P2JW093000-4-C00500-1--------XA

THE GREAT SOCIETY AT 50 C6 | THE ENLIGHTENED CONQUEROR C7 | JAMES BROWN REDEEMED C9 | BEST SELLERS C14

© 2016 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. ****

BOOKS THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Saturday/Sunday, April 2 - 3, 2016 | C5

The Long History of Retail Therapy

Conspicuous consumption is not a product of market capitalism, but a mark of civilization
Empire of Things
By Frank Trentmann
Harper, 862 pages, $40

BY EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

‘EMPIRE OF Things”—a sweepingly

detailed history of humanity’s passion
for the possession of objects—is a bit
like one of the early 20th-century de-
partment stores that Frank Trent-
mann writes about a few hundred
pages into his epic chronicle. Such
stores—which were likened at the
time to museums, so encyclopedic
were their offerings—seemed to put
the entire world of objects on display.
One store, Tietz in Berlin, emphasized
the point with an illuminated globe on
its roof. Within these meccas of mate-
rial goods, it seemed, was all that
could be dreamed of and desired.
Mr. Trentmann’s narrative has a
similar abundance. Here are 16th-cen-
tury silver forks gathered by Floren-
tine merchants in Europe’s first urban
culture; 18th-century Indian calico,
which became so popular that Euro-
pean textile weavers had it banned;
19th-century flush toilets, which were
too advanced for the sewage system of
Manchester, England; and 21st-century
smartphones, which, in 2009, were
CORBIS IMAGES

used for emails by 31% of American

owners and just 8% of Italian owners.
Here too are aisles of facts, eccen-
tric and suggestive, ranging over conti- CATHEDRAL OF COMMERCE The art nouveau interior of the Galeries Lafayette department store, built in 1912 on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris.
nents, eras, languages. In England in
1500, real wages were three times than a coherent presentation of goods. Mr. Trentmann’s array of facts and ob- goods was so extravagant that the Do- African region developed particular
higher than they had been in 1300, be- The first half is a chronological his- servations. You think that frenzied ac- minican friar and preacher Girolamo tastes in fashion and cloth. The end of
cause the Black Death (1348-49) had tory of consumerism, guided by ex- quisition is uniquely characteristic of Savonarola reacted with his notorious the slave trade in 1807 led to the ex-
wiped out more than a third of the tended case histories—about 16th- modernity and Western capitalism? “bonfire of the vanities,” sending mu- pansion of African exports of native
working population. In 1750, the king century northern Italy, for example, or Think again: Mr. Trentmann begins sical instruments, books and tapes- products like palm oil and gum. “Afri-
of the African kingdom of Dahomey 20th-century Asia. The second half is cans,” Mr. Trentmann writes, “did not
made £250,000 from selling slaves (an a series of issue-driven chapters ex- need imperial masters to teach them
astronomical sum that approximates amining themes, including the idea of how to become consumers.”
£45 million in today’s currency). In late credit, ethical consumerism, pur- A Chinese observer in the 1570s complained As Mr. Trentmann chisels away at
19th-century Europe, food dropped in chases made for the home and the ef- about the ‘young dandies’ who lusted ‘for Suzhou various claims and misconceptions, it
price, but water became more expen- fects of capitalism on religion. Mr. becomes a little more clear what his
sive. In 1954, only 7% to 8% of French Trentmann keeps a feeling of miscel- embroideries’ and the ‘look of the moment.’ overall strategy is. Toward the begin-
households had a refrigerator or a lany in play; he seems to deliberately ning of the book he notes that “today,
washing machine. In 1966, only 5% of avoid a conceptual system that might consumption is at the center of a
German men changed their underwear explore fundamental principles. the first chapter citing a 60-year-old tries up in flames—thereby illustrat- heated public debate between two ri-
daily. At the end of the 20th century, What gives the book coherence, in- chronicler in 1808 bemoaning how ing an alternative form of consump- val camps pointing their moral artil-
New Yorkers were eight times as rich stead, is its spirit of challenge and dis- rapidly the world around him has tion. In Venice during the next cen- lery at each other.” On one side are
as they were at the beginning of the sent. Early studies of what is now changed. Wealthy men parade around tury, the senate passed rules against “progressive and social democratic
century, but their household garbage called “material culture” like Fernand displaying fancy pocket watches. Ordi- luxurious display: One 1512 law said critics who attack the juggernaut of
weighed slightly less (the bulk of per- Braudel’s “The Structures of Everyday nary citizens follow frivolous fashions that no more than six forks and six shopping, advertising, branding and
sonal rubbish used to be ash). Life” (1982), intent on a new form of and keep animals as trendy pets. But spoons could be given as wedding easy credit for turning active, virtuous
If all this is a little dizzying, that is history, paid close attention to house- this chronicler, Mr. Trentmann tells us, presents and banned gilded mirrors; a citizens into passive, bored consum-
part of the point. The facts presented hold and economic goods but not to “was not writing from Paris or London 1562 law limited the desserts permit- ers.” On the other are “champions of
in “Empire of Things” touch on the major historical and political events. but from Yangzhou” in China. In this ted at banquets. In fact, Mr. Trent- consumption, first and foremost clas-
economy of slavery, the growth of This restricted perspective, Mr. Trent- case, the fancy pets were chickens mann notes, the imposition of sump- sical liberals who cherish freedom of
Western commerce, the beginning of mann argues, became common in the from Canton and rats from “the West.” tuary laws regulating consumption choice as the bedrock of democracy
urban utility networks, the rapid eco- discipline and has led to many gener- What about, then, the issue of accompanied the growth of material and prosperity.” Mr. Trentmann insists
nomic change during postwar de- alizations that don’t hold up. In addi- “conspicuous consumption” defined in possibility throughout Europe. that he is not out to “adjudicate a
cades, and the shifting aspects of con- tion, he suggests, the world of the 1899 by Thorstein Veblen? Isn’t it A larger perspective over time moral debate” or decide whether con-
sumption and its consequences. Mr. consumer has been too narrowly de- characteristic of modern consumer- shifts our understanding; so too does sumption is good or bad. He is, he
Trentmann, who teaches history at fined, focusing on private acquisition ism? Not at all, Mr. Trentmann says. a vast geographic perspective. Mr. says, more interested in tracing the
Birkbeck College, University of Lon- and thus neglecting areas like public One Chinese observer in the 1570s Trentmann surveys the economic im- process and evolution of consumption
don, is an authority in “consumer spending, which is now running at a complained about the “young dan- pact of the slave trade not just in the over the past five centuries.
studies” and wants to jolt the ac- rate of over 20% of GDP in the world’s dies” who thought “silk gauze isn’t West but in Africa. Pre-imperial Af- Still, he seems more critically pre-
cepted wisdom in his field. wealthiest countries—“levels unparal- good enough and lust for Suzhou em- rica, he points out, was hardly a “tra- occupied with the progressive vision,
Sometimes the sheer range of ex- leled in every previous period in hu- broideries” seeking the “look of the ditional” society untouched by materi- in part because it has shaped contem-
amples on offer can make the book man history.” moment.” In 15th-century Florence, alism. During the 18th century, im- porary ideas—and it is fraught with
seem more like an open-air market So a polemical edge accompanies the competitive display of luxury ports in West Africa rose 10-fold. Each Please turn to page C6

The Lyrical Executive

honeymoon—something he had post- the church choir, reading Poe and
The Whole Harmonium poned for more than a decade—and Hawthorne at night, and throwing
By Paul Mariani spent the better part of the following himself into his studies with a new se-
Simon & Schuster, 481 pages, $30 six years working quietly in his job as riousness while still playing left end
a corporate executive” and watching a for the football team. He became edi-
BY MICAH MATTIX daughter, who was born in 1924, grow. tor of the school paper and graduated
In 1928, Williams complained in a note near the top of his class in 1897, giv-
to Pound: “Undecipherable letter from ing the school’s valedictorian address.
WITH LINES like “Call the roller of Wallace Stevens. He says he isn’t writ- Completing Harvard in three years
big cigars / The muscular one, and bid ing any more. He has a daughter!” This instead of four, and taking courses in
him whip / In kitchen cups concupis- English and philosophy, he filled his
cent curds,” Wallace Stevens’s “Har- university journals with sonnets on the
monium” (1923) should have an- “monstrous pleasure” of “unexpected,
nounced the arrival of a new talent. It The ‘monstrous pleasure’ commonplace, specific things,” like a
didn’t. Published a month before the of ‘commonplace, specific drop of rain on a leaf or the “thin
poet’s 44th birthday, the book pro- whiteness” of a sunset. Some of these
voked mostly lukewarm reviews, and things,’ like a drop of rain he published in the Harvard Advocate,
what interest the volume may have on a leaf or the ‘thin of which he would become president
garnered evaporated in time as read- in his final semester, even though he’d
ers turned their attention to a still whiteness’ of a sunset. “loafed and drunk his way through
young T.S. Eliot, the expatriate whose most of his senior year,” Mr. Mariani
“The Waste Land,” published at the writes. After he left Harvard in 1900,
end of 1922, hit readers, as the poet could have marked the end of a poetic he did not publish a poem for another
William Carlos Williams would later career that was already characterized 14 years. By the time he was 34, he
put it, like “an atom bomb.” by fits and starts. had tried and given up on a career in
In Paul Mariani’s skillful “The Born in Reading, Pa., Stevens went journalism, graduated from law school,
Whole Harmonium”—the first biogra- by “Pat” at school and ran around and had just been hired as the vice
phy of the poet in 16 years—Stevens with the town hooligans, playing president of the New York office of a
seems barely to register the apparent poker and pool, before a bout of ma- St. Louis insurance firm.
GETTY IMAGES

failure, though he soon after took his laria caused him to have to repeat the Stevens’s dream of becoming a poet
longest break ever from writing. A ninth grade. When he returned to was back in the cards by 1914, how-
month after “Harmonium” appeared, Reading Boys’ High School that fall, ever, when five poems appeared in the
IDEAS ABOUT ORDER Stevens in July 1950. he left with his wife, Elsie, for a proper he was a changed youth—singing in Please turn to page C7