Faces

...I believe that so many things can be said about 1776 -- both in terms of David McCullough's superbly written tome, or in relation to the historical period itself -- it often staggers...

FACES is a sublime example of the virtually *endless* perspectives one can take on the Revolutionary period and -- almost like a camera swooping in on the scene of the battle -- author McCullough leaves us with a single inspirational idea, and permits it to linger in our minds: that of authentic period photography.

How did things *really* look back then?

Have you ever wondered?

McCullough asks these -- rhetorically, as it were -- because he wishes us to know that the events of yesteryear -- more than two hundred year ago -- are as relevant today as they were back then. The images and canvas pastiches which we view in the grand museums and galleries of our mighty naion aren't mere abstractions...sad, though, that they are often made to look as such...

Rather, McCullough managed to discover over the course of his voluminous research into his book, 1776, that the fighting reality was much more visceral than the pictographic evidence shows.

FACES is an attempt to shake us out of our soporific inattentiveness -- to remind us that our Nation once-stood for something majestic and highly meaningful. Over time, we've been made to believe that the Revolutionary War was a period of heroic beauty. Generals were officious and kempt, soliders were young and fit and fought until the last. Old men never showed their age nor their obvious blemishes.

Jaggers! We know only too well...that is false.

FACES is a cold-shower-in-the-morning reminder that what we're going through today -- in all its ugliness and harshness, entirely unairbrushed and unmitigated and mendacious in its atrocious scale -- is precisely the way things were then.

We just can't see it...because those who went through it wished to spare us the worst of its ravages.

But the truth prevails in the end (doesn't it?)...photography or not.

This is a short off beat essay on how an American might have looked in 1776. Indeed, what did the Revolutionary War look like?
Photography hadn't been invented yet. We have only paintings, fine as they may be in their own way. Portraits are invariably kind to the subject, who is probably older, or dignified-looking. Battle scenes are interpretations colored by the artist's politics. Very well written but from David McCullough I expected no less. I read Truman because he is my favorite president. Then I purchased John Adams ASAP. I reviewed both here. As soon as it was available I listened to the audio version of 1776. Thanks for an interesting mid morning interlude.