Jeremiah and me

NYT Book Review essay 3.28.10 American Jeremiad: A Manifesto

· Jeremiad: American writers have “taken their cue from the biblical prophet Jeremiah and the particular form of Puritanical sermon - at once lament and indictment of the community’s sins and exhortation to return to the true faith – that bears his name. Americans aren’t supposed to write manifestos. We write jeremiads.

· I write jeremiads as well. My blog is a jeremiad and this became more apparent when I read what Harvard scholar Scavan Bercovitch said, “American writers have tended to see themselves as outcasts and isolates, prophets crying in the wilderness. So they have been, as a rule: American jeremiads, simultaneously lamenting a declension and celebrating a national dream.”

· I am crying in the wilderness, to the wilderness, about the wilderness. Although in my outcasted and isolated state I am even more ambitious because while I lament the decline of civilization, I am celebrating a universally beneficial dream.

· Move over Thoreau. It is time for my lamentations and dreaming.