Ross Douthat (June 26, 2007) - Updike on Shlaes Revisited (Books)

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Updike on Shlaes Revisited

26 Jun 2007 10:57 am

I just re-read my earlier post and I think I'd like to disassociate myself from my own snarkiness. Sure, Updike's essay wasn't very good at all, but neither was it bad enough to be described as "solipsistic flapdoodle," and I'm not sure why I was so obnoxious about Updike not being a professional historian. (Shlaes isn't one either, technically.) Particularly since with this piece and his earlier Aimee Semple McPherson review, Updike seems to be tackling books that fall outside the usual New Yorker orbit - and even if he ends up giving them the usual New Yorker gloss, it's still a tendency that ought to be encouraged.

Also, it's more interesting to use the review to analyze the psychology of the typical Depression-era voter - which Updike's FDR-voting ancestors assuredly were - than to make fun of Updike's leaps in logic. Here's Daniel Larison's take:

Updike’s story is an interesting portrait of how government-exacerbated crises can work, perversely enough, to instill even greater support for the government: the Depression was so miserable that people became grateful for whatever assistance they could get, even though the very programs they were using were working, on a macro level, to perpetuate their misery.

I basically agree with this, though being somewhat more sympathetic to big gummint than Daniel I would suggest that the relief programs that people were most immediately grateful for - and that were politically necessary, I would submit, if not always economically ideal - weren't usually the ones that did the most damage to the economy. You could have had the unemployment relief and the jobs programs, in other words, without the attempts have the government rig wages and prices - or the WPA without the NRA, the CCC without the AAA, if you follow me. (Ah, the New Deal ...)

Update: Isaac thinks I was right to begin with.