Not Much Has Changed
This is a close reading I conducted in my MFA program in 2016. Sadly, the message in this essay appears to be timeless.
A close reading of an essay written by Eula Biss in her collection titled; Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays
Time and Distance Overcome
The United States is in the midst ofsocialunrest that most citizens believed was long behind them. In the 1960’s Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of civil rights and acceptance. He spoke of brotherhood and love. "Let no man pull you so low as to hate him," he said. Almost 60 years later, an unspoken discomfort bubbles beneath the surface of our advanced technology and progressive communication like an infected cut under a bandage that was never changed. The pundits say our nation is divided. Black men are as much at risk of being gunned down in the street now as they were back then. Black Lives Matter has become a movement.
It is no shock that writers are addressing the issue, but it is surprising that a young, American, white woman would pen of one of the most powerful collections of racially themed essays in the last decade. Eula Biss’s essay collection Notes from No Man’s Landis a remarkable piece of literature.
The first essay in the collection, “Time and Distance Overcome” carries the most significant impact. The juxtaposition of topics, combined with Biss’s use of point of view and warm and cold language in describing the events provide the reader with a reminder of the dreadful acts of inhumanity committed in the late 1880’s and early 1900’s.
Biss repeatedly surprises the reader by abruptly and strategically shifting subject and tone. In the first few pages of the essay, she discusses the resistance of land and business owners to the unsightly existence of telephone poles on the landscape.
The second half of the essay focuseson how telephone poles served as a convenient tool for lynching.
Throughout the essay, Biss takes the point of view of a reporter. She strategically chooses fresh details on a familiar topic to prevent the piece from becoming a boring history lesson. She provides selective components of the history of Alexander Graham Bell and his invention of the telephone. This thread of the essay is interesting and informative. She chooses to tell the little-knownfacts instead of the story that most readers already know.
Biss begins her essay with journalistic fact: “Of what use is such an invention? the NewYork Worldasked shortlyafter Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated his telephone in 1876. The world was not waiting for the telephone. Bell’s financial backers asked him not to work on his new invention because it seemed too dubious an investment” (Biss 3).
Biss’s line, “The world was not waiting for the telephone” seems unfathomable to the reader, who is only aware of the great success of Mr. Bell’s invention. The fact that his financial backers were doubtful may also come as a surprise, given the incredible culture change the telephone invention initiated.
The next paragraph is one sentence; “Even now it is an impossible idea, that we are all connected, all of us” (Biss 3). Biss changes the point of view from a reporter of fact to an omniscient third person. She uses the words “we” and “us” to encompass the people in the past as well as the reader. She also chooses a warmer language in her interjection. The words “impossible idea” denote a tone of disbelief in the technology of those early years. The words “even now” keep the reader engaged in the story by relating to the advances in technology that we all currently enjoy. It reminds us that without Bell’s telephonewe may not be so advanced today. The last three words of the sentence, however, carry the most weight. “All of us.” She breaks the sentence with a comma to give pause before those three words. The reader feels the importance of “all of us” in the warm tone of Biss’s reflection on how the advances in communication affect every corner of the globe. What the reader is not yet aware of is the subtle foreshadowing the words carry.
The juxtaposition in the first portion of the essay illuminates the contrast between the amazing technology that Alexander Bell offered society and society’s surprising resistance to the implementation of it.
Biss offers more historical fact. “Property owners in Red Bank, New Jersey, threatened to tar and feather the workers putting up telephone poles.A judge granted a group of homeowners an injunction to prevent the telephone company from erecting new poles. Another judge found that a man who had cut down a telephone pole because it was obnoxious was not guilty of malicious mischief” (Biss 5). The reader is likely surprised, at first, to learn that people did not want to deal with unsightly telephone poles that are now barely noticed along the roadways. Most will pick up on the fact that this civil disobedience and threatening bodily harm to telephone workers went unchecked by the judicial system of the era. We can see how ridiculous and inappropriate it is for people to react this way over telephone poles The use of the phrase “Tar and feather” is a foreshadowing to what the KKK would do to their black victims and ofthe change in subject furtherin the piece.
In the next paragraph the author changes point of view; “And then perhaps there was alsofearthat distance, as it had always been knownand measured, was collapsing” (Biss 5). She speaks as a voice of reason and understanding. The use of the word “fear” puts the actions of the people in question into perspective. We all have a fear of major change in our way of life. The word “collapsing” indicates the justification of that fear. The unknown is a scary prospect. Again, Biss changes the reader’s mind about the facts she relays with one sentence.
The conflict that resonates with readers is when the essay shifts from a historical account of the introduction of telephone poles to the horrifying ways people used them. In one paragraph, Biss writes: “Rutheford B. Hayes pronounced the installation of a telephone in the White House. The telephone, Thomas Edison declared, ‘Annihilated time and space, and brought the human family in closer touch’” (Biss 6). A telephone in the White House is a significant detail because the White House exemplifies unity. America had accepted the telephone, and the utility companies installed the poles from coast to coast. This fact givesthe reader a sense of closure. The paragraph which follows changes that.
“In 1898, in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole. And in Weir City, Kansas. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma where the hanged man was riddledwith bullets” (Biss 6). The language is cold and journalistic. She gives the year, then the city and state. She begins each subsequent sentence with a capitalized “And.” The reader wonders, for a moment, if this is the same essay. The following three pages consist of similar lists of violent acts which today would be considered murder but were accepted, then, by law enforcement.
Biss’s use of warm language in this section of the essay is scant. In the middle of page 7,there is a paragraph that defends the poles themselves. She writes: “The poles, of course, were not to blame. It was only coincidence that they became convenient as gallows, because they were tall and straight, with a crossbar, and because they stood in public places” (Biss 8). Although Biss writes this paragraph in defense of the inanimate poles, the words “coincidence” and “convenient” are contradictory. The society that feared great change in their way of life had no problem taking the lives of other human beings.
The most haunting of the cold language passages in this piece the description of a picture Biss finds in her research. She describes it in a reporting voice with simple, but gruesome detail.
“A postcard was made from the photo of a burned man hanging from a telephone pole in Texas, his legs broken off below the knee and his arms curled up and blackened. Postcards of lynchings were sent out as greeting and warnings until 1908 when the postmaster general declared them unmailable” (Biss 9). In this passage, “A burned man” is the only acknowledgmentof the human element in the photo. She moveson to state the missing legs and curled up arms, but the reader has not seen the photo. Curled up arms and missing legs are difficult to imagine for most of us, so the image does not resonate deeply as it could.
Conversely, she describes another photo with warmer language. “…the bodies of the men lynched from telephone poles are silhouetted against the sky. Sometimes two men to a pole, hanging above the buildings of a town. Sometimes three. They hang like flags in still air” (Biss 9). Here, the author gives the reader a more impactful image with the use of warmer language. The words “bodiesof men” tells the reader that these are human beings. They have bodies that once looked like ours, walking, talking and breathing. The word “silhouetted” is significant. First, the word gives the reader the image of black and white, as the photo must have been. Also, the word indicates a description of somethingthat is moving and living. The silhouette of a dancer, or a cat on a fence. Most people think of silhouettes as pleasant images. In this instance, it refers to the silhouettes of ghosts. The photo is haunting. “Above the buildings of a town” acknowledges the additional element of humiliation created by the publicspectacle. The men hung and burned and likely struggled for their liveswhile other human beings watched, and did nothing. The final line, “they hang like flags in still air” impacts the reader with the absolute loss of life. The word “flag” is a reference to the American flag, the White House, unity, and the resistance to unity the bodies represent. The last two words, “still air” is a reference to the inhumanity of the scene. It gives the reader the sense that nothing is moving, not the air, not society. Nothing is happening in response to, or in retaliation for, the horrific deaths of the men hanging in the photo. This isan emotional and heartbreaking account following several pages of cold reporting. The contrast pulls at the heart of the reader as a result.
The final interjection of Biss’s personal point of view comes on the last page of the essay. “My grandfather was a lineman. He broke his back when a telephone pole fell. When I was young, I believed that the arc and swoop of telephone wires along the roadways wasbeautiful. I believed that the telephone poles, with their transformers catching the evening sun, were glorious. And I believed that the telephoneitself was a miracle” (Biss 11).
The first two sentences in the paragraph give the first insight intothe author’s connection to the subject of the essay. “My grandfather was a lineman.” She reveals a family connection. “He broke his back,” gives the reader an idea that the family suffered as a result. If her grandfather broke his back, it likely caused hardshipto the family. Still, she remembers being enamored by the “arc and swoop of the wires” as a child, which implies the mystery of how those wires carry voices.
Biss continues with her personal point of view for the remainder of the essay, which is two additional paragraphs.
“Now, I tell my sister, these poles, these wires, do not look the same to me. Nothing is innocent, mysister reminds me. But nothing, I would like to think, is unrepentant” (Biss 11).
Biss acknowledges the impact of the information she has uncovered in this essay. The phrase “Nothing is innocent” tells the reader that although she excused the poles themselves earlier in the piece, the men who used them as a vehicle of death are guilty. Biss (nor anyone who reads the essay) will not look at telephone poles in the same way again. The words “nothing is unrepentant” serve as a form of recognition that the long list of horrible acts cited in the essay require atonement.
The value of atonement is determined by each of us as individuals. Our society is unable to agree upon the right way to atone for generations of racism and hatred. The time that has passed and the distance African Americans have come in the last one hundred years makes it easy to push the unforgivable acts out of our minds. Eula Biss exhumes the cold hard facts as a sharp reminder. We can only hope that essays such as “Time and Distance Overcome” will incite more effective conversation toward that end.
