FFB: A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER, Hamlin Garland (reviewed by Ron Scheer in 2014)

 

(what a great reviewer Ron was)

Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

First edition

Being a Nebraska farm boy, I grew up on a middle border between Midwest and West many decades after Garland. Yet I found much that was familiar in his memoir of rural life during the period of Western expansion, 1865 – 1900. By the 1940s, not that much had changed. 

Farm work was more mechanized, and gas-powered tractors had taken the place of horses. Improved roads and automobiles had shortened distances. But farm work was still hard, often grueling labor at the mercy of the elements. There was dust, manure, and mud, and whether bumper years or drought and crop failures, farm life was isolated and lonely.

Realism. Garland’s realistic portrayal of it—the beauty as well as the ugliness—collided with two different streams of thought about rural America in the early 20th century. One was a pastoral, bucolic, and picturesque vision of simple, wholesome living far from the corruptive influence of the city. Another was the go-west boosterism that coaxed settlers from the East and abroad to snap up free land and get rich as agricultural producers. Garland saw in his own family’s example the empty promise at the heart of both visions.

The Garland family

He came to understand that a nation’s culture thrived in its major cities, where books were published, talented artists gathered, and there was intellectual stimulation for freedom of thought. Those with heart and mind for such pursuits were deprived of them in rural backwaters. For Garland, there was only one such city, Boston, while Chicago was no more than a huge commercial center, and New York had yet to emerge as more than a crowded port of entry.

The lure of the West, as Garland came to see it, was even more devastating in its effect. His pioneering father moved west a total of five times, with time off to serve as a Union soldier during the Civil War. As a boy, Garland went with his family from their farm near La Crosse, Wisconsin, to a homestead community near Osage, in northeast Iowa. At the age of 10 he was plowing virgin sod there with horses.

The next move was to the James River Valley near Aberdeen in Dakota, where his father eventually acquired 1000 acres of prairie, converted to wheat. But after 2 – 3 years of crop failure he was ready to move once again, this time to Montana, where there was irrigation for farming. By now able to supplement his father’s income, and seeing his mother’s failing health, Garland persuaded his parents to return to Wisconsin, where they could spend their last years with the friends and family who never left.

Farewell gathering

The cost of pioneering. The lesson for Garland is that his father’s pioneering spirit grew from faith in false promises about the frontier. For all the energy he poured into making a living from the soil, he won little in return and would have been better off remaining in the Wisconsin settlement he had once fled from. Particularly ruinous was the effect on Garland’s mother, who labored unrewarded from before sun up to after sundown, seven days a week, years on end, giving birth to four children and losing two daughters to illness.

In Dakota, Garland observes that “nearly all, even the young men, looked worn and weather-beaten and some appeared both silent and sad.” He sees “the tragic futility of their existence,” their lives “dull and eventless.” Influenced by the social-economic theory of Henry George, he blames the system of land ownership, which has pushed settlers from the East and Europe/Russia onto western lands, where with “unremitting toil” they labor to feed and clothe families while remaining impoverished and fugitive.

Seminary graduation

Social history. There are other threads in Garland’s book that offer a modern-day reader (and especially writers) a deep experience of day-to-day life on the frontier in the latter third of the 19^th century. I have already written here about how family life was enriched by song and music (see “Family musicale c1870”). A young person’s schooling, from the local country schoolhouse to “seminary” in town is also well described.

Interesting for book lovers is Garland’s recollection of his McGuffey Readers and how he supplemented his formal education with other reading material: 100 (by his count) dime novels, Hawthorne, Scott, Cooper, Paradise Lost, Twain’s Roughing It, western poet Joaquin Miller, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Franklin’s Autobiography, and Edward Eggleston’s Hoosier Schoolmaster, “a milestone in my literary progress,” he notes, “as it is in the development of distinctive western fiction.” Plus magazines and weekly newspapers: Hearth and Home, New York Saturday Night, New York Ledger, and New York Weekly.

Yet another thread of the book is Garland’s struggle as a starving writer and lecturer in Boston where he ekes out a living, while befriending the likes of novelist and editor William Dean Howells and eventually wins the praise of Walt Whitman. He is also deeply affected by the performances of Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, who taught “the dignity, the power and the music of the English tongue.”

Hamlin Garland, 1893, age 33

Wrapping up. As someone who grew up with “barn shoes,” went to a country school, learned of jazz concerts and Impressionist painters on trips to Chicago, and once worked in an office with a view of the Empire State Building, I found Garland’s story easy to identify with. I share his ambivalence about rural living, where the smell of new-cut hay and the song of meadow larks are among its pleasures, while shoveling cowshit from a milking parlor remains an indelible memory of my teen years.

Mostly I want to recommend this 467-page book as an excellent reference for any writer placing a story on the prairie frontier during the decades following the Civil War. It’s a valuable lesson in social history as it captures a period of rapid national transition, with a realism that is a corrective to the somewhat different view of Little House on the Prairie.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Small Good Thing" Raymond Carver

 https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/sgthing.html

This is one of Carver's most beloved short stories and probably his saddest. A mother picks out a birthday cake for her young son on Saturday, and on Monday he is the victim of a hit and run. He doesn't die immediately and Carver gets those hours of waiting across by putting the reader through them along with the parents. The doctor comes in, assuring them their boy will wake up. He doesn't. Meanwhile the baker keeps calling to ask when they will pick up the cake, each call getting angrier on his part. A gem of a story but hard to read if you have any experience with the death of a child. 

George Kelley

TracyK 

Jerry House 

Casual Debris

Monday, Monday-Happy Memorial Day

 

 

 

 

EVIL DOES NOT EXIST is by Ryusuke Hamaguchi does not provide any concrete endings to its story of corporation trying to build a glampground in a small rural town in Japan. It ends with a very ambiguous conclusion on two major plot points. I saw it at the Detroit Film Theater. His last film DRIVE MY CAR was an easier watch.

About to start reading HORSES (Geraldine Brooks) for my book group. Still searching for that perfect book I won't be able to put down.  To that end, I keep downloading more and more books. 

Watching OUTER RANGE and the usual bunch (Friday Night Dinner, Northern Exposure, The Cleaner) I have dumped so many streaming channels, I don't have much to watch right now.  

Went to a lecture on the history of Hamas by a reformed Rabbi and boy, did that leave me more confused than ever. 

So what's up with you? 

FFB: THE GOOD SOLDIER, Ford Maddox Ford

 One of the many podcasts I listen to is BACKLISTED. On this podcast, they invite a guest to choose a favorite older book and then the two hosts and the guests discuss it (and the writer) for an hour. It takes place in a library or bookstore and there is usually an audience. This week they talked about THE GOOD SOLDIER, chosen by Alex Michaelides, author of THE SILENT PATIENT among others. 

I haven't read THE GOOD SOLDIER in thirty years but their discussion brought it back to me. It is quite an amazing novel. Written in the first person, who's an unreliable narrator, (both a pretty new innovations in 1915) it tells the story of an affair and how it undermines a marriage and a friendship. It is very modern in its depiction of sex also. Maddox intended to title the book THE SADDEST STORY but his editor talked him into THE GOOD SOLDIER, a choice he regretted. He claimed it was to attract readers given the war going on. If you have never read the book, it is very much worth your time. A number of influential writers name it as their favorite novel.

Short Story Wednesday: THE NIGHT IN QUESTION, Tobias Wolff

 

What a great cover. 

One of my favorite short story writers too. I have only read two stories from this collection, but both were knockouts. "Mortals" is the story of a young man hired to write the obituaries for a small town newspaper. His editor calls him in one day where an older man and woman are seated. He had written an obit for the man sitting in front of him. It turns out the obit writer does not check to see if a person is actually dead. His editor fires him. On his way out, the supposedly dead man tries to make amends for him losing his job. The outcome is unexpected but not unearned. 

The second story "Powder" is about a father and son traveling on newly fallen snow. Given what I know about Wolff's life (THIS BOY's LIFE) this is surely autobiographical.

George Kelley

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 

I finally finished THERE, THERE, which had an alarming but well-prepared for ending. It was the type of book I should have read quickly and instead I took a month with it. Shame on me. When you have a dozen characters the only way to keep them straight is to take notes or read quickly and I did neither. Our next book group choice is HORSES. We have two months to read it and I will probably drag it out over those 8 weeks.

I had a story accepted in a newish journal called DARK YONDER. Looks like a nice publication. 

Watching OUTER RANGE, (Prime)which has quite a cast. Also FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER, THE CLEANER (PRIME and what a strange one). On Northern Exposure Joel has left now and I doubt it will hold up well without him. The hero's journey needs the hero. And most especially I am watching HACKS (MAX). Has a TV show ever had a more interesting female character? Has a part ever been played better? Smart is not afraid to come off looking bad. And also not afraid to show sentimentality.

Still working at the haikus and haibuns. My entire writing group is doing a piece on the subject of fences for our next group. This ought to be fun.

How about you?

FFB: TENDER IS LEVINE-Andrew Bergman (reviewed by Randy Johnson)

 

FFB: Tender Is LeVine – Andrew Bergman

(from the archives: RANDY JOHNSON, 2015)

I’ve posted about the first two Jack LeVine novels HERE and HERE previously, so i thought I might as well get to the third and last in the series.

It’s 1950 and Jack LeVine has had his office given a good upgrading. It’s a response to the funk he’s been in since his father died in 1948. After more than a year of virtually doing nothing, sulking in his apartment while listening to ball games, news reports, and classical music programs on the radio with little enthusiasm, the private detective decides to get back to work.

His first client is a German violinist, a Jew, who visits LeVine with an outrageous claim: his maestro, the famous Toscanini of the NBC Symphony Orchestra has been replaced by an impostor. The man’s memory is slipping, his conducting style has changed, and his eyesight is suddenly better than it used to be. The violinist, and others in the orchestra, suspect the conductor has been replaced by a double.

A crazy idea on the surface, but Jack takes the job.. After all, the upgrades on his office have yet to be paid for.

It’s not long before organized crime steps into the picture, the pair that turn Jack and his client away from seeing the Maestro, are way too obvious. His client gets murdered, a trip to Cuba gets an invite from hood Meyer Lansky, a boat ride back to the States, and Vegas calls, as well as a chase across country with the Maestro.

A satisfying mystery. Would that Jack LeVine had appeared in more novels.

Image

Short Story Wednesday

 TracyK

George Kelley 

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House

Eyes Dilated for a bit.

Will return on Friday. 

Monday, Monday

 Beautiful Mother's Day weather but lots of ups and downs with temps this week. I have gone from heat to air to heat more than once. I saw AISHA with my movie club. It's an Irish movie about an immigrant from Nigeria who cannot impress the bureaucrats that her life in Nigeria is in danger. A good movie but so depressing. A few light-hearted scenes would have given the shadows some light to land on. Also went to see the Brentano Quartet play music from Beethoven and Schubert. I doubt there was anyone under 65 in the house. Who will support the arts when we're gone.

Watching NO OFFENSE on BRITBOX. Sadly I managed to order it in two places and am stuck with paying twice for the first month. Still watching NORTHERN EXPOSURE but I might be at the end. Or at least it says one more episode. Loving HACKS. 

Had a nice brunch with my son and his family.  I will probably get to spend a little time with Megan in June. Some friends invited me in for a long weekend. We are getting tkts for MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, STEREOPHONIC, and ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. Hopefully I will get there again in the Fall and get to see some other friends on that trip (like Jeff and Jackie). This is a quickie and really last minute. Three plays in three days seems like a lot, but I will top it off by watching the TONY'S.

Happy Mother's Day

FFB-RIPLEY UNDERGROUND, Patricia Highsmith (reviewed by Nick Jones)

 

The Great Tom Ripley Reread, 2: Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith (from the archives by Nick Jones)

Ripley Under Ground is set five or six years after The Talented Mr. Ripley, although in reality fifteen years had passed between the two books, which means that either Under Ground is set in the then-past or Talented was set in the then-future (I'm guessing the latter is more likely, as at one point in Under Ground a policeman finds a buried coin dated 1965 and the inference is it's been there some time). Either way, Tom is now thirty-one, and has secured for himself the kind of comfortable, idle existence he worked – and killed – so hard for in Talented. He lives with his wife of three years, Heloise, in a large house, Belle Ombre, in rural France, spending his time pottering about in the garden, reading, painting, and occasionally acting as a middle man for a fence friend of his, Reeves Minot (and oh, what an attractive way of life it is – at least, to me). Heloise has a stipend from her father, and Tom has Dickie Greenleaf's inheritance, but Tom also derives an income from an art forging ring in England, and it's the unravelling of this that forms the basis of the plot.

In making art, painting and forgery the focus of the book, Highsmith is picking up on themes she established in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Dickie painted, as did Tom – except of course Tom only painted as Dickie, having assumed Dickie's identity. Right at the end of Talented, however, Tom discovers a genuine interest in painting, determining not so much to paint himself (although by the time of Under Ground he has, as I say, taken it up, and as a painter believes himself to be, amusingly, "worse than Dickie"), but "to collect paintings that he liked, and to help young painters with talent who needed money". In a perverse sort of way, this is what he does prior to Under Ground. As is established at the start of the novel, when Derwatt, a painter in whom Tom became interested, died a few years back, Tom suggested to Derwatt's friends that another painter, a friend and admirer of Derwatt's named Bernard Tufts, forge further Derwatt paintings, and helped concoct a story that Derwatt was in fact still alive and living in Mexico. Tom has two Derwatts hanging on his walls at Belle Ombre, one real, one fake, and it's telling that he prefers the Tufts fake to the genuine Derwatt.

But there are other strands from Talented that Highsmith immediately picks up in Under Ground. Tom's association with the shady Reeves Minot speaks to Tom's fascination for the criminal, and he's soon called upon to impersonate Derwatt himself, donning make-up and a fake beard for a press conference in London, echoing the moment in Talented when he briefly tries out eyebrow pencil and putty on his nose to impersonate Dickie. Tom's skewed perspective is highlighted when he takes delight in the obscene but witty graffiti scrawled on the London Underground, and when he observes that "Some people didn't know how to run a business" upon learning that the gallery which sells Bernard's Derwatt fakes hasn't accounted for how the paintings might have arrived from Mexico – as if faking records and ledgers were a typical business practice.

Highsmith professed herself very pleased with Ripley Under Ground when she finished writing the novel, and it's easy to see why. There's an unhinged, giddy, almost farcical quality to the book – a grotesque hall of mirrors, with Bernard's forging of and Tom's impersonating of Derwatt reflecting Tom's impersonation of Dickie and forging of his will in Talented. (Derwatt, Dickie... is it a coincidence that their names both begin with "D"...?) Moreover, Dickie's cousin, Chris, is staying with Tom when Bernard comes to stay at Belle Ombre also, Chris's expressions often reminding Tom of Dickie. On top of that, after six years Tom has just killed again, this time an art collector, Murchison, who had come to suspect Derwatt was being forged. Tom buries Murchison's body in the woods out back of his house before enlisting Bernard's aid in moving it and dumping it in a river instead; with all this going on, it's little wonder that Tom comes close to cracking up.

Of course, Highsmith is performing the same trick she did in Talented: getting the reader to empathize and even sympathize with Tom. Her aim with Talented, as quoted from her diaries in Andrew Wilson's biography of Highsmith, Beautiful Shadow, was to show "the unequivocal triumph of evil over good, and [rejoice] in it". She added: "I shall make my readers rejoice in it, too." That said, in Under Ground – unlike, arguably, in Talented – Highsmith leaves the reader in no doubt as to Tom's true nature: after Bernard, whom Tom greatly admires (although perhaps more as a forger than a painter), tries to kill him (the first of two attempts, the second of which will see Tom buried alive – hence the novel's title), Bernard tells him, "I detest you – because all this is entirely your fault. I should never have agreed to it – true. But you're the origin." After which Tom reflects: "Tom knew. He was a mystic origin, a font of evil."

The realisation that Tom full well understands who and what he is is perhaps more disturbing than the revelation that he's evil incarnate. It's a stark illustration of Tom's lack of conscience: even with that knowledge, he's perfectly able to continue operating and to live his life; to appreciate art; to be fond of ("love" would be putting it too strongly) his wife; to take pleasure in learning and in his garden and his house. But that self-awareness and self-acceptance extends to his perception of others, too – and here is an ability that serves both him and Highsmith well. His "otherness" grants him insight into how people – adversaries and potential allies – think; allows him to foresee what they might be planning. In a sense, this is Highsmith making things slightly easier for herself: by endowing Tom with an acute intuitiveness, she can have him make startling leaps of logic and consequently move the plot along.

Tom's intuitiveness, his knack for feeling his way through hazardous situations, helps him to evade capture in both Talented and Under Ground, but just as important are his single-minded ruthlessness – which reaches its apotheosis at Under Ground's climax with the monstrous desecration of another corpse – and his aptitude for obfuscation, misdirection and impersonation. He weaves an intricate web of lies in Under Ground – admittedly strengthened with a little luck (the literal luck of the devil) – and will do much the same in the next book in the series. And as rewarding a novel as Ripley Under Ground is – and it actually rose in my estimations this time around – the third Ripley outing, Ripley's Game, is, I think, even better...

Short Story Wednesday: "Mirrors" by Carol Shields

 I like Carol Shields novels more than her stories but anything by her is first -rate. The short stories can sometimes feel overstuffed. STONE DIARIES and HAPPENSTANCE are terrific novels especially. Or perhaps writing styles are more spare now. I'm not sure. 

I have only read a few so far. My favorite is "Mirrors." A couple has decided not to have any mirrors at their summer cottage. They don't even have saucepans with bottoms that might reflect them. For those three months, he shaves without aid, she does her hair without help too. It's a relief for her to not bother with her looks for those three months. Does the lack of mirrors give them both a break from narcissism, a break from societal demands? Or does it create an interim with new concerns?

George Kelley

Jerry House 

Kevin Tipple

Monday, Monday

BABY REINEEER (Netflix) is pretty terrifying, but one of those "you can't look away" shows. Lost of chatter about it online. Also watching FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER (Kanopy) NORTHERN EXPOSURE (PRIME) (which somehow gets better each season), SPOOKS (PRIME), HACKS (MAX) still great in its third season. Trying to watch THE SYMPATHIZER but it ain't easy.  If you get Kanopy, Friday Night Dinner is so funny. Especially if you have a taste for British humour.

Rewatched THE NICE GUYS and still don't think it's a great movie despite its two stars. The mix of comedy and violence never goes down easily for me.

Went to a library book sale but because I was walking (about a mile) I could only purchase four books. I would go back today for the bag sale but I am going to hear Mozart at the DSO. 

The one book you probably can't see (above) is a collection of short stories by Carol Shields (Dressing Up for the Carnival). Unlike Tracy's book sales there were not many great books to be had and there were almost no people looking at them. For an educated community, these people don't seem to read much. Or maybe they don't read used books. Or even library books.

Went to an architectural exhibit at Lawrence Institute School of Technology. Their graduating project was to design a sports center for Sault Ste Marie, a town in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Amazing to see their final projects.  I have one friend who is willing to do oddball things like this. Thank God.

Anyway, I am not supposed to be buying books. Just reading them. Still working on THERE, THERE but reading a lot of magazines and short stories and trying to write haiku.  

Lots of podcast listening. Mostly ones on books, movies, TV but some political ones too. 

Exercise classes, writing group, and a woodwind concert at the Senior Center this week. They, too, are trying to build a better facility. Their programs are great, it's the building that isn't.  I went to a meeting discussing what people want and boy, they want a lot but don't want higher taxes. Pickelball is the big thing.

How about you?

FFB: Fred Zackel

  

Every once in a while, I got an email from Fred Zackel. I think I met him once at Bouchercon. I bet some of you remember him. 

Today, looking for something else, I ran across his obit from December. https://obits.cleveland.com/us/obituaries/cleveland/name/frederick-zackel-obituary?id=54090148

FREDERICK ZACKEL is the author of Cocaine and Blue Eyes (1978) and Cinderella After Midnight (1980) among other novels. He teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Trivia buffs should note that the 1983 TV adaptation of Cocaine and Blue Eyes was co-produced by O.J. Simpson, who also starred as Zackel's detective, Michael Brennen. "Look at it this way," Zackel says: "I was discovered by Ross Macdonald and O.J. Simpson. That can haunt you in the wee hours of the night."

 

Short Story Wednesday: FINISTERE, Kevin Barry, from THE NEW YORKER

 

My Dad around age 12.
 

https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/kevin-barry-04-15-24

 

The protagonist has just ended a summer romance as he takes a ferry to France. The romance ended with cop cars so his escape is a quick one. On the ferry, he meets a teenage girl, wise beyond her years and possibility beyond believability, he alternately is childish for a man of 55. The two bond over a TV show WORLD'S TOUGHEST PRISONS. At the end of the trip they are both uplifted in some -hard to describe- way.

This was another beautifully written story and hearing Barry read it on THE NEW YORKER site is pure joy. Barry has a new novel coming out in July and is the author of THE NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER. In the link above, he discusses the story. 

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Casual Debris

 

Here is the storyhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/finistere-fiction-kevin-barry