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
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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
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