages, transforms what would otherwise prove simply a potpourri of interesting American lives into a study of the American experience and American values. Hoyle states the intention of his book neatly in the opening paragraph: 

This book profiles exemplary American men and women whose lives collectively span the history of our country from the period of the first Puritan settlements to the present time. These individuals have been chosen because of their life stories, thought often at variance with the directions of the mainstream society around them, exhibit certain enduring qualities of the American character that persist despite the changing circumstances of time and place. (1)

Note what Hoyle is positing here: "the American character." I believe that earlier in my life to posit something like "the American character" would have been utterly unremarkable. But in our current situation, such a contention might prove highly contentious. "We have so many differences! We are so diverse! E Pluribus Unum is a fraud!"  Or some would so argue. But Hoyles's introduction, and each chapter that recounts the lives and projects of individuals from disparate times, backgrounds, and interests, demonstrate that Hoyle posits a sound position when he identifies "the American character" based on sets of common experiences and values even as he notes and celebrates our distinctions and differences. 

Hoyle identifies the first American challenge as that of the first European immigrants to adopt European traditions and modes of living to the "realities of the New World." (N.B. Don't let this contention mislead you into thinking that Hoyle is not cognizant of the American Indian experience, he is. (See the chapter about Brummett Echohawk.) But "America" was not "America" until the Europeans arrived. Before European exploration and colonization, this was a land of many peoples who understood their land and their world very differently from how they experienced it after the arrival of the Europeans.) Hoyle recognizes that the earlier colonists came for a variety of reasons, some to escape religious prosecution and others for the prospect of economic opportunity. And both of these motives (and no doubt a host of other reasons between these two extremes) fostered the development 

of two seemingly contradictory traits that enabled survival in the New World--independence and cooperation--that have unfolded in a dynamic tension across American history. Independence required the development of individualism and self-sufficiency. The need for cooperation required the recognition of each man's equality; it also encouraged conformity. . . . From these two imperatives sprang the basic values that were codified in America's Delcartion of Idependence from England: liberty (personal freedom), and equality (personal freedom for all). These two values have become the bedrock of American character.

 Hoyle, however, adds a third trait that becomes the tie that binds his subjects together as a set of representatives that range throughout American history: dissent. Beginning with the Puritans and Quakers: 

These religious groups insisted on the right of individual conscience, a right that transcends the authority of public opinion and even the authority of law. The right of dissent is the supreme affirmation of individual right--the right to whistle your own tune and to dispute the majority when you believe that its attitudes and policies threaten liberty and equality.  . . . 

Dissent has continued to arise when people feel that one of the country's founding principles is being violated or kept unfulfilled. Some of the main historical causes of dissent have been slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and discrimination against ethnic minorities; unjust treatment of Native American peoples; the subordinate political and economic status of women; and economic inequities between capital and labor.

Dissent becomes an avenue of reform. And Hoyle identifies each of his subjects as a "dissenter' and an "exemplar" (borrowing the term from a previous subject of Hoyle's, Henry Miller). Thus, each of these subjects provides an example of the "tension we find inherent in the American character between the interests of the individual and interests of the group . . ." Hoyle concludes his introduction with this declaration: 

For dissenters, by acting on their individual vision even though it may be at variance with received wisdom or prevailing custom, even though it may threaten the established order, often serve the common good by opening new vistas and liberating others. We owe them our gratitude.

I must say that I agree with Hoyle's declaration about each of his subjects. 

However, Hoyles's contention raises an issue that bothered me as I read about these individuals who, with their individual faults and shortcomings, I admire. The ills they addressed and the hopes to which they aspired (or aspire) I find admirable. But dissent can run both ways: slaveholders were dissenters (rebels), as were the Klan, white supremacists, eugenicists, John Birchers and militiamen types, and so on. Dissent, per se, gives us no guidance about what course we should choose now. Today, amid our pandemic, some "dissenters" say we need not wear masks and that to compel anyone to do so is a violation of personal freedom; that the whole idea of a lethal pandemic is a hoax; and so on--just to name one topic! In short, dissent as an admirable trait often only after it reaches a degree of certainty after the fact. Dissent is often used as a tool of persuasion (via both ethos and pathos) by both sides of a disputed contention to bolster the moral and emotional authority of their position--the mantle of "dissenter" is often coveted in American public discourse. Dissenters about topics such as those that concern the common good or the truths of science may later receive vindication, but sometimes not until after they're dead and buried and posterity has taken an opportunity to come to a different conclusion than their forebearers. We must remain mindful that our ability to separate the sheep from the goats is an imperfect process and that we all too easily confuse the two. This lesson from history should prompt us to strive with the utmost care to judge those among us whom we may be inclined to deem needless pests or even genuine threats. If we judge prudently perhaps we can identify those among us who can improve the lot our nation, such as those whose lives Hoyle has shared here.