tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-485125544763770222024-03-13T11:21:03.050-06:00Pulling Another Pulitzer off the ShelfMy musings and adventures as a collector and reader of Pulitzer Prize winning fictionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-73515957345704771142016-04-28T00:07:00.000-06:002016-04-28T09:18:24.298-06:00His Family by Ernest Poole<div class="WordSection1">
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<u>His Family</u> by Ernest Poole, 1917. Won the Pulitzer in 1918.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ernest Poole (1880-1950) was born in Chicago, graduated from Princeton in 1902 and worked as a journalist as well as a writer of novels. He is reported to have
had a brush with socialism in the early 1900's and helped
Upton Sinclair do research for his socially conscious 1906 novel, <i>The Jungle</i>. As a writer, Poole worked for social
reform, including an end to child labor. He wrote <i>The Harbour</i> in 1915 which
dealt with labor unions in New York City.
In 1917 Poole wrote <i>His Family </i>and in 1918 it became the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. This work took on a theme of social reform in that much of the story
deals with the “tenement” families in New York and their struggles against
poverty, ignorance, disease, and unfair labor practices. The central character is Roger Gale, a 60
year-old widower who is trying to understand and help his three adult daughters. Roger is also trying to understand and adjust
to changes in American society, especially those brought on by World War
I. In this sense, Poole wrote on a theme
that was later picked up by Willa Cather in <i>One of Ours </i>and Edna Ferber
in <i>So Big</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Poole is trying to go
beyond social reform even though his character, Roger Gale, begins with prejudice
and lack of sympathy toward the poor masses and ends up, at the end of his
life, accepting them as part of his larger family. Poole is also interested in one man’s efforts
to relate to his adult children, help them where possible, but also let them
have their own lives, and ultimately be willing to let go in order for the
children to shape their own lives. Roger regrets years of neglecting or, at least, not being very involved in his
children’s lives and then, later, wanting to see them happy. Once they became adults he found that what he
wanted for his children was not necessarily what they wanted for
themselves. He comes to question how
much he ever really knew them.
Finally, Roger has to face the conclusion that he has worried enough
about his family and has to try to find peace in his life rather than get what
he wants and thinks is best for his daughters. <span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The beginning of WWI in Europe in
1914 brings on economic hardships to many in the U.S., much like the aftermath
of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Roger feels it in his newspaper clipping
business and he is forced to lay off workers and take out a mortgage on his
home to keep the business going and to support his family. </span> </div>
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Poole
seems to be saying that family is of great importance in our lives- or
that it can be if we choose that value. Circumstances require that Roger take in his daughter and her children and he has to find ways to
provide. This family commitment is set
against Roger’s youngest daughter’s choice to pursue wealth and pleasure
without concern for her marriage or her family. His other daughter, a public
school principal, goes the direction of adopting in an educational and social
sense thousands of poor families in the tenements. This daughter struggles with her social
commitments as opposed to her desire to marry and have her own children. It appears that Poole is laying out our life choices: pleasure, family commitment, or social conscience. In the end, his educator daughter finds a way
to have her own family and her large family of poor children in need of
education. His oldest daughter is
totally committed to her five children and his youngest daughter chooses to pursue wealth and pleasure without family concerns. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Roger ends his life being a happy man, at peace with how his family has turned out. His experiences
in later life have helped him appreciate his family and to accept them as they
are. He also develops an appreciation
for the family of man and the countless thousands who need help from
society. Poole succeeds in making a case
for social conscience and also tries to convey that this end does not have to
rule out our own family and concern for the children born to us. Seen in this light, I believe Poole had a
good message for his time and for our time, as well. In the 100 years that have passed since Poole
wrote <i>His Family,</i> the number of poor and needy families has not decreased. We still need to decide whether to be focused
only on our own family or to see humanity as our family and to provide help, as we
are able. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-61061965965318430462014-09-17T21:44:00.000-06:002014-09-17T21:44:01.417-06:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VQblUwP9qMM/VBfCnzGcV5I/AAAAAAAAAEs/5yknMzLt6Qg/s1600/The%2BGoldfinch%2Bcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VQblUwP9qMM/VBfCnzGcV5I/AAAAAAAAAEs/5yknMzLt6Qg/s1600/The%2BGoldfinch%2Bcover.png" /></a></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Goldfinch</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> by Donna Tartt, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in
2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i>The
Goldfinch</i> embodies one of the good, engaging and endearing stories that I
have found lacking in many of the Pulitzer Prize winning works of fiction for
the past decade. With many of the past
winners, I have had to force myself to the read the novel because of my commitment
to read the Pulitzer winners. With <i>The Goldfinch</i>, I couldn’t put it down,
thought about it when I wasn’t reading, and am still thinking about it now that
I've finished the book. The fact that it
won the Prize tells me that great fiction can still have a compelling, meaningful story. I knew this all along but it felt good to see
that the Pulitzer jury for fiction and the Pulitzer board also viewed <i>The Goldfinch </i>as a great book, worthy of
the Pulitzer Prize. Frankly, I had begun
to doubt that I could be carried away by a recent winner of the Prize. This admission says a lot about me and my
taste for a good work of fiction. But
what is wrong with a good story that carries the reader to a place and a
situation where interesting characters are dealing with problems in life that a reader can relate to? I am glad I can enjoy
such a work of fiction. My wife has a
cousin who seldom enjoys a meal in a fine restaurant because there is always
something wrong with the sauce, the wine, the coffee or the service. Can such a critic ever be happy with a meal?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i>The
Goldfinch </i>is a story about love, the loss of love, and the adjustments,
good and bad, to the loss. It is also a
story about fate, how life sometimes gives us bad luck or even tragedy but also
manages to give us some good luck along the way. The central character, 13 year-old Theo Decker, lives in New York City with his
beautiful and dearly-loved mother, Audrey. His father, Larry, deserted them a year ago but they have a happy life without him. Theo loses his mother in a terrorist attack in an art museum and his life is
never again the same. However, he goes
on with life, sometimes wishing it would be over because of how much he misses
his mother. Theo finds a few good people
along the way who give him what love and help they can provide so that his life
has enough support and meaning to continue.
Theo also acquires a painting, The Goldfinch by a Dutch master named Fabritius, on the same day that his mother is taken away from him. Without thinking clearly about it, Theo decides to keep the painting and it becomes the focus of Theo’s life
and the focus of Tartt’s novel. Theo’s
mother had loved the painting since she looked at it in an art book as a young girl. She had taken Theo to
see it at a museum in New York on the day that changed his life. The Goldfinch painting, in real life,, is still housed in a New York museum. It helps Theo get through the loss of his mother as he clings to it to represent
something of her. The Goldfinch makes
him feel that somehow his life has meaning, partly because Audrey had loved it
so much. The paining is part of the good luck Theo experiences in his life but
it also leads to some of his greatest challenges. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> As I see it, <i>The Goldfinch</i> deals with the issue of how the people in our lives
often don’t meet all of our needs but by receiving what love and support they
have to offer, and putting it all together, we can make a life that can be satisfying, maybe even happy. A poor
adjustment to loss of the most important person in life could lead a person to
reject all other sources of help. But
Theo accepted the help and went on living.
The day Theo lost his mother was also the day he was, by chance,
introduced to Pippa, Welty, and eventually to Hobie, people who would end up being one his sources
of love and emotional support. He also
receives help from the Barbour family who end up loving Theo but not being able
to show it directly after his mother’s death, when he needed it most. Pippa is a girl he encountered on the fateful
day when Audrey died and Theo loves her through the whole story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> More ill fate enters Theo’s life when his father comes back after the death of Theo’s
mother to claim his son. This father is </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">bad news</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">and </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">bad luck for Theo. Larry and his girlfriend Xandra take Theo to
live with them in the outskirts of Las Vegas where Larry is a professional gambler. Theo suffers major culture shock due to the fact that Larry is a poor father along with being a loser and a deadbeat. He pretty much ignores Theo and ends up in
trouble for not paying gambling debts.
Without parents to care for him, in a new environment and school, Theo
makes the adjustment we might expect- he finds a friend in a similar situation. He becomes best friends with a Russian boy named Boris, who is also without a mother but has an alcoholic father and is essentially living on his own. They become inseparable friends and assist
each other in becoming expert shoplifters and dependent on alcohol and drugs. All this time Theo has, or thinks he has, The Goldfinch painting hidden in his room.
Fate steps in again to change Theo’s life when Larry is killed in a car
crash. Theo panics and heads out on his
own </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">so he won’t be taken in by social services in Nevada, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">though Boris tries to get him to stay in Las Vegas.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Theo gets back to New York, as a sixteen
year old with no family, and is faced with having to make more adjustments to what life has
dealt him. <i>The Goldfinch </i>has the feeling of a Dickens novel such as <i>David Copperfield
</i>or <i>Great Expectations</i>: boy on his own,
facing great challenges, having to face life and deal with difficult situations. Donna Tartt has loaded Theo down with more than his
share of bad luck and undesirable characters but also given him a number of
good people who help him along the way. Hobie, an endearing character in the
book, takes Theo in, gives him a home and eventually helps him end up in a
career as an antiques dealer. Unfortunately,
Theo continues with some of the shady dealings and drug use he started in Las
Vegas. It becomes clear early on in <i>The Goldfinch </i>that Theo is suffering
from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to what he experienced at the time of
his mother’s death. The effects of PTSD
follow Theo into his early adult years and make it hard for him to settle into
a stable, drug-free life. His obsession with Pippa
also makes it hard for Theo to go forward with marriage to a daughter in the
Barbour family he has known for years.
Then along comes Boris, and the Goldfinch painting, back into Theo’s
life and more bad luck takes him down a road he couldn’t have imagined. Theo has to face a new set of challenges that
almost prove too much for him but a will to live and cope, along with some good luck, get him through the crisis. The
Goldfinch doesn’t end with Theo neatly working out all his problems but he does
emerge as a more mature and self-aware person who seems ready to get on with a
better approach to life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> It was interesting to me that the
incidents in Theo’s life as a 13 year old took place roughly around the time of
the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001. Many children lost their parents and were
traumatized by the attack. The story of
Theo captures much of what likely played out in the lives of children and
teenagers as their families and their lives were ripped apart by the attack. And some of these young people likely went
through the same kind of </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">difficult adjustments and P</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">TSD that we see in
Theo.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The love of art, help from good
people, and a will to go on living made it possible for Theo to make it to a
better place.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">One can only hope that the
young people affected by the 9-11 attack had the same mix of good luck and good
people to help offset the bad luck in their lives.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some critics and readers may not have liked </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Goldfinch</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> for reasons they
understand.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I liked it for the reasons I
have tried to share:</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">it touched a place
in my heart that wants to see a young kid with a lot of loss and bad luck,
along with PTSD, find a way to adjust to life in some effective ways, using the
good things fate also gives him, to end up with a life worth living.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-48757899790852965132014-02-21T10:09:00.001-07:002014-02-21T20:19:58.334-07:00The Orphan Master's Son<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9feylndYUPA/UweBSkSf4pI/AAAAAAAAAEE/RobFdv49qFA/s1600/Orphan+master's+son.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9feylndYUPA/UweBSkSf4pI/AAAAAAAAAEE/RobFdv49qFA/s1600/Orphan+master's+son.png" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Orphan Master’s Son</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> by Adam
Johnson, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Won
the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2013</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
Orphan Master’s Son </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">took
me over a year to get around to reading, mainly because the premise expressed
on the dust jacket seemed so strange and foreign: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Orphan Master’s Son</i> follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters,
dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious
dictatorship, North Korea.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>North Korea
has been a mystery to many of us due to how closed off from the rest of the
world it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have heard very
little about the lives people lead in the country other than how the people
often go without sufficient food while the government spends large sums on the
military and defenses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I wasn’t
sure I wanted to learn more about all of this, so I put off reading Johnson’s
Pulitzer-winning novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to be
honest, I have not enjoyed or felt rewarded for having read many of the recent
winners of the prize for fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
I admit that I got caught up in this novel and I am sorry I put off reading it
for a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have not written a blog
post on any of the more recent Pulitzer winners because of my disappointments with
the works but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i>
was, for me, a rewarding read and a book I want to talk about in this
blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please bear in mind that I am only
giving my reactions and opinions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your
take on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i> may
be different from mine and I would value hearing your views.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
Orphan Master’s Son</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
is the story of Pak Jun Do who was the son of the orphan master at the Long
Tomorrows orphanage in North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jun
Do’s mother was stolen away by the North Korean government to Pyongyang to be a
singer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s all he knows of her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the Orphan Master sees his lost
wife’s face in Jun Do and, therefore, takes out his loss and hurt by being
cruel to his son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is Jun Do’s job to
give a name to each orphan boy, usually taken from the list of honored martyrs
of North Korea. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though he is not an
orphan himself, Jun Do is taken for one his whole life because he is named
after a national hero and he grew up in an orphanage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Orphans are at the lowest level of society and
most of them end up in the army. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At age
14 during a severe famine, Jun Do and the other orphans at Long Tomorrows are
trucked to an army base where they are trained to be tunnel fighters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The North Korean army digs tunnels under the
demilitarized zone into South Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
tunnel fighters are trained to sneak into the South and kidnap people and bring
them back to North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jun Do moves
on from tunnel fighter to be a kidnapper in the Navy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His job is to go by fishing boat to the
shores of Japan, sneak into the country in a small raft, grab an unsuspecting
Japanese citizen, and bring the victim back to North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the kidnapped persons was a famous
Japanese opera singer whom a North Korean Minister wanted for his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jun Do was particularly good at carrying out
these raids because of his knowledge of taekwondo and his ability to fight in
the dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a number of successful
kidnappings, Jun Do is rewarded with schooling to learn English and is then
assigned to a fishing boat where he has the job of monitoring English radio
transmissions and reporting them to the North Korean government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kim Jong Il</div>
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Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea</div>
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1994-2011</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The story told in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son </i>is strange and hard to believe but it’s also
compelling to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The events in the
life of Jun Do strike me as rather implausible but the context of these events,
occurring as they do in North Korea, was interesting and informative. Not
knowing much about North Korea, I became fascinated by the story Johnson tells
in this novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In preparing to write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i>, Johnson
travelled to North Korea in 2007 and read numerous testimonies of defectors
from the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe that Johnson
gives a reasonably accurate description of the bizarre dictatorship of the Dear
Leader, Kim Jong Il, over the nation of 23 million North Koreans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This nation is believed by many to be one of
the most backward and repressive countries in the world today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Johnson drives home this point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I read the novel I kept trying to decide
whether Johnson was giving the reader an expose’ of how things are in North
Korea or a parody of North Korea and the Dear Leader. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought of how the movie and TV series
“MASH” was a humorous parody, often exaggerated, of how it was for a U.S. Army
medical unit in the Korean War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet,
MASH had a ring of truth that made the episodes entertaining, poignant and
educational at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My opinion
is that expose’ and parody both apply to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Orphan Master’s Son</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see parody in
how truth is handled in Kim Jong Il’s regime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While the citizens are taught over loudspeakers in their homes and
places of work that North Korea is the greatest, most democratic nation on
earth where there is no hunger, the citizens are also warned over the
loudspeaker to not start snaring song birds and gathering acorns until the
proper seasons for these activities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
central point in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son </i>is
that the people are kept in the dark about how life is outside of North
Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, a central female
character in the story, Sun Moon, asks a captured American woman about the evil
imperialistic country she comes from:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I
wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to
protect you, no one to tell you what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is it true you’re given no ration card, that you must find food for
yourself?....What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew,
what is taught at your child-rearing collectives?....How does a society without
a fatherly leader work?...How can a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>citizen know what is best without a benevolent hand to shepherd her?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keeping the people so ignorant about the
outside world and what North Korea is lacking compared to other countries is an
effective way to maintain power and control.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Ultimately, I think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i> is a story about love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jun Do didn’t have the love of a mother or
father, for that matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People in North
Korea were taught to not seek and cultivate familial love but rather to feel
the love of the Dear Leader and the State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Under the surface, however, Jun Do longs for love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though he has never had a wife or even a
girlfriend, he has the face of North Korea’s major female movie star, Sun Moon,
tattooed on his chest while he is working on a fishing boat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has to do this so he will appear to be a
fisherman since they all have their wives’ faces on their chests and Jun Do
doesn’t want to be taken for a spy if their boat is captured by the U. S. Navy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a hard-to-believe plot twist, Jun Do is
sent to Texas on a mission to recover a piece of Japanese radiation-detecting
equipment that the U. S. has taken away from North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is where the novel starts getting even
more unbelievable rather than being a serious look at life in North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mission fails and Jun Do gets thrown into
a prison mine after returning to his homeland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He manages to survive the terrible conditions and harsh treatment and
eventually escapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jun Do ends up being
the replacement husband of Sun Moon and finally finds love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The movie Casablanca and the actions of Rick
serve as a model for Jun Do in how to make the ultimate sacrifice for his loved
one and, in the process, play a good trick on the Dear Leader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What an inventive, unique story- much better than
a MASH episode. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have tried to not give away too much of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son </i>but I hope that my thoughts might create an
interest in reading Johnson’s award-winning novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned a number of things about North
Korea and Kim Jong Il but I was also entertained and touched by the story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the accuracy of the descriptions
Johnson gives of the Dear Leader and conditions in North Korea, I have become
more convinced of this since reading a February 17, 2014 piece by John Heilprin
of the Associated Press which reports that a United Nations panel has sent a
formal warning to North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il, that he may be
held to answer for continuing crimes against civilians of that nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These crimes include mass starvation,
executions, torture and rape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The U.N.
investigation also found that North Korea is guilty of lifelong indoctrination
of its citizens, political prison camps, and state-run abductions of North
Koreans, Japanese and other nationals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
impressed that Johnson describes all of the above U.N. findings in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Orphan Master’s Son</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What first struck me as hard to believe is
now documented by an U.N. investigation of North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks to Adam Johnson for bringing to us
this look at life under the Dear Leader.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-72264215588027781742014-01-16T20:30:00.000-07:002014-01-16T20:30:30.119-07:00
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<strong> </strong></div>
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<strong></strong> </div>
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<strong></strong> </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<strong>Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair, 1942, Won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1943</strong><o:p> </o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s Teeth</i></b> is the
third book in a series of Lanny Budd novels by Upton Sinclair which chronicles world history from
around 1914 until the beginning of the Cold War Era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Lanny Budd series includes the following novels:</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_End_(Sinclair)" title="World's End (Sinclair)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">World's End</span></a>, 1940<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Two_Worlds_(Upton_Sinclair)" title="Between Two Worlds (Upton Sinclair)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Between Two Worlds</span></a>, 1941<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Teeth_(novel)" title="Dragon's Teeth (novel)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Dragon's Teeth</span></a>, 1942<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Is_the_Gate" title="Wide Is the Gate"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Wide Is the Gate</span></a>, 1943<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Agent" title="Presidential Agent"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Presidential Agent</span></a>, 1944<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Harvest" title="Dragon Harvest"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Dragon Harvest</span></a>, 1945<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_to_Win_(Lanny_Budd)" title="A World to Win (Lanny Budd)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">A World to Win</span></a>, 1946<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Mission" title="Presidential Mission"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Presidential Mission</span></a>, 1947<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Clear_Call" title="One Clear Call"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">One Clear Call</span></a>, 1948<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Shepherd,_Speak!" title="O Shepherd, Speak!"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">O Shepherd, Speak!</span></a>, 1949<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Lanny_Budd" title="The Return of Lanny Budd"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The Return of Lanny Budd</span></a>, 1953<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Sinclair used the Lanny Budd
character to be an eye-witness to history and tell the story of what happened
in Europe prior to World War I and on to World II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lanny was the illegitimate son of a
Connecticut arms manufacturer, Robbie Budd, and his mother who was called “Beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was an American beauty who had posed nude
in France for some paintings before she and Robbie got together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robbie’s father would not let him marry
Beauty because of her sketchy past, so she lived outside Cannes, France in a
villa and that was where Lanny grew up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Lanny</span>
had opportunities to travel through Europe and pick up all the languages so
that he could move between the countries and cultures much like an insider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This all sounds a bit like an old-fashioned “soap
opera” but it makes a good vehicle for Sinclair to give his account of what
transpired in Europe during the era.<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s Teeth </i>gives an account of the rise to power of Socialism, Communism and Fascism in
Europe as a result of the bad way the reparations for WW I were imposed on
Germany and Italy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It begins with the 1929
stock market crash and ends in 1934 after the Nazi’s have solidified their
power in Germany and Adolph Hitler has been elected Chancellor. Lanny has
encounters with Mussolini and Hitler as well as many other important figures of
the time. He also has Jewish friends who are beginning to see what is in store
for them in Nazi Germany. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the reader of <em>Dragon's Teeth</em>
needs to start at the beginning of the Lanny Budd series in order to understand
the characters and events that are described in the third novel. That means reading the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>600- page <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World’s
End</i> and the equally long <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Between Two
Worlds </i>before launching into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s
Teeth</i> (630 pages).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, this
meant about a year’s worth of reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You need to be interested in world history, Europe, World War I and II,
and fighting Fascism to get through these three novels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Upton Sinclair does not tell
this story from a neutral point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was, in fact, a devoted Socialist and social activist (some called him
“muckraker”) known to many readers as the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle</i> in 1906.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <em>The Jungle</em> he exposed the horrible conditions which surrounded the meatpacking
industry in Chicago in the early 1900's and his novel actually led to improvements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act and the
Meat Inspection Act were made laws in the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sinclair ran unsuccessfully for election to the U.S. Congress in 1920
and 1922 as a Socialist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also ran as
a Democrat for governor of California in 1934 but was not elected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gained close to 900,000 votes which
suggests that he was a viable candidate.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
With some of Sinclair’s
political point-of-view in mind, it is not hard to imagine that in the Lanny
Budd series, he is a strong proponent of the working class both in Europe and
the U.S. Lanny comes from a wealthy, WASPISH background but also becomes very
sympathetic to the poor working people around him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the novels, Lanny has an uncle, brother to
his mother, who is an avowed Communist and he teaches Lanny a great deal about
the party and its crusade to help the worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lanny never joins the Communist Party but he contributes to it and to his uncle’s
campaign to be elected as a Communist to the French national assembly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems evident that Sinclair tried to use
his influence as a writer of historical fiction to promote the social causes that
he had been committed to for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One interesting point from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s
Teeth</i> is that Fascism was developed as a means of opposing and stopping
Communism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wealthy industrialists of
several European nations were threatened by the workers' movement happening in
the 1920’s and 1930’s so they supported the Fascist movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many believed that Hitler and Mussolini could
put down the Communist movement and then be controlled and used by the
industrialists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anti-Semitism became a
useful tool for the Fascists in rallying middle class workers and in
eliminating many of the wealthy Jewish bankers who were blamed for much of the
hardship that had befallen Europe after WW I. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Lanny is caught between the
worlds of wealth, fashion and capitalism on the one hand and the plight of the
working class and also the Fascist movement that he sees clearly as a threat to
world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 1934 Lanny has married a woman
who has inherited $24 million from her father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She is not as sympathetic toward the plight of the working class or the Jews in Europe as is
Lanny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She clearly represents the
wealthy class that does not become alarmed by the rise of Fascism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lanny, with his “Red” leanings, is now
convinced of the great evil that will come from Fascism but he wrestles with
the problem of what he can do about it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ends up trying to rescue his Jewish friend
from the Dachau concentration in Germany as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s
Teeth</i> ends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To do this he poses as a
sympathizer of the Nazi’s, makes a deal with Herman Goering, and tries to use
his wealth and status as a means of bringing about the liberation of his
friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This makes for an engaging
story.<o:p> </o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
A point to keep in mind is that
Sinclair was writing the Lanny Budd series as history was unfolding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The series was begun in 1940 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s Teeth</i> came out in 1942.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sinclair seems to be trying to warn the
world, as he did in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle </i>that a
great evil was being perpetrated on the world and that something needed to be
done about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The title “Dragon’s Teeth”
is explained at the end of the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
Greek mythology, the teeth of a dragon, planted in soil, will grow into fully
armed warriors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sinclair was giving a
warning that the events surrounding World War I and the poor way reparations
were inflicted on the losers of the war in Europe was the sowing of dragon’s
teeth that would lead to horrible armed conflicts for the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time of the writing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragon’s Teeth, </i>Sinclair did not know
that Fascism would be defeated in Europe but he was making a good effort
to warn readers of what was at stake. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am now faced with needing to read the next
Lanny Budd novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wide is the Gate </i>and
the seven<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>other novels, to find out what
Lanny does as he tries to save the world from the dragon’s teeth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series of
historical novels has become “old history” and rather unknown in our present
time, I believe the books are worth reading for enjoyment and for education about
a past time that has greatly changed the world we live in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are dragon’s teeth still being sown that we
will have to deal with in our future?<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-87090869966697029122013-01-25T00:01:00.001-07:002013-01-25T23:27:02.654-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Stone Diaries</b>
by Carol Shields w</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">on
the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Stone Diaries </i>is one of the Pulitzer winners that I have put
off reading because I had a feeling that I would not like it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, it turns out that my hunch was
right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept reading it because I have
committed to myself to read all of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> And I kept thinking that something interesting or exciting was going to happen. </span>The book is written as a diary of Daisy Goodwill who is born to a married couple in Manitoba, Canada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her mother dies the day she is born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Father doesn't know his wife is expecting a child and he is busy as a stone cutter in the local
quarry, so he goes back to work. Daisy is raised by Mrs. Flett, a kind neighbor lady who liked Daisy’s
mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> At age 11, </span>Daisy moves to Bloomington,
Indiana with her father when he takes a job in a quarry in that locale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She marries a man, Harold Hoad, when she is a
young woman and he falls out of a window in Italy on their honeymoon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daisy is a young<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>widow and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>remains single until she marries Mrs. Flett’s
son, Barker, and moves to Ottawa,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ontario.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have three children
and Barker eventually dies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daisy
becomes an expert in gardening and raising plants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She writes several newspaper columns on
gardening, is popular in Ottawa for a while, and then she gets replaced by a
newspaper journalist who wants the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Daisy gets depressed for a while and then moves to Florida and finds
some of her old friends living there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She is a grandma but her grandchildren live far away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>then<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daisy gets sick and old and
eventually dies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book ends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On page 340 of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Stone Diaries</i>, Shields raises the
question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>What is the story of a
life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A chronicle of fact or a
skillfully wrought impression.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not
sure what this means related to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Stone
Diaries. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t aware of much
other than a chronicle of fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
impression I was left with is that the book is a story about nothing, like the
TV show proposed by Jerry and George toward the end of the Seinfeld
series.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But George and Jerry somehow
made funny, entertaining stories based on nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Stone Diaries </i>was about nothing without the entertainment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But there may be another impression that I derived from reading <em>The Stone Diaries</em>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After letting some time pass upon completing my reading of <em>The Stone Diaries</em>, perhaps the best thing I can say
about the book is that it provides an example for living a life- an ordinary life of a good person. Daisy turns
out to be a resilient woman who starts life without a mother, has a rather
distant father, loses her first husband on the honeymoon, remarries an older
man, has three children and raises them to be good people, is a popular
gardening columnist until she’s replaced, gets depressed but doesn’t stay that
way, moves to Florida, tries to be a good grandmother to kids who live far
away, and ends up enduring several years of illness in her old age without
becoming bitter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The facts of her life allow us to form an impression of Daisy. Maybe we need to be reminded of people who live ordinary lives well enough and endure hardships to the end- and hope that we too can be such a person.</span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></i></div>
Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-71103981939112844042012-08-12T22:21:00.001-06:002012-08-12T22:21:06.390-06:00Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor, 1955,</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Won
Pulitzer Prize in 1956<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em> is a book I remember my father, Herbert Isakson,
reading in the 1950’s, soon after it was published.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been interested in it ever since I saw
Dad reading the book but it has taken<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>me a while
to get around to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I also greatly appreciate my father's example of one who read great literature. He passed on to me a love of reading and my life has been wonderfully enriched because of reading.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em> is a historical novel of
the Confederate prisoner of war camp in Anderson, Georgia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kantor had studied the Civil War and
Andersonville for 25 years prior to writing the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He states in his five-page bibliography
that…” <em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em> is a work of
fiction, but is presented as an accurate history of the Andersonville
prison…”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am very impressed that Kantor
would devote the time and effort to learn what happened in Andersonville and
then tell the story in a compelling, meaningful way.<o:p> </o:p></div>
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The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>story of Andersonville prison is told from
the perspective of many<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>individuals and
families, probably fictional, who were involved as neighbors to the prison,
prison adminstrators, guards, and physicians, and many of the Union
prisoners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This approach made the story
of Andersonville come alive as Kantor created characters who represented what
must have been the experiences of the people most affected by the prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many great books written about the
Civil War including Pulitzer Prize winner <em>The
Killer Angels</em> by Michael Shaara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most books that I am aware of describe the battles and tell moving
stories about horrible cost in human lives of the War Between the States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, Kantor chose to tell the story of
the infamous Confederate prison in Andersonville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first I thought this would be a less
interesting story than those told about the battles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was wrong in this assumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em>
tells of the tragedy that occurred after Union soldiers had been captured and
sent to prison in Andersonville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may
be that the North had prisons just as bad as Andersonville but I have not heard
of those prisons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we do have is a
carefully researched novel about conditions in Andersonville.<o:p> </o:p></div>
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Andersonville prison was built
later in the war, sometime after the battle of Gettysburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was built in the little town of
Andersonville, close to a rail line. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
owner of the nearby plantation, Ira Claffey, is a central character in the
novel and we see the prison from beginning to end through his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ira is there to see a beautiful pine forest
with a stream of fresh water running through it turned into a crude stockade
surrounding about 20 acres.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He watches
the trees being cut down by slave laborers who then placed the trees on end in
a trench to form a 20 foot high wall. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first prisoners arrived in February 1864 .
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kantor does not spare the reader the horrors
that were documented in Andersonville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
prison was designed to hold about 10,000 prisoners but by the end of the war,
it held over 30,000 men in absolutely terrible conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the walls of the stockade had been put
in place, nothing else was provided for the prisoners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were no shelters for the men except the
tents they could make out of their coats or scraps of canvas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Food given the men was minimal rations of
cornbread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No vegetables or meat were
provided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Water was not provided except
for the little stream that ran through the stockade but it quickly became
horribly polluted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No toilets were
provided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nearly all of the prisoners
suffered from dysentery and scurvy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their teeth fell out when they tried to eat their hard cornbread after
the scurvy became advanced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they got
scratched, they often got gangrene infection and had maggots crawling through
their rotting flesh. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The neighbors
around the prison suffered from the stench of the open<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sewer and dead bodies.<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kantor also does a fine job of portraying
humanity at its best and its worst in <em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one very touching section of the book, Ira
Claffey organizes some of his neighbors to share their excess garden produce
with the prisoners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They haul wagon
loads of vegetables to the stockade only to be turned back by order of the
commander of Confederate prisons, General John Winder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Winder castigated the townspeople for not
bringing the vegetables for the Confederate prison guards and questioned their
loyalty to the Southern cause due to their compassion for the Yankee prisoners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This incident was included, in my opinion, to
communicate that some in South had compassion for the prisoners while there
were others who were determined to see the Yankees suffer and make their lives
unbearable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another story symbolic of
the humanity and the healing that would need to follow the war involved a young
former Confederate soldier who lived nearby the prison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had lost one foot in battle and now
hobbled around with a crude crutch, embittered by his loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While out hunting one day he came across an
escaped Northern prisoner who was trying to steal the hawk the Reb had just shot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Yankee had lost one of his
arms in the battle when he was captured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To stay alive, he had escaped from Andersonville but had no means of
finding shelter or food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than
turn in the escaped Yankee for a reward, the Reb helped him find a place to
hide and brought him food. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the two
became friends, it came out that the Yankee had worked in a shop where
artificial limbs were crafted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will
let you find out what happens between these two young casualties of the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe Kantor wanted to convey the spirit
of healing and cooperation that was needed between North and South after the Civil
War.<o:p> </o:p></div>
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The impression I came away with
after reading<em> <strong>Andersonville</strong></em> is that
there were no real winners in the American Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Freeing the slaves and preserving the United
States were causes that made the War worth fighting but the cost was enormous
in terms of lives lost and the human suffering that resulted from the
conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em> helped me better understand the degree of suffering
inflicted on captured Northern soldiers. Kantor conveyed that there were many among the Andersonville prison administration and guards who wanted to punish the Yankees and were not unhappy to see them die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Toward the end of the War, when Andersonville came into being, the South
was desperate for resources, both human and material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe they could not provide shelter, water and food
for the prisoners but I believe conditions were worse in Andersonville than
they had to be and Kantor seems to be making that point. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am glad that I read <em><strong>Andersonville</strong></em> and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about
this unfortunate chapter of Civil War history and learn about the people who were
affected so greatly by it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-42132484412415286432011-12-28T11:38:00.006-07:002011-12-28T12:12:13.571-07:00Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nRK40B5DE68/Tvti8OC051I/AAAAAAAAAC4/TNUwhgOehR0/s1600/Humboldt%2527s%2BGift.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 225px; height: 225px; text-align: center; display: block; cursor: pointer;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691251340814378834" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nRK40B5DE68/Tvti8OC051I/AAAAAAAAAC4/TNUwhgOehR0/s320/Humboldt%2527s%2BGift.jpg" /></a><br />Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature the same year he received the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt’s Gift in 1976 . He was given the Nobel Prize with the citation: “ …for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.” Evidently, Bellow demonstrated his understanding of human nature and an analysis of contemporary culture in Humboldt’s Gift. Von Humboldt Fleisher wrote a series of poetic ballads in the 1930’s and became famous. A young aspiring writer from Chicago named Charlie Citrine went to New York City after graduating from the University of Wisconsin to meet and try to learn from Humboldt. Humboldt’s Gift is the story of their relationship, sometimes inseparable friends and sometimes at odds with each other. Humboldt was brilliant and wanted to create art to embody the great ideas he had in his head. Charlie wrote biographies and histories and eventually became famous for writing a play, based on the Humboldt character<br />that was a big hit. <br /><br />In the story Charlie won the Pulitzer Prize for his writing and Humboldt was made a professor of literature at Princeton University. Human nature and contemporary culture being what they are, Bellow had Humboldt gradually become mentally ill with bipolar disorder and a good helping of paranoia such that he ended up as a bum in the streets. He even turned on his buddy Charlie Citrine, accused him of trying to rob him, having an affair with his wife, and of trying to put him away in an institution. While they were still friends, Humboldt and Charlie entertained themselves by writing a couple of movie scenarios that were farcical but never intended as art. Charlie lost track of these manuscripts after he and Humboldt parted ways.<br /><br /> Humboldt dies and Charlie goes on living off from the proceeds of his past successes. He is divorced from his wife and she is trying to get all the money he has left because it is assumed that<br />Charlie can make plenty more once he sets his mind to work again. Some of Humboldt’s Gift is the telling of Charlie and Humboldt’s relationship and their struggles at the end. The bulk of the<br />book is an account of Charlie’s meditations, reflections, and free associations as he goes through his problems. When faced with a difficult situation, he likes to lie down on his large comfortable<br />couch and meditate on some topic such as the nature of boredom. Charlie is a vehicle for Bellow to be highly intellectual and literary but, for me, his writing style was too diverting from the story I wanted to appreciate. The reader learns a great deal about Charlie’s nature and how he fits in or, rather,doesn’t fit in very well into contemporary society. <br /><br /> As Charlie is starting to get desperate for money, he learns that before he died Humboldt left him a legacy. He learns that his buddy Humboldt has left him the two movie scenarios they wrote together with documented proof of the two of them having created the movie ideas. Furthermore, one of the scenarios has been made into a very popular, farcical movie and there is serious interest in the second idea. Charlie ends up getting out of his financial troubles through the gift left to him by Humboldt. It was ironic that the two writers who valued art and the intellect so much would resort to writing ridiculous yet entertaining movie scenarios that would appeal to so many movie goers in contemporary society. I suppose Bellow’s message is that art is the gift to the world of the truly gifted but much of the world cannot appreciate the art and would rather be entertained by something less artistic and intellectual like the farce the two artists spun out while bored. I’m afraid that my reaction to much of Humboldt’s Gift bears out this message. I want to be entertained with a story and not bogged down with intellectual musings and meditations. Other readers may want to test the quality of their literary tastes by reading Humboldt’s Gift to see if they can appreciate true art or if they are just one of the masses who want to be entertained by a story.<br /><br />It took me almost three months to plow through Humboldt’s Gift and I am glad I read it. Now I know even more fully what type of reader and connoisseur of art I am. I would probably rather go to the movie farce than read Humboldt’s ballad poems. It would be interesting to discuss Humboldt’s Gift but I have never met anyone who has read the book.<br /><br /><br /><div></div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-82618032292985441842011-10-12T23:33:00.004-06:002011-10-26T21:45:08.830-06:00The Store by T. S. Stribling, 1932<div><div style="text-align: center; clear: both;" class="separator"><a style="margin-right: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7j6xayhdtXY/TpZtk_t9O4I/AAAAAAAAACo/2gku7CRGAT0/s1600/imagesCAGERKMS.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7j6xayhdtXY/TpZtk_t9O4I/AAAAAAAAACo/2gku7CRGAT0/s400/imagesCAGERKMS.jpg" width="276" height="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> <em>The Store</em> by T. S. Stribling, written in 1932, is the second of a three-part series about the South, before, during, and after the Civil War.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>The first book is <em>The Forge</em> and the third is <em>The Unfinished Cathedral</em>.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>Together, the three books are an excellent description of the war told through the experiences of the Vaiden family.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>Unlike <em>Gone With the Wind</em>, the series by Stribling is not sympathetic to the Southern point of view of the war, of the institution of slavery or of the aftermath of the Civil War.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Stribling </font>grew up in a family in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Tennessee</st1:place></st1:state> where one of his grandfathers served in the Confederate Army and one served in the Union Army.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font><em>The Forge</em> starts with the Vaiden family on their small plantation just before the War.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>They live in <st1:place st="on">Northern Alabama</st1:place>, close to <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Tennessee, and own a few slaves</st1:place></st1:state>.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p> </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p><font style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </font><font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>Miltiades Vaiden, is the central character in the series.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>He fights in the War, as described in The Forge, and comes out of it a colonel and is called by that title the rest of his life.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>The Vaiden family is followed through the War and afterward, to the end of the series.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>Miltiades Vaiden represents the valiant Confederate officer who brought honor to his state even though the South lost the war.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>Running through the series of books is the Vaiden family’s relationship with their slaves and former slaves.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>In The Store, the Colonel is without employment, barely living off the sharecroppers who work on their old plantation. <font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>For a time he is active in getting a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan started in his area.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>It’s interesting that the Klan was started, according to Stribling, as away of using fear and intimidation to keep the former slaves working on the estates as sharecroppers. </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> Through a dishonest act Miltiades gets the money to start a store.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>His wife dies and he marries the daughter of the woman he almost married at the outset of the War.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>In The Unfinished Cathedral, Miltiades is a wealthy banker who is trying to have a large cathedral built in his honor and as a place for him to be buried at the end of his life.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>The story ends as the Great Depression sets in and the wealth gained by Miltiades is lost and so is the cathedral he is building.</div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> Miltiades is a flawed man who, when he no longer has the labor of slaves to sustain his wealth, turns to dishonest means to regain a position of influence. In the process, he leads other men in the Klan to intimidate the former slaves and keep their labor on the farms as sharecroppers. Miltiades succeeds in business for a time but fails in the end and dies a broken man. I think Stribling meant Miltiades to represent the South that benefited from slavery but lost in the end. I found it hard at times to read about how the slaves and freed slaves were treated by some Southerners. They were emancipated in the Civil War but were kept in their place by forces in the South that needed them as laborers and sharecroppers.</div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"> </div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </font>This is one more forgotten yet great novel that I found by reading the Pulitzer winners.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>I strongly recommend reading the series by Stribling, starting with the Forge.<font style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </font>It is a great account of the South, slavery, reconstruction, and of the onset of the Great Depression.<o:p></o:p></div></div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-4231806227342885472011-10-11T22:48:00.000-06:002011-10-12T11:00:18.092-06:00Laughing Boy by Oliver LaFarge<br />
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<em> Laughing Boy</em> is another of the great novels that I would never have heard of if I had not been collecting and reading
the works that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><em>Laughing Boy</em> can, perhaps, be described as “A
Navajo Tragedy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Written in 1929 by La
Farge who had been an anthropologist among the Navajo and other tribes of the
Southwest, the book struck me as a rather authentic story of the impact of
American culture on the Navajo people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was told by a white man living among the Indians and may have many inaccuracies
and misinterpretations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I have read some critiques of <em>Laughing Boy</em> that express the opinion that no white man can ever understand Indian culture. Be that as it may, La Farge made a good effort and tells a story that was </span>honored with a Pulitzer Prize and is well worth reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I had strong feelings for the young
Navajo man, Laughing Boy, as he encountered for the first time some of most
damaging aspects of the Americans who had come to live in the Southwest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story tells of his meeting Slim Girl, a
Navajo woman who had been taken from her family as a young girl and sent to a
school for Indians in California.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
she finally made her way back to Navajo country, she found that she was neither
American or Navajo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She enticed Laughing
Boy, a traditional Navajo, into marriage in order to help her find a way back to the
Navajo way of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Instead, she led him into some of the worst aspects of American life. </span>With Slim Girl mixing
drinks, Laughing Boy has his first taste of whiskey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a poignant moment when you realize how
often this must have happened to Indian people who would become slaves to
alcohol and ruined by its influence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Slim Girl tries to live in two
worlds: the Navajo world with Laughing Boy and the American world with a man
who pays her for sleeping with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
goes off during the day to clean house for the minister’s wife, as she tells
Laughing Boy, but actually goes to meet her wealthy American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Slim Girl justifies this by believing that
she is getting even with the Americans who took her life away from her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laughing Boy eventually finds out about her
double life, catches her with the American, and then reacts. This is where real trouble begins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
I won't give away anymore of the story but it has a tragic ending. Laughing Boy's faith and religious conviction from his Navajo upbringing and way of life help him go through what he has to face. <em>Laughing Boy</em> is a strong statement
about how much good is in the traditional Navajo way of life. Even if there are inaccuracies, <em>Laughing Boy</em> conveys the evil that was brought to
the Navajos because of the Americans encroaching into their world and way of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an important book to read,
especially by Americans who have grown up believing that the Indians were
just savages who deserved to be run off their lands and herded onto reservations. </div>
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<br /></div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-5171061742390843942011-03-21T20:57:00.006-06:002011-03-21T22:18:29.213-06:00Another of my favorite Pulitzer winners- Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BRN3EsCIXyM/TYgfrB6rZkI/AAAAAAAAACY/-owhvZ9lGBg/s1600/01ScarletSisterMary.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586750161862485570" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BRN3EsCIXyM/TYgfrB6rZkI/AAAAAAAAACY/-owhvZ9lGBg/s320/01ScarletSisterMary.jpg" /></a><br /><div><em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> by Julia <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span>, 1928, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.</div><div><br />I was fortunate to learn of this book from the list of winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. <em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> was written by Julia <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span> who was the mistress of a former plantation in South Carolina named Lang <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Syne</span>. She had lived on the plantation for 30 years prior to writing Scarlet Sister Mary. She gives an account of the former slaves and their <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">descendants</span> who once were the property of the plantations of South Carolina. In <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span>’s book, the slaves, though emancipated in the Civil War, stayed on the plantation and worked for the owner or tried being share croppers. The African-American workers even lived in the former slave quarters. Scarlet Sister Mary was the daughter of a slave who had been born in the quarters. The book gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives of these people who were free to leave their old life but chose, in many cases, to stay on the land and do the work they knew. In <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span>’s book, the plantation was very isolated and this may account for why the former slaves found it easier to stay where they were rather than venture out into the world.<br /><br />One of the themes of <em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> is the story of some young men and women leaving the plantation and seeking work, education, and sometimes pleasure in the world. In Mary’s case, her husband July left her shortly after they were married. Mary had a baby boy to take care of. July <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">does not</span> return for 20 years and when he does come back, she won’t take him back. Sister Mary gets the “Scarlet” added to her name because of the scarlet sins she commits as she goes through life supporting herself and her child with short-term relationships with a variety of men. In the process, they provide her with eight more children.<br /><br />Because of her sins which the little community knows about, Mary is put out of her church by a vote of the deacons. Her struggle to finally be saved again, by vote of the deacons, forms much of her story. However, her desire to be a good Christian is set against her beliefs in the old ways, dating back to slavery times and possibly back to Africa. The people in the village believed in black magic, spells, conjurers, and other superstitions that somehow co-existed with their Christian beliefs. Mary’s struggle was between these two forces. She had a love-charm made Daddy <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Cudjoe</span> that brought many men to her and perpetuated her sinful life. At the end of the book, Mary experiences another religious conversion brought on by the death of her son. But even after her conversion and re-acceptance into the church, Mary is unwilling to give up her love charm. Daddy <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">Cudjoe</span> asks her to give back the powerful “conjure rag” now that she is going to quit with men. Though scarlet no more, Sister Mary refuses and says it is all she has to keep her young. Her struggles with men and the struggle between living as a good Christian woman and a woman with special powers continues.<br /><br /><em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> is interesting, in part, because the dialog in the book is written as the people spoke. This seems authentic because Julia <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span> lived around the descendants of slaves on her own plantation. She would have heard how they spoke and capture it in her novel. The message of <em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> seems to be that Black women have had to be strong in many of their family situations. Mary had to be strong but also rely on her community and church as she raised her children. <em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em> gave me some good insights into what it might have been like for the freed slaves and their descendants in the years following the Civil War. The effects of slavery were not easily or quickly overcome. </div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-25515991513206578032011-02-21T20:02:00.014-07:002011-02-23T17:01:46.015-07:00Some interesting information about Pulitzer-winning authors<div align="left"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cldDLJBvOys/TWSGYCKoAbI/AAAAAAAAACQ/Jw111RcjrSs/s1600/Hemingway-%2BItalian%2BArmy.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 190px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5576729986047934898" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cldDLJBvOys/TWSGYCKoAbI/AAAAAAAAACQ/Jw111RcjrSs/s320/Hemingway-%2BItalian%2BArmy.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br />Young Ernest Hemingway as an ambulance driver in Italian Army in WWI - Inspiration for <em>A Farewell to Arms<br /></em><br /><br />Ever since I started collecting and reading the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I have also been interested in the authors of these award-winning works. Since 1918 when the prize was first awarded to Ernest Poole for <em>His Family</em>, there have been 84 works of fiction given the Pulitzer Prize up through 2010. If no work of fiction was judged to meet the criteria of the Pulitzer Prize in a given year, no award was given. This was the case in 1920, 1941, 1946, 1954, 1957, 1964, 1971, 1974, and 1977. However, in 1957 an honorary Pulitzer award was given to Kenneth Roberts in the year he died for his outstanding historical novels including <em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Arundel</span></em> (1930) and <em>Northwest Passage</em> (1937). Over the years 53 men and 28 women for a total of 81 have been the winning authors. This number does not add up to the 84 works of fiction that have won the award. The explanation for this discrepancy is that three authors won the Pulitzer for two of their books: Booth Tarkington for <em>The Magnificent <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Ambersons</span></em> (1919) and <em>Alice Adams </em>(1922), <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">William</span> Faulkner for <em>A Fable (</em>1955<em>)</em> and <em>The <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">Reivers</span></em> (1963), and John Updike for <em>Rabbit is Rich</em> (1981) and <em>Rabbit at Rest </em>(1990).<br /><br /><br />The earliest-born winning authors were Edith Wharton (1862) and Booth Tarkington (1869) while the latest-born winners are <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">Jhumpa</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Lahiri</span> and Paul Harding both born in 1967 . The oldest living winning author is Herman <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">Wouk</span> (sounds like "woke") born in 1915. He won the Pulitzer in 1952 for <em>The <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Caine</span> Mutiny</em>.<br /><br /><br />In my minor study of Pulitzer-winning authors, it has also been interesting to note their places of birth. Of the winners, 5 were born in New York City, 4 in Chicago, and 3 in Washington, DC. When the winners are analyzed by region of the country where they were born, it turns out that 24 were from Eastern states, 23 from Southern states, 22 from the Midwest, 4 from California, and 2 from Mountain West states (one from Colorado and one from Idaho). The West is under-represented except for the 4 from California. I will leave it to you to speculate on why Pulitzer winning authors are not likely to come from Western states.<br /><br /><br />The last point I want to make about Pulitzer winners is that many of them, like most good authors, write about that with which they are familiar or have experienced in their lives. I included Ernest Hemingway's picture at the beginning of this post to make the point. Hemingway wrote <em>A Farewell to Arms</em> about an American ambulance driver in the Italian army after having had that experience as a young man in 1918. Hemingway was foreign correspondent in Paris and ended up writing <em>The Sun Also Rises</em>. He served as war correspondent for American newspapers in the Spanish Civil War and then wrote <em>For Whom the Bell Tolls</em>; lived in Key West, Florida and wrote <em>To Have and Have Not</em>; spent time in Cuba and wrote his Pulitzer winning novel, <em>The Old Man and the Sea</em>.<br /><br /><br />Other Pulitzer winners used the same approach in writing about what they have experienced. Robert Olen Butler served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and wrote a novel about people from Vietnam during and after the war, <em>A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain</em> (1992). John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, CA and wrote a number of novels that took place in and around Salinas including <em>Cannery Row</em> and <em>Sweet Thursday</em>. Julia <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">Peterkin</span> owned with her husband a plantation in South Carolina and wrote <em>Scarlet Sister Mary</em>, a novel about the former slaves who continued to live on the plantation years after the Civil War. James A. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Michener</span> was a historian in the U.S. Navy in WWII who served in the South Pacific as used the stories he learned of as the basis for his Pulitzer winner, <em>Tales of the South Pacific</em>. Herman <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Wouk</span> served as an officer on a Navy minesweeper in the Pacific in WWII and then wrote his great novel, <em>The <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">Caine</span> Mutiny</em>, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">which</span> took place on a minesweeper in the Pacific and examined the psychological well-being and fitness of the ship's commanding officer.<br /><br /><br />Pearl S. Buck spent most of her life in China with missionary parents and used the experience to write <em>The Good Earth</em>. Willa Cather was raised in Nebraska and studied at the University of Nebraska. Many of her well-known novels such as <em>One of Ours</em>, <em>O Pioneers</em>, and <em>My Antonia</em> describe life on the Nebraska plains. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">Jhumpa</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">Lahiri</span> was born to parents from India living in London, England and wrote her Pulitzer winner, <em>Interpreter of Maladies</em> about the experiences of people from India living there and in foreign lands. Oliver <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">LaFarge</span> was a Harvard-trained anthropologist who studied the Navajo culture in the Southwest and wrote a wonderful novel about the challenges to the culture in his <em>Laughing Boy</em>. T. S. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">Stribling</span> grew up in Tennessee in the 1880's and heard his parents and relatives tell stories about the Civil War and then wrote a wonderful three-part series about the Civil War in Alabama and Tennessee: <em>The Forge</em>, <em>The Store</em>, and<em> The Unfinished Cathedral</em>. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">Stribling's</span> father fought in the Union Army while his mother's people were <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">Confederate</span> soldiers. His treatment of the Civil War and the reconstruction were much more from the Northern perspective about slavery and the hardships of former slaves after the Civil War compared to Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell's <em>Gone With the Wind</em> which was quite sympathetic to the Southern perspective on the Civil War, slavery, and the reconstruction. Harper Lee grew up as a tomboy in small town Alabama in the 1930's and went on to write <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em> which explored racial equality in the legal system. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Incidentally</span>, her father was a lawyer in the small Alabama town and her close friend Truman <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error">Copote</span> served as the model for Dill in her novel. Even the character Boo <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">Radley</span> was based on an actual person in the town. The practice of Pulitzer-winning authors to write about their own life experiences is still being carried on. The most recent winner of the Pulitzer for fiction, Paul Harding, wrote his novel, <em>Tinkers</em>, about a man who spent his life repairing clocks. It turns out that Harding's father was a repairer of clocks and Paul served as his apprentice.<br /><br /><br />It has been particularly interesting for me to gain greater appreciation and understanding of the works Pulitzer-winning authors by learning something of their background and life experiences. I hope this information on will add to your interest and enjoyment in reading the Pulitzer-winning authors.<br /></div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-21453219606005627742011-01-22T10:19:00.019-07:002011-01-31T15:26:29.868-07:00So Big by Edna Ferber: Another recommendation for an early Pulitzer winner<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TTsVL5-O3lI/AAAAAAAAABk/VBMoDoTdmQQ/s1600/OneOfOurs%2B1st%2Bed%2Bcover.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br />In my last post I recommended five novels that won the Pulitzer 70 or more years ago but are now more or less lost and forgotten. After I finish reading one of the Pulitzer winners, I write my views and opinion about the book. This helps me process what I have read and decide what I think of it. I also do this writing in the hope that it might help you to decide whether or not to read the work. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is given to an American author who preferably writes about the American experience. Given this guideline for the prize, after I have read a Pulitzer winner, I like to reflect on what aspects of American life have been dealt with in the novel, what I may have learned, and how my thinking about the American experience has been influenced by the work.<br /><br /><br /><br />In this blog I want to share my thinking about Edna Ferber's <em>So Big.</em><br /><br /><br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 277px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 208px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5567081109048588354" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TUI-xeSg-EI/AAAAAAAAAB8/f0mvEjUACeQ/s320/01SoBig.jpg" /><br /><br /><em><strong>So Big</strong></em> by Edna Ferber, 1924<br />Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925, Read in 2006<br /><br /><em>So Big</em> tells the story of the transformation of American society in the late 19th century from agrarian to industrialized city living and to a more prosperous way of living. In some ways, think <em>So Big</em> has some parallels with <em>The Good Earth</em> by Pearl S. Buck with the story moving from China to Chicago. In <em>So Big</em> a young woman, Selena Peake moves from Chicago to High Prairie in the farm land outside Chicago to be a school teacher, after her father dies and she has to support herself. Selena ends up marrying Pervus DeJong, a Dutch-American farmer, and has a son named Dirk. Selena calls her son “So Big” because when she asks him how big he is, Dirk spreads his arms and says, “so big.” Selena’s husband Pervus is a truck farmer who grows vegetables and hauls them to Chicago to sell them.<br /><br />The story gets interesting after Pervus dies unexpectedly and Selena has to take over the truck farm. So Big (Dirk) works with his mother and plays by her side in the fields. Selena drives a horse-drawn wagon, leaving the farm early in the morning, and arriving in Chicago in time to claim a spot in the produce market. Dirk rides along with his mother on the weekly trip to market. Selena learns the truck farming business and becomes well-known for her excellent, clean vegetables.<br /><br />This is where the similarity with The Good Earth comes in. Because Selena is so successful with her farm, she wants what’s best for Dirk and sends him to a good school. By now Dirk is tired of being called So Big and he is soon ready to leave High Prairie to be educated in Chicago. Wang Lung in The Good Earth did something similar with his sons when he became a prosperous farmer. It sounds like a good thing but what do the sons miss out on as they are having a good life handed to them with little effort on their own part? Dirk begins to enjoy big city life and goes on to college. Selena is in favor of this and wants Dirk to be an architect. She wants Dirk to create art through the buildings he will design. However, Dirk goes off to World War I and comes back having lost his interest in architecture and art. He found that he cannot earn enough money as an architect, so he went into banking. Dirk made good money as a banker selling bonds and was able to support his expensive lifestyle, trying to keep up with the wealthy friends he has made in Chicago. Meanwhile, Selena keeps on farming. She tries to get Dirk to see what is missing in his life but he has too many other things to attend to.<br /><br /><em>So Big</em> gets me thinking about what has happened countless times as sons of successful parents fail to appreciate what those who went before them had to work for in order to be successful. Wang Lung’s sons enjoy the benefits of his hard work and then wait for him to die so they can divide up the property and sell it. It isn’t clear at the end of <em>So Big</em> what Dirk will do with what Selena has worked for. However, Selena has a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with what she has done with her life given her difficult time of making a living when her husband died and left her with a small son. Where Selena devoted her life to building something, an excellent truck farm, Dirk seemed to want the good life and use wealth for pleasure. It seems like it takes very wise and tough parents to keep from spoiling or harming their children by the fruits of their own hard work and success.Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-39110691767357995882011-01-12T20:02:00.007-07:002011-01-12T22:13:32.235-07:00Forgotten novels I discovered on the Pulitzer winners list<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TS6CjXhgW0I/AAAAAAAAABc/_GJT30dq30M/s1600/5%2Bwinners.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561526133970721602" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TS6CjXhgW0I/AAAAAAAAABc/_GJT30dq30M/s320/5%2Bwinners.JPG" /></a> <div></div><div>I love the earlier winners of the Pulitzer Prize. When I started finding out about winners for fiction, I had the pleasant experience of discovering some great novels that I had never heard of. Without my interest in the Pulitzer winners, I likely would never have learned of them. On the other hand, there are some very well-known early winners of the prize that we all know: <em>The Age of Innocence</em> (1920) by Edith Wharton, <em>Arrowsmith</em> (1925) by Sinclair Lewis, <em>The Good Earth (1931)</em> by Pearl S. Buck, <em>Gone With the Wind</em> (1936) by Margaret Mitchell, <em>The Yearling (1938)</em> by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and <em>The Grapes of Wrath</em> (1939) by John Steinbeck. It was interesting for me to discover that these novels that I had enjoyed reading had won the Pulitzer Prize.<br /></div><div>Now for the novels that I had never heard of until I started searching for the Pulitzer winners. Here are the books that stand out for me as great winners of the Pulitzer that I discovered because they won the award. See how many of them you had heard of before you became interested in the Pulitzer winners.<br /></div><div><em>One of Ours</em> (1922) by Willa Cather</div><br /><div><em>So Big</em> (1924) by Edna Ferber</div><br /><div><em>Scarlet Sister Mary </em>(1928) by Julia Peterkin</div><br /><div><em>Laughing Boy </em>(1929) by Oliver LaFarge</div><br /><div><em>The Store</em> (1932) by T. S. Stribling</div><br /><div></div>The picture at the top of this post shows my copy of each of these books and I am fortunate to have a 1st edition copy of all of them. The importance of literary awards has become clear to me as I realize that the novels listed above might go unnoticed by readers of good fiction if not for the Pulitzer Prize. For example, none of these novels was known to my wife or my daughter who were both English majors in college and avid readers after college.<br /><br />So, if you are looking for a good Pulitzer winner to read, I highly recommend each of these five books. In future posts I will give my brief review and opinion of each these novels.Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-82152653239357280662011-01-08T22:48:00.008-07:002011-01-09T21:11:31.904-07:00Selecting a Pulitzer to read<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSlNBoVzmVI/AAAAAAAAABU/fXvnDzIOUgs/s1600/scan.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 338px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 235px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560059905369676114" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSlNBoVzmVI/AAAAAAAAABU/fXvnDzIOUgs/s320/scan.jpg" /></a><br />Title page and illustration from my 1918 edition of The Magnificent Ambersons<br /><br />In this post I am going share some of my thoughts about selecting a Pulitzer winner to read. The image above is the title page of my copy of <em>The Magnificent Ambersons</em> by Booth Tarkington. It was written in 1918 and won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1919. It was the second novel to win the award. I have a 1st edition copy of the book, the oldest in my Pulitzer collection. The first owner, Beatrice A. McCormick, wrote her name on the inside cover in 1919. I mention all this to make a point: I find it most enjoyable to read an early edition of the Pulitzer winners. For me it needs to be hardcover and maybe falling apart a little bit so you have to be careful with it. I like the large print on the soft old paper. The old edition feels good in my hands and I feel that I am able to go back in time more completely with the antique edition. Another benefit of the older editions is that they sometimes have wonderful illustrations, as you see in image of my copy of <em>The Great Ambersons</em>. Some collectors would not think of actually reading their rare, old edition of a book but I like the experience. My edition of <em>The Magnificent Ambersons</em> also has the original dustjacket and that is quite rare. The dustjacket adds greatly to the value of the book. However, when I read my old editions, I always remove the dustjacket, if my copy of the book has one. If you are interested in finding and possibly buying an old, rare edition of the early winners of the Pulitzer, my advice is to hurry. They are truly rare and often hard to find, especially if you want one in good condition with a dustjacket.<br /><br />How do you find an old edition of a Pulitzer winner? I have spent many happy hours poking around in used bookstores across the U.S. I have found some treasures that way but the bookstore owners usually know what the book is worth. So, you don't often pick up an early edition for less than it is worth. However, I have been lucky to buy some early editions for a low price. I paid only $25.00 for my 1st edition of <em>The Magnificent Ambersons</em>. I love finding used bookstores in the cities I visit, from Boston to Jacksonville, Florida and New York to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The French Quarter in New Orleans may be my favorite book hunting grounds because there are 8 to 10 used bookstores within easy walking distance of each other in the Quarter. Some of my best bargains have been in used bookstores in Utah and I think it's because fewer collectors have been there before me.<br /><br />The other way I have acquired many of my old and rare editions is through online sales. I recommend going to the AbeBooks.com website at <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/">http://www.abebooks.com/</a><br />AbeBooks.com lists used and new books that can be ordered online from bookstores across the U.S. You can search for the book you want and specify an early edition and a dustjacket. But don't be surprised if the list price is $1000 or more. You pay more for a 1st edition of a book with a dustjacket that is in mint condition. I saw listed a copy of <em>The Grapes of Wrath</em> by John Steinbeck for $10,000. It was tempting but I knew I couldn't explain the purchase or hide it from my wife, so I settled for a lot less expensive edition.<br /><br />If you don't feel that you can purchase a copy of an early edition of one of the Pulitzer winners, don't let this keep you from reading them. I recommend trying your local library. I actually got started reading older editions of older novels by borrowing an early edition of <em>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</em>, a novel written by Betty Smith in 1943. My daughter had checked it out from the library and I read it while I was visiting in her home. The look and feel of this old edition of a great novel that probably should have won the Pulitzer but did not gave me my start in reading and enjoying the old editions. By the way, I now have my own 1st edition copy of <em>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</em> that I found in a used bookstore for $5.00. So check the library if you want a reading experience that is, in my opinion, better than reading a new paperback edition of a great old novel. And if you can, try finding your own copy of an old edition of a Pulitzer winner. I haven't found and bought all of them.Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-15156883767458591402011-01-03T13:28:00.014-07:002011-01-03T15:43:50.665-07:00Some of my thoughts on leisure reading and Following the Thread<div><div><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSI0Go2fLWI/AAAAAAAAAAs/BENcj5EjKyg/s1600/moby-dick%2Bimage.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 215px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558062178778426722" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSI0Go2fLWI/AAAAAAAAAAs/BENcj5EjKyg/s320/moby-dick%2Bimage.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>In my leisure reading over the years, I have generally found two types of books. There are books like <em>The Yearling </em>that are written in a way that makes me want to savor every word and a story that is compelling and beautiful as it unfolds. In <em>The Yearling</em> the story flows along with few excursions into material that might "sidetrack" me as I read. I know I'm getting into tricky territory now as I write about what I like in leisure reading. But remember, this is about my opinion. Your opinion may be quite different. Maybe you like to read a novel that explores the sidetracks as well as a flowing story.<br /><br /></div><div>Now that I have described my reading of <em>The Yearling, </em>I'll talk about a different kind of book, still fiction but different from the kind that sweeps you along on a story line with few excursions. Some years ago I read <em>Moby-Dick</em> by Herman Melville. This is considered one of the greatest works of American fiction and is well-worth reading. That said, I also have to point out that <em>Moby-Dick </em>is a good example of one of those novels that takes the reader on long excursions into rather lengthy discourses on many subjects having to do with whales and the whaling industry of the 19th century. For example, Melville gives the reader 11 pages of material on various kinds of pictures of whales and whaling, from engravings to paintings on wood. This sidetrack, if you wish to see it as such, comes in the middle of an interesting account of Captain Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale. It became a bit frustrating for me to be reading the interesting story and then be switched over to a lengthy treatise on pictures of whales or any number of other topics.<br /></div><br /><div>So, here is how I ended up reading Moby-Dick. I call this kind of pleasure reading "<strong>Following the Thread</strong>." I decide after starting a book like <em>Moby-Dick </em>that there is a thread of a good story that I want to follow. So, I set my purpose in reading to follow that story and enjoy the reading experience. I read the first chapter or two to discover the setting, plot, characters, and general idea of the book. By this point I have probably seen the author's intent as it was with Melville, to educate the reader on many aspects of whales and whaling as well as to tell the story. If I decide that my purpose in reading is to enjoy the story, I start following the thread and skimming through parts that strike me as excursions into areas that are not crucial to pursuing the story. I skim, which for me means to quickly glance over what is written and to search for where the story thread starts again. Once I find the thread, I read more carefully to enjoy the story. When the side excursion begins again, I start skimming once again in order to pick up the thread of the story. The way I read depends on my purpose and I find following the thread to be a flexible approach to reading when my purpose is to enjoy a good story. </div><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSJOF524bBI/AAAAAAAAABM/v638O8EZdYg/s1600/1256915625-26991-0.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 317px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 313px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558090753465936914" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TSJOF524bBI/AAAAAAAAABM/v638O8EZdYg/s320/1256915625-26991-0.jpg" /></a><br /><div>The following the thread strategy helped me read <em>Moby-Dick</em> in about half the time it would have taken me to read it all straight through. I am currently using following the thread with <em>American Pastoral </em>by Philip Roth which won the Pulitzer in 1998. This book has a thread of a story that is embedded in a lot of material that strikes me as uninteresting and not very crucial to the story. I want to finish <em>American Pastoral</em> and get the satisfaction of the story Roth is telling but I can't handle the sidetracks. I know when I am encountering too many sidetracks because I feel like giving up on a novel. At that point I stop and ask myself if the story is worth experiencing and if it is the sidetracks that are leading me to want to quit. If both of these points is true, I then decide my purpose is to read the story and I start following the thread.<br /></div><div>Before I leave my discussion of following the thread, I would like to add that the strategy might apply to academic or professional reading as well as to leisure reading. In non-leisure reading, I find myself skimming through material and sampling what is there and then picking up on the thread of the most relevant material in the piece I am reading. Again, it all depends on my purpose and having a clear purpose in reading strikes me as the best way to decide how I am going to read anything from a professional journal article to the sports page in the newspaper. I hope this excursion into following the thread has been a worthwhile sidetrack for you. Happy purpose-directed reading!</div></div></div></div>Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-65570285952000961832010-12-29T23:16:00.010-07:002010-12-30T23:41:59.089-07:00The book that started my Pulitzer shelfAs I said in my previous post, my interest in reading winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction started with <em>One of Ours</em> by Willa Cather. However, I have since learned that I had read a number of other great winners of the award: Harper Lee's <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>, John Steinbeck's <em>Grapes of Wrath</em>, <em>Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose</em>, Pearl S. Buck's <em>The Good Earth</em>, Upton Sinclair's <em>Dragon's Teeth</em>, Allen Drury's <em>Advise and Consent</em>, William Faulkner's <em>The Reivers</em>, Alice Walker's <em>The Color Purple</em>, and Larry McMurtry's <em>Lonesome Dove</em>. Before learning about the award, I didn't pay much attention to whether any of these books had won the Pulitzer. I found out later they had won the award and realized that the Pulitzer had been given to some of my favorite novels.<br /><br />Some people might wonder why I have focused only on the winners of the fiction award and have not gone in for reading winners of the Pulitzer Prize for history, biography, drama, or non-fiction. My only explanation is that I love a good story with the characters, the situations with whick they struggle, and the ways they resolve their problems. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is usually given to an American author dealing with life in America. What could be better than reading to find out whether Jody in <em>The Yearling </em>by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings gets to keep the young deer he has raised as a pet even though it is eating the family's crops? What could be better than reading the Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk to find out whether the officers on the USS Caine who relieved Captain Queeg of his command during World War II were justified because of Queeg's irrational behavior? So, fiction fits my interests and gives me enjoyment in my leisure reading. Also, I don't have time to read everything, even if it won the Pulitzer for some category other than fiction. Therefore, I choose fiction.<br /><br /><br />Now more about the book that got me started on my Pulitzer reading. I will share some of my views of <em><strong>One of Ours</strong></em> by Willa Cather, 1922, the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 1923.<br /><br />In <em>One of Ours</em> Cather writes of a young man, Claude Wheeler, who grows up on his family’s prosperous farm in Nebraska during the years leading up to World War I. It’s a rather contented time for the people on the large Midwest farms, at least for the Wheeler’s in Nebraska. There seems to be plenty of land, corn, and cattle. The farm life required a lot of work but families assisted by hired hands were able to produce a surplus. Better tractors, trucks and automobiles were purchased with the surplus. Prosperity also made it possible for some of the sons to leave the farm to seek other employment or a college education. Claude’s older brother got to be a farm implement dealer in their town. Claude wanted to go to the University of Nebraska but, instead, ended up being obedient to his father’s wish that he stay on the farm and take it over one day.<br /><br />Claude married a woman who seems to love him but leaves the farm to help her sister with the missionary work she is doing in China. Claude continues to work on the farm but isn’t contented. World War I comes along in time to give Claude a chance for a new life and he is eager to go to war. <em>One of Ours</em> suggests that America was ready for a war and the Nebraska farms were able to send their sons into battle. The boys were ready to go over there and teach the Kaiser a lesson. Claude loves his war experience in France and finally finds what he has been looking for in life. He finally starts living but does he really? I won’t give away the end but I strongly recommend <em>One of Ours</em> by Willa Cather.Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48512554476377022.post-90348280770445038782010-12-29T20:23:00.006-07:002010-12-29T22:19:35.167-07:00How I Started My Pulitzer Shelf<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TRv7ZVQQKTI/AAAAAAAAAAk/5FSZfWHSJSE/s1600/OneOfOurs_Cover.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 162px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 266px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556310977912252722" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k28E-D6ZNjU/TRv7ZVQQKTI/AAAAAAAAAAk/5FSZfWHSJSE/s320/OneOfOurs_Cover.jpg" /></a> I decided to start a blog about my experiences in collecting and reading the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction because of the enjoyment and satisfaction this pursuit has given me over the last seven years. Right up-front I want to make it clear that I am not an expert in American literature. I am a clinical professor of counseling psychology and work in a university counseling center. I read for the love of reading that I started developing as a little kid reading the Landmark series of biographies of great people like George Washington and Babe Ruth. I don't let a day go by without reading a work of fiction just for the enjoyment of it. Reading the Pulitzer Prize winners has been a wonderful way to pursue my love of reading. Here is how I started on this adventure.<br /><br /> On a Saturday in January of 2004 I came across a book that caught my eye while rumaging around in our local used bookstore. <em>One of Ours</em> written by Willa Cather in 1922 was the book. I had never heard of it though I had read other works by Cather including her well-known <em>My Antonia</em> and <em>Death Comes for the Archbishop</em>. I was not familiar with <em>One of Ours</em> and decided to read it.<br /><br /> I didn't know at the time that I was about to start an adventure in reading great American fiction, much of it seemingly forgotten or, at least, not known to me. Not only would I read <em>One of Ours</em> but would go on to read many other works of fiction that I might have overlooked. This is because I noticed "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize" on the top of the cover of <em>One of Ours</em>. As I read and enjoyed the book, I started wondering what other works of fiction had won the Pulitzer Prize and if I would find them as satisfying as <em>One of Ours</em>. These questions have led me into a fun search for the other winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and a great experience in reading them. I have been able to collect an early copy, in many cases a first edition, of all of the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction, starting with <em>His Family</em> by Ernest Poole that won in 1918 through <em>Tinkers</em> by Paul Harding that won in 2010.<br /><br />Because of my focus on Pulitzer winners for fiction, I have become acquainted with many authors and their prize-winning works that I probably would never had learned about. This seems to be a good reason for giving awards to books and I am grateful that the Pulitzer Prize, endowed by Joseph Pulitzer, was launched in 1917. You can learn more about the Pulitzer Prize at <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/history.html">http://www.pulitzer.org/history.html</a>. In the Pulitzer website you can find the winners for fiction and the many other areas where awards are given annually.<br /><br /> In this blog, I will share some of my experiences in collecting and reading the Pulitzer prize-winning works of fiction. A large part of the fun is looking for the books. I will list some bookstores and online sources where you can start your own Pulitzer shelf. I will also post some of my opinions of the Pulitzer winners. I don't mind sharing my opinion but I remind you that I am an amateur. So, if you are involved in reading Pulitzer winners or are just getting interested, your comments are welcome.Richard Isaksonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026308760566565987noreply@blogger.com4