Letter From Batavianby Bill KauffmannThe Forgotten Firen”I am on the one hand a kind of NewnYork State Republican, conservative.nOn the other hand, I am a kind of anBohemian type. I really don’t obey thenlaws. I mean to, but if I am in a hurrynand there is no parking here, I park.”n— John GardnernBatavia’s wandering native son left thisnvale of tears fittingly, in a motorcyclenaccident on a dusty country road nearnSusquehanna, Pennsylvania. If hisnshade should return to Batavia, he’llnhave little trouble finding a legal parkingnspot in one of the sprawling asphaltnmaria that border shut-down plants andnvacant retail stores. Alas, he’ll be luckynto locate a copy of The Sunlight Dialoguesnor The Resurrection.nA prophet, the good book remindsnus, is ever without honor in his hometown.nEven in the Burned-Over Districtnof upstate New York. JohnnGardner’s Batavia (and mine) is a citynof 17,000, seat of the county of Genesee,njewel of the empire that the speculatornand Declaration-signer RobertnMorris sold to the Holland Land Gompany.nWe lie at the western edge ofnNew York’s Burned-Over District, thatnfertile swatch of upstate land, stretchingnfrom Utica to Buffalo, whichnblazed with white-hot fanaticismsnthroughout the first half of the 19thncentury.nThe Burned-Over District incubatedna score of social and religious enthusiasms,nfew of which survived the Jacksoniannera. Here in upper York, alongnwhat the poet and hardy regionalistnGarl Carmer called our “psychic highway,”nJoseph Smith entertained thenAngel Moroni; John Humphrey Noyesnpreached the Perfectionist creed to hisncomely disciples at Oneida; Ann Lee’sn”Shaking Quakers” writhed in celibatenecstasy; Jemima Wilkinson, thenCORRESPONDENCEn”Publick Universal Friend,” was worshipednas an incarnation of Ghrist;nSusan B. Anthony took up the equalrightsncudgel; and hundreds of lesserknownnprophets and seers and lonelynantinomians scorched the ground.nBatavia’s contribution to thenBurned-Over stew was modest: the oldntown was home to William Morgan, annapostate Mason whose eagerness tondivulge the order’s secrets got himntossed into the Niagara River (thoughnprobably not over the Falls) in Septembern1826.nThe Burned-Over enthusiasms werenpretty well drenched by 1850, yet theynbequeathed the region a curious, contradictorynlegacy. The millenarian firestormsntriggered a reaction by the yeomanry:nthe shrinking band of utopiannzealots were gradually swallowed by anconservative majority that clung tenaciouslynto the eternal verities.nUpstate New York’s Givil War experiencenis instructive. Birthplace of thenabolitionist Liberty Party, home tonFrederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith,nthe Burned-Over District helped NewnYork supply the most men per capita tonthe Union Army. At the same time.nNew York’s Governor, Horatio Seymournof Utica, acted as the North’snanti-Lincoln lightning rod — denouncingnthe draft, the suspension ofnhabeas corpus, and various of FathernLincoln’s other infringements uponnthe Revolutionary liberties.nThe principled dissident Seymournwas execrated as a traitor. But henremained popular upstate, and his exampleninspired fellow Utican HaroldnFrederic to compose a milestone ofnBurned-Over fiction, his 1893 novellanThe Copperhead. (The book sympatheticallyndescribes an upstate farmernwhose adherence to Jeffersonian principlesnleads him into a bitterly anti-nCivil War stance. His son deserts him,nhe is banished from the town’s commercialnlife, hotheads burn down hisnbarn . . . until the Mohawk Valleyncomes to its collective senses, andnnnthe protagonist is readmitted to communitynlife by a chastened town.)nWith Frederic’s death, a silencenovertook Burned-Over tongues, andndespite the best efforts of the latenfolklorist Garmer it grows more oppressivenwith each passing year. Why arenthe sons and daughters of the Burned-nOver District so timorous in assertingnthemselves in cultural matters? Is itnbecause we fear the disfavor of KittynCarlisle Hart, or Billy Joel, or GordonnLish, or the rest of the downstatendefilers of Parnassus? Is it because thenlast knight to challenge the ManhattannGorgon, John Gardner (can’t you seenthat beautiful native son, leatherjacketed,nwhite-maned, swilling vodka,nroaring down Route 63, gravel sprayingnin his Harley’s wake?) was revilednas the “hippie Moral Majoritarian”nafter he threw down the gauntlet to thenneurasthenic archons of modernism innOn Moral Fiction?nOr is it because the belletrist is anstranger in this land, a practitioner of ancraft that his neighbors view as illegitimate?nGarl Garmer threw up his handsnin frustration: “To the disgust of thenliving artist, the Yorker, whether rich ornpoor, refuses to look upon him as annatural product of the people of hisnregion but insists on regarding him as anbiological sport, a not-to-be-expectedngrowth from the soil of upstate civilization.”nMy theory, for what it’s worth, isnthat the Burned-Over District’s artisticnvoid is due to the disappearance ofnregional patriotism. Up here that wordnmanifests itself as New York Cityhatred.nOur forefathers, bless theirnsouls, detested the Babylon on thenHudson. (The City of New York, afternall, served as a Tory bastion whilenupstaters were consecrating the Revolutionnwith their blood.)nFor whatever reason, that resentmentndidn’t stick. Sure, the Burned-nOver populace gets riled up now andnthen at some downstate outrage, butnour boys and girls routinely sell out tonNOVEMBER 1988143n