In the currently fashionable interpretation of why the West prospered, (See J. Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel, N. Ferguson’s Civillisation or C. Kupchan’s Rise of the rest), the many valleys of Europe prevented oppressive large empires and spurred innovation in lifestyles and technology. I’m not sure I entirely accept the thesis, but looking at Virginia’s rolling valleys, it provides a compelling logic for why this part of the north has had such a long standing and strong attachment to liberty.
For most local settlers in the 18th and well through the 19th century, you imagine many a farmer could ride from their back porch to the edge of their properties to work and never see another man or dwelling all day. Alternately, this essentially geographic explanation for western culture and prosperity also suggests why the long flat hot plains that surrounded southern plantations nourished the control of one man over many. Slaves on such land could run and run, but never escape the gaze of others.
Tomorrow we plan to visit the home of one of the central figures of western liberty — and a product of these vivid hills — Thomas Jefferson. A man as famous for his contradictions (writing “we declare all men are created equal” while a slave-holding gent) as for his contribution to the founding of America. I have to admit, I’m a little bit excited. Jefferson has always been the most fascinating of the US founding fathers for me. Washington was a distant figure, whose way of carrying himself, renunciation of title and office, and exploits on the battlefield created his fame. Almost a mirror opposite, the vain but loveable bulldog John Adams is the one I most like, in large part thanks to David McCullough’s empathetic biography. In between these and others is the languid, slightly awkward figure of Jefferson and his quill. For the two are inseparable. Jefferson was an inventor, farmer, legislator, diplomat and architect, but he was a writer above all. In a telling anecdote, he once passed his State of the Union Address to Congress as a letter to be read by another, stating that there were writers and speakers and they were not the same skill.
This view was indirectly disagreed with by the greatest writer of our era, the recently departed biographer of Jefferson, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens’ advice was to write as you speak, and any who had heard his British-American drawl could never get it out of their head as they read his many columns and books. Yet in this divide I take Jefferson’s side. My writing voice is quite different to my speaking one, and when I read back my words in my public voice I cringe at the clash of pause, moment and rhyme. Think of the interviews with your own favourite authors, and most shy from the microphone and camera spotlight. For writers, writing is re-writing. For speakers, there is only one take and the high risk is part of the excitement. I love both forms, but I find the two utterly distant skills.
Anyway, tomorrow we journey to see the desk of a true American author, one whose own ability to pen out the immortal sentiment of the US Declaration of Independence was surely forged in the remote hills and valleys of this Virginia countryside.
(As a final note, check out this map from Crikey.com. We’d been surprised to learn most of the US is in drought, given the roadside conditions. Katina has helpfully drawn our route in blue. We swear it was unintentional.)