Pamela Walker Laird is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Colorado Denver. Her publications include “Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin,” which won the Hagley Prize; and “Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing.” Laird has spent almost half her life in Colorado, which has been a great base for working with others here and elsewhere to foster communities that improve people’s professional lives.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Pamela Walker Laird: For years I wondered why popular culture cared about claims that someone was self-made, especially because it’s impossible to succeed without access to social capital — that is, networks, mentors and gatekeepers. I showed that in my previous book, “Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin.”
But I wanted to figure out how this misleading idea eventually gained acceptance even though people only started to use it in the early 1800s, and it has always been contested.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Walker Laird: This passage is part of the book’s introduction and sets up its reinterpretation of American history. It briefly summarizes how I challenge common notions about historical people while also bringing to light alternative perspectives to help us reimagine the dynamics between individuals and communities.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Walker Laird: Over my lifetime and in studying American history, I have seen too many people benefit from community resources but claim that they are “self-made” and, therefore, that they don’t owe anything unless it makes them feel good about themselves. Many of those people also believe that their good fortune indicates moral superiority. Starting about two centuries ago, the myth has made it possible to condemn everyone else as self-made failures as if they didn’t work hard enough.
Many years ago, affluent students in my class announced that their advantages came from hard work. A young woman who hadn’t said a word all semester stood up and told us that her grandparents and parents worked hard at jobs that didn’t pay well and that wore them out. This experience, like many others, motivated me to write about how not all work is created equal. It matters what types of education and work people have access to, as the COVID-19 pandemic reminded us about “essential” work that was neither well paid nor respected. The myth encourages us to dismiss as failures those who clean other people’s houses, slaughter cattle, and extract coal from the earth while praising as self-made those who succeed in clean and quiet offices.
Also, I have seen how advocates for wealthy people have argued that taxes “punish success,” instead of honestly acknowledging that affluent people benefit the most from community resources. In contrast, Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the wealthiest Americans of his day, always said that people should not avoid taxes, and he objected to citizens’ “Remissness in Paying Taxes.” But that was before the myth of self-made success became acceptable.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Walker Laird: The evolution of the myth of self-made success is so tightly intertwined with American history that I found myself reinterpreting how we typically understand that history and the people of all descriptions who made it. Two decades of detailed research to build this book added to my lifetime of studying our past and the stories that people told as they lived it.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Walker Laird: It was a huge challenge to trace and share a storyline that changed direction multiple times across four centuries of American history. There were so many people, events, and ideas that I wanted to include, but a book has to be finite, and too many of those stories had to be filed away.
As I was making these decisions, I constantly worried — and I still worry — about disappointing readers. I know that every reader is going to be sure that their favorite historical figure or event or idea should have been in the book or should have been rendered differently. I wish that I could have included each of those!
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Walker Laird: Although notions of self-made success have become fundamental to the lore of America’s past, for half of that history, it was socially unacceptable and even profane for anyone, including the most obviously ambitious men, to forget their debts. Only two centuries ago, during major political and economic changes, did it start to become acceptable to declare individualist ambitions and to claim self-made success. In addition, I highlight alternative interpretations for how people can flourish that emphasize the help in self-help.
SunLit: What’s the problem with telling stories as if both success and failure were self-made?
Walker Laird: Positive beliefs about self-made success began about two centuries ago as a way to praise preachers and good citizens for their service to the common good. The idea moved into politics after the American Revolution when elites had to attract the votes of ordinary men by falsely presenting themselves as from “obscure origins.” From misleading political rhetoric, the myth of self-made success moved into the business realm with the rise of huge industrial fortunes in the middle of the 19th century.
For the last century, wealthy and powerful people have spent enormous resources to convince Americans of the myth of self-made success. Their motives include opposition to regulation and taxation, as well as attacks on support systems for everyone but themselves. Now, every public and private institution that serves ordinary people is at risk because of tax cuts going mostly to a tiny fraction of the population.
Myths succeed because they tell simple stories that align individuals’ identities and ambitions with group identities and ambitions. The myth of self-made success results in stories told as if people live in a vacuum, as if their lives depended only on themselves. It says that successful individuals owe nothing, and everyone else deserves nothing.
“Self-Made” shows, instead, how the myth of self-made success filters out the intricacies of people’s real lives. Its history of America includes what the myth excludes: the contexts and complications that either support or inhibit people’s possibilities.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Walker Laird: Over the past two decades of working on this book, I went down a lot of fascinating research rabbit holes about people, events, and ideas that I had to file away. I am now going back into those materials, hoping that some of them will finally see daylight.
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: No reading; it keeps me awake. I do a crossword puzzle, instead.
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: Marguerite de Angeli’s “Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes” (1954 edition). I remember spending hours and hours sitting on the floor fascinated by the old-time illustrations and rhymes. I still have that book on my shelf, well-worn but sturdy and a pleasure to browse.
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Annie Dillard’s recognition that we often have to write something that no one else should have to read. That is, we shouldn’t hesitate to get our ideas written out, however rambling or ill-framed. However, then, we must discard words that help us get to our goal but won’t help readers get there, too.
Favorite fictional literary character: The “character” about whom I like to read the most is not fictional: Benjamin Franklin. There always seems to be something new to learn from him, his insights, and his humor.
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: “Roget’s Thesaurus”
