![]() In other manifestations, it surfaces again in the lives and careers of US presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.įranklin was a man always boiling over with ideas and opinions, a man of print and paper. His can-do enthusiasm and practical, folksy approach to the issues of the day is – dare one say? – quintessentially American. There’s also a revolutionary strand running through the text that makes it an ABC of democratic revolt as well as a canny self-portrait of a robust and rather enthralling radical, a lover of life, of women, and of simple pleasures, with an apparently uncomplicated delight in the world around him. The book itself is quite short, having been published in an abbreviated form after his death, but the tale it tells – a boy who makes his way in the world without connections, wealth or education, essentially living off his wits – is an archetypal portrait of “the founding fathers’ founding father”. ![]() His Autobiography is perhaps his finest creation, what the critic Jay Parini has called “a foundational book for Americans” that offers “a template for self-invention”. In all these guises (icon, innovator, self-advertiser), he is a true founding father, and 100% American. In life, he was a great inventor (of stoves, lightning rods and bifocals) in literature, a great self-inventor. ![]() B enjamin Franklin’s face – on banknotes, letterheads and civic documents – is an ageless icon of the American revolution, at once benign but cunning, projecting a mood that’s universal and accessible. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |