The man in the street: Papers on American topics — A Reader’s Guide

The Persona of the Man in the Street

Nicholson's titular figure is less a character than a rhetorical stance. In the foreword, he admits his right to speak for the average American is 'open to serious question,' and he playfully imagines that some would rate him higher than average, others lower. This self-awareness recurs throughout the excerpts: the narrator in 'Let Main Street Alone!' presents himself as a traveling investigator, skeptical of a young solicitor's church invitation, yet he is drawn into the story of the 'Church For Honest Sinners.' The persona is not a fixed identity but a flexible device that allows Nicholson to shift between insider and outsider, critic and sympathizer. He claims he can find answers to any question by 'planting myself on the post-office steps,' a boast that underscores his faith in local knowledge. This framing gives the essays a conversational, almost improvisational quality, as if the reader is overhearing a series of thoughtful monologues.

Recurring Images: Churches, Streets, and Urban Movement

Two images dominate the excerpts: the church and the street. In 'Let Main Street Alone!,' the narrator contrasts St. John's, a new stone church, with a white wooden structure across the street, boarded up and labeled 'The Church For Honest Sinners.' The physical proximity of the two buildings—one saintly, one shuttered—becomes a metaphor for the town's social divisions. The street itself is a stage: the narrator observes men lounging in the hotel lobby, a stout gentleman in checks pointing with a card, and church-bells clanging 'importunately' as a backdrop. Nicholson frequently anchors his scenes in specific urban details—the 'fifteenth floor of an office-building,' the 'post-office steps,' the 'slum which the town had acquired with its prosperity.' These settings are not merely decorative; they ground his abstract arguments in tangible, often ironic, contrasts between aspiration and reality.

Conversation as Argument: The Dialogic Structure

Nicholson often advances his ideas through reported dialogue rather than direct thesis. In the excerpt, the narrator's exchange with the young solicitor unfolds over several pages, with the solicitor revealing the story of the sinners' church through hesitant, almost conspiratorial replies. The narrator's own comments—'I felt guiltily that the topic might have been chosen providentially'—add a layer of self-mockery. This method allows Nicholson to explore multiple perspectives without committing to a single position. The solicitor's nervous handling of a pack of cards, the narrator's scrutiny of his 'wholesome-looking' face, and the amused glances from the cigar-stand all contribute to a scene that feels more like a short story than an essay. The political pieces, by contrast, are described as 'sufficiently explained by their dates,' suggesting a more direct approach, but the conversational mode remains the collection's most distinctive structural feature.

Movement Between Scales: From Local Anecdote to National Commentary

The essays shift fluidly between the intimate and the general. A single conversation in a hotel lobby can open onto questions of church nomenclature, labor conditions, and the nature of sin. Nicholson's foreword establishes this method: he moves from a lawyer friend's help identifying a Beethoven symphony to a claim about the 'happy conditions of life' in his home province. The excerpts show him zooming in on a boarded-up church, then zooming out to reflect on why 'the idea of sin isn't exactly popular.' This oscillation is not random; it reflects Nicholson's belief that the local contains the national. The political articles, he notes, are reprinted 'without alteration' for future students, implying that even dated commentary can illuminate broader patterns. The reader is invited to follow these movements, trusting that the 'certain cohesion' Nicholson promises will emerge from the accumulation of specific, grounded observations.

Readers approaching The Man in the Street should attend to the way Nicholson builds his arguments from the ground up—through overheard remarks, architectural details, and the rhythms of small-city life. The essays reward attention to their conversational texture and the persona of the narrator, who is both a participant and a skeptic. Because the collection preserves political pieces from different years, it offers a layered view of American attitudes in the 1910s and early 1920s, though Nicholson's own stance remains deliberately elusive. Treat each essay as a self-contained scene, and the volume's cohesion will emerge not from a single thesis but from the consistent voice that ties them together.

That rainy afternoon, Nicholson’s Man in the Street kept me indoors, watching conversations drift like church bells across Indianapolis. His quiet faith in ordinary talk made me wonder how earlier Americans reasoned aloud. Later, rummaging for a bookmark, I found a volume of Jefferson’s letters — Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 — Themes and Context — and sat down, almost without deciding to.