Week #39: October 15 – October 21
What do the following words have in common: disgrace, regret, remorse, shame, sin, stigma, dishonor? Yes, the word ‘guilt’ can substitute all of their meanings, but they have another commonality as well… the three playwrights that would have celebrated a birthday this week all suffered in some form bouts of guilt that greatly influenced their lives and as a consequence their writing too. As we honor Eugene O’Neill, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Miller during their birthday week, we must reflect on how far our society has come and imagine how far it still needs to progress so that others don’t fall victim to the consequences of needless guilt. Although guilt comes in many forms, the three most prevalent forms that affected these playwrights included personal, familial, and/or societal. Since Oscar Wilde celebrated his birthday first on October 16, 1854, let’s begin with him and how guilt influenced his life. As the second of three children of a well-known and successful doctor, Oscar Wilde experienced a comfortable childhood, but during his early adolescence he experienced his first encounter with guilt – survivor’s guilt: his younger sister suddenly passed away from a fever, most likely meningitis. Her death wreaked havoc on young Oscar’s mind. He carried a locket of her hair in an envelope throughout his life and composed the poem “Requiescat” in her memory. In a notebook of his where he drafted this poem, he journaled about feeling guilty that she died because of the love the two shared. Whether this love references a familial love or an incestuous one, remains controversial. Regardless, Wilde found a way to continue on with life and his studies. He eventually attended Magdalen College, and during his time here, at the age of twenty-one, he experienced his second encounter with guilt: that of sibling rivalry. The unexpected death of their father required his older brother to forgo his law ambitions and help care for their mother, while the younger Oscar continued to enjoy the lively campus life. The responsibility his brother faced led him to alcohol, and the more he heard about Oscar’s successes, the more he drank; and the more he drank and screwed up his life, the more Oscar felt a different type of survivor’s guilt – what if he’d helped out more after the death of his father, would his brother have had a successful life too? But Oscar stayed in school and maybe because of the guilt he carried, he became involved in the Aesthetic Movement – wanting to appreciate art (and life) for its beauty rather than for having a deeper meaning. After he graduated from college he dappled in writing children’s stories and while touring internationally to lecture on the Aesthetic Movement, he wrote his first play, “Vera; or The Nihilists” (1880), but it only lasted one unenthusiastic week in the theatre. Fortunately, he still had his excellent reputation as a lecturer and in 1884 he married Constance Lloyd. And within two years, she bore him two sons. Unfortunately, the combination of the stress from trying to maintain that aesthetic lifestyle and the birth of his second son, made Oscar consciously aware of his own unfulfillment. Within a short period of time, he found his fulfillment in the arms of a young man, seventeen-year-old Robert Ross. Once again, Oscar Wilde found himself entrapped in the clutches of guilt – this time not by the survivor’s guilt stemming from familial relationships, but from the guilt of having sinned against society’s expectations – homosexuality was a crime at that time. Brimming with this conflict, Wilde penned the controversial novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) which follows a young handsome man, who after having his portrait painted, unintentionally makes a deal with the devil that allows his picture to grow old, but his physique to remain youthfully handsome. The more he enjoys the pleasures life has to offer him, including innuendos of homosexuality, the older and uglier his portrait becomes, until finally he commits a bizarre form of suicide. Perhaps because society considered his novel scandalous, it quickly rose in popularity. The popularity of his novel introduced Wilde to one of his admirers, Bosie Douglas. The two quietly became lovers, and Wilde’s wife left with his two sons. During this time, Oscar Wilde found a quiet contentment in his personal life and robust success in his writing career. He published three well-renowned plays, “A Woman of No Importance” (1893), “An Ideal Husband” (1895), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895). Unfortunately, this period did not last. Although Bosie and Oscar tried to conceal their relationship, Bosie’s father publicized their affair. Upset and fearful of the consequences, Wilde sued him for libel – but lost the suit when investigators brought too much evidence to court. The court then arrested Oscar Wilde for gross indecency and sentenced him to two years of hard labor – the maximum sentence. Upon his release from prison, Wilde spent his few remaining years wandering Europe, trying unsuccessfully to revive his writing talent. He finally succumbed to cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900 – believing that he only left his sins as his legacy for society. It took one hundred and twenty-two years for the courts to see the error of their ways: in 2017, London officials passed the Policing and Crime Act which pardoned some 50,000 men for homosexual acts – Oscar Wilde’s name is on the list. One can only imagine the contributions Oscar Wilde would have continued to make to the literary scene had society learned how to accept people’s differences earlier. Fortunately, the rise of LGBT rights, such as the 2015 Supreme Court decision which recognizes marriages between same-sex couples, reinforce that we are finally headed in the right direction: a direction that leads to acceptance, and acceptance which will lead to the alleviation of unnecessary guilt. After reading about Oscar Wilde’s experiences, we can see that guilt can arise from disappointing both familial and societal expectations. And he was not alone: playwright Eugene O’Neill suffered from the same, and the plays he wrote portray the consequences of living with such guilt. Even before Eugene’s birth on October 16, 1888, guilt’s fingers clutched at the family’s happiness. In 1885, Ella – Eugene’s mom – left her two sons James Jr. (age seven) and Edmund (age two) with her mother to tour with her husband, an actor in a traveling theatrical production of The Count of Monte Cristo. While away, James Jr. contracted measles. He recovered but not before toddler Edmund contracted and succumbed to the disease. Laden with guilt for her absence during this time, Ella verbally accused James Jr. of intentionally infecting his baby brother, and so at the young age of seven, James Jr. – Eugene’s older brother - already had the weight of guilt on his shoulders. Within three years, Eugene came along, and after a difficult childbirth and still suffering from depression over the loss of her second son, doctors prescribed morphine to his mother. She quickly became addicted, causing chaos and instability in the O’Neill household for Eugene’s entire childhood. Full of resentment and at a breaking point for caring for his wife, when Eugene reached adolescence, his father told him that Eugene was responsible for his mother’s addiction. As a way to escape this guilt, Eugene turned to alcohol, and by late adolescence, left home for a drunken and destitute life on the sea, coming to shore to enjoy the ladies. During one of these excursions, he married his first wife and introduced his own son into the world. While staring at the bottom of a bottle and on the verge of divorce, he gave into guilt’s strangulation and attempted suicide. His failed attempt left him believing that his life must have some purpose, and he came ashore and landed a job contributing to a London newspaper. Unfortunately, his previous life caught up with him and he shortly exhibited signs of tuberculosis. At the end of a six-month stint in the hospital, alone but sober for the first time in almost a decade, he tried a different channel for his guilt – he put pen to paper and wrote. Within four years he had written five plays; “Beyond the Horizon” (1918) even winning him a Pulitzer Prize. With this success and the old feelings of guilt at bay, he tried again at love and married Agnes Boulton. They had two children together, but after eleven years, he filed for a divorce when he met Carlotta Monterey, whom he married less than a month later, and even though they suffered a tumultuous marriage, they remained together until his death from complications of Parkinson’s Disease in 1953. By the end of his life, he had written twenty-six more plays, including “Anna Christie” (1920), “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (1941), and “Strange Interlude” (1928), earning him three more Pulitzer Prizes and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. Utilizing his own life’s experiences as his muse, majority of the characters in his plays drift into the despair of a variety of addictions after surrendering their hopes and dreams, leaving the audience exhausted and reflecting upon their own lives. O’Neill not only left us his plays as his legacy, which with the rise of addictions in society, tend to reverberate louder now than they did during their first performances, but he also left the guilt that riddled his life. Both of his sons struggled with addiction – the oldest with alcohol and younger one with heroin – and both eventually committed suicide. And he never spoke again to his youngest child, daughter Oona, after she pursued an acting career and married Charlie Chaplin, thirty-seven years her senior. Although she lived into her sixties, seeking escape from psychological issues, she suffered from alcoholism and eventually passed away from pancreatic cancer. The connection is clear: guilt leads one on a troubled path. But one can escape guilt, or least warn others of its devastating consequences, as we see in Arthur Miller’s life. He endured right along with the rest of his family when they lost everything in the Crash of 1929; he quietly suffered anti-Semitism remarks as a teenager while working for an automotive part warehouse; he defied stereotypes when he attended the University of Michigan to study journalism; and he rose above expectations, when after the success of his first play No Villian, he switched to an English major and graduated in 1938. Then he made the next typical adult move – he married and started a family. With the responsibility of a family, Miller continued to work hard on his writing and found great success with his plays All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). So far nothing to cause Guilt’s sleepy eyelids to open and take notice. But then after over a decade of marriage, in walked temptation: Marilyn Monroe… and Guilt opened her eyes. Miller knew he had responsibilities to his family and fought his attraction to Marilyn, but their relationship continued to strengthen. Maybe the inevitable – his divorce and subsequent marriage to Marilyn - would have happened sooner than the five years it took, but Miller had his eyes on a bigger picture. During the 1950s fear of Communists casted shadows of suspicion on every American and lurked around every corner. As the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) interrogated friend after friend in the entertainment industry, Miller watched each one struggle with their decision to save their own reputation and career by proving their allegiance with America at the destruction of someone else’s reputation by blaming them as Communists. He watched as these friends submitted to pressure. He watched as they lowered their eyes as they passed by the victims they named, the knowledge of their own guilt and betrayal evident in their downcast glance. He could simply watch no more. Miller knew that history tends to repeat itself, and although hundreds of years had passed, he knew we had come full circle. This hunt for Communists based on hearsay - where in order to save your own reputation you had to deliver someone else’s reputation in exchange - strongly reminded him of the infamous Salem Witch Trials - where a ‘witch’ had to prove she believed in the ways of the Lord by surrendering the name of another potential ‘witch.’ Although he knew he needed to tread carefully not provoke the HUAC, he knew just how to portray this so that others would see this mass hysteria for its absurdity. And so, Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” (1952). Although no one disputes the historical occurrence of the Salem Witch Trials, Miller certainly added his own speculation about the onset of those events: Miller wrote that when John – the moralistic husband who had an affair - tried to severe his indecent relationship with Abigail – the young girl with whom he had the affair, she accused his wife Elizabeth of witchery, hoping that Elizabeth would hang and John would turn to her in consolation… sounds like Miller’s personal guilt over his growing affections for Marilyn Monroe while still married might have found a creative release! But if no one at the time made that personal connection to Miller, the overall theatrical comparison to the behaviors of the HUAC did not fool the HUAC members, and they subpoenaed him for having Communistic ties. By this time, already knowing what it felt like to have guilt perched upon his shoulders because of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe and remembering the guilty look in the eyes of his friends that had succumbed to the HUAC’s pressure, Miller decided to make another stand; he refused to surrender any names and although his sentence included a fine and imprisonment as a consequence, he held his head high. Fortunately, within a year, the Court of Appeals overturned his conviction. Unfortunately, if he thought he had paid his penance to Guilt, he was wrong. As Marilyn Monroe became more of the stereotypical housewife, the more Miller’s attraction toward her waned. By 1961 – just a few years after she staunchly stood beside him during his confrontation with the HUAC – Miller divorced her. The divorce devastated Marilyn; she had sacrificed her career, her fame, and even her religion for him and within a year from that betrayal, she died from an overdose. As Miller felt the tendrils of Guilt root themselves in his mind, he turned to what he knows best – writing plays. He wrote the very personal play “After the Fall” (1964) which follows the main character Quentin’s struggle with the decision to forge ahead in love after the suicide of his last partner. And much like Quentin, Miller forged ahead and married his newest love, Inge Morath. For the next forty years, by outward appearances, Miller lived a contented, humanitarian, and moralistic life. But as the saying goes, looks can deceive. Arthur and Inge had two children: Rebecca and Daniel. Miller doted on Rebecca, but few even knew about Daniel. Why? Daniel had Down Syndrome and Miller made the decision to institutionalize him. Although institutionalizing a child with Down Syndrome was more commonplace during the 1960s than today, Miller’s behavior (or lack thereof) toward his son speaks volumes. He rarely visited, never spoke about him to friends, and didn’t mention him in his memoir. His actions suggest denial of his existence, but exist he did and that guilt must have had a profound affect on Miller. Maybe that guilt hindered his writing, explaining why he wrote less in his final years. Although society remembers Miller as a moralistic humanitarian, stemming from his stand against the HUAC and the Vietnam War, he seemed to continue to juggle one form of guilt or another his entire life. Even in his final days, within two years of his wife’s passing and much to the dismay of his daughter, he became involved with a woman more than five decades younger – a relationship that caused stress on his relationship with his daughter, adding another ball of guilt to juggle. When Arthur Miller died in 2005 from heart failure, maybe his heart just couldn’t fight Guilt’s stranglehold any longer. So here we have three playwrights who all struggled with multiple forms of guilt: Oscar Wilde carried around guilt caused from both personal and societal expectations; Eugene O’Neill carried personal guilt from family relations; and Arthur Miller – although he attempted to at least enlighten society – still met his match with personal guilt. As far as the guilt caused by not meeting some type of societal expectation, I’d like to think that we have learned more about acceptance which lessens the reasons for a person to feel guilty, but evidence suggests that society’s expectations – or at least what we individually think society expects – is too closely interwoven with our own thoughts leaving a tangled mess of what turns into personal guilt. We see advertisements portraying overly thin physiques and see this as society’s expectations for our own physique; we then feel guilty that our own physiques don’t reflect that expectation. We see others following a prescribed path in life that we think society expects, and then feel guilty that our own life hasn’t followed that same path. We see families behaving in a manner in which we think society expects, and then feel guilty about our own family’s dysfunctionality. And sadly, this guilt often leads to addictive or obsession behavior: we feel like we can’t control society’s expectations, but we can control our food intake – so we eat; we can numb those feelings with alcohol or drugs – so we indulge; we can control with whom we interact - so we escape. But truly, it is our own demons – our own insecurities the we project as society’s expectations. Once we accept ourselves, once we love ourselves, we can take responsibility for our own actions which will alleviate the need for Guilt to open her eyes. Let her rest in slumber – she’s been busy for far too long. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Churchwell, Sarah. “Eugene O'Neill, master of American theatre.” The Guardian. 30 March 2012. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/mar/30/eugene-o-neill-master-american-theatre Fishman, Howard. “Swept Away By a Dark Current: The Plays of Eugene O’Neill.” The New Yorker. 20 March 2018. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/swept-away-by-a-dark-current-the-plays-of-eugene-oneill Hammerman, Harley. “Eugene Gladstone O’Neill.” eONeill.com: An Electronic Eugene O’Neill Archive. 2016. Web. https://www.eoneill.com/biography.htm Kingston, Angela. “Oscar Wilde and the sister’s death that haunted his life and work.” The Irish Times. 16 February 2017. Web. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/oscar-wilde-and-the-sister-s-death-that-haunted-his-life-and-work-1.2976363 Marino, Steve. “A Brief Chronology of Arthur Miller’s Life and Works.” The Arthur Miller Society. 2017. Web. http://arthurmillersociety.net/am-chronology/ Petrusich, Amanda. “A Daughter’s View of Arthur Miller.” The New Yorker. 19 March 2018. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-daughters-view-of-arthur-miller Pluckebaum, Ryan. “Oscar Wilde.” CMG Worldwide. 2018. Web. https://www.cmgww.com/historic/wilde/biography/ Rintoul, Douglas. “The Crucible: the perfect play for our post-truth times.” The Guardian. 14 February 2017. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/feb/14/the-crucible-the-perfect-play-for-our-post-truth-times Smith, Wendy. “A new biography of Eugene O’Neill looks beyond the playwright’s demons.” The Washington Post. 01 December 2014. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-new-biography-of-eugene-oneill-looks-beyond-the-playwrights-demons/2014/12/01/2e217a88-7016-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html?utm_term=.708992eeafaf Wikipedia contributors. "Oscar Wilde." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 October 2018. Web. 15 October 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde Zinoman, Jason. “Arthur Miller’s life had its own lost act: A son placed out of sight.” The New York Times. 30 August 2007. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/arts/30iht-miller.1.7317269.html
0 Comments
Week #23: June 16 – June 21
Go to bat, get on the bandwagon, throw in your lot…. all these quirky sayings reference taking sides. Taking sides in an argument, any argument, big or small, personal or national. While couples may argue on which movie earns their vote for best motion picture and parents may argue which school their children should attend, politicians take sides on issues ranging from healthcare and firearms to borders and trade… and every issue in between. We live at a time in society where every person has a voice – albeit some louder than others – and everyone has the constitutional right to voice their opinion, to jump on a bandwagon going in their direction, to pick up a bat and swing for their team (figuratively of course) and throw in their lot with their like-minded companions. According to a recent survey conducted at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, arguments are physically healthy because they lower harmful hormones. And they provide psychological benefits because they demonstrate that individuals are thinking for themselves which provides a sense of self-worth. But… on a personal scale, arguments only remain healthy if both sides agree on the fundamental outcome of the argument. For example, if we look at the couple arguing about which movie to choose, as long as they both agree that motion pictures provide a type of entertainment then they can have a healthy argument. If we look at the parents arguing over which school their children should attend, as long as they both agree about the importance of education then they can have a healthy argument. If this concept of having an argument based on a fundamental agreement holds true on the personal level, then logically, it should also hold true on a national level. Let the Democrats and the Republicans jump on their bandwagons for healthcare, as long as those bandwagons are headed in the same direction – fixing healthcare; let them feud over firearms as long as they both aim for increasing safety; let them duke it out over borders as long as they both fight for improved security; let them throw in their lot with trade agreements as long as they all pitch for improved financials. Unfortunately, we tend to get bogged down in selfish interests and pride and lose sight of the fundamentals. And this seems to have happened to two very talented writers that enjoyed their heyday during the 1940s and 1950s: Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. Born just seven years and one day apart, during a time when women needed to bond together to fight against inequality in the workforce, these two instead butted heads in the ultimate literary cat-fight. So as we honor each one on the anniversary of their birthdays instead of focusing on the feud that divided them, let us focus on their similarities and imagine what they could have accomplished if they had realized they were aboard the same bandwagon for the prevalent issues occurring in society. Lillian Hellman spent the first half of her life in the typical writer fashion – attending college, working menial jobs, marrying (and then divorcing) the wrong man, and indulging in a passionate love affair with a fellow writer. In between all this, she learned to write plays which declared her political philosophies. Overall, she wrote approximately sixteen plays and screenplays, and although audiences loved watching the performances of her all plays, the most controversial and outspoken ones - “The Children’s Hour” (1934), which portrays the ugly consequences of lying, rumors, and the mob-mentality that overtakes a community because of their paranoia, “Days to Come” (1936), which demonstrates the consequences when a factory owner pushes his workers too far, and “The Little Foxes” (1939), which symbolically portrays unsavory capitalist motives through the characterization of three siblings fighting over their family’s business, all provoked the watchful eye of our suspicious government. And Lillian Hellman continued to walk a narrow line writing politically out-spoken plays for the next decade. But when, at the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s, she resurrected her play “The Children’s Hour,” and then within a month Arthur Miller released his similarly themed play “The Crucible,” the House Un-American Activities Committee quickly stepped in and blacklisted both playwrights. Out of work and with time on her hands, she took the first tenuous steps that would lead to her downfall…she began writing her memoirs. As a successful woman with strong political views and an unwavering stance against injustice, she knew she had something to write about. And write she did, publishing Unfinished Woman: A Memoir in 1969 in which she reminisces about events ranging from her childhood travels between New York City and New Orleans to her love affair with fellow writer, Dashiell Hammett, followed with Pentimento: A Book of Portraits in 1973, which as its title suggests portrays how she uncovers her past experiences to portray her original hopes and intentions, and finally Scoundrel Time in 1976 in which she reflects on her experiences during the McCarthy era when the House Un-American Activities Committee ruined and jailed her partner, Dashiell Hammett, a known communist, and then tried to interrogate her. Unfortunately, she wrote the truth as she saw it, not necessarily as it really happened, and people called her out on the inconsistencies, exaggerations, and what some say, just down-right lies. Between Mary McCarthy’s incendiary remarks during a televised interview proclaiming that “Every word [Hellman] write is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’,” Martha Gellhorn’s comments that Hellman distorted the accounts of the Spanish civil war and her friendship with writer and war correspondent Ernest Hemingway, and psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner’s accusation that the events Hellman wrote about in a chapter of Pentimento were actually based on Gardiner’s life, all led to a turning point in Hellman’s reputation and career. Although Hellman fought back, trying to sue for defamation, the lawsuit continued until her death from a heart attack in June of 1984. Now instead of discussing her as a woman of strength and independence, a woman on the pioneering front of feminism, negativity shrouds her legacy, and few people pay their respects to her at her final resting place in Martha’s Vineyard on a remote hill in Abel Hill Cemetery. Although almost exactly seven years her junior and a literary rival, Mary McCarthy shared many characteristics with Lillian Hellman. As the oldest of four children and the only girl, Mary would have shared that same independent streak as Lillian Hellman also had as an only child. Although their reasons differed, Mary also moved around during her childhood. Born and raised in Seattle, at the age of six she moved to the Midwest to live with her paternal grandparents after the unexpected death of both her parents from influenza. Unfortunately, unprepared for her grandparents’ strict rules and parenting style, she hated her time there, and eventually at the age of eleven moved back to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents who provided a loving home with a rich education. Then much like Lillian Hellman, Mary experienced the typical after-high-school developments: attended college, married prematurely, divorced quickly. Whereas Lillian began her career writing plays, Mary began her writing career as a drama critic for the new magazine, Partisan Review – a platform that encouraged her honest, straight to the point, and often harsh criticism, that not even a spoonful of sugar would help the receiver swallow. As a drama critic, one can easily see how she would cross paths with playwright Lillian Hellman. And their ideological differences quickly sparked a feud between them that simmered for years, regardless of their similarities. But at this time, instead of focusing on other writers, she focused on how to climb the career ladder. Although she felt intimidated by her boss, she knew how to unbalance him… have an affair with him. And that she did much to the dismay of her coworkers. And although the affair became more serious – even to the point where she lived with him – she unexpectedly married another man, fellow literary critic and editor of Vanity Fair magazine, Edmund Wilson, who encouraged her to try writing fiction, supposedly locking her in a room and telling her to write. Whether the door was really locked or if she went willingly, it doesn’t matter because she did write; she wrote what would become the first chapter of The Company She Keeps, a compilation of six controversial episodes that although closely resemble McCarthy’s personal younger years, McCarthy herself can’t say for certain which episodes she made up and which ones are true. Sound familiar? Using her husband’s connections at the magazine, she published the finalized novel in 1942. Although she and Edmund had a volatile marriage, he continued to support her writing by reading and promoting her written works, including The Weeds (September 16, 1944), which fictionalizes the time she fled to New York after a fight with Edmund. With an already established reputation as a “controversial” woman during the 1940s, she divorced Wilson and within a year entered her third marriage; this time to Bowden Broadwater, a fellow writer and teacher at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. While married to Broadwater, she focused on her writing and published eight books. And during these two decades, she also, like Lillian Hellman, understandably became a liberal critic of McCarthyism and communism. Then in 1961 while on a lecturing tour, she met and fell in love with James Raymond West, a former director of information for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. She divorced Broadwater, and entered marriage number four – her final one. During her marriage to West, she published perhaps her most contentious novel, The Group (1963) which follows eight young female friends post college graduation, and explores the theme of the rampant sexism so prevalent in society during the 1930s – the setting of the novel. But she also experienced this sexism, as did Lillian Hellman, because of the choices each made in their lives, especially in regards to their careers and relationships with men at a time when woman married once and raised children as their career. So although these women could have supported one another, during the late seventies, Mary fanned that old simmering spark with Lillian Hellman, causing an explosion. On The Dick Cavett Show she incited Hellman by saying that “every work [Hellman] writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Of course, Hellman retaliated with a libel suit. Perhaps Mary forgot her own ‘liberties’ she had taken with some of her own writings, or perhaps she enjoyed playing devil’s advocate just a little too much; either way this one comment would become her legacy – not her talented writing – after she died over a decade later from lung cancer. And sadly, few literary fans visit her grave in Castine Cemetry in Maine. So, had these two women, these talented writers, focused on the bigger picture – the sexism they experienced during their careers, their pioneering feministic endeavors regarding their personal lives, their fight against political repression and the unjust accusations during McCarthyism – they may have realized that they were at bat for the same side, were traveling on the same bandwagon, and had thrown in their lot with the same liberal group. Instead, they lost sight of that fundamental argument and fought against each other, which ultimately lead them both into obscurity. The lesson? Although arguing may provide personal benefits, check to see if your opponent agrees with you on the same fundamental outcome; because if you do agree, by collaborating you become a force to be reckoned with and remembered. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Churchwell, Sarah. “The scandalous Lillilan Hellman.” The Guardian. 21 January 2011. Retrieved 22 June 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/jan/22/lillian-hellman-childrens-hour-sarah-churchwell Gornick, Vivian. “The Company They Kept.” The New Yorker. 17 June 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2018 from https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-company-they-kept Kakutani, Michiko. “Mary McCarthy, 77, Is Dead; Novelist, Memoirist and Critic.” The New York Times. 26 October 1989. Retrieved 25 June 2018 from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/26/specials/mccarthy-obit.html?scp=49&sq=gay%2520catholic%2520voice&st=cse “The Lives of Lillian Hellman: About Lillian Hellman.” American Masters. 30 December 2001. Retrieved 22 June 2018 from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/lillian-hellman-about-lillian-hellman/628/ Week #21: June 01 – June 07
Grab your passport, your hiking boots, and your cheaters (aka, reading glasses… but I just love the old-timers’ terminology) because the authors who celebrated a birthday this week came from all over the world: Australia, England, Russia, and Germany, and they each utilized their writing talents to deal with events beyond their control, which – thanks to translated editions (because for the life of me, I just can’t seem to learn even one foreign language – unless you count igpay atinlay – which Webster’s Dictionary clarifies it as just a language game, not a language, so I guess I better omit it from my resume!) – we can still enjoy their writing and perhaps even apply their messages and themes to our own societal dilemmas. My introduction to this first author occurred while at the podiatrist. The doctor broke that awkward silence that happens while conducting an examination by asking me what book I was reading; I always take a book with me to appointments because I hate sitting in that isolated little room for who knows how long, just waiting. This prompted a discussion on our favorite books. Hers was Australian author, Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds. She had such high praise for the novel that at the conclusion of my appointment I immediately placed it on my RBL (reading bucket list), and like over 33 million other people – including my podiatrist, I eventually read it too and became a fan of Colleen McCullough. Although she passed away in January 2015 after suffering from several strokes, we can certainly celebrate her talent by recognizing her on the anniversary of her June 1, 1937 birthday. So how did Colleen McCullough become Australia’s most famous author? Ironically, writing was her back-up to her back-up plan: after experiencing an allergic reaction to surgical soap, she had to sacrifice her dreams of becoming a doctor to research in the medical field. Knowing that her career in research could not maintain her current level of comfort after retirement, she decided she needed an alternative income - writing. Within a decade, she had written two books, Tim (1974) – a story about an unusual relationship between an unmarried middle-class older woman and her developmentally challenged gardener – and The Thorn Birds (1977) – the romantic saga about the forbidden love between Meggie Cleary and Father Ralph de Bricassart. Although, like many authors, McCullough included tragic events that she experienced in her writing – the drowning death of her brother inspired, almost word for word, the death of Meggie’s illegitimate son Dane – McCullough’s life also oddly resembled scenes from her novels: in her novel Tim, a relationship blossoms between an older woman and her much younger gardener; in real-life – almost ten years after writing Tim - McCullough married Ric Robinson, thirteen years younger than her and a palm tree grower. Events that she wrote about in The Thorn Birds also have an uncanny resemblance to events in McCullough’s life after she wrote it: in The Thorn Birds before Mary Cleary, owner of Drogheda sheep station, dies, she maliciously re-writes her will so that Father Ralph de Bricassart inherits her expansive fortune instead of her likable but conflicted niece Meggie. In McCullough’s real life, as honorary founding board member of University of Oklahoma’s Board of Visitors at its College of International Studies, she re-wrote her will so that the university, NOT her husband of thirty years, would inherit her expansive estate. And much like Father de Bricassart, the University of Oklahoma maintains that it’s the rightful beneficiary even though her husband vehemently disagrees. So what do we learn from her writing or her novels? We learn that after experiencing a tragic event, writing, much like talking, can be therapeutic in that you’re sharing your grief, but in this case, instead of sharing it with one psychologist, you can share your grief so that millions of people can empathize with you. And from her novels, at least from The Thorn Birds, we learn about the unfairness in life: some people can live a righteous life and lose the ones they love, while others can manipulate people they love, yet rise in society’s ranks. And although we certainly understand after reading The Thorn Birds that people must choose between love and ambition, I personally think that our society no longer accepts this dilemma. Just because a woman decides to have children, it no longer means that she must sacrifice her career; likewise, just because a man decides to have a career, doesn’t mean he no longer changes diapers nor attends little league games. We live in society where we want it all, and therefore strive to do it all. This of course leads us to a new dilemma: is it better to give one responsibility 100% or divide that 100% across multiple responsibilities? That question certainly makes me reflect upon my own accomplishments and realize that I could have improved my parenting if that was my sole responsibility; much like I could have improved my career if that was my sole responsibility, but I am thankful that I chose to juggle those responsibilities, for my children turned out well and I did achieve a certain level of success in my career. But what about Colleen McCullough? She didn’t have children; was that a choice or part of the vengeful God’s plan that she depicted in her stories? Regardless of the answer, she gave 100% to her writing, her books becoming her children. The success of The Thorn Birds, allowed McCullough to quit her research job at Yale University and concentrate solely on writing, but in order to maintain that level of concentration, she needed privacy and an escape from the interruptions caused by her fame. She found that solace at Out Yenna, her secluded home on Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia. Only now, after her death, can fans invade her sanctuary by visiting her unadorned grave at Emily Bay cemetery or touring her eccentric home, hoping to capture a little piece of her boldness in their memories as they view her library and ‘scriptorium’ which still houses her well-loved typewriter that she used to write her beloved novels, which by the end of her life comprised of another nine novels (including a 2008 controversial sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice titled The independence of Miss Mary Bennet), a psychological suspense series based on the title character detective Carmine Delmonico, and the seven-book Masters of Rome series, which she took the most pride in because of the exhaustive research she conducted in order to make them historically accurate. Fortunately, for most of us that do not have the opportunity to visit the island, we can still pick up one of her books and get lost in her world… while you’re on your way to England to celebrate our next author. Thomas Hardy, born June 2, 1840, eventually became a legendary poet and novelist, portraying Victorian society through a realistic lens. But in order to understand his works, we must first understand his youth, so once you land in England, don your hiking boots and head southwest towards Dorset County, the location that Thomas Hardy called home for more than three decades. As the son of a stonemason, Thomas Hardy’s beginnings reflected the life-style of any other respected, but under-privileged family: while his father worked long hard hours to bring in a little income, his well-educated mother schooled young Hardy until he went to grammar school. Thomas Hardy encountered his first obstacle as a member of the lower-class when his parents denied him the opportunity of continuing his education at the university level because of the financial burden of a higher education, and instead encouraged him to become an architect apprentice, which as a manual laborer, would only discouraged him from ever advancing into a higher social class. At the impressionable age of twenty-two, Thomas moved to London to continue his work in architecture. While there, he observed and felt the disparities between the classes, and after five years of it gnawing at his conscience, which eventually manifested in a physical illness, he moved back to Dorset to clear his conscience and regain his health by writing his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady (1867). Unfortunately, publishers did not appreciate his controversial views portrayed in the novel and they refused to publish it. Although Hardy would eventually cut and paste several segments of the story into his later works, he destroyed the manuscript so we will never know what he wrote exactly. Feeling a little apprehensive after enduring such a disappointment with his first foray into writing, yet wanting and needing to express his views, he picked up his pen again and wrote two more less controversial novels, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), anonymously. Both novels deal with the injustice of belonging to a lower economic class and desiring something that only the higher class can obtain, and the success of both novels reignited Hardy’s enthusiasm for writing. A year later, he published (under his own name this time) A Pair of Blue Eyes, which, in the guise of a love triangle, continues to portray the challenges associated with different socio-economic classes, and also supposedly reflects Hardy’s courtship with his future wife, Emma. Unfortunately, Hardy’s marriage to Emma only re-enforced his opinion regarding the disparities between the classes: after the typical brief period of contentment associated with the early months and years of marriage, Hardy found himself miserable in the relationship, but due to society’s expectations and the cost of a divorce – which only the wealthy upper-class could ever afford – he stayed in the unhappy marriage. Perhaps in an attempt to improve his relationship with Emma, in 1885 he moved them, after living in his home for more than forty-four years, not too far away to a new home they called Max Gate. Unfortunately, the new home did not improve their relationship, and Hardy sought refuge from their unhappy encounters in his writing. During this time he wrote Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), which both portrayed fatalistic opinions about relationships, marriage, and challenges associated with social-classes, and both received negative reviews from the public, causing Hardy to stop writing novels forever. Emma’s death in 1912 strangely inspired Hardy to write poetry which expressed a love and appreciation for her he hadn’t felt until after her death. But he didn’t stay single for long; just two years later at the age of seventy-four, he married his thirty-something year-old secretary (and Emma’s close) friend, Florence. They remained married until Thomas Hardy’s death in January 1928 after a month-long battle with pleurisy. As a final romantic gesture, Hardy had requested to have his remains buried at Stinsford Church in the same grave as his first wife; however, after his death, emulating a final battle between those with and without power, executors of his will disagreed and wanted him buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey because of his legendary literary influence. After deliberating, Florence and his friends convinced the executor of his will to bury Hardy’s heart with Emma and his ashes in the abbey, allowing future literary fans the opportunity to pay their respects while visiting London, or at the cemetery after touring his two homes in Dorset and hiking the Wessex countryside which inspired many of the settings for his writing. Regardless of where you pay your respects to Thomas Hardy or how you capture a little bit of his essence, you can’t help but understand his frustration with the class system that he so prominently portrays in his literature after taking a glimpse at his life. And unlike the dilemma reflected in Colleen McCullough’s writing regarding the hard choices in life that our society no longer accepts, the dilemma Thomas Hardy portrays regarding the class system has only worsened over time: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, ever widening the gap. And unfortunately, I don’t have the answer. If I did, I’d be popular and rich. Governments have tried to implement different philosophies and various programs, only to worsen the problem. The solution must come from a mixture of an individual’s moral character: compassion to help and motivation to succeed. But how to guarantee and then replicate that formula remains a mystery. In society, we will always have contrasting personalities when it comes to work: independent hard working people who believe in taking care of their own, or lackadaisical people waiting to accept the hard work others provide. What we need involves compassionate people who will work hard and help others, but how do you keep the balance? How do you encourage those who need the help to work if they receive help without working? How do you encourage those who need the help, if they encounter obstacle after obstacle when trying to better their situation? How do you encourage those with an abundance to give, when they see their funds mismanaged? Hopefully, we as a society will find the solution, but until then we’ve learned that even though Thomas Hardy penned his stories over a hundred years ago, their unjust and cruel endings depicting the reality of life still relate to us today. But should we sit by waiting idly for something to change? Or do we bravely speak out against the injustice we witness? Most of us would quickly reply that we’d choose bravery, that we would never sit idly; but how much would you sacrifice for your act of bravery? Would you sacrifice your home? Your loved ones? Your life? When forced to ponder those questions, we often hesitate in our reply to the original question. Perhaps it’s best that we often think an act brave only after it occurs. Such is the case for our next author, whom we celebrate his June 6, 1799 birthday this week. If we say “s dnem rozhdeniya, Alekandr Pushkin” can you guess which stamp you’ll see in your passport next? If you guessed Russia, you may not need to buy his literature already translated into English, and I’ll invite you to come translate for me while we visit his home, now the National Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg. Unlike Thomas Hardy, who didn’t receive a university education because of his economic-status, Alekandr Pushkin’s family – although poor – had aristocratic lineage and therefore he received the best education. Whether he would have discovered his talent for writing without this formal education, we will never know; but before even graduating, he had published his first poem at the age of fifteen and received rave reviews. The first few years after graduation that Pushkin spent living the high-life affected him dramatically: instead of ostracizing those less fortunate than him, he sympathized with their plight. Utilizing the only skill he commanded, he wrote poetry that portrayed his frustration with the government. As an American, we take the act of speaking out against a government for granted, but Tsar Alexander of Russia felt differently. After reading Pushkin’s revolutionary poem, “Ode to Liberty” (1820), the tsar exiled young Pushkin. After three years, his influential friends finally arranged for Pushkin to live in Ukraine, where he continued to write poetry and began writing his first novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, a story about a gentleman who fails to appreciate true love until it’s too late. Although still under surveillance, after only a year of living a rather comfortable life in Ukraine, Pushkin refused to allow his situation to silence his concerns about how the government and religion treated the lower-class. Once again the government intervened; this time virtually imprisoning him at his mother’s house. And once again, Pushkin utilized this time to hone his writing skills by composing poetry and continuing his work on Eugene Onegin. Finally, under the new rule of Tsar Nicholas I, Pushkin returned to Moscow with the understanding that Pushkin would never write, publish, or even read his revolutionary writing again. Now, Pushkin may have subversively returned to his controversial writing, kicking the hornets’ nest again and chancing another exile, but for the love of a girl. Try as he might, Natalya Goncharova refused to accept his marriage proposal until the government allowed him to publish his writing again. With a renewed determination and taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s historical plays, Aleksandr Pushkin wrote “Boris Godunov” – a historical play about the anarchy surrounding the reign of Russia from 1584-1613. Although the play did not see an actual stage for almost forty years, the government did allow Pushkin to publish it, thus securing his marriage to Natalya, which occurred in 1831. For a few years, the couple lived happily in St. Petersburg welcoming several children, and Pushkin’s writing continued to flourish. He published several short stories including, “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” and “The Shot” (both in 1831), and “The Bronze Horseman” (1833). He even – after a decade of writing and revising - finally finished his novel Eugene Onegin, publishing it in 1833. But then as a dutiful son, Aleksandr agreed to help his deeply indebted family, causing Pushkin himself to fall into debt. Like many marriages that encounter money problems, Aleksandr and his wife began to argue and she eventually openly turned her affections to Georges D’Anthes. Not wanting to lose face, Pushkin challenged D’Anthes to a duel. D’Anthes fired first, mortally wounding Pushkin. He died two days later on January 29, 1837 and is buried at the Svyatye Gory Monastery. So here we have a man, who refused to sit idly waiting for someone else to find a solution, a man who accepted the call of bravery, voicing his opinion to help others. But he made a mistake: he allowed pride to interfere. Although he started out by utilizing his talent of combining the Old Slavonic language with everyday Russian vernacular to give voice to the lower-class by portraying the injustices that they endured and even accepted years of exile from his home and family for this practice, pride reduced him to a man too arrogant to allow his own personal injustices to go unanswered. Through Aleksandr Pushkin, we must learn that when we have our eyes and heart set on helping others, we will endure; but turn that interest inward, and we’ll perish before our time. And with that thought-provoking statement, we’ll leave Russia behind and travel to our next destination in order to celebrate the June 6, 1875 birthday of another legendary author, Thomas Mann. As we say “alles Gute zum Geburtstag” to him, any guesses on which country will stamp our passport next? If you guessed Germany, your ability to speak multiple languages leaves this sadly monolingual person in awe. I personally have only tip-toed into Germany once, crossing into its eastern city Aachen for a brief day visit; so the anticipation of visiting Lubeck, the northern city bordering Denmark and birthplace to Thomas Mann, truly excites me. And a visit here (at least for literary fans) certainly deserves a place on your must-see bucket list as it boasts housing the world’s most exceptional literary museum, The Buddenbrook House, which displays a tribute to both the history of the Mann family and Thomas Mann’s Nobel Prize winning novel Buddenbrooks. So if we’re traveling all this way, who is this man and how does his century-old novel relate to our society? Let’s take a look. Born into a long line of a bourgeois or middle-class family, Thomas Mann lived a typical childhood until the death of his father; after which his mother uprooted the children to move to Munich and forced Thomas to stay behind until he had finished grammar school. After graduating by the skin of his teeth, Thomas arrived in Munich with a career in journalism in mind and thus began classes at the university. After attending classes at the university, like many young men, he dabbled in life: traveling with his brother and taking odd jobs, such as one at an insurance company. It wasn’t until he witnessed the success of his brother’s writing career, that Thomas took a keener interest in writing. Although he started by submitting a collection of short stories to the fledgling satirical magazine, Simplicissimus, he quickly by-passed the success of his brother with his first novel, Buddenbrooks (1901), which eventually won him the Novel Prize in Literature in 1929. And even though Thomas Mann continued to write for years, publishing over twenty short stories, almost a dozen novellas and novels, and several other essays, speeches, and plays, his first novel has always remained his most popular, and still relates to our dream-filled society. As an American we have grown up with visions of the American Dream. The dream itself differs among individuals, but generally remains the same between generations: the younger generation wants to be better than the previous generation, with the meaning of better referring to money, housing, possessions, health, etc. And although Thomas Mann‘s German ancestry inspired his novel Buddenbrooks, it reflects the same philosophy behind our American Dream, making his novel still relatable regardless of where we live – generation after generation. And this particular generation, for the first time in decades, questions whether they can truly accomplish the American Dream. As the cost of living increases, they ponder their generation’s dilemma: “Can they achieve ‘it’ better than their parents?” The previous generation knew that even by working a manual-labor, 9-5 job they could afford to marry, buy a house, and live comfortably on one income while the wife stayed home to care for their children. Now in order to afford that lifestyle, the breadwinner of the family must bring in over a six-figure salary – typically not a salary you’d find in a hard-working 9-5 factory job. So more people go to college hoping a higher education will increase their future salary, only to discover they’ve begun their adult life on a foundation of debt. And as their mountain of debt rises along with their stress, they long for the way of life their parents lived. And this is the premise of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks novel. It portrays the decline of a merchant family over the course of four generations, and although the setting is Germany, that longing for a better time crosses physical borders. And speaking of borders, Thomas Mann found himself crossing borders – several times. After marrying, he moved his family to Switzerland to escape the growing political tension in Germany and to capture inspiration for his next novel, The Magic Mountain, which he published in 1924. With his writing success he purchased a summer cottage in the village of Nidden (now Lithuania), which is now a small museum in his honor. He had planned on returning to his homeland, but WWII began and the Nazi occupation made his return unsafe, so he immigrated to the United States. As one of the few surviving German authors that had fled the Nazi regime, he felt compelled to give anti-Hitler speeches in his native tongue, which the United States then gave to the British Broadcasting Company to transmit across Europe. His fervor ultimately led him to earn the position as Consultant in Germanic Literature at the Library of Congress. Unfortunately for Mann, his helpful status in the United States did not last. During the Cold War, the increase in intolerance and interrogations, and the decrease in legal rights he witnessed in America reminded Mann of the political atmosphere in Germany prior to WWI. So when Mann protested the arrest of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ he also came under suspicion of having Communist ties and had to vacate his position at the Library of Congress and he eventually moved back to Switzerland. Although he returned to Germany for visits, he died in 1955 never having lived in his home country again. These four legendary authors certainly gave our passport a workout! And we’ve learned that although authors come from all over the world and may have lived over a hundred years ago, we can still relate to what they experienced and the messages they conveyed in their writing. Society long ago had to choose which path to take in life, and today we choose how to juggle traveling multiple paths. Society long ago faced the challenges associated with social classes, and today the rich still get richer and the poor, poorer. Society long ago made the brave decision to take action, and today we still fight the battle, giving a voice to the under-represented. And society long ago dreamt of a better life, and today we question the achievability of our own American Dream. These authors may not give us the answers to our problems, but at least through reading their writing we understand that ultimately we are not alone with our troubles and that life will go on… for someone a hundred years from now will read and still feel connected. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Aleeva, Ekaterina. “10 reasons why Pushkin is so great.” Russia Beyond. 6 June 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/06/06/pushkin-birthday_600561 Chawkins, Steve. “Colleen McCullough dies at 77; author of ‘Thorn Birds,’ mysteries.” 29 January 2015. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 June 2018 from http://www.latimes.com/ local/obituaries/la-me-colleen-mccullough-dies-at-77-20150129-story.html Fincham, Tony. “About Hardy.” The Thomas Hardy Society. 2 February 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from http://www.hardysociety.org/about-hardy Hall, Louise. “Battle over author Colleen McCullough's estate takes a twist.” The Sidney Morning Herald. 14 May 2016. Retrieved 11 June 2018 from https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/battle-over-author-colleen-mcculloughs-estate-takes-a-twist-20160512-gotksh.html Mann, Thomas. “Thomas Mann: Biographical.” Nobel Prize Organization. 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1929/mann-bio.html McMillan, Eric. “The politics of an apolitical writer.” Editor Eric. 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/authors/MannT.html Shubnaya, Ekaterina. “Prominent Russians: Aleksandr Pushkin.” Russiapedia. 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/aleksandr-pushkin/ “Thomas Hardy.” Poetry Foundation. 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2018 from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-hardy Wikipedia contributors. “Alexander Pushkin.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 3 June 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander _Pushkin&oldid=844206688 Wikipedia contributors. “Colleen McCullough. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 May 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colleen_ McCullough&oldid=842395247 Wikipedia contributors. “Thomas Hardy.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 June 2018. Retrieved on 6 June 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Hardy& oldid=844365298 Week #16: April 22 – April 30
According to the Population Reference Bureau, since the beginning of mankind roughly 50,000 years ago, more than 108 billion people have ever been born. And most of those people lived unremarkable lives. A few however permanently changed our history with their influence on our philosophical, religious, scientific, humanitarian, business, or literary beliefs and practices. Reaching back thousands of years ago, Socrates, going against the moral, intellectual and political norm of the time, changed the way we think. Instead of looking for answers from others, he encouraged people to seek answers from within, to question one’s own morals and motives leading to a new philosophical outlook on learning. Then several hundreds of years later, Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha converted people during their lifetime from a polytheistic culture to a monotheistic culture, and they continue to influence billions of people with their core values in life including beliefs about our origin and our afterlife. From a 50,000 year perspective, the more modern developments from Galileo Galilei, who concluded that, contrary to Catholic belief, the earth rotated around the sun, and Charles Darwin, who hypothesized that our species originated within the animal kingdom, both drastically changed the way we see and interact in the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up and demanded equal rights for all, changing the humanitarian outcome for all future generations. And the inventions over the past couple of centuries that have changed the way society does business is awe-inspiring: Thomas Edison harnessed nature’s electrical power and showed us how to control it in our homes; Henry Ford introduced the mass-production line of automobiles, making them affordable for the average person and changing the mobility of a culture forever; Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web which now offers unlimited knowledge at our fingertips. And speaking of knowledge, one person in the literary world has influenced more future writers than anyone else ever combined. Who is that literary icon, who also happens to have had a birthday this week? Here’s a riddle to help you figure it out. What do the lyrics of Taylor Swift and 2Pac have in common? What about those of Metallica and Elton John? The Beatles and Iron Maiden? Dire Straits and Sting? The answer? Shakespeare! Yes they are all musicians in a wide-range of genres but they all have at least one song with lyrics influenced from this one literary icon. That person is William Shakespeare. Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” and the opening arpeggio on Dire Strait’s album Making Movies both reference Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet; and Shakespeare’s portrayal of greedy and power-hungry kings such as King Lear and Macbeth make their way into the Beatles’ album The Magical Mystery Tour, Metallica’s song “King Nothing” from their album Load, and Elton John’s song “The King Must Die.” Even the prophesizing witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth make their presence known in 2Pac’s debut album 2Pacalypse Now with their chant “something wicked this way come,” and heavy metal icon Iron Maiden includes the prophesizing words from Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” in the title of their top hit “The Evil that Men Do.” So far Shakespeare’s sadder and darker themes have influenced all these lyrics, but that’s not always the case. Shakespeare also wrote 154 sonnets, many with lighter themes highlighting new love and nature. “Sonnet #130” includes the line ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” which award-winning singer Sting in part borrowed for the title of his album Nothing Like the Sun. And these only represent a few of the modern lyrics Shakespeare inspired; if we also took note of the quotes, poems, novels, plays, movies, and counties, cities, and streets that Shakespeare also inspired, then our list would quickly turn into a gigantic book. So how did one person influence thousands, perhaps even millions? It certainly wasn’t his childhood background. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23, 1564 – we think. You see, we know very little about this man who changed the literary world forever. We know the church baptized him on April 26, 1564, an event that traditionally took place three days after birth. We know he was one of eight children born to his father, a leather merchant, and his mother, a land heiress, and although they lived wealthy for a time, by William’s childhood, their wealth had declined rapidly. We assume he attended the local King’s New School, which would have taught him the classics. But so far nothing extraordinary. As an adult, we know that at the age of eighteen, he married a pregnant Anne Hathaway – eight years his senior. We also know that William and Anne had three children: Susanna and then twins Hamnet and Judith. Unfortunately, at the age of eleven, Hamnet died for reasons that leave us in the dark. We know that Shakespeare goes off the radar for almost a decade and then reappears as a respected partner in the prestigious London acting company called Lord Chamberlain’s Men. By the age of thirty-three, he had already written fifteen plays and could afford to buy New House, the second largest house in Stratford. Within two more years, he and his partners built their own theatre called The Globe. Unfortunately, during a “Henry VIII” production in 1616, a canon shot during the performance caught the theatre’s thatched roof on fire and the entire theatre burned to the ground. And remarkably, it took a whopping 383 years to reconstruct The Globe, just a few blocks away from the original theatre. Prior to this reconstruction, surprisingly nothing existed in London to honor Shakespeare or his plays. And speaking from experience, when I saw “Titus Andronicus,” there’s nothing quite like watching a Shakespeare play in the same recreated outdoor ambiance of The Globe theatre on the banks of the Thames River in London. And lastly, we know that at the age of fifty-two, he was interred at the Trinity Church on April 25, 1616, leading us to believe that he died on April 23 – his birthday, but leaving it a mystery as to how or why he died. And as fate would have it, both of Shakespeare’s daughters had children that did not survive into adulthood, thus forever ending William Shakespeare’s line of ancestry. In all, in addition to the sonnets mentioned above, William Shakespeare wrote a total of thirty-seven plays, ranging from histories, tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies. So why does his writing, especially his plays, still hold such a dominant place in the literary canon? Why does even modern society still compare all other plays to Shakespeare’s plays? The answer may be that the themes of his plays - appearance vs reality, order vs chaos, life vs death, fate vs free-will, youth vs wisdom, ambition vs fortune, love vs hate, forgiveness vs violence, and ambition, evil, guilt, and conscience – transcend any time period and every culture. Whether you’re an elderly Chinese gentleman laying on his deathbed full of regrets during the 1700s or a young Afghanistan woman unhappy in an arranged marriage during the 1900s, you can find at least one Shakespearean play that connects with you, that speaks to you, on a deeper level. So does his ability to transcend time and cultures justify his inclusion on the list of people who changed history? Well if that reason is not enough, then the fact that he alone introduced more than 1,700 original words, such as lonely and frugal, and phrases, such as “breaking the ice” and “heart of gold,” into the English language – words and phrases that generation upon generation continue to use both in their writing and in their everyday speech – should definitely catapult him to the top of that list. Because of his influence, he is (perhaps) unknowingly ingrained in our psyche. Everyone has either seen or read a Shakespeare play, visited a place named after one of his creations, read a book by an author that Shakespeare inspired, or spoken one of the words he introduced. Not many people – ever – have had that kind of an impact; so I definitely say he has earned his spot on that list, and his name should certainly be near the top! And so now that we come towards the end of April and celebrate the great Bard’s birthday, I would love to return to his birthplace to pay my respects while visiting one of the many homes and properties associated with him, or even stand in front of his tombstone, that curses any man that may attempt to move his bones, and offer a moment of silence in gratitude for the impact he has had on so many lives throughout the centuries. But until I visit Stratford-upon-Avon again, it is with anticipation that I await the warmer weather of the summer months when Kentucky’s Shakespeare in the Park returns for their 69th continuous year of offering free performances to entertain and inspire audiences, so that I can attend and bask in the productions of his theatrical masterpieces. Well done William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, and Happy Birthday! In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Pettinger, Tejvan. “100 people who changed the world.” Biography Online. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.biographyonline.net/people/people-who-changed-world.html “Pop goes Shakespeare: the Bard in Modern Music.” British Broadcasting Company. 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2018 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4nwSNRbP6DhyV79KgT94LTp/pop-goes-shakespeare-the-bard-in-modern-music “William Shakespeare Biography.” The Biography.com. 5 August 2017. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323 “William Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Influence.” 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2018 from https://www.williamshakespeare.net/ Week #15: April 16 – April 21
Like all mothers, I want my children to gain the knowledge required to help them grow into independent productive members of society, and I want them to experience long-lasting happiness. When I look into the future, I can envision each one living their version of the American Dream: married with children and pets in a house, and working in a career that allows them to live comfortably in middle-class. That’s it. Average and reasonable expectations, right? But if this is the average then logically speaking, some young adults will not experience this average version of the American Dream, while other young adults will seem to have pixie dust sprinkled over them and coast right by average to the exceptional. But do we as parents really have any control over their path? According to Life and Fitness journalist for England’s newspaper The Telegraph Linda Blair, we do. Through her research she concluded that parents must incorporate six specific characteristics into their parenting in order to increase the likelihood that children will experience high levels of success in adulthood. To begin with, parents must teach grit (1) and self-belief (2). A child must persevere through their challenges and truly believe that they can do what they’ve set their minds to do. Parents must encourage their children to think outside-the-box (3). A child must understand that just because it hasn’t been done before, doesn’t mean it can’t be done – especially when it comes to society’s traditional boundaries. Parents must allow their children to try, to fail, to succeed on their own so that the accomplishment belongs to the child (4), not the parent. And what might be the hardest of all, the parent must trust (5) that their child will discover their own talents. Just because we have a specific talent or enjoy a particular hobby, does not mean the child will follow suit. But above all, these characteristics must start early (6) in the child’s development – the earlier, the better. After reading about these characteristics and looking at my now grown children, I’m personally feeling pretty good about my parenting, really only wishing that I’d started earlier, had more time. But hindsight is twenty-twenty. So why do I mention all this? The two authors that celebrate a birthday this week both come from families with ‘super-siblings’ – meaning that every child in their families went on to achieve a high-level of success. So were they sprinkled with pixie dust or did their upbringing include these parenting characteristics? Let’s take a look. American playwright and novelist, Thornton Wilder’s birthday is April 17, 1897. He was one of five children in the Wilder household with successful parents. His father achieved success as a newspaper owner/editor, public speaker, and consul general in Hong Kong appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt. His mother achieved her own success as a poet and as the first woman elected to public office in Hamden, Connecticut. His older brother earned his acclaim as a prize-winning poet. He also had three younger sisters: another award-winning poet, a successful novelist, and a zoologist. With all this success surrounding the household it is no wonder Thornton Wilder achieved success too, but was it parenting or pixie dust? After researching his life, several of his accomplishments as an adult prove that his parents must have incorporated those six parenting traits. As educated parents, they instilled in him a love of the literary classics at an early age (6). His enrollment and success at both Oberlin College and Yale University prove they instilled in him a sense of his own empowerment (4) – after all, they didn’t do his homework for him. And when he decided to include a year studying archaeology in Rome as part of his post-graduate work, his parents obviously had to trust (5) his instincts that the experience would help him in life. And it did; believing in himself (2), he published his first novel The Cabala (1926), a fantasy story about the death of pagan gods set in Rome. Although the book received unenthusiastic reviews, Wilder showed perseverance or grit (1) by continuing write and following his dream. His second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), a story about unconditional love, brought him instant popularity and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Wilder also proved that he had learned to think outside-the-box (3) when he wrote the theatrical sensation Our Town, popular for its never-seen-before rudimentary setting and a narrator that tells the story of a young couple in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Considering Thornton Wilder displayed the results of the six successful parenting characteristics, they must have worked – with maybe a little pixie dust. Unfortunately, he never married or had children, and died at the age of seventy-eight of a heart attack living in his Connecticut home that he shared with his sister, so he never had the opportunity to pass on those same characteristics. He did however leave us with great stories – in both book and play formats – and he left us a place to pay our respects to him: the Mount Carmel Burying Ground in Hamden, Connecticut. But super siblings don’t just happen in the United States. Let’s jump across the Atlantic Ocean and take a look at one of the most famous super sibling families ever known, especially in the literary world: the Bronte Family. This one family produced not one, not two, but three authors of international literary classics all within less than a year from each other: coming in third, Anne Bronte published The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in June 1848, Emily Bronte came in second, publishing Wuthering Heights in December 1847, but Charlotte Bronte beat them all to the publication finish line with Jane Eyre in October 1847, and it is in honor of her April 21, 1816 birthday this week that we take a look at her life to see if her parents had a secret supply of pixie dust or if they too incorporated the six characteristics of effective parenting to produce these successful writers. Let’s begin with the last trait (beginning early) and work backwards to the first trait (grit). When looking at Charlotte’s childhood, three significant events occurred that changed the course of her life. The tragic death of her mother from cancer when Charlotte was only five years old left her and her five other siblings in the care of her religious father and aunt. Although both of these educated adults home-schooled the children, her father, himself a poet, enrolled his girls at the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge only a few years later in order to heighten their education. Unfortunately, this enrollment proved disastrous when illness spread throughout the school, eventually taking the lives of Charlotte’s two older sisters. So although her education began early (6), public schooling left a black mark on Charlotte’s heart, which we see remnants of in her novel, Jane Eyre. After enduring such a tragedy at the school, her father immediately brought his remaining three girls home. It is during this time at home that her father first witnessed the path his children would eventually take – writing. After receiving little toy soldiers as a present from him, the children created elaborate plays around these soldiers and wrote manuscripts through their voices in tiny writing so that you could imagine the little hands of the soldiers writing it themselves. Instead of reprimanding this foolish and ungodly behavior, their father trusted (5) that their creative imaginations would not lead them to harm’s way. But he also needed his maturing children to eventually contribute to the household’s finances, and one of the only respectable ways to do this was to become a governess, so Charlotte went back to school. Although she initially struggled in her studies, with self-determination and many skipped extra-curricular activities, less than two years later she had earned top marks in her class and several academic awards. Obviously these academic accomplishments prove her father instilled the sense of empowerment (4) in her: he knew she was struggling, but allowed Charlotte to own both the struggle and the sweet success of conquering that struggle. But although Charlotte conquered the academic struggle, she continued to struggle with her role in society. She hated the teaching profession; she wanted meaningful lasting work, flexible hours, and privacy, but as a female, she felt limited in a man’s world. Her solution came in the guise of her sisters’ poetry: Emily had written several poems. The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, decided to publish a book of Emily’s poems intermixed with a few of their own using male pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The girls had found a way around society’s constricting gender roles, and thus confirmed that their father had taught them not to accept limitations (3). Charlotte took such pleasure in the business aspect of finding a publisher that her self-confidence grew. She stopped writing the more feminine poems and began writing her first novel, The Professor. Even though publishers continued to reject her novel, drawing on her previous sense of empowerment, she continued to believe in herself (2), so when a publisher finally said no to her first novel, but offered her hope by asking to see another example of her writing, she went home and within two weeks penned Jane Eyre (1847). The publisher immediately accepted it, as did the rest of the world. We’ve accounted for five traits, which only leaves one remaining – grit. One might think that Charlotte had to learn grit when her two older sisters died, or when she struggled in school, or in finding a way in a man’s world, or in publishing her writing. She did, but not to the degree which she needed after suffering another tragic loss. Within eight short months, Charlotte buried ALL her remaining siblings. Her brother Branwell died in September 1848, her sister Emily in December, and her sister Anne in May of 1849 – all succumbing to tuberculosis. From a happy family with five siblings, she was now alone. I’m going to guess that if her father had any pixie dust, he would have used it to save his children, so it seems more likely that he just incorporated the six traits really well into his parenting. Unfortunately, none of his children survived long enough to test out those same traits with their own children, for even Charlotte passed away before having children. She died nine months after her wedding from complications during her troublesome pregnancy. So now we are left with only something to hold - a literary classic portraying themes of love, identity, independence, and forgiveness - and something to see - in Haworth, England, the Bronte home, which is now the Bronte Parsonage Museum and the final resting place of the Bronte family, with the exception of Anne who died too far away while visiting in Scarborough. Although advances in medical and hygiene have severely decreased the likelihood of dying from tuberculosis, other illnesses still exist that take lives way too young. Although my own children are grown, I offer this advice to them as they begin their own parenting journey: to protect your children and give them the best chance at a successful life, I would certainly incorporate these six characteristics into your parenting styles – after all it can only help them. And vaccinate your children – because we all know that pixie dust is only used in fairy tales. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Blair, Linda. “Six ways to raise 'super-siblings'.” The Telegraph: Life and Fitness. 12 September 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2018 from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/six-ways-to-raise-super-siblings/ “Charlotte Bronte.” Poetry Foundation. 2018. Retrieved 23 April 2018 from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charlotte-bronte Dominus, Susan. “Overlooked No More: Charlotte Brontë, Novelist Known for ‘Jane Eyre’.” 8 March 2018. The New York Times. Retrieved 23 April 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/obituaries/overlooked-charlotte-bronte.html Dugan, Evelyn Clare. “The novels of Thornton Wilder: themes through characterization.” 1970. Ball State University.Retrieved on 20 April 2018 from http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/handle/175952 Poulos, Alex. “The Thornton Wilder Society.” Montclair State University. Retrieved on 20 April 2018 from http://www.twildersociety.org/biography/chronology/ Strub, Rosey. “Wilder: The official website of the Thornton Wilder family.” The Wilder Family LLC. Retrieved on 20 April 2018 from http://www.thorntonwilder.com/ “Thornton Wilder Biography.” The Biography.com website. 11 November 2015. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 20 April 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/thornton-wilder-9531264 Tompkins, Joyce.“Charlotte Bronte.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2018. Retrieved 23 April 2018 from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Bronte. Week #13: April 08 – April 15
What makes an author great? It wouldn’t surprise me to hear day, week, or even month-long discussions on this topic. Does an author have to embrace rich language to be great, like Shakespeare? Does a great author have to bring to light appalling conditions, like Charles Dickens? Does a great author have to make readers question their morals, like Harriet Beecher Stowe? Does a great author have to display a pioneering concept, like Wilkie Collins? Does a great author have to capture the essence of an era, like F. Scott Fitzgerald? Does a great author have to incorporate personal experiences, like Ernest Hemingway? Does a great author have to publish numerous books, like Jane Austen, or one powerful book, like Harper Lee? We’d all agree that these authors individually earned their title as a “great” author, but we’ve all read a book that includes one or more of these qualities, and yet we don’t consider the author “one of the greats.” So to be a great author one must be remembered – not just a passing fad that lasts a year or a decade, but remembered for even centuries. And why do we remember them? For any of the qualities listed above. But why do some good authors never transition to the “great” category? To answer that, let’s take a look at the four authors that all celebrate a birthday this week: Paul Theroux, Glenway Wescott, Scott Turow, and James Branch Cabell. Let’s begin with saying ‘Happy Birthday’ to popular travel writer, Paul Theroux who will celebrate his April 10, 1941 birthday this week. After spending a childhood lost in the pages of books, Theroux left the comforts and chaos associated with living with his parents and six siblings in Medford, Massachusetts to attend the University of Maine, but then transferred to the University of Massachusetts and took creative writing classes before earning his bachelor’s degree in English. But Theroux needed more than writing – he wanted to travel. So he trained to become a member of the Peace Corps, and as a result spent time lecturing and writing in Italy and Africa. During his stint in Africa, he met his wife and started a family. Although he loved Africa, he uprooted his family and moved to Singapore to teach after an angry mob almost hurt his pregnant wife. During his time in the Peace Corps, Theroux wrote five novels, beginning with the publication of Waldo in 1967, and concluded with Jungle Lover in 1971, which the Malawi government banned. But it was his travelogue, The Great Railway Bazaar, about his four-month journey by train from London through Europe, the Middle East, and southern Asia that earned him substantial literary recognition. Since then he went on to write eighteen more non-fiction books, most about his travels, and thirty more novels. As a professional writer and currently living in Hawaii, he has obviously achieved success, but will society remember him in one hundred years? Hopefully he doesn’t take this personally, but probably not. And not just because of his vocal criticism about celebrities and their attempts to help third-world countries within Africa. More likely, society won’t remember him because it will have outgrown his main genre of writing – travelogues. Nowadays, if people want information about a specific location, they Google it or turn to social media for assistance – they generally do not read a book about it. Travelogues will sit on the shelves of our memories like phone books and will only come up in conversations about the ol’ days… “Remember when people used to look up phone numbers in a massive printed phone book?” Just replace phone numbers with locations and phone book with travelogues. Fortunately for us thought, although Paul Theroux may not transition to a great author, we can certainly enjoy his work now. Since we have travels on our mind, let’s also say ‘Happy Birthday’ to another substantial literary figure of his time, expatriate Glenway Wescott who would have celebrated his birthday on April 11. Although back in the 1920s Glenway Wescott ranked on the literary charts along with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein, nowadays, his work has taken up residence on the dusty bookshelves of a bygone era along with that phone book. Born at the turn of the century in 1901 in the small agricultural town of Kewaskum, Wisconsin, Wescott quickly grew tired of the tedious farm life and struck out for college as soon as he could. Unfortunately, he didn’t prosper at the University of Chicago either and just a year shy of graduating, dropped out in search of bigger horizons. After a brief stint in New Mexico, he found himself, along with several other literary-talented expatriates, in Paris during the 1920s. Paris’ relaxed atmosphere agreed with Wescott’s creativity, and he began writing. At the age of twenty-six he started a promising writing career with the publication of his first novel The Apple of the Eye” (1924). Earning the Harper Prize award for his second novel, The Grandmothers (1927), a story set in the mid-1800s about a family that moved from New York to barren Wisconsin, also earned him a legitimate place on the literary stage. But then he encountered a writer’s worst nightmare, writer’s block. Maybe he felt too much pressure to maintain the high level of successful writing since critics often compared his writing to the other expatriate literary giants of the time; maybe his perfectionist attitude about language and sentence structure bogged down his creativity, or maybe he just enjoyed living on the coattails of his previous work; whatever the reasoning, he struggled to write for over a decade. He even returned to the States for inspiration when the troubling preludes to WWII began in Europe. And it took the war to shock his creativity into overdrive; in 1944 he finally published Apartment in Athens. The story about a young family forced to house a German officer became an instant worldwide success – soldiers even carried it around with them during their search for the Nazi enemy. And then he stopped writing fiction – forever. Even though his book had reached the best-sellers list, even though Ernest Hemingway’s own mother chided Ernest for not being more like Wescott – which led Hemingway to portray him as the annoying writer, Robert Prentiss in The Sun Also Rises, even though Wescott relied on his sister-in-law for money to keep up his extravagant lifestyle after the money ran out, Wescott didn’t write, giving the excuse that he simply wasn’t good enough anymore. And so, after more than forty years of living quietly without writing, he died of a stroke quietly at his Rosemont, New Jersey home at the age of eighty-five with his partner of more than seventy-years beside him. Unfortunately, the question remains though: although Glenway Wescott achieved literary success during the same era as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, why do their books reside on the canonical bookshelf while people don’t even recognize Wescott’s name? Was it because Hemingway and Fitzgerald continued their extravagant wild lifestyles almost ‘til their dying days, and therefore stayed in the limelight and continued to write? Was it because Wescott didn’t have a successful publisher, marketing his novels? Was it because Wescott became complacent with living on his brief success? Or was it because he feared never reaching the same level of success as he did with his last novel? Regardless of the reason (or perhaps reasons) Glenway Wescott and his works have fallen into obscurity. So I suppose the moral of his life, if one in fact needs a moral, is that although it takes dedication and perseverance to reach the top, staying there requires even more! And our next birthday boy, celebrating his sixty-ninth year on April 12, certainly knows about dedication and perseverance! Chicago native, Scott Turow knew he needed a college education to achieve success, and so he dedicated himself to his studies at Amherst College and graduated with high honors, which not only earned him a prestigious fellowship to Stanford University’s Creative Writing Center but then a position there as lecturer for a Creative Writing course. Although Turow enjoyed writing, his aspirations included another love – the law. In order to satiate that love, he moved to the opposite coast to attend the best law school, Harvard. Once again, he reaped the benefits of his dedication to his studies, when he graduated with honors and the city of Chicago welcomed him back home with a position as their Assistant United States Attorney, where he remained – probably consciously or subconsciously collecting story ideas – for the next eight years. And then in 1986 his original love, writing, awoke from its long slumber and Turow realized he had a dual calling in life – he needed to practice law and write. And so he did. He traded his position as Assistant US Attorney, for a partnership in a Chicago-based law firm, and started writing novels based on litigation. And he obviously made the correct choice; beginning with the international success of his first novel, Presumed Innocent (1987), he continued to write six more bestsellers, including his latest Testimony (2017), all the while continuing to fight for the underdog in the courtroom. With several bestsellers and even books made into major motion pictures, why is Scott Turow not listed as one of the literary giants? Will we remember him in a hundred years? Sadly, probably not. But why? It’s his niche. Although millions of readers love a good courtroom drama and mystery, (including me), they certainly do not appeal to everyone, especially with his highly effective and justifiable use of legalese. And although his work at least attempts to answers many of the original questions that the literary giants answer in their works, his setting – the courtroom – is not where we as readers want to imagine ourselves. And so, although we’ve learned that it takes perseverance and dedication to remain at the top, in order to be a literary great, an author must make sure that their “top” is not such a small peak that not everyone knows it even exists. Now talk about not knowing something exists! Let’s take a look at author of fifty books in just as many years, James Branch Cabell, who would have celebrated his April 14, 1879 birthday this week as well. Fifty books! Surely with so many novels, he and his work must have a place on that elusive canonical bookshelf! Sadly, hardly anyone nowadays even knows he existed; but they sure did back in his day. Odd rumors followed Cabell for most of his life, beginning with college gossip that he partook in a homosexual orgy, costing him the loss of his girlfriend and a hiatus from college. Shortly after returning to his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, a rumor that he killed his mother’s lover waylaid him. And even though the investigation into the death proved otherwise, he never truly evaded the hint of speculation. And maybe he didn’t mind the speculation because he enjoyed the limelight – even negative limelight – which he found himself in again when after publishing several unremarkable books, he published his controversial medieval novel, Jurgen (1919). Concerned about the safety of the public’s morality, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice banned the book, causing a lengthy lawsuit and court battle which Cabell eventually won. Although some considered him the first contemporary writer from the South or even the first American fantasy writer, the rising popularity of Hemingway’s rough demeanor and realism writing style clashed with Cabell’s sophisticated writing style, which combined with his elitist past, quickly threw his popularity into a downward never-ending spiral. Rather than wallow in self-pity though, Cabell continued to write well into the 1950s. With over fifty books published in his lifetime, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Richmond in May 1958 and is buried alongside his wife of over three decades in the city’s Hollywood Cemetery. So now we know that the quantity of books an author publishes does not guarantee him the title of a great author. A great author must keep their finger on the pulse of society’s ever-changing literary taste in order to maintain at least a degree of connection to their audience. Because if an audience feels like an author doesn’t understand them, they will less likely continue to read their publications. After looking at the temporary success these four authors encountered during their writing careers, I find it amazing that any author can reach the elusive level of greatness that last centuries instead of years or decades. Once upon a time I thought that a great writer just had to write an awesome story. Now I know differently. I wonder which of our society’s modern authors will finally grasp the “great” adjective that they all want associated with their names. Will I even read one of their works in my lifetime? If given the opportunity, who would you nominate? Which author do you think society will remember in a hundred years from now? In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Kelly, Gwyneth. “Travel Writing Doesn’t Need Any More Voices Like Paul Theroux's.” The New Republic. 11 September 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2018 from https://newrepublic.com/article/122789/travel-writing-doesnt-need-any-more-voices-paul-therouxs McCabe, Vinton Rafe. “Glenway Wescott: The Man Behind The Writer.” 30 May 2014. Chelsea Station. Retrieved 5 April 2018 form http://www.chelseastationmagazine.com/2014/05/glenway-wescott-the-man-behind-the-writer.html McDowell, Edwin. “Glenway Wescott, 85, Novelist and Essayist.” 24 February 1987. The New York Times. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/24/obituaries/glenway-wescott-85-novelist-and-essayist.html “Paul Theroux.” 2007. Retrieved 4 April 2018 from http://www.paultheroux.com/biography/index.html Rosco, Jerry. “Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography.” 29 December 2012. The University of Wisconsin Press. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/3537.htm “Scott Turow: Plays Vocals.” The Rock Bottom Remainders. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from http://www.rockbottomremainders.com/pages/bios/scott.html Turow, Scott. “The Slow Death of the American Author.” 7 April 2013. The New York Times. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-slow-death-of-the-american-author.html Wetta, Stephen R. “James Branch Cabell (1879–1958).” 12 August 2013. Encyclopedia Virginia: A Publication of Virginia Humanities. Retrieved 6 April 2018 from https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cabell_James_Branch_1879-1958#start_entry “What's in a name: James Branch Cabell.” Virginia Commonwealth University. 5 March 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://www.library.vcu.edu/about/libraries/cabell/history/whats-in-a-name-james-branch-cabell/ Wikipedia contributors. “Glenway Wescott.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 19 February 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Glenway_Wescott&oldid=826521647 Wikipedia contributors. “Paul Theroux.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 April 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Theroux&oldid=834157547 Wikipedia contributors. “Scott Turow.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 20 March 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scott_Turow&oldid=831357848 Week #13: April 01 – April 07
According to the calendar, it’s springtime; and for once, the weather outside feels like it too: a rollercoaster of temperatures with chilly mornings and warmer windy afternoons, and scattered thunderstorms and rain across the country. It feels good to shake off the frigid winter months and finally plan ahead for outdoor activities. Watching the budding trees, and blooming flowers, and listening to the busy birds chirping outside my window, it’s easy to understand why we traditionally associate spring with new beginnings. And so now is the perfect time for a new beginning in our society as well. Unless you’re living under a rock with ear muffs on, you’re familiar with the tragic mass shootings that have occurred during just the past six months. And in their wake, teenagers and young adults, identified according to survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, Cameron Kasky, as “the mass-shooting generation” want change and a new beginning for their safety causing heated debates and controversy across the country. But this is not a political rant, on the contrary – it’s a plea for perseverance and kindness penned by authors across centuries, who also happen to celebrate a birthday this week. To look at the names of these authors you’d think they didn’t have anything in common: they lived centuries a part, called different continents home, experienced unique challenges and successes, and even contributed to various genres of literature. But these authors, while wildly different, each left a snippet of advice behind that we as a society on the brink of a new beginning need to hear. So let’s lend an ear to what Hans Christian Andersen, Washington Irving, Maya Angelou, and William Wordsworth had to say. Our first snippet of advice comes from one of our favorite children’s literature author of all-time, Denmark born, Hans Christian Andersen, who celebrated a birthday on April 2, 1805. In his famous tale “The Ugly Duckling” he wrote, “He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him.” How does this apply to our society’s hopeful new beginning? We have all suffered sorrow and trouble during the past, even if we were not personally connected to the recent shooting tragedies, we’ve all felt the sting of failure, the perspiration of a challenge, and then the euphoria of overcoming it all and tasting success. Overcoming dark times and enjoying new beginnings is all about spring, it’s at the heart of the message that this young generation wants to achieve. They want to feel the euphoria of actually changing their course. But why should we heed Hans Christian Andersen’s advice? What experiences did he have to make him an expert? He experienced his own challenges, feeling like the ‘ugly duckling’ he created. Although his family struggled financially, especially after his father passed away, who had instilled in young Christian the love of folktales, the community banded together and sent him to school. And even at this young age, he dreamt of making it big in life, and not from books, but on the stage. So at just fourteen, he packed his bags and moved to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, his poor acting ability, his awkward stage presence, and his inferior script writing, left the theatre owners with little choice. But they liked him, so instead of dashing all his hopes they sent him back to school to hone his skills. The university professors did not treat him as kindly though as the theatre owners did. Older than all the other students, they often made fun of him, leaving him feeling isolated and feeble-minded. Once again his home community came to the rescue and hired a private tutor for him, which must have worked because he later graduated from Copenhagen University, published his first short story, a play, a book of poetry, and a travelogue after traveling around Europe, Asia, and Africa on the government’s dime. Oh and in the meantime, he wrote the fairytales that we would come to love: “The Princess and the Pea” and “Thumbelina” both in 1835, quickly followed with “The Little Mermaid” (1836), “The Emperor’s New Suit” (1837), “The Ugly Duckling” (1844), and “The Little Match Girl” (1846) – to name just a few of the most popular tales. The point is though that he felt like the outsider – the ugly duckling – and he dreamed of living in a different world than the one of his parent’s – the inspiration for Ariel in the “The Little Mermaid” – and he succeeded. He knew that his challenges in life made him into the successful person he became. Those dark challenges allowed him to enjoy his new beginning, his springtime. Let’s take a look at another quote pertinent to our society’s approaching spring. Coined the first professional writer of American short stories, New York City native, Washington Irving, in his “Philip of Pokanoket: An Indian Memoir” (1820) which describes the Native American Chief’s demise after the colonists arrived, wrote “Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.” His revelation perfectly describes the movement currently taking place in our society. This mass-shooting generation has endured enough misfortune in their brief lifetime, but instead of bowing down, instead of tucking tail, instead of closing their eyes and minds to the terror and allowing it to tame them, they have donned boxing gloves and have prepared to battle the terror on multiple fronts. Their collective wisdom has allowed them to rise above the norm and to think outside the box. They don’t want their tragedy to be a fleeting moment in our history; they want to make an enduring change. And they realize that change must start with them. But why should we heed Washington Irving’s advice? What experiences did he have to make him an expert in rising above challenges? From the beginning of his life, which began April 3, 1783, he suffered from sickness but never allowed it to dampen his rambunctious spirit. This sense of perseverance endured even when his parents, fearing an outbreak of Yellow Fever, sent him to live with relatives close to Sleepy Hollow during his teen years. And he later withstood the long voyage overseas to France in order to receive treatment for his continuing lung ailment. Upon his return to the States, although he had passed the bar exam, he floundered in finding his true aspirations in life. In just a few short years, he helped publish a magazine with his brother, he temporarily edited another magazine, he briefly joined the military, he traveled back to England to help with the family business, which failed anyways, and he unexpectedly lost his beloved fiancée to illness – all these experiences left him feeling aimless. But instead of allowing them to tame him, he rose above them and decided to write. While in England, he wrote The Sketch Book (1820) which included an array of travel pieces, literary essays, descriptions of the Native Americans, and three short stories – “The Spectre Bridegroom,” and the two that would immortalized him in the world of literature, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and “Rip Van Winkle.” And when his health again took a turn for the worse, temporarily paralyzing his legs, he didn’t retrieve into depression – he picked up the pen again and wrote, publishing two more collections in the following four years. Upon returning to the United States, throughout the rest of his life he accepted various positions within the government allowing him to write about his continuous travels throughout Spain, England, and the western territory of America. At the age of seventy-six, he died of a heart attack in his ‘Sunnyside’ home in New York, just a few months after finishing his lifetime goal of writing a biography about his namesake, George Washington. Looking at his life, we can see that he rose above challenges that may have diminished others in a similar situation. But he chose to rise above; just like we must rise above our challenges in order to welcome our springtime. You may make the observation that both of these authors had two common attributes: 1) they both wrote stories that have remained favorites among younger generations, and 2) they lived over a hundred years ago, which may leave you questioning whether or not any contemporary author also provides the same advice. And the answer to that is an astounding yes! From the recipient of eleven prestigious awards, including the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom Award and the author of the first nonfiction best-seller by an African American women, Missouri native, Maya Angelou wrote in her book Letter to My Daughter (2008), “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Obviously we can try to prepare for what we think life will throw at us, we can take precautions, but it never fails, that sometime in our life we experience the unexpected. Maya Angelou pleads in her words of wisdom for us not allow those challenges to define us, but rather rise above them. And like Hans Christian Andersen and Washington Irving, did she also have the experiences in life to support her own advice? As you’ll soon read, the answer to that question is also an astounding yes, but we’ll need to take a look specifically at her childhood. Marguerite Annie Johnson, Maya’s full given name on April 4, 1928, endured a potentially devastating childhood. From an early age, she lived with her paternal grandmother because her parents had divorced. During one of her visits to see her mother when she was seven years old, her mother’s boyfriend raped her. When her uncles found out about it, they sought revenge and killed the man. So not only did she suffer the physical and psychological effects of the rape, but she also felt the added unjustified guilt over the man’s death. A horrific event like this could very well destroy an adult, much less a child – and although she spent the next five years in a non-communicative state, she did not allow the experience to demolish her. She took the love of language that she learned during her recuperation and made a successful life for herself which included, earning a scholarship to the California Labor School in San Francisco, a successful stage career and civil rights activist in the 1950s, working as an editor and writer while living in Egypt and Ghana in the 1960s, and then publishing her award-winning autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. Her international success in literature and civil rights continued until her death in May 2014 at her Winston-Salem, North Carolina home. We now have advice from multiple authors across centuries and genres, all with actual life experience validating their pleas. We understand that when faced with challenges, we must persevere; but what is our call to action? How do we bring springtime to our dark winter? The answer comes from our last author celebrating a birthday this week. And as you’ll see – he composed this plea centuries ago. Celebrating a birthday on April 7, 1770, English native William Wordsworth, creator of some of the most influential poems in literature, wrote in his poem “Tintern Abbey” (1798), “That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” After living in the city for years, William Wordsworth returned to the countryside which inspired him to write this poem. One can only imagine that interactions between people in the city differ from those in the country. And Wordsworth took pride in his country upbringing. He recalled that in the country, people helped each other without expecting accolades for doing so. If a neighbor needed help harvesting their crop, they arrived with tools in hand to help; if someone felt under the weather, they arrived with casseroles in hand; if a stranger looked weighed down with stress, they arrived with alcohol in hand and an open ear. And they did these acts of kindness without being asked. How did they know someone needed their help? They were in-tune with the needs of the individuals in their community. They cared about each other. And day-by-day, these small acts of kindness accumulated so that when one reflected on their life, they saw that they had a good life and that they would leave kindness as their legacy. But did Wordsworth experience these acts of kindness during his life? Unmistakably. William enjoyed a typical carefree country childhood, until the age of eight when his mother died. With five children in the house, the community gathered around to help. And then while still in elementary school, his father died too, leaving his five children in a cloud of debt, but the community and relatives stepped in to raise the children, with William staying with relatives in Cumberland. Without his parents and now without his siblings, he found peace in taking long walks throughout the countryside, focusing on the simplicity and kindness in nature. And when they recognized his talent in language and poetry, they sent him to school in the Lake District where he would continue his habit of long walks in nature, and would eventually call home for most of his life. Although maybe less obvious, and therefore even more relevant to his quote since they are the ‘unremembered’ acts of kindness, these most likely occurred during his college years at Cambridge University, where he published his first poem and met fellow-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In their friendship, they traded numerous small acts of kindness, including helping each other wake up on time and meet deadlines. Living with him until her death in 1855, he and his sister Dorothy had an unusually close relationship. And in that relationship, they also exchanged various acts of kindness, including Dorothy journaling William’s daily activities so that he would have access to the memories for later writing inspiration – such was the case with his famous poem “Daffodils” (1815), which William took inspiration from while walking with Dorothy, but recalled once reading her journal. And although William had an illegitimate child during his college years, he eventually married another girl, Mary. He and Mary had five children together and remained married until his death in 1850 at their Rydal Mount home. A marriage that lasts almost fifty years, and endures the death of two children within the same year, takes countless exchanges of acts of kindness – all too private for future generations to analyze. So now we know our call to action. In order to bring in our society’s new beginning, our springtime, we must start with acts of kindness. And many have already started this movement. They see someone eating alone – and they join them. They see someone ridiculed – and they intervene. They see someone unable to speak – and they provide a voice. They see someone drop something – and they pick it up and return it. They see someone struggling to enter – and they pause allowing them entrance. They see someone hungry – and they deliver food. These small acts of kindness, instead of focusing on selfish, mean, and belittling behavior, will bring about a change that this generation of 50 million school kids would be proud to call their legacy. I used to feel good when I did a daily unrecognized “act of kindness,” but that is no longer enough. I need – we all need – to increase those acts of kindness until it becomes who we are as a society, as a community. Only in this manner will we be in-tuned with others enough to prevent senseless acts of violence. Hummm…. People say that reading books is going out of style. That the younger generation doesn’t read like its predecessors. But just imagine the snippets they would pick up if they did. They could learn to understand and empathize with other cultures and their beliefs before they actually find themselves thrust into a situation. So in addition to acts of kindness, I urge everyone to pick up a book, and read to make us a better, kinder society. On a side note, I usually include places to visit to pay your respect to the authors that celebrated a birthday each week. So if you’ve accepted the two calls to action, then read on and during your visit to these places, you’ll appreciate their talent and wisdom just a little more. If you’re traveling in Europe, visit Denmark to tour the landscape and homes that inspired Hans Christian Andersen before his final resting place at Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen. Then jump on a train that ferries across the channel to England and tour the landscapes, homes – including Rydal Mount – and churches that inspired William Wordsworth in the Lake District before his final resting place in the St. Oswald’s Church Cemetery in Grasmere. And if your travels only take you within the United States, don’t fret; there’s still a few places to visit. On the west coast stop in the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Solvang, California which they’ve filled with significant memorabilia from his life and fairytales. And then take a road trip across the country, stopping in Ripley, Oklahoma to experience the Washing Irving Trail Museum, which highlights memorabilia from his adventurous travels in the area. Then continue east and enjoy a picnic at the Maya Angelou City Park in Arkansas. Unfortunately, we do not have another place of significance to pay our respects to this awe-inspiring contemporary writer. Perhaps a letter to the President will change that? After lunch, start the long drive over to the east coast, and visit Tarrytown, New York to tour the landscape, homes – including ‘Sunnyside’, and churches that inspired Washington Irving before his final resting place in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Finally, while in New York, stop for another picnic at Central Park and feed the birds in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue. Wow! That would be a road trip wouldn’t it? And for added relevance, complete it during spring! In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Washington Irving.” 15 April 2017. Historic Hudson Valley. Retrieved 25 March 2018 from http://www.hudsonvalley.org/community/blogs/10-things-you-probably-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-washington-irving “Hans Christian Andersen Biography.” The Biography.com. 2 April 2014. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 23 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/hans-christian-andersen-9184146 Hans Christian Andersen Center, The. 11 August 2015. University of Southern Denmark. Retrieved 23 March 2018 from http://andersen.sdu.dk/liv/biografi/eventyr_e.html Hakon Rossel, Sven. “Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales and Stories.” Retrieved 23 March 2018 from http://hca.gilead.org.il/chron.html “Maya Angelou Biography.” The Biography.com Website. 27 February 2018. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 26 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/maya-angelou-9185388 “Maya Angelou.” The Poetry Foundation. 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2018 from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maya-angelou Merriman, C. D. “Biography of Washington Irving.” The Literature Network. 2007. Jalic Inc. Retrieved 25 March 2018 from http://www.online-literature.com/irving/ Shmoop Editorial Team. William Wordsworth: Childhood. 11 November 2008. Retrieved 28 March 2018 from https://www.shmoop.com/wordsworth/childhood.html “Washington Irving Biography.” The Biography.com website. 20 October 2015. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 25 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/washington-irving-9350087. “William Wordsworth.” Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 27 March 2018 from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/william-wordsworth Week #12: March 22 – March 28
The world today has literally millions of authors: most with claims to one or two obscure novels, a few with blockbuster hits that reach the prestigious New York Times Bestseller List, and only a handful that people will remember in centuries to come. With so many writers creating novels, it is often easy to forget that other writing genres exist in the world of literature. On March 26 we celebrate the birthdays of two writers (yes they share a birth day – but not a birth year) who through their own set of personal struggles persevered to become masters of their own genres. We celebrate America’s poet Robert Frost, born in 1874, and the playwright Tennessee Williams, born as Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. Although these masters of their craft encountered different mountain peaks of success and valley lows, fortunately for us, they had two coping mechanisms in common: they wrote to escape and they traveled, leaving behind a cornucopia of places for us to visit which deepens our connection and appreciation of the men behind their individual masterpieces. So don your adventure shoes and let’s start with a walk in the footprints of Robert Frost. Although most think of Robert Frost as a Northeastern poet, he actually started out in life on the opposite coast, in San Francisco, California. He lived in this area with his parents for almost eleven years until his father passed away, leaving them almost penniless. Although we can’t visit his childhood home, the city does have a plaque commemorating the author’s birthplace in the middle of their very own Robert Frost Plaza. With only eight dollars to their name, the remaining Frost family moved to the east coast to live with relatives until his mother found employment teaching in Salem Depot, New Hampshire. Although Frost initially struggled in school, by the time he reached high school he had already found his love for writing poetry, publishing two poems in the school’s paper. Feeling the promise of a bright future, he enrolled in Harvard University and soon met future Mrs. Robert Frost – although she refused his proposals until after she graduated (smart girl!). Within a year after their 1895 marriage, the young couple welcomed their first son. Three years later, they welcomed a daughter. But the dawn of a new century brought tragedy: Frost had dropped out of college, his son died of cholera, his wife suffered from depression, and his mother died from cancer. At a breaking point, Frost learned that his grandfather had also passed, leaving him Derry Farm in New Hampshire. During his stay at the farm, Frost experienced some of his greatest peaks and valleys in life: they welcomed son Carl and three more daughters (Irma, Marjorie, and Elinor), he began teaching English Literature at Pinkerton Academy, and had several poems published; but then the sudden death of his infant daughter cast him back into the valley of despair. In his grief, Frost continued to teach and try different endeavors on the failing farm, but ultimately he decided to sell it. But please don’t fret; after some finagling of the property’s ownership, the state of New Hampshire purchased the farm so that generations to come can still tour the house, explore a poetry trail, and even listen to poetry readings in order to encourage a connection to not only the poetry, but the man behind it. (Visit www.robertfrostfarm.org for more information.) With the proceeds of the farm’s sale in his pocket, Frost moved his devastated family to England with both personal and professional aspirations: personally he hoped that the change of scenery would improve his wife’s justifiable depression, and professionally he hoped to secure a permanent publisher for his poetry. Upon their arrival in Beaconsfield, Frost began meeting several internationally well-known poets and both his aspirations became true: the scenery helped the family prosper, and his new colleagues and the scenery inspired him to write the poems “Birches” and “Mending Wall.” Although the family’s cottage no longer exists, the city recognized the influence the area had on Frost, so like San Francisco, it too placed a plague in the cottage’s original location to honor Robert Frost. Always drawn to the nature in the countryside, Frost then moved his family to a small cottage two hours further west from Beaconsfield to Dymock, Gloucestershire. During their time here, Frost wrote his most widely-known poem “The Road Not Taken” after taking a nature walk with a good friend. Although he claimed that he wrote the poem as a jest because his friend constantly asked Frost to follow him down a path to see a particular plant and then regretted that he hadn’t shown Frost a plant only seen on a different path, upon reading the poem to his friend and then the public, they immediately read a deeper – longer lasting – meaning in the poem which has withstood the test of time. And guess what? You too can take the same walk in Dymock that inspired Frost! Although the cottages are privately owned, the city has organized a poet’s trail for adoring fans. (Visit www.dymockpoets.org.uk for more information.) Although Frost wanted his stay in England to last longer, after WWI began, he moved his family back to the States, deciding to settle down on a farm in Franconia, New Hampshire. Even though Frost only lived there for half a decade, fans can still visit the property, touring the farmhouse and exploring another hiking trail. (See www.frostplace.org for more information.) Fortunately, the success Frost experienced in England had also boosted his reputation in America, allowing him to launch his career in teaching and lecturing, while continuing to write poetry. For the next decade, Frost bounced back and forth accepting and resigning teaching and advising positions at both Amherst College and the University of Michigan. During this time, he sold his Franconia property and moved to Shaftsbury, Vermont where he resided for the next decade. This property, which includes several of the original apple trees, is now the Robert Frost Stone House Museum where admirers can see where Frost wrote his famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” while sitting at his kitchen table. (Visit http://www.bennington.edu/robert-frost-stone-house-museum for more information). Frost savored his national fame until his wife began experiencing health problems, eventually leading to her death in 1938 at which time Frost resigned his affiliation with the colleges, sold his home, and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although this house in Cambridge still stands, unfortunately Frost enthusiasts can only admire the property from the street since it is currently privately owned. (Visit https://www.cambridgeusa.org/listing/robert-frost-house for more information). I wonder if these owners ever tire of having literary admirers gawk at their property. If so, maybe they’ll sell! During the last twenty years of Frost’s life he battled several health issues, including two bouts of pneumonia, a cancerous lesion, and facial skin cancer. He endured and then overcame all of these while still lecturing, earning different honorary degrees, and accepting literary awards. Unfortunately, a diagnosis of and surgery for prostate and bladder cancer which lead to a pulmonary embolism halted this American poet’s life on January 29, 1963. In addition to leaving a rich legacy of poetry behind, he also left one last location for Frost devotees to come and pay their respect: his gravesite at Old Bennington Cemetery in Vermont. Having a general love and appreciation for poetry and as one of those Frost devotees, I look forward to taking a road trip to visit these multiple locations while re-reading my most favorite Robert Frost poems. So while I’m waiting to take that road trip, let’s take a look at another writer ranked as one of American’s best: playwright Thomas Lanier Williams, or Tennessee Williams as we all know him. Much like with Robert Frost, America appreciates the talent of Tennessee Williams and has protected the multiple properties associated with this master of the stage. Unlike Frost though, whose places of literary significance are sprinkled around the world – making it a little more difficult to visit all of them, Tennessee William’s places are all located in the Southern portion of the United States, beginning in Columbus, Mississippi. Now the home that welcomed Thomas Williams into the world in 1911, welcomes visitors to the city as the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center. (Visit www.visitcolumbusms.org/attractions/tennessee-williams-home/ for more information). Seeing how his family moved from there to Clarksdale, Mississippi when young Williams was only three years old, he probably didn’t remember toddling around this house. Fans can also visit Clarksdale in October to enjoy the annual Tennessee Williams Festival where they honor the playwright with porch performances and a walking tour of the neighborhood including viewing his friends’ homes and touring the home that he remembered with some trepidation, since it was here that he suffered from diphtheria that left him weakened with paralyzed legs and confined to the house for over a year. (Visit www.clarkhouse.info/historic-district-tennessee-williams for more information.) So although the Clarksdale home may mark the beginning of his tempestuous childhood, he claimed his real struggle didn’t begin until his alcohol-loving father moved the family of five to St. Louis, Missouri as part of a work promotion. Maybe the urban bustle stressed his father, maybe the added responsibilities at work lowered his father’s patience, maybe the added chaos from moving to several different homes within the city caused his father’s turbulent behavior; whatever the cause, Thomas felt his father’s aggression and the growing tension in the house, and often sought refuge in writing. Nowadays, instead of fostering curiosity about these homes, this city also honors the playwright with an annual festival, but in May. (Visit www.twstl.org for more information.) And with the exception on one privately-owned apartment, his remaining homes in this region remain a mystery. And maybe they should remain blockaded from the prying eyes of literary aficionados since, although they provided him with inspiration for characters and locations in the plays he would later write, they did not evoke happy memories for the young Williams, and he would forever (ironically – which I’ll explain later) despise the city. Fortunately, young Williams found his salvation from his chaotic home life through writing. Like Robert Frost, Thomas Williams also experienced his first writing success while still attending high school, publishing an essay and a short story. These small successes led him to major in Journalism at the University of Missouri – at least until his father pulled him out of school to work at the same shoe company where he worked. We can only imagine too well that this did not bode well with Thomas. Although he tried to write his way through his depressive state of mind, it eventually took hospitalization to overcome a nervous breakdown. At the age of twenty-six, he returned to college, enrolling at the University of Iowa. In between his studies, he wrote his first play, “Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay” (1937), and then graduated the following year. Out of his father’s demanding presence, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana and changed history – at least for the world of the theatre. If you’ve ever traveled to New Orleans, you know it has a unique vibrant vibe. And it was here while living in various rooms that he learned to accept himself as a homosexual and he learned to mold his experiences with family, addiction, madness, and sexuality into enduring plays that theatre-goers would enjoy for generations to come. It was also here that he reinvented himself as ‘Tennessee’ Williams, supposedly taking the name of his father’s home state – which if true, goes to show his father’s psychological influence (maybe subconsciously seeking his father’s approval). And it was here, while listening to the streetcar travel down towards Desire Street that he penned his famous play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Unfortunately for us, we can’t experience a ride on the actual streetcar because the city modernized the route with a city bus the following year, but we can still get our Tennessee Williams fix by either following a walking tour of the city that showcases the different rooms where he lived and bars where he enjoyed a drink or two (visit www.biography.com/news/tennessee-williams-new-orleans for more information), or celebrating his birthday at the New Orleans Literary Festival that they hold every year (visit http://tennesseewilliams.net for more information). With success and fame, came money and the freedom to travel. He enjoyed vacationing in Key West, Florida so much that he eventually bought a house there and consistently traveled between New Orleans and Key West for the next several decades. And not wanting to be forgotten, the city of Key West bought an old house down the street from Williams’ original house (which is now privately owned) and renovated it as a Tennessee Williams Museum, displaying the largest collection of his memorabilia, including photographs taken in the area, first edition plays, and the typewriter he used while writing in Key West. So come relax in the small town he probably called his home away from home (visit http://twkw.org for more information). Unfortunately with success and fame also came alcohol and drugs, which led him to depression. In this state, he struggled to write at the same level. The critics, smelling a weakness, attacked. With each new play, he suffered new criticisms, and with each criticism he drank more alcohol and abused more drugs, causing a vicious cycle. Concerned for his well-being, his mom and brother intervened. Under false pretense, they lured Williams back to St. Louis, imploring him to come quickly because of his mother’s failing health. When he arrived, mom was fine. And they forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric ward for recovery. He never forgot his brother’s betrayal and never spoke to him again. After six months sober and back home, he began writing again. But the roots of addiction run deep and like a weed they sprang back to life, choking off his creativity. In the mist of alcoholism and addiction, Tennessee tried to revitalize his reputation; however even though he wrote almost two dozen more plays, none of them received the accolades of his earlier work like “The Class Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947), or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955). And then too entangled in the weeds of alcohol and drugs, he died in a New York hotel room in 1983. When a national icon dies, fans relish the opportunity to visit the final resting place to pay their respect, and it was no different for fans of Tennessee Williams; however they didn’t find his final resting place in either one of his most beloved cities, Key West or New Orleans. Instead, he rests eternally in the city he despised the most, St. Louis. Why? His brother. As his surviving kin, his brother chose to return Tennessee Williams to St. Louis for burial alongside his mother in the family plot in Calvary Cemetery, making even his death a plot, that if still living, he’d likely use in one of his own plays. But since he could not overcome his addiction, the city he despised the most welcomes visitors to both his tormented childhood homes and his unlikely gravesite. So between these two literary giants that each earned the title as “America’s Best” in their respective genres, we, as literary aficionados, have over a dozen places to visit strengthening our bond with literature. But having visited several places of literary significance, some of the ones I mention here included, I have come to a deeper understanding. While in the presence of a writer’s home, place of inspiration, or even their gravesite, I feel the justifiable reverence we have for these national icons. But I also understand that to truly claim a connection to a writer, to understand and to bond with a writer, it cannot be accomplished by standing in their foyer decades or centuries after their death; it can only be accomplished through the enjoyment of reading and understanding their works of art, and then recommending others to read it as well. So I implore you to read…. and then go pay your respects knowing why. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: “10 of the Best Robert Frost Poems Everyone Should Read.” Interesting Literature: A Library of Literary Interestingness. 26 June 2017. Retrieved 19 March 2018 from https://interestingliterature.com/2017/06/26/10-of-the-best-robert-frost-poems-everyone-should-read/ Giegerich, Steve. “Why Tennessee Williams rests for eternity in the city he openly despised.” The St. Louis Post Dispatch. 19 February 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2018 from http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/why-tennessee-williams-rests-for-eternity-in-the-city-he/article_ea5a875f-2332-5227-a698-6532cfcfded5.html “Robert Frost.” Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 19 March 2018 from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robert-frost “Robert Frost.” Biography.com. A&E Television Networks. 27 April 2017. Retrieved 19 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/robert-frost-20796091 “Robert Frost Biographical Information.” Retrieved 20 March 2018 from http://www.ketzle.com/frost/frostbio.htm “Tennessee Williams.” Tennessee Williams Biography. A&E Television Networks. 2 December 2015. Retrieved 18 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/ people/tennessee-williams-9532952 “Tennessee Williams.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 March 2018. Retrieved 18 March 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tennessee_Williams &oldid=830336410 Week #11: March 15 – March 21
If we placed writers on a spectrum based on their writings’ readability, we would most likely have historical William Shakespeare on the left most difficult end, and the modern writers like James Patterson on the right, easier end. The authors celebrating a birthday this week are just as diverse on where they’d fall on this spectrum. We have John Updike and Irving Wallace who would both fall more towards the right of the spectrum, and then Henrik Ibsen who would fall closer to the left. Regardless of where we place them though, their work stands on their own and remains enjoyed by millions. Let’s take a look at our two authors closer to the right end: John Updike, who celebrated a March 18, 1932 birthday, and Irving Wallace, who celebrated a March 19, 1916 birthday. Although born sixteen years apart, these two authors have many similarities in their backgrounds and writing styles. Both of these authors were born in the United States: Updike in Shililngton, Pennsylvania, and Wallace in Chicago, Illinois. Both had working parents who influenced the foundations of their beliefs: Updike’s father as a math teacher and Wallace’s father as a store clerk, both taught their -sons to work for their living and to understand social class; while both writers’ mothers instilled in them a love and appreciation for reading and writing. Both writers worked for their high school’s newspaper. And while still in high school, both submitted their work to outside magazines: Updike submitted his drawings (yes – he had aspirations to become the next Walt Disney) to The New Yorker, and Wallace published his first article to Horse and Jockey magazine. Upon graduation, both young men went to college but developed different skills: Updike studied graphic design at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wallace studied creative writing at Williams Institute in Berkeley, California. Both married in their early twenties. Both travelled, albeit for different reasons: Updike earned a scholarship to attend Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England, while Wallace traveled for the military creating training scripts during World War II. Both attempted working for other companies before considering writing as a career: Updike returned to the States as a staff writer for The New Yorker, and Wallace tried his hand at screenwriting in Hollywood. Although both achieved a goal – Updike to write for the esteemed New Yorker, and Wallace to write for Hollywood - the achievement of the goal only wet their appetite for true writing success as independent writers, and so both men quit their jobs for a professional career as an author. And although both eventually died in their seventies (Updike from lung cancer in 2009, and Wallace from pancreatic cancer in 1990, both achieved long successful writing careers before then: Updike published twenty-one novels, twelve works of non-fiction, and several collections of poetry, while Wallace published sixteen novels and seventeen works of non-fiction. Even their novels contained often pondered the same questions, such as “How do different pressures affect an individual? How do men and women handle situations? And what’s the purpose of an individual’s life?” Obviously, these questions pertain to citizens in our everyday working-class society, so it’s no wonder their novels remained popular over the decades. One difference between the two writers is that John Updike’s novels typically reference significant events that actually happened during the time of the book’s setting, so in reading them, not only do you empathize with the characters, and learn about history, but you learn about how these historical events escalated and affected the characters over time. This is especially evident in Updike’s Rabbit series, which includes Rabbit Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990), because the multiple books follow a character over four decades. With so much similarity, I’ll have to read at least a couple of novels from each author to see if I personally prefer one over the other. I think I’ll begin with John Updike’s novel The Centaur (1963) which tells the story of a distraught relationship between a father and his son, while shifting narrators between these characters and Greek mythical beings. Sounds interesting! And then I’ll compare it to Irving Wallace’s controversial The Celestial Bed (1987) which follows a “hero’s” journey as he attempts to solve patients’ sexual challenges as their sex therapist. Maybe this is one to keep the young kiddos from looking over my shoulder as I read? These seem like totally different plots, so I’m curious to see if they have any over-lapping themes. Either way, I’m reading something different, and regardless of which one I personally prefer, when I’m in their neck-of-the-woods, at the very least I’ll stop at their gravesites (Updike is buried at Robeson Lutheran Church Cemetery in Plowville, Pennsylvania, and Wallace is buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California), if for nothing else but to pay my respects to two authors who made a successful living writing for others – something I long to do as well. And while I’m in Pennsylvania, I’d also like to make the quick eight minute drive over to Shillington to tour John Updike’s childhood home (see https:// blogs.iwu.edu/johnupdikesociety/the-john-updike-childhood-home/) and see just where the young lad first recognized his artistic talent. Who knows, maybe I’ll catch that artistic bug too! Now let’s take a look at Henrik Ibsen on the other end of our spectrum, whose work is only out-performed world-wide by that of Shakespeare! Like John Updike and Irving Wallace, Henrik Ibsen, born in Skien, Norway on March 20, 1828, learned the fundamentals in life from his parents. His father worked hard as a merchant, and his mother, talented in the arts, taught him the joy of reading and writing. But that’s where the similarities end. As the eldest of five children, Henrik Ibsen endured a childhood more characteristic of other literary giants, meaning he persevered through life’s challenges. At the age of eight, the collapse his father’s business left the family in poverty. Henrik leaned on reading and writing as a way to escape his new situation. Then at the age of fifteen, tired of living in the poverty-stricken household of his family, he dropped out of school and supported himself by working for an apothecary. Again, he utilized his free time to read and write, but this time his scribbling turned into something more: it positioned him on his fateful path because it led to his first play in verse Catilina (1849), which follows a man full of doubts and torn between love and duty. Sounds like maybe Henrik’s decision to leave home came back to haunt him, at least subconsciously . Not only did this play signify the beginning of his illustrious career as a playwright, but it also signified how he would continue to handle stressful situations. You see, people in town thought the content of the play scandalous – after all, one must never question duty. With the town up in arms, Ibsen quit his apprenticeship with the apothecary and moved to the university town of Christiania, which proved a fateful step in the right direction. Within a year he met a theatre manager who offered him a job as a writer and manager of a theatre in Bergen, where at the young age of twenty-three, he learned the ins-and-outs of the theatre business. Before he reached his thirtieth birthday, he had returned to the college town of Christiania to manager yet another theatre, but this time in additional to getting married and starting a family, he encountered several challenges with the business-end of the theatre. In order to handle the stress, he leaned on his old friend – writing, and by 1862 he had written Love’s Comedy, which takes a satirical look at marriage… hummm. I wonder if the stress of the theatre business also caused him stress in his personal life. Regardless of why he wrote it, once again people in town thought the content of the play controversial and immoral. And so, maybe with the understanding that he enjoyed writing more than managing, or maybe he grew frustrated with the controversy surrounding the play, he applied for a small grant and uprooted his family to move to Italy. Italy suited him well: he wrote the much applauded Brand (1865), quickly followed with Peer Gynt (1867), which he took inspiration from the Norwegian folktale character Per Gynt who as a hunter rescued three dairy-maids from trolls. Not everyone praised Ibsen’s verse in this play, and he took his accustomed approach, and fled to Germany. Although he spent the next decade unhindered and writing, which included the play The Pillars of Society (1877), the publication of his masterpiece A Doll’s House (1879) set the theatre world into chaos because he had once again questioned the traditional roles in society. With debate hot on his tail, he did what he did best – he moved, this time to Rome where he continued his Tasmanian devil approach to writing and life (placing a town in chaos by creating controversial plays that caused people to question their traditions and morals, and then fleeing under such controversy). While in Rome he became bolder and wrote Ghosts (1881), which includes taboo topics of incest and sexually transmitted diseases. Feeling the pressure from critics, he immediately the appropriately titled An Enemy of the People (1882), to try to educate his audiences on his belief that traditions and morals change, and they must too. Although he continued to write while in Rome, he seemed to have backed off a little on trying to get this point across; after all he still needed to make a living and everyone thought his plays too risqué and controversial, then he risked his income. Before finally returning to Norway in 1891, he managed to pen his last masterpiece, Hedda Gabler (1890) with its formidable female character, that actresses still today claim as the pinnacle of an acting career. Unfortunately, after suffering for several years after multiple strokes in 1900 took his writing ability, he passed away IN 1906, leaving behind his legacy of plays for future generations to ponder and enjoy. Fortunately, in addition to these plays, you can also visit Norway (twist your arm, right?) and walk in his footsteps as he searched for inspiration for some of his plays, then tour his Reimanngarden home and the Ibsen Museum, before finally arriving at his grave to pay your respects to this playwright that seemed to evoke chaos wherever he went (www.visitnorway.com). To me, the fact that the themes in his plays still remain popular and still make people question their own morals and self-identity prove the validity of the accolades he earned over a hundred years ago, and make us want to read or watch his plays even though we place them on the more challenging side of our readability spectrum. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Adams, Robert M. “Henrik Ibsen: Norwegian dramatist and poet.” 2018. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 12 March 2018 from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henrik-Ibsen “Henrik Ibsen.” Biography.com. 3 March 2015. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 12 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/henrik-ibsen-37014 “John Updike.” Encyclopaedia of World Biographies. 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2018 from http://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/Updike-John.html Pamuk, Orhan. “Updike at Rest: Adam Begley’s ‘Updike’.” New York Times. 17 April 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/adam-begleys-updike.html Severo, Richard. “Irving Wallace, Whose 33 Books Sold in the Millions, Is Dead at 74.” 30 June 1990. New York Times. Retrieved 12 March 2018 from https://www.nytimes. com/1990/06/30/obituaries/irving-wallace-whose-33-books-sold-in-the-millions-is-dead-at-74.html Week #10: March 08 – March 14
The two authors celebrating a birthday during this week, spent their entire career striving to write a great novel equivalent to historical international literary giants, but inevitably came up short, and now their contributions to the literary canon, although popular at the time, collect dust on antiquated bookshelves or lay waiting as a forgotten treasure at estate sales. Let’s take a peek into the lives of Jack Kerouac and Hugh Walpole to see if like fashion that becomes popular again decades later, their writing can once again ignite interest in our modern society. When I first travelled to Denver, Colorado, in search of the area’s literary significance, the life and writings of Jack Kerouac piqued by interest, not because he was born there – he was born in Lowell, Massachusetts – but because he’d spent influential time in Denver. Born on March 12, 1922, as Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, he experienced an unblemished and carefree childhood, until the tragic death of his older brother from rheumatic fever. At this point, Jack knew his role and responsibilities in the family had just became more important. So when the Great Depression hit and his father, the owner of a small print shop, suffered severe financial loss and eventually the business, Jack stepped up to help by concentrating on his talents to win a scholarship to Columbia University, where he envisioned a degree would mean better opportunity for job security and financial assistance for his family. The scholarship was not for writing though – but for football. With dreams of stadium-filled fans, Jack packed up his belongings and moved to New York to attend the required pre-college preparatory school, Horace Mann. During his time there he discovered two influential artistic elements that would drive him for the rest of his life: jazz and writing. Although the influence of jazz would come in to play later, the benefit of writing happened immediately when Jack used his new talent to begin writing for the school’s magazine. Jack found this new passion just in time before life would throw him a curve ball that would alter his path. During one of the first Columbia University football games, Jack broke his leg. With life not going the way he had anticipated, he dropped out of college. With the dreams of a degree destroyed and knowing that his family still needed help, after working a few construction jobs, he joined the military only to have life hit him with another curveball. The military honorably discharged him after only ten days for having “strong schizoid trends.” No degree. No patriotic enlistment in the military. Kerouac was anchorless, and remained so for the remainder of his life. He returned to New York City and although he didn’t return to the school, he befriended two Columbia students aspiring to write. Although these two students, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, along with Jack, would eventually start the Beat Generation literary movement, these “friends” also encouraged his chaotic irresponsible life-style and bad-decision making, leading to a positive or negative influence, depending on the situation. The first negative influence and bad decision occurred when one of William Burroughs’ friends committed murder and Kerouac helped dispose of evidence, ultimately leading to Kerouac’s arrest as a material witness. That bad decision lead to his first marriage; his girlfriend’s parents bailed him out of jail on the condition that he marry their daughter immediately. Within a few months he realized his mistake and divorced her. But this then in return lead to a positive influence because he used their connections to publish his first book, Town and City, which narrated his first-hand experiences of the conflicting big-city life temptations and his fundamental family values. With a little success under his wings, he began to aspire to write the next “Great American Novel,” which too often left him edgy and dissatisfied with life. Restless, jobless, and constantly looking for inspiration in what he thought life owed him, he travelled back and forth between West Coast and East Coast with frequent stops at his friend, Neal Cassady’s, house. His nomadic traveling often included sex, drugs, alcohol, and jazz, at the end of which, during a three-week binger, he wrote unedited on a 120-foot scroll these tales. The result? His most prolific novel, On the Road, (1951). It revolutionized the literary world. His unique “spontaneous prose,” which he compared to the rhythms of jazz, combined with his descriptive non-conformist accounts of characters’ and their behaviors, left the literary world open-jawed by his abandonment of form, but also more knowledgeable about the hippy-lifestyle surrounding them. Although Kerouac received much acclaim for this novel, he did not handle the success well and oftentimes used alcohol and drugs as an escape. In one of his drunken states, he married his second wife. The marriage produced a daughter and then ended shortly afterwards. Still feeling edgy and in search of enlightenment, he went on a mountain hiking trip. He used his experiences there as the basis for his next novel The Dharma Bums (1958). Although he received positive reviews, it was not canonical. Always hoping that his next novel would capture the title of the elusive “Great American Novel,” he continued to write several more novels. With each one he encountered some success, and with the success came more drugs and alcohol. In 1966, basically penniless, he married his third wife and moved to Florida. Unfortunately, in one of his drunken states he argued with the wrong bar locals and their fight resulted in his death from internal hemorrhaging at the age of forty-six. Although Kerouac lived a personally dissatisfying life - always searching - he did influence the next generation of writers to take more freedom with their own personal writing style. So much so that in Orlando, Florida, there’s a waiting list to reside at the Kerouac Project, which is the house where Jack lived and wrote, and where now sponsors provide free housing for aspiring writers. To date, over sixty-five writers from all over the world have called this little house a temporary home and an inspiration to their writing. But Kerouac inspired more than writers. Although for decades his work fell to the wayside, many readers wishing to forego his lack of direction and entitlement for tales of hard work and perseverance, nowadays this next youthful generation, with its own feeling of entitlement, has initiated a resurgence of Kerouac’s work, enjoying his “speak-your-mind” kind of writing. And so to honor him, both young and old admirers of his work, crisscross the country stopping at places where he once visited. On the West Coast they marvel at his contributions to the Beat Generation literary movement at the Beat Museum in San Francisco and then head over to the Jack Kerouac Alley for a drink or two at one of the local bars he frequented during his visits. And after sobering up, on their way east they stop (like I did) at Brother’s Bar in downtown Denver, Colorado, where he and sidekick Neal Cassady often clinked glasses while musing over life. Again after sobering up – remember Kerouac spent most of his adult life in a state of drunkenness – they travel another 1,800 miles and stop on the East Coast at the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts to pay their respects at the Jack Kerouac Commemorative Path and then visit his grave in Edson Cemetery. Wherever you go or whatever you do, make sure you enjoy the journey there, not just the destination, otherwise you could end up like Jack. Skipping across the pond, we have another novelist that spent his life aspiring to write the next great – not the next great ‘American” novel, because he’s British so - English novel after the likes of Thomas Hardy or Anthony Trollope. Say Happy Birthday to Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, who would have celebrated his March 13, 1884 birthday this week. As the eldest son of a prominent reverend, Hugh Walpole was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but from an early age started on a different path. After his father accepted a position in New York, his parents sent young Hugh to England for a proper English education. Unfortunately, Hugh suffered through miserable experiences at four different schools leading up to his college education. Often bullied and feeling miserable, he spent most of his available time in the library reading the works of the literary giants. And he must have absorbed at least some of what he read because he published his first essay for the school’s magazine, starting his prolific writing career. During his college years, Hugh struggled with his sexuality, finally secretly admitting his homosexuality which caused him great personal strife because it conflicted not only with the laws of society but also with his religion – which he eventually abandoned. When offered a post as a missionary in Liverpool, although he originally accepted the position in order to refrain from upsetting his father, he resigned within a few months because of his lack of faith and commitment. With a strong educational background, he decided to tutor children from a wealthy family. During this free time, he wrote, eventually publishing his first book The Wooden Horse (1909). He then taught at Epsom College, and continued writing in his free time, which led to his first real success with Mr. Perrin and Mr. Trail (1911), a story about clashing school masters. Even with this success, he remained a disappointment to his father, who consistently proved difficult to please. Hugh wanted to help with the oncoming war effort, but the military didn’t want him because of his poor eyesight and the police didn’t want him. Undeterred he accepted a position as a journalist in Moscow, Russia. When his father learned of this, he disappointment continued. Again, during his free time, he continued to write and published four more novels by 1915. Eventually he became a Russian officer, working on the Austrian-Russian front where the military awarded him the Cross of Saint George for his heroic efforts to rescue a wounded rescue. Walpole utilized his experiences during his time in Russia to write The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919). By this time, he had more free time on his hands than actual war-related responsibilities, so the military sent him back to England. And that suited Walpole, who continued to write and lecture, including a lecturing tour in the United States where people lined up to see and hear him. But even with the literary stardom, he felt the inadequacy of his writing career and the loneliness in his personal life. He finally met Harold Cheevers, who even though had a wife and children, took up residency with Walpole as his companion and chauffeur for the remainder of Walpole’s life. With his personal life fulfilled, he concentrated on his quest be write the next great British novel, writing anywhere from one up to three novels a year between 1918 and 1943. And although he achieved success with The Herries Chronicle series which includes four books he wrote between 1930 through 1933, his work never reached the canonical level of Thomas Hardy. Walpole also founded The Book Society to promote literature by selling members the latest quality books published – of course that included his literature as well. And maybe this business venture vexed fellow writers, like Somerset Maugham who based his superficial ambitious character with limited literary talent on the likes of Walpole. Unfortunately, even with the positive review from readers about The Herries Chronicles series, the negative attention associated with Walpole because of Maugham, combined with Walpole’s more traditional views and what literary critics considered an outdated writing style, seriously lacerated his popularity which he never regained. Never having reached his ultimate goal, Walpole died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-seven and is buried in the St. John’s churchyard in Keswick, England. So after three-quarters of a century, can he finally make a comeback? Does his writing style that displays little concern for form and conventional rules of writing deserve a place in the canon? With themes relating to conflicts between societal classes, ageism, the agony of love, and the inner desires of the soul, one would think that his novels are even more relatable to our modern society. After researching both of these authors and learning about their quest for greatness, while never really appreciating the journey along the way, I am reminded of a quote by one of the world’s leading wellness authorities Greg Anderson during his fight against terminal lung cancer. He said, “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” I wonder if Kerouac and Walpole had reached their goal of writing the next great novel, if they would have lived the end of their days differently. Would they have any regrets knowing that readers still enjoy their novels decades later, even if the novels are not considered one of the greats? I think they would find that greatness is subjective. In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: “Jack Kerouac Biography.” The Biography.com Website. A&E Television Networks. 27 April 2017. Retrieved on 6 March 2018 from https://www.biography.com/ people/jack-kerouac-9363719 Shrivastava, Dr. Ila Rani. “The Technique of Plot-Construction in the Novels of Sir Hugh Walpole.” New Man International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies. 1(6) June 2014. Retrieved 7 March 2018 from http://www.newmanpublication.com/br/4%20-JUNE%202014%20%20Issue%20Final.pdf Weinreich, Regina. “Jack Kerouac: American Writer.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 5 March 2018. Retrieved on 7 March 2018 from https://www.britannica.com/biography/ Jack-Kerouac Wikipedia contributors. “Hugh Walpole.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 25 January 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= Hugh_Walpole&oldid=822339235 Youngs, Ian. “Author Hugh Walpole Comes in from the Cold.” BBC News. March 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2018 from http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-21829409 Week #9: March 01-March 07
In a society that simultaneously evades and embraces identity, romanticizes and rationalizes actions, and destroys and protects childhood, the three prolific and distinctly different authors that celebrate their birthdays this week all would have something to say about our uncertain future. As we celebrate their ingenuity, let’s take a brief look at the pathway that led Ralph Ellison, William Dean Howells, and Theodor Geisel to success. But first, say Happy Birthday boys! Being named after the Father of Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson, immediately thrust Ralph Waldo Ellison, on a path for greatness when he was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Although his father died during Ellison’s early childhood, he instilled in him a love of reading. And his mother, left to raise her children as a single mother, instilled in him the sense of duty. And a summer job after high school which influenced him to relocate to New York taught him perseverance. And the writers (Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Alain Locke) he met in New York while working for the New York Federal Writers Program taught him to spread his wings and fly. Overall, Ellison had a strong foundation of “teachers” when he picked up the pen while at his friend’s farm in Vermont and started writing what would become his most prized work, The Invisible Man. I have read this and have utilized it while teaching a unit on identity in AP Literature. I personally found it a very insightful and challenging novel. And although this novel takes place in Harlem during the 1930’s, as I reflect on the overall idea of the importance of identity nowadays – both how others see you and how you see yourself – I can’t help but contemplate how this same issue affects our world today. Before Ellison died of pancreatic cancer in 1994, did he realize the impact his novel would continue to have? Within four months, we have endured three ghastly mass shootings: one at a concert in Las Vegas leaving fifty-eight dead, and two at high schools leaving nineteen dead. In the aftermath of those shootings, in our search for answers, we question the identity of the perpetrator: who was he? Which characteristics does he have that led him to these actions? How can we identify this possibility in someone else? Sadly we do not have all the answers, and will probably never have all the answers. But this also leads me to wonder how these criminals thought of themselves. Did their own distorted view of themselves and society lead to their actions? Mental state, self-worth, and identity are closely connected, as the nameless protagonist in Invisible Man describes in his telling of his life’s experiences. He knows he is not literally invisible, but he might as well be for his thoughts and actions are not his own; he is a puppet on puppet strings doing what he thinks society expects of him. And what limitations come with this type of invisibility? If you’re invisible, how much can you get away with? Based on recent event, apparently a lot. So we want to embrace our identity, we want others to see us, to know us, to love us. We need human connections. In a world where it is easy to communicate over the phone, over the internet, but increasingly difficult to communicate in person, to physically look into another individual’s eyes, to physically touch another, we cannot evade those connections. Look what happens when individuals feel invisible. So this week to honor Ralph Ellison’s search for identity, instead of visiting his memorial at Riverside Park in the Bronx or touring Oklahoma City’s tour of places significant to Ellison (www.historypin.org/en/remembering-ralph-ellison-the-oklahoma-city-t/geo) - you can do that another week, I ask that you look someone in their eyes, take someone by the hand and feel their presence. Let them know they are not invisible; you are not invisible. William Dean Howells also celebrated a March 1 birthday. Born in 1837 as the second son of eight children with a father in the printing and publishing industry positioned William to experience situations that would contribute to his career as a writer. For example, as a young adult, under the influence of his father, he worked as a typesetter and as a printer’s apprentice. This gave him the knowledge and experience to earn money as a writer. He used the money to move to New England where, with his publishing influence, met quite a few literary giants including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. His success in the writing industry continued awarded with a job offer in Italy as a consulate. Once there, he met his wife and started a family. As he aged, he continued to meet with success, publishing works by Mark Twain, Henry James, Emily Dickinson, and Stephen Crane in America and Henrik Ibsen Leo Tolstoy in Europe. Born with access into the industry, to this point, some would say he had lived a perfect life. But then he endured a parent’s worst nightmare: the death of his daughter. Maybe before this event, he was already considering turning his own writing into his primary career or maybe this tragedy made him realize the uncertainty of life and question the legacy he would leave behind one day. Either way, Howells began to write… a lot. Although he wrote eight novels, beginning with Venetian Life (1866) long before he ever traveled to Europe, and he wrote nine novels, including the rags to riches tale The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) while living in Europe, when he returned to the United States until his death he wrote an additional thirty-eight novels ranging from Indian Summer (1886) to his autobiography Years of My Youth in 1916, which he wrote while vacationing at the house in St. Augustine, Massachusetts that people can still tour today. Maybe because of the tragedy he endured in his own life, or maybe because he published the works of other realists like Mark Twain or Stephen Crane, regardless of the reason, Howells too wrote in a realist manner. He portrayed ordinary people with dreams of something better but confined by moral or societal responsibilities. So how does his writing relate to our troubled times? Dreaming of something better is the foundation of the American Dream. The problem is that criminals in our society romanticize individual freedoms and ignore the restraints of societal responsibility, and the victims suffer the consequences. Too many people think they deserve something or are owed something, and therefore take it regardless of the lawfulness of such actions. We need to remember, such as Howells reminds us, that we can’t allow our individual wants and desires to overshadow our greater responsibility to society. If we do, we’re left with a dark and dangerous amoral world. So to combine our honor of Ralph Ellison in which we will physically reach out to someone, let us also honor William Dean Howells by choosing positive, moral actions that positively affect the greater society. Our most famous author that celebrated a birthday this week entered the world on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts, so it is no surprise that in honor of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, that the city opened “Seussville” which contains the National Memorial Sculpture Garden including prominent characters from his books, The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum displaying significant artifacts, and a map of places around the area influential to the great man himself. But in the early years, Dr. Seuss was certainly not a doctor and not even a writer. He was a cartoonist in advertising. Although he attended college at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth and then England’s Oxford University, while studying literature, he had a greater propensity for doodling than taking notes. So eventually he dropped out and after marrying his first wife, they returned to the United States where Theodor for the next thirty years he drew cartoons for different advertisements. Three simultaneous events occurred that propelled Theodor into writing children’s books. First, his contract as a cartoonist forbade him from writing any other type of book, and second, he found out his wife could not have children, and third he became seasick on a cruise returning from Europe. As a distraction from the seasickness he concentrated on the rhythm of the ship’s engines and chanted purposeless sayings. In hope of still connecting to children since he couldn’t have any, he organized these sayings into his first children’s book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Upon landing in the States, he looked for a publisher, only to have them reject his book. Ready to give up, he ran into an old high school friend that worked at Vanguard Press. With Vanguard Press’ 1937 publication of this book, Dr. Seuss was born. Like many of you, I remember learning to read and reading Dr. Seuss books as a child. As a teacher, I used them to help students understand the cadence of William Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter. As a mother, I gifted Oh the Places You’ll Go (1990), filled with memories written by her high school teachers to my graduating daughter. As a grandma, I still send them to my grandbabies hoping to instill in them that same love of reading that these same books instilled in me many, many moons ago. During all of my experiences with Dr. Seuss’ books, I enjoyed them on the purely entertainment level. I only now realize the autobiographical and political nature of his books. Let’s look at the more autobiographical books beginning with the story of an adoptive father, Horton Hatches an Egg (1940), perhaps still pinning for the chance to raise children. Everyone’s Christmas favorite, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (1957), also surprisingly portrays Seuss himself. After enduring yet another stressful Christmas season, Seuss looked in the mirror and saw a sour man who, lost in the sea of materialism, felt lonely. So he created Mr. Grinch and Cindy Lou Who in order to rediscover the meaning of Christmas. And finally we have the epitome of chaos with The Cat in the Hat (1957), which transcends both autobiographical and political backgrounds. Seuss wrote the book as a challenge. In 1954 John Hersey wrote an article “Why Do Students Bog Down on the First R?” which exclaimed that boring books such as Dick and Jane perpetuated the country’s low reading skills problem and challenged Seuss to write a book that children couldn’t put down, but that only contained 225 different early-reading words. Challenge accepted. After looking at the list and finally finding two words that rhymed, he had the title and main character for the book. On a personal level though he connected to the cat’s creativity, his sense of awe in the frenzy that comes with multi-tasking, and his rebellious nature. This rebellious nature of Seuss’ we see in several of his other children’s books. As an adolescent whom others teased because of his German ancestry, his books often portray a sensibility to social injustice. For example, he took inspiration from America’s atomic bombing on Japan to write his 1954 classic Horton Hears a Who!, which portrays a world facing annihilation. He wrote Yertle the Turtle (1958) about an oppressive turtle who builds his empire at the expense of his miserable citizens, closely resembling Hitler’s rise to power. In 1971 he wrote The Lorax after witnessing the destruction of trees on a visit to Kenya. The powerful message that someone must speak for those who can’t, led the logging industry to try to ban the book. And finally, out of concern about the ever-growing nuclear arms race, in 1984 he wrote his last major political outcry in The Butter Battle Book, which ends leaving the reader to decide what happens with the characters as they stand ready to drop a bomb on the other’s country. If children read these books with a deeper understanding of their etymology, would they still enjoy them? Would these books still make the classic literature list? I think it’s important to remember that Seuss wrote for two audiences: the child – he just wanted them to read, and they did; and the parent – who could understand and take interest in the books connectivity to their own society. But, other than still teaching and encouraging millions of children to read each year, do they still relate to our society? Just a few weeks prior to Theodor Geisel’s death from oral cancer in 1991, biographers asked if there was anything he might have left unsaid that he wanted to tell children. He replied, “We can…and we’ve got to…do better than this.” In the aftermath of our recent shootings, his words can never be truer, can never hold more power. And just look at the impact the survivors are making on ways to eliminate this violence in the hope that as a society we will stop destroying childhood and start protecting it. So to honor Dr. Seuss, in addition to reaching out to someone, to making a positive impact on society, support the protection of childhood because we can “do better than this.” In addition to the websites I mentioned in my article, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: Campbell, Donna M. The William Dean Howells Society. August 2009. Washington State University Retrieved February 28, 2018 from https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/howells/hbio.htm. Christinawolf68. Oklahoma City University. December 4, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2018 from https://www.historypin.org/en/remembering-ralph-ellison-the-oklahoma-city-t/geo. Nel, Philip. Seusville. Penguin Random House LLC. 2010. Retrieved February 28, 2018 from http://m.seussville.com/biography.html Ralph Ellison. Biography.Com. A&E Television Networks. May 31, 2017. Retrieved February 28, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/ralph-ellison-9286702. Week #5: February 01 – February 07
I grew up as a middle child during the carefree 1970s. As a middle child I oftentimes learned to successfully keep myself entertained because my parents had their hands full with my older sister, a rebelling teenager, and my younger brother, the baby and only boy of the family. Combine this characteristic of resourcefulness with the time period when children could stay outside playing hide-n-seek well past the lighting of the street lamps without fear of personal injury, neighborhood violence, or kidnapping, helped shape my fiercely independent nature. I learned then that if I wanted something, I needed to figure out how to do it myself. And as I contemplate writing a novel, I find that I subconsciously create characters that reflect a strong independence highlighted with resourcefulness. Why do I mention this? Because I believe in the philosophy that writers write what they know. And that famous authors that celebrate a birthday this week used their upbringing in one form or another to their upmost advantage. Let’s say “Happy Birthday” to these four world-renowned authors: Langston Hughes, James Joyce, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Charles Dickens! Wow - What a group! What amazes me is that even though these authors’ lives spanned over a century in three different countries, the underlying themes in their writings still resonate with millions of readers in today’s society. Let’s see how… Let’s begin by celebrating Langston Hughes’ legacy: challenging the American Dream. Usually when one imagines the American Dream, they think of homeownership, children, prosperity, money, and maybe even a dog. And we learn that if you work hard and put in your time, you’ll succeed in achieving that dream. This may be true for some, but certainly not everyone. And growing up as a man of mixed ancestry in a racially tense society during the early 1900s, Langston Hughes understood some of this, albeit not to its extreme. To understand this, let’s look at the challenges and triumphs he faced, especially during his youth. Langston was born on February 1, 1902. Within a year the first defining event happened in his life: his parents divorced when his father moved to Mexico because of the racially-influenced limitations in America. This – maybe subconsciously – taught him about the difficulties that non-Caucasians endure and that those difficulties do not necessarily happen in other countries. The next defining moment occurred when his mother left him in the care of his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. She instilled in him a sense of racial pride even while enduring the racial slurs within the town. We can contribute the next defining moment to a teacher. During his teens, his grandmother passed away and he moved to Cleveland, Ohio to live with his mother. During those years, a teacher introduced him to the poetry of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. And Langston caught the bug… the poetry writing bug. As Langston matured and worked various jobs including one as a crewmember on a freight ship that traveled to Africa and Spain, he observed and compared the diversity of different cultures and remembered the lessons of his childhood as he started writing and publishing his poetry. Most of his poetry portrays the struggles and joys of working blacks in America and the intense pride of his culture – all pages directly out of his childhood! He even validated this by stating that he based the characters in his semi-autobiographical novel, Not Without Laughter, on people he knew while living in Lawrence, Kansas. When analyzing texts reflecting the American Dream in American Literature classes that I taught, we’d often compare the varying definitions of the dream as seen in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God with Langston Hughes’ poetry. His perspective and voice within his poetry – especially “I too, sing America,” “Dream Deferred,” and “Let America be America Again” – projects a powerful sense of pride, injustice, and determination that grabs hold of you as you read the rhythm of his words and (regardless of who you are or where you came from) makes you want to yell “Yeah! Me Too!” So the next time I visit New York, I’ll make my way over to The Langston Hughes’ House (https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/afam/2008/langston_hughes_ house.htm), to learn more about this poet and re-read Hughes’ poetry, and then I’ll hold my head up high and walk to the rhythm as I observe the sights along the walking tour of Langston Hughes’ Harlem of 1926 which www.poets.org posts for free. And in the rare circumstance that you find yourself in Lawrence, Kansas you can also visit sights with Hughes’ significance (http://www.kansashistory.us/langstonhughes.html). Another author that used the defining events of his childhood to influence his literary career - and who also celebrated a birthday this week on the second - is the Irish celebrity James Joyce. During his childhood he, as the oldest of thirteen children, more than anyone else in the household most likely felt the consequences of his father’s actions. In a nutshell, his father found himself on the wrong side of a political campaign, which spring-boarded his alcoholism. With each sip, less money came into the household. With less money – but more children to feed – the family had to continuously downgrade their living arrangements, eventually leading them into the pits of poverty. Enduring in these conditions became the first defining event in his life. As he struggled to figure out who he was, he began seeking the pleasure of the town’s lowest inhabitants: prostitutes. These encounters left him feeling conflicted: he certainly enjoyed their activities, but he also knew the church forbade such feelings. This conflict lead to Joyce ultimately rejecting the church. Conflict – in many forms – added a couple defining moments in his life. The other occurred when his mother fell ill and lay on her deathbed dying and as he listened to his father rage at her in a fury to “just get on with [dying].” Imagine the fury he felt towards his father, yet the guilt he had over not believing in the power of praying for his mother. At the epitome of his grief over his mother, a serendipitous encounter led him to yet another conflict: he met Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid. Maybe because they came from different towns, endured different backgrounds, and had different future inspirations, Nora ignored his advances. But James’ persistence overcame her stubbornness, and the two went on a seemingly innocent date to the beach. But the private events of that date were not so innocent – at least not by Victorian standards – and they left a lasting impression. So much so that years later when he penned his most famous literary work and what some say represents a primary contributor to 20th century literature, Ulysses, that he centered all the events in the story with the same date - June 16, 1904 - as his first outing with Nora. From the moment of that outing, she became the love of his life and never left his side. Even when he made the decision to leave Dublin after living in an apartment with lowly people that reminded him too much of the same chaos that his father brought home in fits of alcohol fueled anger. He set out to search for a place to call home in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, and Nora followed him. Eventually the two enjoyed over a decade of marriage before he died of a perforated ulcer. She tried to have him buried back in Dublin, which he continued to use as the setting for majority of his writing, but the Irish government declined her request and he remains buried in Fluntern Cemetery in Switzerland. Although he wrote professionally all his adult life, including Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939), none of his works matched the popularity of Ulysses, which ultimately in addition to themes of sex, desire, and jealousy, is about a man exiled and in search for home. Hmmmm. Sounds like Joyce himself! Now for those of you with knowledge of Greek mythology this storyline may sound familiar in another older context. Joyce substituted and compared the characters of Homer’s Odyssey (Odysseus, his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus) with his own characters Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus as each chapter follows them on their own physical and psychological odysseys. But in order to highlight his own literary ingeniousness, Joyce also changed his writing style every chapter. Whether you read Ulysses because the themes intrigue you or because his writing style intrigues you or because the connection to Greek mythology intrigues you, read it. And you’ll also discover the defining events in the life of James Joyce within the 732 pages of his writing. And if that seems too daunting of a challenge, then you can still find those same defining events reflected in his short story “Araby.” And once you familiarize yourself with his writing, visit Dublin – you simply can’t go before then – for their annual Bloomsday celebration on June 16 (does that date ring a bell?) where you can take part in a walking tour of significant literary interest (http://jamesjoyce.ie/ulysses-seen/) for only €10 euros, but if you’re thrifty like me you may want to follow the free self-guided walking tour at https://www.dochara.com/tour/itineraries/joyce-tour/, which includes statues of the author and points of interest from Ulysses. Now our next two authors both celebrated a birthday on February 7, and both bring back vivid childhood memories for me: one of watching a television series based on her books and the other one of watching a movie every year during the holiday season based on one of his books. For this date, we’ll begin with ladies first – Laura Ingalls Wilder. Have you seen the television series “Little House on the Prairie”? If you have then you’ll understand that in a nutshell, that series represented Laura’s life – right down to living in a log cabin in Kansas. For those of you unfamiliar with the series or the books which inspired the series, I’ll give you a little background. Laura spent the first two years of her life in a wooded cabin in Pepin, Wisconsin before her family moved to Kansas. And if you’re lucky enough to travel through this area during the summertime, you can still tour a re-creation of this cabin. Keep in mind that she lived here during the 1860s so don’t expect much in the way of modern conveniences! During the next decade of her life, their family moved five times: to Independence, Kansas to Walnut Grove, Minnesota to Burr Oak, Iowa back to Walnut Grove, and finally grow roots in De Smet, South Dakota. Why do I tell you all these stops? Because each one represents a defining moment in her life and each one inspired her to write a story which eventually became a book in the overall series. And because most all of these towns offer some type of museum honoring Laura Ingalls Wilder or her beloved children stories. In Independence, Kansas you can tour the log cabin that inspired the “Little House on the Prairie.” In Walnut Grove, Minnesota you can tour another home, a school house, and a covered wagon at their Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. In Burr Oak, Iowa you can tour the hotel the family helped manage when she was nine years old at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum. And in De Smet, South Dakota you can tour many of the buildings that she mentions in her books at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Homes & Discovery Center. So basically if you find yourself traveling anywhere in the Midwest, you’ll find a Laura Ingalls Wilder museum fairly close to you! Let’s get back to her life. As you can imagine, with all that moving around, especially during that time period when “towns” were sparsely populated and we obviously didn’t have the education standards we have today, the children in the family (two of them younger than Laura) had to rely on each other for their education. But she must have shown talent in her studies because by the age of fifteen she accepted the role as a teacher in a one-room school house to help her family with finances when her older sister required special schooling at a school for the blind. Both of these events also take place in the series “Little House on the Prairie.” Eventually a relationship bloomed between her and a family friend, Almanzo Wilder, and within a few years, the two married. She quit teaching to help around the farm and raise her own family, and her aspirations seemed to come true: within five years she had a daughter and a son. But then tragedy quickly struck and her son died within a month. Tragedy followed again four years later when her husband contracted diphtheria and became partially paralyzed and then their farm burned down. Needing a new home, the couple and their daughter finally settled on a 200 acre farm they called Rocky Ridge Farm in the Ozarks of Mansfield, Missouri. She stayed there even after her husband passed away until her death in 1957. And guess what? You can also tour Rocky Ridge Farm which holds the largest collection of Laura Ingalls Wilder memorabilia. Obviously, the similarities between Laura’s real life and the life of “half-pint” in the series unquestionably outnumber the differences, and the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder did not dispute that the stories reflected her life, but when she tried to publish the stories as an autobiography, publishers rejected her work. It wasn’t until she revised her “autobiography” (with the help of her grown daughter, Rose) into a children series that publishers took note and Wilder found instant success. Now that we’ve read how Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life reflects in her writing, well move on to our other literary icon that shares her birthday – Charles Dickens! If Wilder’s writing brings back a sense of idyllic hope with new beginnings, Dickens’ writing does the exact opposite: it displays the stark disparity of the lower social class. And not surprisingly, all his major works also reflect the defining moments in his life. Charles’ family included seven siblings, a father that had the habit of living beyond his means, and a mother that spent more of her time maintaining the house than raising her children, allowing them to roam free throughout the English coastal countryside. Charles’ first defining event occurred after his father’s imprisonment for excessive debt, and Charles had to quit school and work in a dingy, filthy factory to help his family with finances. As just a young twelve year old boy, he felt that his family’s survival had cost him his innocence. Eventually, his father returned from prison and Charles tried to pick up his education again. But his father didn’t learn his lesson and continued to live above their means, and so Charles, at the age of fifteen, dropped out of school and started working again to help support his family, but this time in a better environment, an office. While working there he began sketching, which he published in magazines under the penname “Boz.” With a little encouragement he compiled these sketches into a book Sketches by Boz and published them at the age of twenty-four. A little bit of success boosted his outlook on life and he quickly married. He and his wife travelled to America but the greed and materialism he witnessed there, brought back a flood of unpleasant memories of him working in that dirty factory. When he returned to England he released that pent-up frustration by writing American Notes for General Circulation which criticized American culture. The backlash he received catapulted him into popularity, and so he continued to write. During the next two decades he wrote several novels that have become a prominent part of the 20th century’s canonical literature, including Oliver Twist (1837), A Christmas Carol (1843) – yep this is the movie I watched every Christmas as a child, David Copperfield (1849-1850), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). During these years, although Dickens encountered public popularity, he experienced some tragedies in his personal life, including the death of one of his daughters, the death of his father, and the separation from his wife. Dickens was working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when he suffered a stroke and then died at the rather young age of fifty-eight. That last novel remains unfinished. Regardless of which novel you read, all of his writing portrays some sort of social criticism describing anything from the tension between social and economic classes, the consequences of poverty – whether it’s living in it or trying to advance to stay above it – the loss of childhood, or the evil nature of capitalism. All of these themes we can trace back to his primary defining moment as a child working in a rat-infested factory. And his works have had such a profound effect on society that they are oftentimes referenced in worldwide talks about the effects of child labor. Want to learn more about or pay your respects to Charles Dickens? As an author of this magnitude, several museums honor his memory. So if you’re traveling to England, visit the small Charles Dickens’ Birthplace Museum (http://charlesdickensbirthplace.co.uk) in Portsmouth, which ironically houses the couch on which he died, or visit the Dickens House Museum (https://dickensmuseum.com) in London and tour where he wrote Oliver Twist and several other novels. Whichever museum you choose to visit, or even if you visit both of them, make sure you stop at Westminster Abbey and seek out his grave in Poet’s Corner inside. His final burial place proved his place in society then and now. The influences these defining events had on these authors’ lives is unmistakeable. But so what. Why should we want to read their writing over a hundred years later? Does their writing still matter? I beg to argue that it does matter… in today’s society with our chaotic economy and the injustices that members of minority groups (African-American, Latinos, Muslims, females, LGBT, the poor, the uneducated, the elderly) continuously face, one can easily draw some inspiration from the poetry of Langston Hughes… after all, don’t we all want to take pride, shrug off the oppression, and permit “America to be Great Again” all the while questioning the subjectivity of the word great and wondering about the antecedent of the word again. And then take a moment and reflect on the connection the “dreamers” (those affected by the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) must have with James Joyce and his literal and fictional search for home throughout his life while he lived in exile. And imagine the power we would have as a community if we strived to live like the characters in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s tales. And I don’t mean going back to living in log cabins and throwing out modern conveniences like refrigeration and indoor plumbing – but the simple idea that in order for just ONE person to be successful, the ENTIRE community must play their part and be involved. No one has the leisure of stepping aside and saying “That’s not MY job,” because it should be everyone’s job to pull each person out of poverty, out of illiteracy, out of oppression, so that they too can stand and help pull the next person out as well. And finally Charles Dickens’ blunt portrayal of the consequences of greed and materialism on all members of society from the young to the elderly should burst the bubble that surrounds our egocentric universes and make us realize there is only one universe and we all reside in it. Wow! What a powerful week! After researching the authors for January I felt ready for adventure, to get out of my comfort zone both literally and physically. Which I did. I read and enjoyed Wilkie Collin’s The Moonstone –an author I had never heard of before I wrote that article. And I booked international travel to a place I’ve never been. But this week’s authors make me look back on my childhood with appreciation and tune into the defining moments of my life; they make me want to hold out my hand for someone in need. In a nutshell, they make me want to be a better person. Now that’s the power of literature! In addition to the website I mentioned above, I also reference information from researching these authors on the following sites: “Charles Dickens.” A&E Television Networks, LLC. November 2017. Retrieved January 29, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/charles-dickens-9274087 “James Joyce.” A&E Television Networks, LLC. April 2017. Retrieved January 31, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/james-joyce-9358676 “Langston Hughes.” Academy of American Poets. Retrieved on January 31, 2018 from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/langston-hughes. “Laura Ingalls Wilder.” A&E Television Networks, LLC. July 2017. Retrieved January 29, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/laura-ingalls-wilder-9531246. litgeek2015. "How are Charles Dickens' novels and themes still relevant today?" eNotes, January 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2018 from https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-charles-dickens-novels-themes-still-relevant-567172 Richardson, Nigel. “In the Footsteps of Charles Dickens.” 23 January 2012. The Telegraph. Retrieved January 30, 2018 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/arts-and-culture/In-the-footsteps-of-Charles-Dickens Walker, Ian. “Why James Joyce had to leave Dublin to find himself.” June 2017. The New European. Retrieved on February 1, 2018 from http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/culture/why-james-joyce-had-to-leave-dublin-to-find-himself-1-5071133 In addition, here are the links to the various Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pepin, Wisconsin - Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum De Smet, South Dakota - Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Homes & Discovery Center Walnut Grove, Minnesota - Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum Mansfield, Missouri - Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum Independence, Kansas - Little House on the Prairie Week #4: January 22 – January 28
As we enter the last week of January, we will celebrate the birthdays of several authors, including Joseph Wambaugh (1/22), Virginia Woolf (1/25), Philip Jose Farmer (1/26), and Lewis Carroll (1/27). Based on their lives and the content of their writing, I have categorized these authors as “the good, the bad, the downright weird, and the ugly.” Before you read about each one, can you make a guess as to which author fits each category? Let’s begin with the good… after all, we all need a little good in our lives, and it is always better to hear the good first before the bad comes along and alters our mood. This author – born on January 22, 1937 - exemplifies the patriotic American: born the son of a police office and having served in the military before calling the Los Angeles Police Department home away from home for fourteen years. This author is none other than Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh Jr. While rising through the department ranks, Wambaugh loosely incorporated what he witnessed every day while patrolling the streets of Los Angeles (drug addicts, rubbernecking tourists, wealthy and poverty-stricken immigrants, and street hoodlums) into stories, eventually writing two successful fiction novels, The New Centurions (1970) and The Blue Knight (1972). Readers enjoyed this type of police fiction that differed from the fantastic gotta-catch-a serial-killer type novels. Much to the dismay of his superiors, readers also enjoyed the refreshing honesty of his writing which portrayed officers as humans with flaws, feelings, and who also play antics – most of which we’d considered politically incorrect nowadays. With the success of these novels and inspired by a true 1963 crime case in which drug dealers kidnapped two LAPD officers and then killed one of them, Wambaugh decided to document the case as a non-fiction book, The Onion Field (1973). It was a hit, such a hit that fans started to infiltrate the department, eventually causing Wambaugh to make a choice: continue serving the Los Angeles area as a detective sergeant or serve the literary world as a writer. Fortunately for us, he chose writing. Since then he has written fourteen more novels, which includes his most recent addition to the “Hollywood Station” series with Harbor Nocturne (2012) and four more non-fiction books covering true crimes. While conducting this research, I asked my husband, who grew up in a police service family, if he had heard of Joseph Wambaugh. He immediately remembered the titles of a few of Wambaugh’s earliest books sitting on his parents’ bedside dressers. He also remembered reading The Choirboys (1975) as a young teenager; and it must have made an impression because he recalled several plot points and even quotes from the book. This connection made me smile. It’s always nice when a book allows us to share memories with loved ones. Then later that same evening as we watched the second episode of Netflix’s Mindhunter, the FBI agent and the serial killer he is interviewing start talking about Wambaugh! What a coincidence! Obviously something in the universe wants me to read at least one of Wambaugh’s books. But it looks like I’ll have to choose from what he’s already written, because according to his Facebook page, when asked if any new books are on the horizon, he stated that he “might be getting to old” to write another one. Understood. Celebrating his 81st birthday this year, he is definitely one of the good guys and has earned his retirement. I look forward to picking up one of his books and diving right into the world of the Los Angeles Police Department during the 1970s. Now onto the bad… but let me begin by saying that this next author’s writing is not bad… sadly “just” her life. With only one female author celebrating a birthday this week on January 25, it’s easy to guess that I’ve placed Virginia Woolf in the “bad” category. Much like Edgar Allan Poe, who also celebrated a birthday in January, Virginia Woolf was surrounded by tragedy and death. Looking at her strong beginning in a privileged home in Kensington, London, with two successful parents and eight siblings, one wouldn’t imagine the tragedy that would unfold in her life. But unfold it did – and rather quickly. During her early childhood, the sexual abuse by two of her step-brothers fractured her early mental stability, so much so that when she lost her mother unexpectedly to rheumatic fever just a few years later, Virginia endured her first mental breakdown at the age of thirteen. And she did not have long to recover when her older sister also died. Seeing how her mother was her teacher and her sister was her study-mate, and they were both gone, she entered college to continue her education. But even in college, which is typically a time for self-awareness, tragedy found her with the death of her father from stomach cancer. This blow was too much for her already fragile mental state and she spent a brief time in an institution. During this time of reflection, she must have found her voice – her writing voice because within a year she started writing professionally. I’m sure she thought she had finally thrown off the darkness, but only a year later her brother died of typhoid fever, and the darkness threatened to pull her back under. In order to process her grief, she started writing a novel she called Melymbrosia, which was about a daughter’s self-discovery as she travels for South America on her father’s ship. Although not autobiographical, you can definitely see the similarities between the protagonist experiencing a journey which ends in self-awareness and Virginia’s own journey with depression. Unfortunately, four years into writing the book, she continued to struggle and once again found herself in an institution. Even once she entered her thirties she continued on this seesaw of depression and contentment. She married Leonard Woolf – hopefully a time of at least contentment - but then the darkness of depression dragged her back into the institution a couple of times within a short time span. It wasn’t until 1915, at the age of thirty-three, that she finally published her book, but with a new title, The Voyage Out. It seems that with the success of this publication, she had finally learned to keep the depression at bay. She and her husband even bought a printing press, establishing the publishing house Hogarth Press, which allowed her more freedom with publishing her own writing, as well as that of her husband’s and friends’ writing. Life once again seemed to settle into a routine of contentment, which lasted over two decades. During this time she wrote over 500 essays and ten novels. When reading most of her works you get this sense that she wrote down what she (or the character) was thinking at the moment, often changing subjects multiple times within a page or two, which makes her writing challenging. But what’s fascinating is reading them now – almost a hundred years after she wrote them – and understanding how quickly the world she lived in was changing around her: the rising popularity of automobiles, airplanes, movie theatres, and the quickly advancing roles of women. Her writing inadvertently documents how society constantly changed. No wonder she had a fragile mental stability. But through all these changes in society, she used her writing to cope and she remained successful at working through the depression. But then World War II hit. Because Leonard was Jewish, the couple grew justifiably more concerned about their safety. They even had serious talks about a double-suicide if Hitler’s troops invaded England. With this stress, coupled with the destruction of their home during the Blitz, Virginia’s delicate mental stability collapsed. On a chilly March day, she wrote a letter to her husband, donned an overcoat to go outside, filled the pockets with stones, and calmly walked into the river, allowing the current to sweep her away. She died on March 28, 1941 at the age of fifty-nine, leaving her husband to grieve over the loss of the love of his life. He published her last novel, Between the Acts, posthumously. In this novel, which is about the production of a performance, all the characters’ lives return to normal at the conclusion of the final act; unfortunately, although he continued to live at their home, Leonard’s life would never return to normal without his Virginia. He even had her remains buried under the elm tree in their yard to be close to her. He died in 1969 and now their house is open for tours (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/monks-house). You can see how they lived and then walk through her gardens to the little lodge that Virginia used as her escape to write many of her novels. But before you leave, stop in the shade of the elm tree and pay your respects to the woman who fought the darkness of depression for as long as she could, but in the end, the darkness won. Now onto the next category – the downright weird. With only two authors remaining and one of them being the mastermind of Alice in Wonderland, you’re probably guessing that it’s him. After all, that story line of going down the infamous rabbit hole is full of weirdness, to say the least. But the other author, Philip Jose Farmer actually wins this category’s placement. In conversation starters, a popular question asks who you’d like to invite over to dinner. After researching this author, I’d have to answer with Philip Jose Farmer, born January 26, 1918! Let me explain. The first thirty-four years of Farmer’s life were fairly unremarkable. In high school he liked science and sports. He went to college but then dropped out when his father’s business went belly-up, and he took a menial job to help make ends meet. He must have had a writing talent at that time because within a few years Bradley University offered him a scholarship to return to school. But did he take it? No… he made a typical impetuous young adult decision and instead eloped with his girlfriend. Needing work, he joined the army air corps with visions of flying, but he failed the test. So instead he took another menial job at a steel mill back in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois and waited for the government to call his draft number. His number was never called and he worked at the mill for over a decade. All of this seems like your dime-a-dozen typical American. Nothing extraordinary. But in the background, ideas must have been twirling around in his mind. In 1952, he shocked the literary world with the publication of his short story titled, “The Lovers.” With the story line about provocative sexual encounters between a male human and a female alien that looked like an insect, it even shocked his editors and publishing house. Up to this point, the science-fiction genre for the most part lacked sexual relationships and sensuality, but Farmer wanted to change that… and he did. He entered a writing contest and submitted another novel that he wrote within a month’s timespan. And he certainly used his imagination to write it. It takes place on a really long river where every human ever born, including characters such as the world-renowned geographer Richard Francis Burton to the satirist Samuel Clemens, come back to life at the same time to experience the adventures of their afterlife. He won the contest and eventually, although not without any mishaps, revised the one novel into a series consisting of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), The Fabulous Riverboat (1971), The Dark Design (1977), The Magic Labyrinth (1980) and Gods of Riverworld (1983). If he had stopped writing at this point, our conversation at that imaginary dinner I had invited him to would be interesting to say the least. Just listening to him explain how he created each person’s afterlife anecdote would fascinate me and lead to hours of entertainment. But he didn’t stop writing. If fact he kept multiple series going at the same time, including the “World of Tiers” book series which consists of The Maker of Universes (1965), The Gates of Creation (1966), A Private Cosmos (1968), Behind the Walls of Terra (1970), The Lavalite World (1977) and More Than Fire (1993). In this series, it follows the adventures and interactions between humans that have a godlike power and immortality and their lesser counterparts – the ordinary humans through a number of parallel universes with tiered planets. How did he create such a story line? And as if creating those two series at the same time wasn’t enough, he also created the Wold Newton series which follows genetically mutated versions of fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan after a radioactive meteor strikes their town. WOW! All-in-all he wrote over fifty novels and over one hundred short stories. I can only imagine that our dinner date would last well into the wee-morning hours as he tried to enlighten me on how he created these stories mixed with science and sensuality while integrating fictional and real-life people and heroes. And I’d certainly have to ask him who created his artwork for his novels. Have you seen them? Almost every book jacket looks like some exotic version of sexy-haired Fabio! Now that is just down-right weird. This leaves only our last category – the ugly. And we only have one author remaining: Lewis Carroll who also celebrated his birthday this week. Now you may be wondering, “Why would she consider Lewis Carroll ugly?” This one is a little more complicated. Usually we use the term ugly to describe someone’s looks. But Lewis Carroll by the Victorian era standards was not ugly. And much like I categorized Virginia Woolf’s life and battle with depression ‘bad’ – not her writing, I am categorizing Lewis Carroll’s life – not his writing – as potentially ugly. Again, let me explain, but in order to do so, I should start at the beginning. As a child I experienced the thrill of Alice in Wonderland. I watched the animated version of it too. I even watched Tim Burton’s version starring Johnny Depp. As a child, I enjoyed it for its entertainment value. As an adult, and as an English teacher, I tried analyzing the themes within it – you know… self-awareness, consequences of curiosity, how a child struggles to survive and come of age in a confusing adult-like world with society’s many rules and expectations.These themes I understood, appreciated, and even respected. When I explored New York’s Central Park, I stopped in front of the “Alice in Wonderland” bronze statue which displays a few of the characters, including Alice, the mad hatter and of course – the elusive rabbit and paid my respects as I stood reminiscing about the book. All of these memories brought happiness. So when I noticed that his birthday was this week, I was excited about the upcoming research. But then the research began and I discovered the controversy surrounding him. I wish I could unlearn these allegations and I contemplated omitting his birthday celebration from my article, but I can’t unlearn it and so and I won’t omit him. Here is what I learned. I learned that Lewis Carroll was his pen name. His real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born the oldest son of eleven children in Daresbury, England. As the oldest, he often had the responsibility of caring for his younger siblings. And he was quite good at it too – oftentimes telling stories to keep them entertained. As he matured, he found a talent for mathematics and photography. He eventually taught math at Oxford University. While teaching at the university, he met the dean, Henry Liddell and his family which included three little girls – one of them Alice Liddell, age four. With time on his hands – since he remained unmarried - he often watched over and played with the girls while their parents were busy. Henry and his wife loved Charles. The girls loved Charles. One summer day, July 4th to be exact, Charles and a friend took the girls for a boat ride on the river Thames. Bored with the monotony of the river and frustrated with the sun’s heat, young Alice pleaded for Charles to tell them a story. And so he did… he told them an off-the-cuff story of a little girl named Alice and the adventures she experienced when she followed a rabbit down a rabbit hole. The real Alice loved the story so much, she pleaded with him (again) to write down this wonderful adventure of the girl named Alice. And so he did. It took him months to handwrite and illustrate the story himself, but he did it, naming the story Alice in Wonderland. So far so good. During this part of my research, I was delighted to learn that the character Alice was inspired by a real-life Alice. But then I kept researching. Sometime after that boat ride, Alice’s parents refused to allow Charles to visit their girls again. What happened? This is the catalyst for the controversy that surrounds him. Remember I mentioned that Charles had a talent for photography? People oftentimes asked him to take a portrait of them. Upon reviewing his collection of thousands of photographs that he took, researchers noticed that over half of them portrayed very young little girls. Most people in society want to believe that all people are fundamentally good, and so they rationalized that it would not be abnormal for prominent households to want Charles to photograph their little darlings all dressed up. The problem is that the little girls were not “all dressed up” – they were nude. Now I realize I am researching this one hundred and fifty years after he took these pictures and that during that time society has changed. I know that in today’s society if someone took nude pictures of little girls, we’d call that person a pedophile and he would spend a lifetime in jail. There are however extended family members of Charles, fans, and researchers that claim that nude pictures of children in the Victorian age were not a sign of perversion, but a sign of respecting and capturing the beauty of innocence - even though in Charles’ photographs, he positioned these little girls in very provocative positions. I have a hard time understanding this logic, but I don’t want to believe the worst in someone like the famous Lewis Carroll, so I kept researching. Although Victorian society may have accepted nude photographs of young children, nude photographs of young adolescents – from the age of ten or older – were not acceptable and considered a sign of deviant behavior. Unfortunately for Charles, at least one nude photograph of a young adolescent was discovered with his initials written on the back of it. Scientists conducted extensive laboratory tests on the photograph and concluded that the picture is most likely Ina (Alice’s older sister), taken from the same camera that Charles used, and developed using the same unique technique that Charles used to develop his photographs.Could this be the reason why Alice’s parents suddenly demanded that he stop spending time with their girls? If so, personally it changes the underlying meaning of his works, Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). Did he initially come up with the story because he had more than a paternal love for Alice? Did he continue to write the second book to keep Alice close to him – at least the fictional character, since he couldn’t see the real-life girl any longer? If I ever travel to Daresbury, England, I will visit the Lewis Carroll Center (http://lewiscarrollcentre.org.uk/) to learn more about this controversy that has scarred the innocent image I used to have of Alice in Wonderland. But until then I will try to separate the mastermind Lewis Carroll from the controversial Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Now aren’t you glad I started with the good, before this ugly category altered your mood!? In addition to the websites I’ve mentioned above, I also used the following cites when conducting research on these authors: Carlson, Michael. Philip José Farmer: An award-winning sci-fi writer who mixed sex, pulp and literature. February 2009. The Guardian. Retrieved 18 January 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/27/philip-jose-farmer-obituary Clute, John. “Philip Jose Farmer: Prolific and influential science-fiction writer.” March 2009. Independent. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/philip-jose-farmer-prolific-and-influential-science-fiction-writer-1636868.html Croteau, Michael and Beaulieu, Rick. “The Official Philip José Farmer Web Page.” 2017. PJFarmer.com Website. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.pjfarmer.com/ABOUT-ten-things-about-PJF.html Del Barco, Mandalit. “Joe Wambaugh: The Writer Who Redefined LAPD.” July 2008. National Public Radio. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from https://www.npr.org/2008/07/18/92649123/joe-wambaugh-the-writer-who-redefined-lapd Ek, Karen. “BBC The Secret World of Lewis Carroll.” Online video. Youtube, May 17, 2016. Web. 17 January 2018. https://youtu.be/_KQ9kDbduTo Presented by Martha Kearney. 59:18. “Hollywood Station Novels, The.” 2012. Hachette Book Group. Retrieved 20 January 2018 from http://www.thehollywoodnovels.com/bio.html Virginia Woolf. September 2017. The Biography.com Website. A&E Television Network. Retrieved January 19, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/virginia-woolf-9536773 Woolf, Jenny. “Lewis Carroll’s Shifting Reputation: Why has popular opinion of the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland undergone such a dramatic reversal?” Smithsonian Magaine, April 2010. Web. 17 January 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lewis-carrolls-shifting-reputation-9432378/ Week #3: January 15 – January 21
We are moving right along as we honor authors born during the third week of the New Year. This week we have two special authors – both persevered through their own challenges but died way too young. Let’s say happy birthday to Anne Bronte and Edgar Allan Poe! Although Anne Bronte was just one of several talented siblings, including brother Branwell known for his paintings, and sisters Charlotte and Emily known for their own novel masterpieces, Anne earned her own place in history as an outstanding writer. Anne Bronte was born on January 17, 1820 in Thornton, England, and met tragedy early in her life when her mother died before Anne even celebrated her second birthday. Without a mother at home, her mother’s sister, who originally came to help her ailing sister, continued to live at their home to care for the children. Within her care, all three sisters’ imaginations flourished as they used toy soldiers to create their own fantasy world replenished with characters filling a complete village. But playtime couldn’t last forever and Anne needed to find a job to help contribute to the family finances. As an educated but poverty-stricken female in the Victorian era, she didn’t have many options, so she became a governess – a job that would fuel her inspiration for writing her first novel, Agnes Grey. The children under her care lacked discipline, and in order to release her frustration with them and her own inability to control them, she’d slyly pull out pen and paper and write in her journal about their devious behavior. Her employer, dissatisfied with Anne’s tutoring ability after five years, fired her. While licking her wounds at home, she also nurtured the imagination she had used all those years ago with her sisters and all three of them began writing poetry together, which they combined in a collection titled “Poems” and published in 1846 under the male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – because of course writing was not a respectable occupation for women! Not only did their success as poets ignite the writing bug in all three, but it also ignited a spirit of competition between the sisters. So while Charlotte and Emily began writing their own novels, Anne brushed off her journal and prepped Agnes Grey for publication. After receiving several letters of rejection, Anne and Emily found a publisher for their novels and Charlotte found one for her novel. Unfortunately, Anne and Emily’s publisher procrastinated publishing Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights for two months after Charlotte’s Jane Eyre became a bestseller in October 1847. Upon publication, Anne realized that both the female protagonists in both her novel and Jane Eyre had similar characteristics. And she knew that she could write a story more compelling than Wuthering Heights. Wanting to desperately win the unofficial competition between the sisters, she sat down and penned her best novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848. And then tragedy struck. In September of 1848, her brother Branwell, suffering from drug and alcohol addiction as well as tuberculosis, died. Then three months later in December, Emily also died of tuberculosis. In February, Anne felt the pains of tuberculosis as well and suffered with the illness until she succumbed to it on May 28, 1848 at the age of twenty-nine. Within ten months, the curse of tuberculosis had claimed three of the four siblings, leaving only Charlotte (who also died of tuberculosis seven year later). Supposedly Charlotte was concerned about the controversial press Anne’s second novel received and decided to cancel the novel’s publication. And with this cancellation, the fanfare for Anne’s novel died and Charlotte’s success continued. But just imagine if Charlotte hadn’t cancelled The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’s publication or Anne hadn’t died at such a young age while still climbing the ladder of literary success; she very well may have surpassed the talents of even Jane Austen! But even as only her second novel, The Tenant at Wildfell Hall definitely deserves a place on the literary classics’ bookshelf with its title as the first feminist novel and overarching theme of women doing whatever it takes to escape physical and mental cruelty at the hands of mean-spirited, inebriated men. Awhile back, I facilitated Bronte themed literary circles. One group read Jane Eyre, another group read Wuthering Heights, and the final group read The Tenant at Wildfell Hall. At the time, I had not read any of the Bronte novels, so I read them concurrently. Although each has its enduring qualities and all led to interesting and spirited conversations within and between the groups, the perseverance of Helen Graham, the protagonist and subject of the novel’s title, certainly caught my attention, especially given the time period in which Anne Bronte wrote the novel. Surely if someone can overcome the cruelty Helen Graham experienced while shackled with society’s male-dominated expectations, then it gives me hope that anyone feeling oppressed in society can also find the keys to their own happiness and release their shackles. Now if you too enjoy Anne Bronte’s writing, and you’re passionate about visiting places with literary significance, then the next time you visit England, travel to the Bronte’s hometown and visit The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Sponsored by The Bronte Society, the museum offers a unique tour of the family’s home and gardens. But if you want to pay your respects specifically to Anne by visiting her grave, you’ll have to also visit Scarborough, England because she’s the only Bronte buried outside of Haworth since she died away from home. By visiting http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/brontes/scarborough/scarborough.asp, you can find a self-guided map of Scarborough that highlights places Anne visited during the last months of her life and culminate at her grave. Let’s jump across the big pond again and honor another famous author that experienced far beyond his fair share of death and then also died too young: Edgar Allan Poe. He was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, and although he experienced death for the first time before he could even remember, the death of both of his parents obviously lodged in his psyche, helping to mold him into the macabre writer he would eventually become. Orphaned, he went to live with John Allan, a successful businessman, and his wife in Richmond, Virginia. During his childhood John Allan groomed him for the tobacco industry, discouraging him from creative writing even though he exhibited his poetic talent at a young age. And John Allan must have wanted young Edgar to learn that one appreciates what they have when they personally earn it, so when it came time for a higher education at the University of Virginia, instead of funding all of it, he funded only a third of it.Unfortunately, Edgar had only learned how to gamble away his money instead of saving it, so he quickly accumulated debt. Unable to pay his full tuition bill, he dropped out of school, only to return home to find out that the woman he considered his mom had died the day before! And that was not the end of his misfortune. Grieving, he went to find solace in the arms of his fiancée, only to find that she had become engaged to another man! But instead of allowing these tragedies to overwhelm him, he started writing poetry which he eventually published as a collection titled “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” Coincidentally, one of the poems is about giving up the love a girl for power. Hmmmm, did Poe decide to choose power at this time in his life after losing his fiancée’s favor? Regardless, with a darkness building in him, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. But the strict routine didn’t leave him the time he wanted to write, so he simply stopped attending, which eventually led to his expulsion. Disowned by John Allan, the only remaining place for Edgar to go was to his aunt Maria Clemm’s in Baltimore. She quickly became Edgar’s substitute mom; but her young daughter, Virginia became more than a substitute sister. Once he moved Maria and Virginia back to Richmond, Edgar and thirteen-year-old Virginia married. It is not surprising that Virginia’s youth brought happiness back into Edgar’s life.And for a short time, Edgar tried to forget about the darkness within him and frolic with Virginia, but he continually struggled to make ends meet. While writing for different magazines, both as a critic and submitting his own stories, he moved the family around to New York and then to Philadelphia. But another blow for Edgar appeared on the horizon. The deadly tuberculosis beast came for his beautiful young wife. It seems that at the first sign of her illness and its inevitability Poe’s inspiration for writing gruesome tales spiked with stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Gold Bug” (1843), “The Black Cat” (1843), “The Raven” (1845), and culminating with “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) right before Virginia took her last painful breath at the age of twenty-four. Understandably, Edgar allowed his grief to consume him this time. He was unable to cope, unable to write. He moved back to Richmond and half-heartedly tried to reconnect with his old fiancée, but ultimately, within two years of Virginia’s death, Poe too mysteriously died. He had disappeared for five days and although his editor found him in a bar disheveled, incomprehensible, and barely conscious and rushed him to the hospital, he died soon after arriving. Like many of Poe’s stories, his own death also remains a mystery. His famous poem, “Annabelle Lee” was published only days after his death. As an American poet and short-story writer, Poe’s writing often comes up in school curriculum. And justifiably, kids can’t seem to get enough of it. They, like many of us, love reading about betrayal, insanity, death, and deception… all subjects Poe knew intimately. And although I haven’t visited all the places that commemorate Poe’s life, I did visit his home in Philadelphia, and as I walked up to it I could only imagine too well the raven that stands guard on a post outside screeching his eerie “nevermore” as I prepared myself to enter Poe’s domain. Let me just say that after reading one of his famous short stories, “A Cask of Amontillado” (1846), there is nothing like slowly descending the creaky steps into his darkened basement with concrete and brick walls wondering if this was the exact place that inspired him to write the story about entombing someone alive! Was there in fact bones inside these walls? Every creak of the old house makes you jump! And then to tour upstairs and walk across the wooden floorboards, it is also easy to fantasize that you too can hear the BEAT, beat, BEAT of a heart or see the eye of someone you just murdered looking at you from in between the boards, just like in his short story, “A Tell-Tale Heart” (1843). With this must excitement at just this one home of his, I can only imagine what it is like at his other homes, and I look forward to visiting them as I use the recommendations of https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/take-trip-through-edgar-allan-poes-america-180953067/ to travel through Richmond, Boston, Philadelphia, and finally to his gravesite in Baltimore to pay my respects to one of the greatest American writers whom critics still call the modern “Father of the Detective Story” and continues to inspire generation after generation to use their own challenges and tragedies as inspiration for becoming great. In addition to websites specifically mentioned above I also utilized the following websites while researching these authors. Anne Bronte. (2018). Biography. A&E Television Networks, LLC. Web. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/anne-bront%C3%AB-11919986 Bondurant, Agnes M. (1942). Poe’s Richmond. Poe Museum. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography Edgar Allan Poe. (2018). Biography. A&E Television Networks, LLC. Web. Retrieved January 12, 2018 from https://www.biography.com/people/edgar-allan-poe-9443160 Ellis, Samantha. (January 2017). Anne Bronte: The Sister Who Got There First. The Guardian. Retrieved January 12, 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/06/anne-bronte-agnes-grey-jane-eyre-charlotte Wright, Kitty. (2017). The Bronte Society: The Bronte Parsonage Museum. Retrieved January 11, 2018 from https://www.bronte.org.uk/the-brontes-and-haworth Week #2: January 08 – January 14
So it’s the second week of the New Year and although reality is kicking in with some of my New Year’s resolutions, my goal of researching authors every week and encouraging a conversation about them remains high on my goal list. Are your New Year’s resolutions still going strong? You can still make a resolution to contribute to our conversation… that’s an easy one to keep! Week one may have set the bar high with some outstanding renowned authors – I mean how do you top Salinger, Tolkien, and Hurston? – but the authors born during the second week of the year can also certainly hold their own. Let’s say hello to Wilkie Collins and Jack London. Happy Birthday gentlemen! Admittedly, I personally had not heard of Wilkie Collins, who was born William Wilkie Collins on January 8, 1824 in London, but after researching him and his novels, I look forward to adding a couple of his novels to my reading bucket list. Maybe you can help me decide which novel of his to read first. Typically when I think of authors born during the Victorian era, I think of stuffy, proper men adhering to strict etiquette guidelines of the times. But Wilkie Collins does not fit that mold and that’s why he piques my interest; after learning a little about him, he might pique your interest too! From early childhood, Collins experienced a difficult life. Because of his distinctive appearance - small in stature but with a large head that had a noticeable bulge on the side of his forehead - fellow classmates brutally teased Collins. Without the “anti-bullying” campaigns that schools have in place today, Collins decided to take his survival into his own hands. But he didn’t use his small fists; he used his mind by captivating the bullies with stories – and not only did it work at holding the bullies at bay, but it initiated his writing career too. The other ironic stimulant to his writing career was boredom; to pass the time while trying to learn the ropes of tea merchants he picked up pen and paper which led to his short story, “Volpruno – The Student,” which he published in New York’s Albion in the July 8, 1843 issue. Wilkie suppressed this small writing success and continued his education, eventually passing the bar exam. But he must have felt conflicted. Should he begin a career as a respectable lawyer or should he buck the system and write? Thankfully, he bucked the system and instead of practicing law, he started earning an income writing several stories beginning with “A Terribly Strange Bed” for Charles Dicken’s publication Household Words in 1852. Yep, you read that correctly. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were friends, good friends actually even eventually leading to Dickens’ daughter marrying Collins’ son. The beginning of his serious writing career also marked the beginning of his personal health problems and a love life that mimicked a modern-day soap opera. To relieve symptoms of rheumatic gout, Collins began to take opium – and lots of it! Maybe this helped contribute to his unconventional love life. In 1856, Wilkie met Caroline Graves, a widowed mother with one daughter, and they began living together in 1858. Their meeting became the inspiration for his first major novel The Woman in White which Dickens published for him in 1860. In a cloud of opium, life continued to go well for Wilkie and Caroline, but then in 1864 he met nineteen-year-old Martha Rudd. Not wanting to break off his relationship with Caroline, he bought another house a few blocks away for Martha where the couple went by the name Mr. & Mrs. William Dawson – but they weren’t married. Around this same time he began work on his last major novel The Moonstone; maybe meeting a new love interest inspired Collins? Sometime around 1868, Caroline must have caught wind of Wilkie’s other woman because she suddenly married someone else. But her marriage only lasted a few years and by 1871 she was again living with Wilkie Collins even though Martha lived just a few blocks away with the couples’ three children. Wow! I’m not sure how he managed both identities, but he did for almost two decades. And at the age of eighty-two when his health declined rapidly after an automobile accident which eventually led to a stroke and then his death on September 23, 1889, he continued to hold onto both women; all three are buried in the same grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, even though he died first! So, other than the obvious reasons, why would you want to read anything by a man who routinely consumed opium and lived with two women in different households? Because authors write what they know and Collins obviously knew how to circumnavigate the challenges associated with living in Victorian London and, drawing on his experience from his days of winning over the bullies by storytelling, wasn’t afraid to write what at the time was on most people’s minds but were unable to express because of that strict social etiquette. And surprisingly, the challenges of the mid 1860s in London also apply to our society today. So now I find myself in a conundrum, do I add his first novel The Woman in White which literary focuses on issues of personal identity (not only are we as readers supposed to wonder who she is, but the woman herself must answer the same question), as well as topics such as the messy consequences of power, the unpredictable cosmic interference of justice, the façade of the traditional stable family, the tricks of memory, and the potential danger of marriage, especially to women – all messily tied into the pages of this soap opera type reading? Or do I read the book that set the foundation for all future detective stories, The Moonstone which while trying to solve the mystery of what happened to a particularly legendary diamond focuses on the illusion of marriage, the unjust stereotyping of gender and ethnic groups, the inequality of social classes, and the controversy of religion? Maybe like Collins himself, I won’t have to decide between my two wants: I can read them both. And once I’ve finished, wouldn’t it be great to play detective and go London and follow the guide provided at http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/wilkie/Homes/85O.htm and walk the same streets and view the same points of interest Collins mentions in these novels before heading to pay my respects to him at his grave? That sounds like an awesome plan! Now let’s jump across the big pond and fast forward about ten years after Wilkie Collin’s death to the beginning of Jack London’s hard-earned literary success. Born John Griffith London on January 12, 1876, Jack was a reader at an early age. Using the texts of what he read as an example, in the beginning he unsuccessfully tried to mimic their writing to earn enough money to evade the manual labor of factory work. But it wasn’t until the turn of the century that he finally found his own voice and honed his writing talent. As many of you know from reading my July post titled “Discover Your Call of the Wild,” I am a Jack London fan. I grew up reading White Fang and Call of the Wild – both of which I highly recommend if you haven’t already read them (and especially if you’re an animal lover) for their themes focusing on survival and the power of relationships. And then as an adult I read the tumultuous but romantic novel Sea Wolf - again another one of his novels I’d highly recommend. And even though it’s titled after and follows a person instead of a dog like his other two novels, it also covers similar themes – just within the confines of a boat on the open ocean. Fortunately though, the old adage that we ‘learn something new every day’ holds true – while researching Jack London again, I discovered a non-fiction that I’d like to also add to my ever-growing bucket list: John Barleycorn. Knowing that most of London’s work derives from his own personal experience, such as Jack taking inspiration from his time in the Yukon during the winter of 1897 to write Call of the Wild and White Fang, or taking inspiration from his two-year voyage across the Pacific in a small boat to write Sea Wolf, I can only imagine how insightful his musings about the two-sided effects of alcohol would be: on one hand enjoying every ‘John Barleycorn’ (a personification of alcoholic drink) that slides down the gullet to the other hand that holds your mouth shut while the drink tries to crawl its way back out of your stomach. As an adult well past the legal drinking age, I can honestly and humbly admit that I too have seen both of John Barleycorn’s hands, and so I’m interested in London’s take on it as well, especially since he died of kidney disease. Did his drinking contribute to it? The other aspect of Jack London that of course interests me are the points of interest fans can still physically visit like Jack London Square located on the East Bay waterfront of Oakland, California. Although small, it does honor London with a replica of his Yukon cabin as well as London’s long-time visited drinking establishment, Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon. So while you’re there, go inside and lift your own John Barleycorn in London’s honor too. After adequate time has passed from your last drink, head north towards Santa Rosa to the Jack London State Historic Park. Within its boundaries you’ll find London’s working ranch and home. It is one of the few homes/museums of literary significance that fans can still tour. Although the original home that he named ‘The Wolf House’ burned to the ground and only a few foundation walls remain, other buildings on his large working ranch remain, including the House of Happy Walls and his cottage, both of which display London’s personal items and touch. London enjoyed the property so much he also chose to be buried there, so while you’re there hike one of the numerous trails or better yet, grab a picnic lunch, your favorite Jack London book that you can purchase in the bookstore, and sit under the large shady oaks and ponder a time when Jack London too worked this very land as you lose yourself in the talent of his writing. Week #1: January 01-January 07
Happy New Year! This year my resolution is to celebrate 48 weeks (four weeks of each month) of world-renowned authors by engaging in literary conversations about who they are, what they wrote, how they relate to our society and how we can get physically one step closer to them. Through this project, I hope to encourage everyone to talk about which novels you’ve read and to also read at least one novel throughout the year that you haven’t previously read. Maybe it’ll turn into a type of online literary circle where we’re all reading and discussing our different novels that we’ve selected! So let’s get this celebration started! The first week of the New Year kicks off with some significant famous authors’ birthdays which include J.D. Salinger on January 1 (1919), J.R.R Tolkien on January 3 (1892), and Zora Neale Hurston (1891) on January 7. Although within this group of authors I have a particular favorite, to keep this project more logical I’ll share information about them by date, and so let’s begin with our New Year’s baby, J.D. Salinger. Born Jerome David Salinger in New York, New York, his parents had their hands full from an early age. J.D. (as we would ultimately know him) struggles in school lead to him flunking out of his school near his home. Knowing the importance of education, his parents enrolled him in a Military Academy. After finally earning his degree, his father sent him to Vienna to learn how to run the family import business, but once again J.D. struggled; he found himself nurturing his newfound love of language and writing, so operating the family business fell to the wayside. After his Vienna stint, Salinger returned home and attended several colleges which eventually led him Columbia University where he met Whit Burnett, professor and editor of Story magazine, who recognized J.D.’s talent and his magazine first published J.D.’s short story “The Young Folks.” Salinger must have felt he’d finally found his path, but this tragedy struck: World War II. In between fighting during the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, Salinger carried along his typewriter and continued to write. Can you just imagine a young Salinger hunched in a trench trying to type with gunfire exploding all around him? During this time, while he watched friend after friend die, the infamous unhappy character Holden Caulfield began to take shape. Although by the time Salinger returned home from war he had suffered a nervous breakdown, the story he had penned during that time was already a success and Salinger quickly earned the popularity he had initially sought for his writing… but now he didn’t want it and spent an increasingly amount of time away from the public, eventually living the life of a recluse – which only added to his mystery and thereby his popularity. For those of you unfamiliar with Salinger’s story that rose from the battlefield, Cather in the Rye has sold more than 65 million copies and continues to be a part of just about every high school student’s English course curriculum. Now I too have read and taught Catcher in the Rye to juniors in an American Literature class as well as an AP Language class. Even though some readers may not particularly care for Holden because of the foul language he uses and his moody temperament, his quest to escape the phoniness of society attracts all of us. Don’t we all want to be more genuine? And if that doesn’t pique your interest, then his drive to protect children, specifically Phoebe his younger sister, from losing their innocent interpretation of the world to the harshness of reality, will encourage anyone to also want to look out for the innocent. But I personally think it is Holden’s distrust of authority figures that strikes a special interest in high school students. After all, they too often distrust everyone so Holden’s thoughts often mirror their own thoughts and concerns. But Catcher is not only for teenagers; adults find solace in Holden’s quest to find “Where do the ducks in Central Park go in the winter.” As an adult reader of the novel without a strong religious foundation, Holden’s symbolic inquisitiveness into the aftermath of death strikes a chord, as I too have lost people close to me and wonder where they are now. Just as I wonder what J.D. Salinger thinks about the resurgence of his writing after his death on January 27, 2010 from natural causes? With his death, his son – who controls his father’s literary interests - released Catcher in the Rye for online access, but has not released the rumored five completed novels that Salinger had continued to write as a recluse but never published before his death. So while we wait with bated breath for a new Salinger fix, we can still read any of his other thirty-nine short stories that he published, nine of which are collected in the book Nine Stories which you can find on Amazon or any remaining bricks and mortar bookstore. But the short story I particularly want to read is Salinger’s last publication titled “Hapworth 16, 1924” which Salinger published in The New Yorker in the June 15, 1965 issue. Its 25,000 word count famously filled most of the magazine’s pages! Unfortunately, reading his stories is the closest we can get to J.D. Salinger, the person. His reclusiveness and his relatively recent death prevents us from touring any residence or museum, BUT we can figuratively walk in Holden Caulfield’s shoes! The New York Times published an article (https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/taking-a-walk-through-jd-salingers-new-york/) that takes you step-by-step and page-by-page right along with Holden as he walks around New York on his personal quest. So the next time you’re in New York and feel like taking a stroll, don a red hunting hat similar to Holden’s and people will understand. As a New Year baby, Salinger has certainly set the bar! Now let’s see who’s next! Do you have any interest in fantasy fiction filled with beautifully mysterious landscapes, wizards, and diminutive-sized people? You’re probably thinking our next author is J.K. Rowling, but it’s not – she’s a summer baby! Long before Harry Potter captured our minds and hearts, J.R.R. Tolkien claimed the title of father of modern fantasy literature with his epic novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Although born in a province of South Africa on January 3, 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, England from the young age of three. “Ronny,” as his mom called him, spent his childhood days roaming the nearby villages, hills, bogs and mills, memories of which he would tuck away as an inspiration in his writing. He also tucked away memories from a summer hiking trip in Switzerland, which eventually inspired Bilbo’s famous journey. But life was not always idyllic. War, WWI instead of Salinger’s WWII experience, also changed the life of Tolkien. As one can imagine, proper hygiene in the close quarters of battle often times take a back seat to survival, but as a soldier in WWI, this poor hygiene, specifically lice – which carries trench fever - may have saved Tolkien’s life. Tolkien lay bedridden with trench fever while his battalion fought and many of his friends died. This fever was just the beginning of his health issues, and because he spent so much time in the hospital, the military eventually discharged him. Once back at home, he leaned on the education and love of language he learned from his mom and landed a position at the Oxford English Dictionary researching the etymology of words beginning with the letter W. Now every time I see a word that begins with W, I will think of Tolkien! But Tolkien had talent, and researching W words was just a stepping stone to a fellowship at Pembroke College. During his time there he wrote The Hobbit and began work on The Lord of the Rings, but WWII interrupted his writing. Only after his stint as a codebreaker during the war had ended and after he moved to Oxford to become an English professor did he finally put pen to paper and finish the remaining volumes of The Lord of the Rings, which he published in 1954/1955. Now for the past several decades, millions of people have placed reality of the sidelines and gotten lost in Bilbo’s quest, taking inspiration from the challenges he overcomes even though he’s drastically outnumbered and considered the underdog, the friendships and relationships he makes, and the power of forgiveness it suggests. The combination of these themes which still reflect in our society today, lured Hollywood producers too. And so, like millions of other people, I watched enthralled in the Hollywood adaptation of these famous books following Bilbo Baggin’s quest, but I haven’t actually read the books. Knowing that the original works of art are always better than the movies, I’m placing Tolkien’s masterpieces on my reading bucket list, and even though I could read them online at https://www.8novels.net/authors/J_R_R_Tolkien.html, I’d much rather hold volumes in my hand and smell the pages as I flip them one-by-one while on the journey right along with his characters. And if I want to turn that journey into a realization, I have a few choices. I can visit New Zealand (the films’ shooting location) and follow the free “Middle Earth” map that the government’s website provides for free – but because most of the locations are a part of public lands, the film’s producers had to remove their props – although I’m sure just seeing the awe inspiring landscapes must also be a breathtaking memorable experience. But personally, I enjoy feeling closer to the authors versus the settings they used, so I’d rather tour parts of England by following the stops suggested on the website http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/1053-fifteen-places-tolkien-fans-should-visit-before-they-die.php which includes his childhood home, his inspiration for the towers and middle-earth, his Oxford home, his favorite drinking spot (because of course I’d want to raise a toast in his honor!), and his gravesite. So are you ready to go? But when we do this, we have to travel there during the third week of September (September 22 to be exact – Bilbo’s birthday) for the “Oxonmoot” which celebrates Tolkien’s contribution to society with exhibitions, talks and culminates in a Tolkien-character themed masquerade ball! How fun would that be?! So while we wait for the warmer weather of September to roll around, let’s take a look at our next author that celebrated a birthday during the first week of the New Year: Zora Neale Hurston. Remember when I said I had a particular favorite within this group of authors? Yep, Zora Neale Hurston wins that unofficial award. Although she never received national acclaim for her book Their Eyes were Watching God during her lifetime – and actually died penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave – Alice Walker, another American novelist, prompted a resurgence in Hurston’s writing taking her from obscurity to topping the list of American’s greatest authors. Although Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Alabama, that state did not hold any particular special place in her heart. That place was reserved for Eatonville, Florida the town her family moved to when she was just a toddler. As America’s first incorporated all-black town, Eatonville’s background is probably just as remarkable as Hurston’s own background. With its own city government, post office, and churches, she grew up observing blacks in position of influence and power and didn’t feel the racial tensions that had a chokehold on the rest of the nation. At least not until her after her mother’s death when her father remarried a woman whom clashed with Zora’s fiery personality. After a particularly heated confrontations that ended in Zora almost killing her stepmom, she dropped out of school and left home surviving only by working menial jobs. Finally at the “old” age of twenty-six, she decided to turn her life around and enroll in school – but without a high school education or any money, she couldn’t attend a college and so she devised a plan… she lied about her age, saying she was only sixteen years old, in order to qualify for free public schooling. Once she lost those ten years on paper, she never found them again! That free public education paved her way to eventually continue on in college with the help of a scholarship. During her time at Howard University, she published her first story in the school’s newspaper. With a little success under her belt, she moved to Harlem and befriended some of the up-and-coming greats such as Langston Hughes. Although she found her first literary success in New York, Florida lured her back with its rich culture history, so she returned to collect and eventually publish African-American folktales. Maybe these folktales ignited a desire in her to capture her own memories of her beloved Eatonville, but regardless of the reason, in the mid-1930s she wrote and published Their Eyes were Watching God, which primarily takes places in that city. Although her writing included more than just this novel (Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays), Their Eyes were Watching God holds a special place in my heart – but it didn’t always. A friend touted how much she enjoyed reading this novel, so I picked up a copy as a pleasure read. Honestly, I really struggled with the phonically-spelled Southern dialogue and didn’t appreciate the plot and character development because of that challenge. As I finally read the last page, I swore I’d never pick it up again. But then fate intervened: our school district decided to adopt this novel as part of our new American Literature curriculum, which left me wondering how these reluctant readers in my class would overcome the same writing style challenge I had endured? So with this question in mind, I re-read the book and meticulously documented words she used in the dialogue that did not look like the words we associated with them (e.g.: fiah = fire, skeer = scare, kivah = cover) and created an activity that helped students match the phonically spelled words with an accent. With this as our guide, we were able to overcome the language challenge and experienced Hurston’s enchanting story-telling and character development. And now, not only has it has become one of my all-time favorite novels because of the personal satisfaction of reading her writing style, but more importantly because of the determination the main character, Janie Crawford, musters to overcome family and societal expectations in order to define her own identity and her own version of the American Dream, which result in gut-wrenching decisions. Now if you too would like to embark on her journey, I’d highly recommend reading her award-winning novel which you can find online for free at http://www.cnusd.k12.ca.us/cms/lib/CA01001152/Centricity/domain/5532/language%20 arts%203a/Their%20Eyes.pdf or of course for purchase at Amazon or your local brick and mortar bookstore. But before you tackle the novel, I’d also recommend beginning with one of her many short stories, such as “Sweat” to help ease you into her writing style. And if you’re tired of the cold temps at home, you can head down to Fort Pierce, Florida, where Zora Neale Hurston spent the last years of her life, to celebrate her life and legacy at the ZORA! Festival the city holds every year in January which includes guest speakers, Eatonville exhibits, and culminates -if you visit the town’s website (http://www.cityoffortpierce.com/386/Zora-Neale-Hurston-Dust-Tracks-Heritage) to download the self-guided map - in a Zora Neale Hurston “Dust Tracks Heritage Trail” which points out Zora themed attractions in the city including her gravesite which thanks to Alice Walker includes a headstone that reads "Zora Neale Hurston – A Genius of the South – 1901-1960 – Novelist – Folklorist – Anthropologist." Did you notice that even if death, she never claimed those ten lost years of her real birth date? This wraps up our first week of celebrating authors born during the first week of the New Year. Have you already read one or more of them? Please share your experiences with these authors. And if you like these authors, you may also like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic, and/or Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Unfamiliar with all of this week’s authors? Did one pique your interest? Maybe you’ll add one of these authors to your reading bucket list too. I look forward to hearing from you! In addition to the sites embedded in the article, I also used the following sites for background information of these authors: www.biography.com www.zoranealehurston.com www.tolkiensociety.org Type in the phrase “books about JFK assassination” into Google and within .71 seconds it returns a list of 1.9+ MILLION results. Login to The Kennedy Catalog at http://kennedy-books-videos.blogspot.com which lists books about his assassination in alphabetical order and it lists fifty-nine books just under “A”! Although John F. Kennedy himself may have “only” written three books (Why England Slept (1940), Profiles in Courage (1957), and A Nation of Immigrants (1958) – all before he became president) his life, or more accurately and sadly, his death has inspired thousands of people to put pen to paper and write books about potential conspiracy theories. And the list will undoubtedly continue to grow now that the government has released another batch of once-classified documents. Why tell you this? Just prior to the release of these documents, which coincidently coincides with JFK’s centennial celebration, I had just returned from a trip to Dallas, TX where I toured the infamous Sixth Floor Museum of the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza – the place where supposedly Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. And although the museum itself hosts a plethora of information about the Kennedy’s in general, the social and political atmosphere of the time, and a timeline down to the minute detail of events on November 22, 1963, really one cannot help but take in the reverence of the entire block before even stepping into the museum – even amongst the derelict that seem to overrun the entire downtown area. Standing on the corner of Houston Street and Elm Street you can’t help but peer up at the sixth story window that has a small box in the corner of it to make it easily identifiable as “the” window. And peering left across the street you see the “grassy knoll” – which in person appears much smaller. How can such a postage-stamp sized area possibly be associated with the assassination of an American president?! In the middle of Elm Street three large green Xs mark the locations of shots fired at John F. Kennedy’s motorcade as he rode that last 100 yards of his 10-mile route between the Lovefield airport and the Dallas Business and Trade Mart. Three green Xs that forever changed the course of American history. After peering at the window, standing on the grassy knoll, and kneeling beside the fatal X, it strikes me (almost) speechless that the American public still does not know all the answers surrounding the who and why of this tragic event some 50+ years later. And even though our government has just released more documents and President Trump has promised to release all the documents within the next six months, we may never piece together all the loose puzzle pieces to make sense of it. But we will undoubtedly continue to try. But why? After so many years, why do we still care? We care because wanting and needing answers to the unknown is part of our human nature. So anytime a tragedy strikes, (e.g.: the assassination of a president, a terrorist attack, the sinking of a passenger cruise ship, the massacre of innocent concert-goers) we as humans want answers. We want answers to feel safe. We want to know how to prevent the unthinkable from happening again. But unfortunately, although we may initiate new procedures and new safe guards, nothing is 100% fail-safe. And that scares us even more. So while thousands may seek refuge behind conspiracy theories which focus on mistrust and blame, I hope that going forward we instead seek solace by focusing on understanding and empathy by helping each other gain our footing after tragedy strikes with a helping hand and a supportive shoulder… and that is what we can do for our country.
From the looks of it, 2017 will go down in history as producing the most high-category hurricanes in one season. With still two and a half months to go, we’ve already seen the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, and before residents of the afflicted areas could even come up out of the water for a bit of fresh air, Hurricane Irma quickly followed suite with Hurricane Maria on its tail.
In between these devastating storms, we’ve all seen the pictures of total loss, the pictures of homes and lives in ruin and wonder how will they recover? I personally have never experienced such a loss, but I can only imagine that they persevere through these hardships with determination, goodwill, love, and a little common sense. Determination because they have no choice really. Life will continue and so must they, and so they wake each morning and place one foot in front of the other, and accomplish what they can to return their lives to a sense of normalcy. They cannot do this alone however; and so they rely on the goodwill of others. Why suffer alone? If you need the equipment, so too does your neighbor. Why not share? You have an abundance of one item but lack another; others have the opposite. Why not trade? This giving and receiving makes us human. It portrays our strength as a community. And that community involves love. Love of an area, love of a house, or love of the memories keep us rooted to that location. It keeps us coming back after tragedy strikes; otherwise people would look at that devastation and move, determined to never experience it again. But of course, one cannot persevere without a little dose of common sense too. Before the storms even hit, people used their common sense and prepared. Some boarded up, packed up, and left with fingers crossed. Others boarded up, stocked up, and stayed with fingers crossed. But all knew they had to take measures for their own safety. We also see this common sense in the rebuilding of the community after the devastation. When a chance for improvement unfolds, we grasp it. We build with stronger material and better barriers in hopes of a better outcome should a storm strike again. So with these four character traits in mind, as I scour news reports I came across one from the Washington Post declaring “Six-toed Cats Survive Irma, Still Have Nine Lives,” that I suddenly remembered those polydactyl friendly felines that reside at the Ernest Hemingway House in Key West, Florida. A few years ago, I ventured down there to Key West on vacation (and I say ventured because it involved a ride-share with a few hitchhiking cockroaches in the car that enjoyed scurrying across the dashboard before diving into the vents – needless to say I spent the entire commute trying to drive while holding my pant-legs clinched around my ankles so the little devils couldn’t crawl up my pants. I thought the drive would never end!). Once I shook off the cockroach induced heebie-jeebies, I set about touring the southernmost point of the continental United States and discovered the beautiful two-storied house with a walk-around upper-level veranda and summery yellow window shutters at 907 Whitehead Street. This was Ernest Hemingway’s beloved house he shared with wife number two for roughly the entire 1930’s decade. This house marvels me not just because Ernest Hemingway penned seven note-worthy short stories, six award-winning novels and one very cynical poem titled “Advice to My Sons” while living here, but the actual architecture itself has remained standing after almost THIRTY hurricanes since the house’s construction in 1851! In the mid-1800s as a marine architect and salvage wrecker, Asa Tift knew the cataclysmic effect of a whirling sea crashing into land, and so as builder of this house, he chose the highest elevation – still only 16 feet above sea level, but then excavated fourteen feet of limestone from beneath the house’s location to build the foundational walls of the house. With a five-foot backfill, this nine-foot deep basement literally anchors this house to the ground. It may appear that he used individual stones for the walls, but the builders actually carved lines into the solid limestone to give it this appearance. In addition to this apparently ever-lasting formula which withstood the test of four major storms in Tift’s lifetime alone, today tourist can still see another reminder of his influence on the home in the marine vessel-like planter leading up to the front steps of the house. He built it as a reminder of his days supervising the construction of the ironclad warships he designed for America’s Civil War. Tift lived out the remainder of his days in this house, and died in 1889. Fortunately, for Hemingway at least, the house fell into disarray after Tift’s death, and upon visiting the area for the first time Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline voiced an interest in the house. Pauline’s uncle purchased the house at a tax auction for $8,000 and gifted it to the couple as a belated wedding present. At the equivalency of $112,000 today - that was one expensive wedding gift! Stepping up to the house, and looking at that beautiful open veranda, images of southern movies crossed my mind. I wanted to sit there on that veranda with the butter-colored shutters bookending each large window and practice a lady’s Southern drawl while fanning myself from the region’s oppressive humidity - but I didn’t; instead I continued towards the old carriage house that Hemingway transformed into his writing alcove. Painted in a soft blue hue, lined with over-flowing bookcases, and windows thrown open to invite a small breeze, this room obviously provided Hemingway with a respite from his partying life. I could easily imagine Hemingway sitting at the small non-distinct wooden table off the center of the room pecking away at the keys on his vintage typewriter developing his famous short stories “The Snows of Kilimenjaro” (1936) and “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1936). And as I observed the taxidermic deer, antelope, and fish mounted on the walls of this room, a sense of envy washed over me, for they witnessed Hemingway in his element. Did these animals’ stares encourage his writing or add to the pressure of creating another American-writing masterpiece? I hope that they reminded him of his adventures. What else reminded him of his travels? To find out, I ventured to the main house. When I entered through the front doors, I could immediately tell that Ernest and Pauline had added their own flair to the house with furniture and decorations from their European travel, including the custom-made electric Murano glass chandelier they shipped in from Venice, Italy. The upstairs bathroom with running water impressed me even more, considering the area did not have running water piped into until 1944. So in order to accomplish this tall feat, Hemingway had two cisterns installed to collect rain water: one outside on the grounds and one on the roof of the house. The one on the roof directly fed the upstairs bathroom. I’m sure they became very water conscious if more than a few days passed without rain! After jumping the running-water hurdle, Hemingway decided to task construction workers with another hurdle … build a swimming pool – a first for the area. And then left Pauline in charge while he left on assignment to cover the Spanish Civil War as a correspondent. When he returned, he received the $20,000 bill – which has the same buying power as $335,000 today! Supposedly, upset at the exorbitant cost, he threw a penny down on the unfinished patio and yelled, “Pauline, you’ve spent all but my last penny, so you might as well have that!” That penny remains there encased in cement but visible for tourists like me to see and chuckle at as the guide told the story. So then I wondered, if they relied on rain water for their bathing and cooking necessities, where did they get the water for a swimming pool? During construction, the workers installed a water pump to retrieve salt water from below which took three days to fill the pool. Unfortunately, this water only lasted a few days in the warmer weather before algae overtook it, and they would have to drain the pool, scrub it, and then restart this tedious cycle. I enjoy swimming, but with the ocean only a few blocks away, why go through all that trouble for a swimming pool? Although Pauline and Hemingway enjoyed their pool, he now had to go a few blocks away to throw a few punches in his boxing ring that he had removed from his property in order to make room for the pool. But Hemingway often visited the local stomping grounds anyways to drink and visit with friends Charles Thompson, Joe Russel, and Eddie Saunders, whom the locals nicknamed “The Mob.” Rumor has it that after drinking at Sloppy Joe’s for years, he joked with friend and owner Joe Russell that he deserved a piece of the property after it went through renovations. Joe agreed… and gave him a urinal. Imagine carrying that home to your wife! I don’t know how Pauline initially felt, but the urinal ended up outside… refinished and tiled as a water cistern for the cats, which seemed to suite them fine since cats around the world still to this day drink water from toilets. And the urinal remains in the small courtyard beside the house. Sitting in the patio seat beside the urinal, I really had to use my imagination to envision it in its prior glory; it simply looked like a very large vase that they turned into a small fountain with water running over its smooth beautifully marbled sides. And sure enough, as I stood there, a mellow-tempered grey cat swaggered up to take its fair licks of the refreshing water during the humid afternoon. Reminiscing about these cats, reminds me of those four survival characteristics that people have when faced with life’s devastating challenges because these cats exhibit the same survival qualities when faced with a natural disaster like a hurricane bearing down on their home. They must have determination. These six-toed felines that scamper about the property today descend from Hemingway’s original kitty, Snow White, which he received as a good luck gift from sea captain Stanley Dexter. In order to persevere through the decades, each descendant of Snow White had to have determination to prosper and multiply, which they did for now they litter the area. They have also received an abundance of goodwill and love. Even after Hemingway’s death and the property fell out of his descendants’ hands into the hands of local jewelry store owner Bernice Dixon for the whopping price of $80,000 at a silent auction, through the museum funding, she has made sure that the cats receive superb care including food, veterinary care, and shelter, which from what I could tell meant anywhere in the house they felt like snoozing including Hemingway’s bed, anywhere on the property and even a cool two-storied cat house that looked just like the main house. As you can imagine, these cats love their home; and people love these cats. The museum has received thousands of inquiries into the cats’ well-being as each hurricane wreaks havoc in the Keys. And they are safe but not because the caretakers herd them to safety during each storm (although they would if they had to – but they don’t). The cats have an abundance of common sense. When the winds pick up and debris starts to fly, the cats quickly make their way back to the main house where the caretakers remain on staff to provide food and lots of cuddles while they all ride out each storm. So along with thousands of others, I released a sigh of relief that the kitties remain safe and hope that in the future they continue to rely on these four survival characteristics for their safety because I think everyone – literary lovers, architecture lovers, and yes animal lovers – should visit this home that proves that all three (literature, architecture, and cats) can withstand the test of time, including a few hurricanes.
Watching the news is disheartening: we have the war on crime, the war on terror, the war on poverty, the war on drugs… Too many wars! With so many wars happening all at once, it’s easy to bury my head in the sand or under a pillow and give in to the idea that “I’m just one person; what can I possibly do to make a difference? What impact can little ol’ me have?”
Maybe we must be born into greatness. But several of the “greats” in the world have evolved from nothing, so there must be more to it. Maybe we must face trials. There may be some validity in that statement. But how intimately must we “face” these trials? Does watching it on the news count? Does it count if it happens to someone we know? And what kind of “trial” must we face? Most would say that a divorce counts as a trial, but unfortunately, almost everyone has faced a divorce – either themselves or through someone they know and yet certainly not everyone goes on to make a difference in society. So the trial must be somewhat unique, but then how many people must the trial affect? A few hundred – like in the unexpected wrongful death of well-loved church member? A few thousand – like the all-too-common school shootings? A few million – like the hunger associated with third-world countries? One idea seems certain; although our experiences in life may lead us to greatness, only a cataclysmic event has the ability to push us to act out our potential – and what constitutes a cataclysmic event is subjective. And how people react to our actions determines whether or not society will remember us. So with this in mind, the basic requirements for making a difference and reaching the level of greatness include 1) having a voice, 2) living in the appropriate time period, 3) witnessing a trial, 4) enduring a loss, 5) reaching a tipping point, and 6) having a receptive audience. I thought of all this during my recent visit to Cincinnati, Ohio to tour the Harriet Beecher-Stowe House. Her life exemplified these requirements and as a result, as President Lincoln said, “[was] the little lady that started a war.” Her writing made a difference; she made a difference. She reached the level of greatness. Harriet Beecher Stowe was not born great but life lead her to greatness and certain events pushed her to reach her potential and write Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. For those of you who haven’t read this classic there is still time - it’s not too late to read it. I read it as an adult and it still caught me in its grip frantically turning pages to discover what would happen to the gentle-souled Tom, to little Eva, to rambunctious Topsy, to courageous George and Eliza, to cruel hearted Legree. I cried with these characters over their disappointments, challenges, and the cruelty they encountered; and I smiled when they loved, forgave, and triumphed as Harriet Beecher Stowe desperately portrays the harsh conditions of slavery in America’s South. It catapulted Southerners to erroneously defend their “traditions” and enraged Northerners into action. Out of everyone in America, why Harriet Beecher Stowe? Why this 40 year-old woman? What lead her to take action and write? A path existed and it wasn’t a short one. Harriet Beecher Stowe had a voice. Harriet’s family provided the foundation for her first step on her path to greatness. As a sought-after Calvinist preacher, her father taught, and eventually became president, at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, OH. And although her intensely religious mother would have also helped lay that foundation of strong morals, she passed away when Harriet was only five years old. Fortunately, Harriet’s sister Catharine Beecher, an adamant proponent for female education and herself a teacher, picked up the reins and educated Harriet in math, Latin, and philosophy – topics well beyond the typical education for girls at the time. Because of her father’s reputation, her sister’s well-known advocacy for higher education for females, and Harriet’s own talent for absorbing knowledge, when Harriet spoke, people listened. Harriet also lived in a tumultuous time period when the average member of society thought the education of women a baseless expense. Fortunately, upon moving to the two-story white house on top of the hill at 2950 Gilbert Avenue in Cincinnati with her father, he allowed the literary club of elite intellectuals called the Semi-Colon Club to meet in his study and encouraged Harriet to participate in their discussions. And as my feet step onto the once carpeted floors of this same study over 180 years later and hear the creak of the now bare wood floors, it does not take too much imagination to picture Harriet pulling a book from her father’s wooden roll-top book cabinet and then sitting on the richly upholstered divan nearby ready to listen with an open mind and to contribute to the discussion her own thoughts on the text or even share with the group her own budding writing samples. One particular member of the group, the seminary professor Calvin Stowe, noticed Harriet’s mindfulness and began to court her. And as I slowly ascend the stairs to the private chambers, I can imagine the young Harriet blushing as she looked into the mirror contemplating this prospect of marriage. And it pleased her. Unlike so many husbands of the era, Calvin encouraged her to share her knowledge and she continued to teach. During her teaching career, Harriet crossed the state’s border into Kentucky to visit an ill student at which time she witnessed a slave auction. It was one thing to know that the South auctioned off African American men but seeing mothers and their children ripped apart only a few feet away devastated her. She couldn’t imagine their suffering, and she quickly returned to her home in Cincinnati and tried to put the event out of mind while she planned her wedding to Calvin Stowe. Historians say that the wedding most likely took place in the small parlor adorned with the warmth of the existing white mantled fireplace. Again, as I walk into this same parlor, I can only too easily imagine Harriet in her full wedding gown standing beside her bridegroom with the fire blazing in the hearth behind them as a room full of loved ones witnessed their vows to “have and behold…until death do [them] part.” She had no idea that events in the near future would change her life’s path and push her one step closer to greatness. Although Harriet and her husband lived in another house just down the street, because Calvin busied himself with seminary duties, she continued to spend a lot of time at her father’s house and continued to join in the Semi-Colon Club’s discussions. During one of these discussion in April 1836 the events taking place outside reminded her that she lived in a city caught at the edge of a divided nation, with slave-state borders just a few miles away. Hearing the chaos on the streets and witnessing the aftermath, Harriet along with other members of the Semi-Colon Club sympathized with African Americans during the Riots of 1834 when angry Irish mobsters destroyed their houses and businesses because of the increasing job competition threat. Seeing the destruction in the city and the devastation on the afflicted faces reminded her about the devastation she witnessed at the slave auction years before. Disgust in humanity continued to build, and so she took her first step towards action by housing escaped slaves and vowed to never stand on the sidelines again. And Calvin and Harriet didn’t have time to stand on the sidelines. They continued a routine for quite some time of having children approximately every two years (for an astounding seven: Harriet & Eliza (1836), Henry (1838), Fredrick (1840), Georgiana (1843), Samuel (1848), and Charles (1850)) and helping fugitive slaves. As I concluded the tour of the inside of her father’s home, I ventured back upstairs to her girlhood bedroom and stood in awe. Since Calvin often traveled, this is the type of four wooden posts bed where Harriet supposedly delivered many of her children. Our modern mattresses did not exist; instead the firmness of the bed depended on the tightness of the woven ropes, and the softness depended on the amount of down bedding layered on top of those ropes. Of course during the winter months she probably welcomed the extra layers, but in the midst of the dreaded humidity of the summer months, I cannot even imagine wanting one layer of bedding. And if she delivered her children here, this bedroom also most likely became her place of grief and solitude, for it is here that she tried to nurse her ailing eighteen month old son Samuel back to health but Cholera’s death grip proved too strong and he died in her arms. In the depths of her depression, she penned, “Having experienced losing someone so close to me I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions. You will always be in my heart Samuel Charles Stowe.” Obviously the horrific slave auction she witnessed more than sixteen years ago had a lasting effect, but the death of her own son personalized that loss only a mother can feel and Harriet once again vowed to take action, but this time through her voice as a mother, an abolitionist, and finally as an author. At the age of forty, she sat down and penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And in 1851 people felt the power of her words. And almost 170 years later, because of her experiences, because of her loss, we – modern day American’s – still feel the power of her words reaching us from the pages of her legacy. So most likely society won’t remember me as one of the “greats.” And maybe I should be thankful for this. Although I have experienced several of the requirements that lead to greatness -my parents instilled in me a strong moral compass, I certainly live in a time period ripe with strife, I have witnessed and even experienced a few minor trials, and I have a voice – I count my blessings that I have not endured a tragic loss and therefore accept my level of non-greatness. But as I stand on the steps of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and look out across the city below, I can’t help but wonder that if everyone relied on good morals and a kind heart, how the world would change by the absence of negativity and wrong-doings. My daughter spends many weeks during her summer salmon fishing on Alaska’s Bristol Bay tides. I enjoy hearing about the sights she sees while working: foxes living under her box-car cabin, cubs playing on the arctic tundra, seals frolicking in the water trying to steal her hard earned catch, even bloated whales laying in the sand. When she tells me this I immediately think about the one author that personally experienced the images I associated with Alaska - Jack London, albeit his adventures took him deep into Canada’s Yukon Territory. As a teenager I fell in love with Call of the Wild and White Fang, both stories that take place in the Yukon Territory. Before my daughter left that first summer, I read his realistic and prophetic short story “To Build a Fire” and it terrified me… I had visions of my daughter’s dry suite ripping, her clothes soaking in salt water, and then her freezing to death. How would she survive? Jack London left the Yukon Territory scarred for life: the loss of his four front teeth from scurvy, chronic pains that gnawed at his leg muscles, and a permanently marked face from frost bite. Just envision the image I had of what my daughter would look like when she returned home! But alas, she calmed my nerves with the reality of her circumstances which included camp-cooked meals, warm and protected sleeping quarters, and close to a thousand miles west of the Yukon Territory versus that of London’s dire circumstances. Although I would love to visit Alaska by way of the Yukon Territory (traveling there tops my bucket list) and honor Jack London’s writing legacy, there is an alternative to frostbite…
Situated along the waterfront in the crowded Port of Oakland, California still stands Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, built in 1883 from the timbers of a whaling ship. It is within these walls that a studious ten-year old Jack London sat at the tables and read, that as an eager young man he sipped his last John Barleycorn (his moniker for alcohol) before boarding his sloop to pirate oysters and gulped his first spirit after returning to maintain the manly camaraderie with the salty bar patrons, that as an envious adventurer he met and listened to Alexander McClean’s whaling stories, and that as the dedicated writer he penned notes for his upcoming works of art – including his novel Sea Wolf – a psychological adventure at sea, which Jack took inspiration from McClean to create the hellish and amoral main character Wolf Larson. With this much history with the old pub, it is no wonder it is even now known as Jack London’s Rendezvous. After enjoying your choice of John Barleycorn within these rustic walls that haven’t changed in over 100 years, step outside to absorb the other sites honoring London. On the square as if guarding this historic pub, stands a statue of a grey wolf which could represent Buck from Call of the Wild or White Fang from his namesake novel. Catch him in the right light and you’d swear he has caught the scent of a delicious meal. He has left a trail of his paw-prints for you to find your way to the recreated cabin that London occupied while living in the Yukon Territory. By peering into the window you can imagine London heating his water for meals on the crude stove, sitting at the basic wooden table determining his actions for the day, or snuggling beneath the furs on the rudimentary bed trying to stay warm as the Yukon wind whispered through the cracks between the cabin’s log walls. Continue to follow the paw-prints and they’ll bring you to Jack London himself… at least a bronze statue of him. Take a moment to observe him and you’ll think that the artist has caught him in the act of begging you to come hither, as if saying “follow me and I’ll lead you on an adventure you’ll never forget.” I did follow him; I followed him as a teenager by reading Buck and White Fang’s journeys, I followed him as an adult when I read Sea Wolf, and I plan to continue to follow him because he created unforgettable adventures about discovery – discovery about yourself and nature. So when the sounds of the city become overbearing, pick up a London novel and he’ll lead you on an adventure over land or sea so that you too can discover your call of the wild. While exploring the Denver area of Colorado, I’d like to say that I came across this interesting museum, but one can’t simply “come across” this site. You have to drive miles on this winding road consistently increasing in altitude leading to Lookout Mountain – and it’s appropriately named too. Views in one direction overlook the Denver valley and views in the other direction span across beautiful snow-covered Rocky Mountains. And I’m sure that hundreds of mountaintop views exist throughout this magnificent part of our country, but why does this one mountaintop have a museum housed there? It is the burial site of “Buffalo Bill.” Now I’m not referencing Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs who earned his nickname from skinning his victims like one would a buffalo hide; although I’m sure his type of museum exist somewhere in the world, looking at serial killer memorabilia does not hold any particular interest for me. No, I’m talking about the symbol of the American West – William F. Cody. After witnessing these same breath-taking views himself, he told his wife to bury him there. And amidst much controversy, she did.
But before visiting his gravesite, to truly appreciate his legacy, I stepped into the museum that honors his accomplishments. William Cody, who after supplying the Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat in 1867 became known as “Buffalo Bill,” lived a life donning many figurative hats in addition to the broad-brimmed Stetson he often wore. At the age of eleven he took a job as a “boy extra” with a freight carrier delivering messages on horseback up and down the track. At fourteen he started riding for a Pony Express affiliate. At the age of seventeen, he enlisted as a Private in the Union Army. The army kept him busy scouting for Indians, fighting several battles and as a hunting guide for worldly dignitaries. Seeing Cody’s talent with a gun, author Ned Buntline wrote a dime novel about “Buffalo Bill” which was then converted into a theatrical production. Later Buntline convinced twenty-six year old Cody to star in this production in Chicago. Audiences immediately loved Buffalo Bill, and Buffalo Bill enjoyed the limelight. In the mid-1880s Buffalo Bill created his own “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” and some version of this show (usually growing more and more extravagant) continued across the United States and even Europe until 1913. Our great-grandparents probably donned Buffalo Bill’s persona (and young girls donned his fellow star Annie Oakley’s persona) and pretended to “shoot ‘em up” and showcase their rifle-handling abilities. After all, this is what made Cody famous. So why am I interested in him for The Literary Hive? He was also a writer! Yep, during his mid-thirties through his early forties, Buffalo Bill, desiring to reach a broader demographic to pull in larger crowds for shows, wrote dime novel stories about the Great American West. And although the literacy rate had increased around this time, the working class didn’t have time to leisurely read long novels. They enjoyed these quick reads which did what Buffalo Bill desired and piqued their interest so that when his show came to town, he performed to sold-out audiences. And since the stories in dime novels were often serialized and repeated, he maintained their interests so that he’d have repeat audience members when his show returned. Great marketing on his part. So as I walk through the museum, founded by his foster son and fellow star, Johnny Baker, I am in awe of the elaborate western costumes he worn and the well-worn leather saddle he rode in during performances, his favorite rifle a Springfield Model 1866 which he called Lucretia Borgia, the hundreds of cities where he toured with his show, the diversity of the performers which included Native Americans and women. This one man influenced every American president from Grant to Wilson when they consulted him on matters of the American West. This one man not only inspired great Americans such as writer Mark Twain, artist Frederic Remington, and composer Antonin Dvorak, but also other world-renowned greats such as Italian librettist Giacomo Puccini and Irish author Bram Stoker. Imagine these without the influence of Buffalo Bill. And it is with this new appreciation that I step up to his gravesite and give this legend a moment of silence that he deserves. For me, it’s not because of his awesome gunmanship, but for his desire and ability to bring the American West alive through literature and entertainment for everyone. Although it may be difficult if not impossible to find copies of Buffalo Bill’s dime novel stories online because libraries and museums house most of them (like the copy of “Death Trailer, The Chief of Scouts or Life and Love in the Frontier Fort” (1878) which his museum proudly displays), Northern Illinois University is addressing this challenge by constantly uploading digital images of these rare literary treats. Lose yourself in the Great American West with one or two epochal dime novel stories at http://dimenovels.lib.niu.edu. Buffalo Bill’s Dime Novel Stories: Death Trailer, The Chief of Scouts or Life and Love in a Frontier Fort (1878) Gold Bullet Sport or the Knights of the Overland (1879) The Pilgrim Sharp or the Soldier’s Sweetheart (1883) Texas Jack, The Prairie Rattler or the Queen of the Wild Riders (1883) Wild Bill, The Whirlwind of the West (1884) The One-Armed Pard or Red Retribution in Borderland (1886) The Wizard Brothers or White Beaver’s Trail (1886) White Beaver, The Exile of the Platte or A wrong Man’s Red Trail (1886) Red Renard the Indian Detective or the Gold Buzzards of Colorado (1886) The Dead Shot Nine or My Pards of the Plains (1890) The Gold King or Montebello the Magnificent (1891) Long before our society’s obsession with The Go Go’s “You’ve Got the Beat” or Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” a group of American writers started the literary movement after World War II known as The Beat Generation. Weary of the proliferating materialism after WWII and desiring to shed the prudent behaviors of their parents’ generation and the conformist ideals of the McCarthy Era, The Beat Generation pushed the limits of society’s standards by openly depicting experimentation with drugs, sexual exploration, and raw human conditions. So in a city known for pushing the standards, it is no surprise that we can find remnants of three well-known authors of The Beat Generation - Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady - scattered across the streets of Denver, Colorado.
I decided to begin my journey into The Beat Generation’s existence within the streets of downtown Denver at a bookstore located in the belly of the Denver Dry Goods Company building where Jack Kerouac, King of the Beat Generation, signed copies of On the Road, the novel that lead to his notoriety. Although nowadays this downtown area is the heart of the famous 16th Street Mall – a compilation of trendy stores and restaurants - as I approached, excitement energized my steps as I closed in on the still-standing old brick building. Although the occupants of the top floors of the building remained a mystery, the city had converted the street level offices into some of these trendy shops and eateries. That’s okay I thought; the bookstore was in the basement. One of the doors led to a Visitors’ Information desk. I walked in and asked the older gentleman for directions to get to the basement bookstore. He stared at me in bewilderment. He declared that he’d worked there since the 1960s and never knew of a bookstore in the basement. Disappointed I started to walk away, but he called out that if I wanted a bookstore I could visit the famous Tattered Cover bookstore just down the street towards the end of the mall. Feeling deflated since my first stop had ended in failure, I decided that maybe I should really work backwards, start by buying one of Kerouac’s books at this modern day bookstore and then feeling revitalized continue my search. So I stepped into the overheated space crammed with books in every direction and asked the reference clerk for assistance. She too looked at me in bewilderment but eventually she unenthusiastically pointed me in the general direction of the fiction shelves. I was on my own. Scanning the ABC’s in my mind, I searched for books with authors starting with “K. Small section. An even smaller section for the Jack Kerouac that I had so enthusiastically started my day researching. Crammed in with the other “K” authors stood three of his books - none proudly displayed nor in special print and all way over-priced. For a second the temptation to simply order his book on Amazon for a fraction of the price crossed my mind, but I decided that purchasing it from this Denver icon had a price tag of sentimentality with it so I plucked an unadorned copy of On the Road from the shelves, paid the exorbitant price and rushed out the door to inhale a deep lungful of blessedly fresh and cool air. While on the shuttle back to my car, I thumbed through the pages of his text. Yep, his writing really existed. I even took a quick whiff of the pages (yes the heavily tattooed man sitting across from me rocking out to his music raised his brows – as if he should judge!). With a bit of success under my belt, I referenced my list of “Beat Generation Stops” and spied one that met my two new requirements: 1) the city had not demolished or built over it – after all I had already stood on a sidewalk between 21st Street and Larimer Street where Kerouac used to socialize with the city’s homeless on skid row, and stood in front of the building on the corner of 27th Street and Welton Street where Kerouac used to listen to the expressive and soulful jazz music. I didn’t want to simply stand on a sidewalk where Kerouac had once stood, which led me to my second requirement for my next Beat Generation Stop – it had to inspire one of the Beat Generation writers. With this in mind, I drove to 980 Grant Street and illegally paralleled park in front of a tall dilapidated brick building called the Colburn Hotel. I didn’t go in. I assumed that if security existed we’d return to the looks of bewilderment I had encountered earlier. So, not wanting to regress, I sat in my rental car staring up at the window on the third floor. It was here that Allen Ginsberg, one of the original core members of The Beat Generation that had formed back at Columbia University, came to visit Neal Cassady for the summer. Neal Cassady became a member of the Beat Generation during a visit to Columbia, and although he asked Jack Kerouac to teach him to write because he wanted to escape the confines of the poverty-stricken streets of Denver where he had grown up, he became more renowned as Kerouac’s muse, for several of Kerouac’s characters in his books truly represent Cassady. While visiting Cassady and feeling the pressures of life, Ginsberg wrote the poem “Denver Doldrums,” which every person who has ever experienced a period of poverty and bad luck can relate to its realistic portrayal of poverty and its audacity to question our perseverance through life’s challenges. It is also here, gazing out that third floor window (the same one that I too now gazed at) at construction taking place across the way, that Ginsberg wrote his most mature and sexually charged poem “The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour.” Although written in prose, or maybe because of its prose, after reading the poem, one can sense his longing in his attention to the details of the bricklayer. It’s quite humbling to understand that such a base location can be the inspiration for such works of art. Feeling strangely at peace, a little hungry, and anxious that I would get a ticket because of my parking job, I drove to my last Beat Generation destination for the day - 2376 15th Street. Nestled on the corner right behind the biggest R.E.I. store I’ve ever seen, stands the longest operating saloon in Denver, “My Brother’s Bar,” in an old brick building with wooden shutters engraved with a golden letter B (which instantly brought forth a smile as I thought how that initial connected me to these writers on some deeper mysterious level). I sat down at the bar where a young slightly over-friendly bartender took my order (a paper-wrapped burger dripping with jalapeno cream cheese sauce and all the trimmings nestled in a convenient compartmentalized tray). As I sat and listened to this young girl spill out the woes of her non-existent love life (the boy she loves apparently only wanted to be friends- ouch), and the regulars gently tease her, I could even feel the sense of community polished in the deep grains of the wood bar, and again I felt that overwhelming presence of peace. This was the bar Kerouac and Cassady had frequented back in their day. I could imagine each one sitting at this bar listening to the woes from a not-so-different bartender yet feeling like he belonged. Willing to release their own woes to the strangers, yet non-strangers. And this bar continued to stand in this downtown community and embrace the notoriety of their beloved group of authors. The bartender didn’t look at me in bewilderment when I asked about the letter that was supposedly hanging on a wall somewhere from Neal Cassady while he was in jail to Jack appealing to him to pay his bar bill. She handed me a souvenir copy of the letter and then simply pointed to the back corner. As I maneuvered through the warm dining room and around the other patrons enjoying their lunch, reality hit. Yes the letter was there, hanging on the wall… but crammed between the restrooms. Surely this was not where he would have wanted to be remembered. Surely he deserved better wall placement. Maybe front and center over the bar. Maybe an entire wall in the main dining room, or even in the second dining room. But between the crappers? Really? I left with an overwhelming sense of disappointment – and a full tummy. As far as I could tell, Denver could make a lot of improvements in honouring this cluster of writers known as The Beat Generation, especially since their fight for freedom of speech in literature has so greatly influenced today’s writers. Several websites exist with different “Beat Stops” to check out, and each time I return, I’ll visit a few more, but I could not find one site that compiled them all… That will be my new goal each time I visit Denver… create a comprehensive “Beat Stop Treasure Hunt”! Wishfully thinking, maybe the city will even create a red line to follow around the city like Boston did for their tourists and they can wear headphones that blasts “We’ve Got the Beat” and “Beat It” as they walk between stops! Let the fun begin! This is my first official post on “Bee’s Tales at the Literary Hive.” To begin my adventures I headed to Denver, Colorado. Why Denver? My husband’s work required his presence here so I tagged along, and I have to get my feet wet somewhere, and Denver welcomes everyone! Now people know Denver for many attractions – the great outdoors, football, universities, breweries, marijuana – but not many know about its literary significance. Back in the day, the Beat authors called Denver home. And nowadays, Clive Cussler also calls this area home. But I’ll come back to these famous literary experts next time. I wanted to first pay homage to someone who lived in this area long ago… during the late 1800 and early 1900s. She was not a literary powerhouse; she never wrote a novel nor published a poem, but she fought for women’s rights, for worker’s rights. She had a passion for travel and adventure. This woman is Margaret Brown. Most of us know her as the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” because she survived the Titanic tragedy, but really her prior life experiences drove her to survive that experience. So it is with this thought that I sat on the wooden porch swing waiting for my tour of her historic home in what is now downtown Denver. As the tour began, the grandeur of her new wealth overwhelmed me as I stepped into her foyer. The walls are lined with gold hued embossed paper, a lit chandelier hangs above, a stylish radio plays, and statues from faraway places greet you. Back in the day, if Margaret or her husband, J.J. Brown, accepted your arrival at their house, they’d invite you into their formal sitting room. In here, children were not allowed, and provocative conversations were not allowed. This was a room for proper society. And Margaret understood the need to impress that society. She understood the benefits their influence could provide. This was why she even draped a shawl over the small European statues’ exposed breasts as to not offend these prudish house guests. If your interests took on a more controversial tone, Margaret would invite you upstairs to her personal drawing room. And as I grasped the exquisitely carved golden oak banister and felt the sun seep through the colorful stained-glass windows, I too could imagine Margaret Brown beckoning me upstairs, encouraging me to join her fight for women’s and worker’s rights. In this room, the real conversations took place. She had a strong moral compass and refused to allow society’s expectations to stop her from voicing her concerns about workers, about women, about children, even about animals. She researched, joined and organized committees, and campaigned to do what was right. Most women during that time period resolutely obeyed their husbands. Not Margaret. When her opinions differed from his – he argued the need for his miners to continue to work regardless of bad conditions, and she fought to improve those conditions – instead of acquiescing, they separated. And as an independent woman, she continued her fight for our rights, understanding that money oftentimes produced results, so she flounced her wealth in front of all the right people, which brings me back to the grandeur of her foyer. I immediately understood that Margaret Brown was a force to be reckoned with; she had power both literally – she had electricity and indoor plumbing in her home which left others in awe, and figuratively – as an experienced traveler she planned ahead and knew how to influence her surroundings. Both of these traits helped her survive her ordeal on the Titanic. She recognized the trouble before others and proactively dressed in warm layers, stashed her money in her clothes, and went on deck to find a lifeboat. It was her moral compass that asked to return to help others. So thank you Maggie (I won’t call her by the moniker “Molly” because she hated it and preferred friends to call her “Maggie” – and yes I think if I had lived back then we would have been friends and travel buddies). Thank you for pioneering the fight for our rights. Thank you for proving the perseverance of women. Thank you for traveling the world as a strong, independent woman. Thank you for surviving. You helped pave my path for traveling and writing. For information about visiting her home, please visit https://mollybrown.org/.
|
AuthorLet me introduce myself. I am Julie Blasofsel. While teaching high school English for the past dozen years, my appreciation for works of literature increased after visiting several locations associated with the authors and their texts. You can't help but feel the presence of Ralph Waldo Emerson as you stand on the shores of Walden pond, the despair of Henry Longfellow as you stand in his house, the loneliness of Edgar A. Poe as you descend into his walled basement, the candor of Samuel Clemons as you reach his men-only study. My goal is to gather information and relate my experiences about these places of literary significance in this literary hive. Please add your literary travel experiences and recommendations. Together we can bring these authors to life and light the flame of passion for reading in others. Enjoy! Archives
October 2018
Categories |