Torching the Fink Books and Other Essays on Vernacular Culture

Western Folklore, Fall 2003 by McCarl, Robert S

Torching the Fink Books and Other Essays on Vernacular Culture. By Archie Green. Foreword by Robert Cantwell. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xxvii 242, illustrations, author bibliography, index. $49.95 cloth, $18.95 paper)

On a drizzly afternoon, I stood with Archie Green in the atrium of one of San Francisco's glass-fronted corporate piles near Market Street. As we dodged office workers and took a breather from our foot-, bus- and BART-tour of the city's labor landmarks, Archie stood with his hands behind his back, facing the interior of the building. He caressed the wooden railing that followed the glass building's huge footprint and continued his observations of labor and labor study in the city. As he talked, his hands seeking out the smooth surface of the teak, I gradually began to understand that the story he was telling about careful joinery and old-time craftsmanship juxtaposed against the flagrant monumentalism of the corporate headquarters was not a mere Archie observation, nor yet another irony of work culture in a world that could care less. He was not talking about just anyjoinery or craft experience, he was talking about his role in planning, shaping and constructing the very railing he was touching. This was a building Archie had worked on.

This personal attachment, this bi- and tri-cultural ability to tangibly forge new meanings out of a variety of cultural contexts, characterizes Archie's thinking and writing. In Torching the Fink Books and Other Essays on Vernacular Culture, we look over his shoulder as he traces the etymology of words like "dutchman," "fink," "cosmic cowboy," and "hillbilly." We join in the celebration as he pays tribute to the work of people like Cecil Sharp, Robert W. Gordon, Tom Benton, and-in a more personal vein-Jack Fitch and Peter Tamony. This rich Mulligan stew of a book suggests how much we owe Archie Green for the subtlety and grace of his scholarship and his craftsmanship.

A short introduction by Robert Cantwell draws attention to the stylistic elements of Archie's delivery. Archie draws upon insights from a variety of sources simultaneously; he pauses to remind us that he is speaking and he consistently draws our attention to predecessors, insiders and colleagues whose insights, hard work and (in the case of Richard M. Dorson) approbation brought him to a particular course of action. Action. Active. This is work. Archie exhibits his skill at combining traditional scholarship with a keen eye for visual representation and, if we could but listen to the music he describes and annotates, for aural experience. These are not just experiences of the mind and citations from published sources. These are accounts of real people who have committed themselves to an ethos of sacrifice for their craft-difficult, but satisfying. Examples are seen in Archie's description of Lawrence Roberts's lessons in woodsmanship; his admiration for the ringing integrity of Sarah Ogan Gunning; his joy at seeing the massive collection of his lifelong friend Peter Tamony preserved for research.

For folklorists, perhaps the most important part of the book is Archie's description of cultural workers' responsibility to the public they serve. Citing the little-known work of Horace Kallen, who coined the term "cultural pluralism," Archie states that, like fire lookouts or ghetto nurses (interesting comparisons), cultural workers have a threefold public responsibility-to parliculanty, to preservation, and to pluralism. For Archie, particularity is linked not only to regionalism and local responses to universal human needs, but also to the environment. An anthropologist might refer to this aspect of human experience as cultural ecology, but that is too abstract. Particularity, as defined by Archie the craftsman, includes the raw material, the tool, the elbow grease and the near-impossibility of putting knowledge into physical motion. A goal of cultural work, therefore, is to remind ourselves that each person has a unique pattern of techniques and skills. Our job as cultural workers is to make others aware, as concretely as possible, ofthat person's contributions.

Archie draws the connection between environmental and cultural labor more closely in his call for preservation. The preservation of natural and cultural environments will require a general recognition that all living things play a role in our world. Archie's example of the spotted owl, pitting environmentalist against woods worker, illustrates how the careful study of specific symbols and words can help cultural workers discern linkages and lessons as they acknowledge divergent cultural perspectives. Preservation as national public policy is one thing; preservation on the part of the rank and file moves laboring culture into a new level of awareness. Archie's work with the Seaman's Union of the Pacific (SUP) and the Pile Butts toward this effort-his last job in the trade-underscores the challenges and satisfactions of this type of cultural activism.