Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
The point of this little tableau was to illustrate the fast pace of life in The
New Era. What may first strike a reader now, however, is how quaint it all seems
– the virtual bragging about technology that is now commonplace, if not obsolete
(alarm clocks, skyscrapers, typewriters); the dated slang and references
(“hokum,” “wuxtry,” movie star Clara Bow); behavior that was once racy but is
now regarded as distasteful, if not unacceptable (cigarette smoking, alcohol
consumption, leering at women). Moreover, this sketch was not as fully
representative as it was clearly meant to be; a “typical citizen,” if there is any
such person, did not necessarily live in a city, ride a subway, work in a
skyscraper, or even have a lunch hour. Ironically, perhaps, what it most
accurately depicts is the provincialism inherent in this writer’s assumption that
he can render a “typical” American experience.
Such limits notwithstanding, there nevertheless does seem to be much in
this description that not only rings true of what many observers at the time and
since have observed of the twenties, but also in the way John Smith’s life
resembles that of, say, his granddaughter Juanita Smith. The essential shape of
the day shows striking similarity to ones experienced today: a morning routine
followed by a rush‐hour commute to work, with a subsequent workday
punctuated by daily rituals that culminate in a trip home and “an illusion of
freedom.” One can grasp the fundamental continuity of John and Juanita’s time
by imagining alternatives on either side of the temporal divide: these are not
people who begin their day by milking cows or drawing water from a well, nor
do they put food on the table by telecommuting from computer terminals in their
homes or attached to their clothing.
Perhaps more importantly, John’s and Juanita’s lives are also paralleled in
the extraordinary range of the mass media in suffusing their days. Driving home
American History for Cynical Beginners
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