Topic 51: Intellectual Inheritance

Carol:

Chess, Anyone?

 I have always enjoyed Norman Rockwell’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post, which along with the Reader’s Digest and National Geographic, was on my parents’ coffee table. One of my favorite covers showed a family tree. At the top was the smiling but mischievous face of a red-headed boy. As the portraits of family members expanded through his line of ancestors, no one had red hair until about 7th generations back, then there she was, a red-headed great-great-great-great-great grandmother with a shock of red curls under her demure bonnet. It is easy to track red hair and pug noses, a genetic heritage that sometimes skips around or sometimes flows from one to the next, not so easy to track the characteristics of what we call intellect or creativity. And, it’s hard to talk about “intellectual inheritances” without falling into the mire of the nature/nurture debate. For a 500-word daily theme, I choose to step around that mire.

Henry James Sr. and Jr. 1854

One might argue that William, Henry and Alice might not have shined intellectually if they had grown up with a different parent than Henry James, Sr. (1811-1882) . A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminar, James Sr.  was a famous theologian, writer and speaker whose unorthodox views often put him at intellectual odds with a distinguished circle of friends that included the Emersons, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Oliver Wendall Holmes. I can imagine the conversations that took place in the James household that laid the intellectual groundwork for 3 of the 5 James children to take up pen and write of the world in 3 completely different ways.  William became a renowned philosopher and psychologist, Henry Jr. one of America’s most significant novelists. Alice, the youngest of the James children, is best known for the diaries she began writing in 1889 only 3 years before her death:

June 18th: I perpetually come across in my reading just what I have been thinking about, curious...because my reading is so haphazard....I wonder what determines the selection of memory, why does one childish experience or impression stand out so luminous and solid against the, for the most part, vague and misty background? The things we remember have a first-timeness about them which suggests that that may be the reason of their survival (qtd at Serendip website)

Alice’s diaries were published posthumously, and since then have been the subject of much speculation regarding the constellation of psychological, emotional and physical maladies that kept her an invalid.

So, where would Norman Rockwell have painted in the literary and philosophical forebears of William, Henry Jr. and Alice? Was there an intellectual red-head somewhere back among the 7th great great great grandparents? Can we tilt the nature/nature debate in the direction of DNA? Their paternal grandfather William James was an Irish immigrant who fathered 11 children by 3 wives; his “genius” was financial, and by the time he died, he was the 2nd richest man in New York State (source: PBS).  Their maternal grandfather was also from immigrant roots in Ireland and Scotland, also a financial and business success.  Ultimately, I suspect most readers of Portrait of a Lady or The Golden Bowl don’t really care where that literary genius came from.  And, Henry James himself would probably consider the nature/nature debate no more than an intellectual game. Let’s leave the last word to him:  “Life’s too short for chess.”

Sources:

Alice James: Serendip website--
Genius in the Family: Alice James (PBS )
Genius in the Family:  Henry James Jr.(PBS)
Genius in the Family:  Henry James Sr  
Norman Rockwell: "A Family Tree", appeared as the cover of the October 24, 1959 issue of the Saturday Evening Post      

Megan:

"Intellectual" Inheritance

My mom said she might write about cartoons today because both of her brothers are gifted cartoonists and I do them too.  I’m not sure that counts as intellectual inheritance, which I guess can be loosely defined as innate ability.  I mean, there probably isn’t a gene for cartoons, but there might be one for creativity.  The creativity gene is fairly widespread in my family, with my mom and her brothers, my brother and me, at least one cousin and my aunt on my father’s side and probably some other people I’m forgetting right now. It’s hard to say whether we come by these inclinations naturally, or if we learned them from each other.  But I don’t particularly feel like writing about creativity today. I’d rather talk about something else I’ve inherited (or learned).

When we write these things, my mother and I, we do not read the other’s essay until we have finished our own. We try not to discuss them either, to avoid cheating (or stealing). My mother: The Cheater … anyone who knows her in real life is laughing right now and shaking his head. But if the accusation were directed at me, there would be a pause (just a little pause) before my honor was defended – not because I am a cheater—because sometimes things out of hand when I’m trying to be funny. Anyone who knows my father is laughing and nodding his head right now.  It’s called the Hammond Sense of Humor, and it’s an acquired taste. It’s snarky and sarcastic, and usually a little twisted.  It was probably developed as a defense mechanism in an unhappy home, but my brother and I inherited it any way.  

Sometimes we can take a joke too far…

Example: My dad was telling me about a shirt he saw a guy wearing. The guy was on a Harley and the back of the shirt said, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off.”

And I said, “They should make one for the woman that says, ‘If you can read this, the car-seat fell off.’”

“Too far, Megan. Too far.”

Another example:

 

Well, my father laughed. 

I guess the best thing about the Hammond Sense of Humor is that we don't just make jokes, we can take them. This served me well in the prison.  


One time a prisoner lied about his name and told me it was Freeman, so the next time he came to the library I asked him his name again.

"I told you my name, why can't you remember?"
"I remember that you lied about your name."
"Oh, I'm sorry miss, it's Jackson."
"Let me see your ID card."
"Don't have one, miss."
"Yeah you do. You're not allowed off the wing without an ID card."
"I lost it miss, seriously. I'm waiting for a new one."
"OK then. So, your name is Jackson?" I reach for the alphabetical inmate list.
"Yeah, Samuel Jackson."
"Right. Your middle name, does it start with an L?"
"Wow, you're good miss. My middle name is Leon."
"Fine."

"Miss, you gotta really good memory to remember I said Freeman."
"I always remember when someone lies to me."
"Oh, sorry. My name's not Jackson either, sorry."
"What is it?"
"Campbell."
"Naomi Campbell?"
"Yeah..."
"Get the hell out of my library."