On This Day In History, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men Was Published

Robert Burns tribute, Milwaukee

When I was in high school I vividly remember two John Steinbeck books that we read and studied, One was his masterful and memorable novel Grapes of Wrath, the second was this powerful novella Of Mice and Men.

What I most remember is the insightful manner in which our English teacher Mr Harris drew attention to certain details that Steinbeck purposefully embedded in this tale of the Joad family as they were forced to leave their homeland during the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression,  (A special shout out to English teachers in general and Mr Harris specifically for his lifelong influence.)

Of Mice and Men is a tightly packed story of two migrant workers. The writing is sensitve, and vivid, the story heartbreaking. Published in 1937 it certified that Steinbeck was the real deal as far as writers go.

The two main characters are George and Lennie. It's themes include the meaning of friendship, isolation and the quest to experience the American Dream, a place of one's own. Like all quest stories there is the dream or objective, and there are the barriers or obstacles to be overcome, The pair are displaced ranch workers striving to escape their fate, George being quick-witted and protective, Lennie being a large, incredibly strong but mentally disable man who needs a friend like Lennie to look after him.

The reality is that there are all kinds of Lennie's in this world. How do we best stand along side of them so they can find a place where they can be free to be themselves? They don't fit in to the business world of success motivation books and seminars. Misfits deserve a place to fit in, too.

The story opens with George and Lennie heading toward another job after things went bad in a previous one. The characters in the new situation have different ideas about life and symbolize the various ways working people approach what they do. There's also the unspoken rules of the various cultures we find ourselves in, with subsequent misunderstandings. In the end we seehow fragile dreams can be in a world that seems indifferent to our struggles.

The title comes from these lines from Robert Burns' poem, To A Mouse. 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

          Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

          For promis’d joy!

(Trans: The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.
    And leave us naught but grief and pain, for promised joy.)

Times have changed but the story remains relevant. Though we're living in a different era, human nature hasn't evolved the way technology has. 

* * *

In 2021 I wrote about banned books. To my. surprise Of Mice and Men was banned in dozens of municipalities. You can find out why here: Do You Read Banned Books

Thanks for reading. Did you read this book in high school? Or later?  What was your take?

Route 66: A Journey Through Time

Route 66, also known as the "Mother Road," was a highway that ran from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. It was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System, and it was established in 1926. Route 66 quickly became a popular route for people traveling across the country, and it played an important role in the development of the American West.

Route 66 passed through eight states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It ran through many small towns and rural areas, connecting these communities to the rest of the country. Route 66 also passed through some of the most scenic parts of the United States, including the Grand Canyon and the Mojave Desert.

This highway was especially popular during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. During this time, many people from the Midwest migrated to California in search of a better life. Route 66 was the main route that people took on this journey, and it became known as the "Highway of Hope." (Read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.)

Route 66 was also popular with tourists. The highway offered travelers a chance to see the American West and to experience its unique culture. Route 66 was also known for its many roadside attractions, such as motels, diners, and gas stations.

The animated film Cars showed audiences what happened to the historic highway once the new Interstate Highway System was being installed under President Eisenhower in the 1950s and it began to decline in importance. The new superhighways were faster and more direct than Route 66, and became the preferred route for travelers. Though Route 66 was officially decommissioned in 1985 it remained a popular tourist destination today.

In 2009 Susie and I drove a portion of it from Texas to the Grand Canyon. There were memorable sites along the way, but the memories were clouded by the poverty we saw as well. People can move on, places cannot. Neither is easy.

Photos courtesy Gary Firstenberg.

Related Link Southwest Sorrows: Making Memories on Old Route 66 Gary Firstenberg: Turning Negatives Into Positives

Do You Read Banned Books?

When I was young Mad Magazine used to cost a quarter. My allowance was a quarter, which worked out well. I could buy a Mad magazine or save two quarters and buy Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was fifty cents. This left me with one more quarter to save for something more expensive, like a Revell model battleship or submarine. That was always around a dollar. 

Mad was famous for occasional inserts. For example, they inserted a vinyl record in the center that you could play on a record player. Side A was It's a Gas, in which the only lyrics were periodic burps. (Burps are a gas, right?) Side B was She Got A Nose Job, which I can still sing to this day. 

Another time, the magazine inserted full color book covers that could be used to wrap around trade-sized paperbacks. The book covers were intended to shock adults by appearing to be banned books or very adult content. The fake title would be large and in small type the rest of the title. One of the book covers was Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Those three words were writ large in white block letters on a blue background. The full title might have been something like Let's go to a TROPIC isle OF no importance and get skin CANCER.

Other scandalous titles included Lady Chatterly's Lover and Fanny Hill. When I took a couple of these fake book covers and put them on my paperbacks, they achieved the intended goal of shocking an adult, specifically my mother. 

As it turns out, when I was in college eight or so years later the movie version of Tropic Of Cancer was playing at the theater. I probably would not have noticed but for the fake book cover I'd used from Mad. Out of curiosity I went to see it and left after about 20 minutes, not because it was vulgar but because it seemed pointless. (My assessment wasn't far afield. On imdb.com it has a 5.5 rating out of 10, which is pretty low.) 

* * * 

There was a time when the label Banned In Boston was a badge of notoriety. Perhaps it was Boston's Puritanical roots that resulted in the region's power to censor books, plays and movies, thereby dictating what was acceptable and unacceptable.

In addition to books like Ulysses (Joyce), Leaves of Grass (Whitman) and The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up Little Susie" was censored.

While perusing the shelves at our local library this past week I discovered the 2014 edition of Banned Books, a catalog of books that have stirred the ire of people in various parts of our country over the years. It's a large book with more than 325 pages of listings, identifying books and the causes of their being barred, or recommended to be. Here are some of the more surprising entries.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury surprised me. It's about book burning. Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles was also banned by one school district because the N-word is used in one of its stories. The book was reprinted without that sentence and is OK now. 

One of my favorite Bradbury stories is The Veldt. It's a short sci-fi story that was included in his The Illustrated Man. I went through a sci-fi stage once, reading a lot of Asimov short stories as well as Bradbury. I had to scratch my head as to why The Veldt would be criticized. Fortunately, Banned Books included the reason people were upset with these various books. In this case, the parent who complained felt the story failed to show any consequences for the children's actions. That's getting pretty picky. 

Various school districts and communities took umbrage with six of Richard Brautigan's books, most of which I read in college.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was banned in the USSR because of references to occultism and spiritism. A Study in Scarlet was pulled in one county school district because it portrayed Mormonism in a bad light. The surprise for me is that Sign of the Four doesn't seem to have received any complaints even though it begins with Holmes rather enjoying the effects of shooting cocaine. 

Upton Sinclair's Oil! was banned in Boston because of its criticism of the Harding administration. Harding was no longer president and his cronies already dispersed by the time the book was published. It was also banned in Yugoslavia and burned in Nazi Germany, the latter because of its socialist views. The film There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was loosely based on this book.

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was banned in dozens of localities for language and in some municipalities because it used the N-word. I've read this book a few times since first reading it in high school. I remember the characters and the power of the prose, not these language matters which passed faster than a speed bump.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was banned in Ireland.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn received dozens of challenges and has been pulled from countless reading lists because it was deemed to "undermine the self-esteem" of black youth, and the N-word is used in the book a number of times. 

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird suffered the same fate, despite it being a story that shines a light on the evils of racial inequality. Some school districts rejected it because of racial slurs used in the story and does "psychological damage to the positive integration process." Ironically Harper Lee was showing the ugliness of people who demean other simply because of the color of their skin. 

Several Kurt Vonnegut books made the list including Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. 

* * *

There's much more that can be said here on this topic, but it's nuanced and I don't have time to detail all the distinctions as regards this issue. I agree with those who believe there is an age appropriateness to be considered when recommending books to younger audiences. Then again, that's a much longer discussion. 

This book, Banned Books, caught my attention when I saw it, and I decided to check it out. The subtitle is Challenging Our Freedom To Read.

The Prose and Cons of a Kerouac Classic -- On the Road

I finally got around to reading On the Road, the Kerouac classic considered by some to be the most significant book about the Beat generation. Twenty or forty years ago I started Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s follow-up, but couldn’t get into it.

Since I myself have now been a publishing writer more than four decades, I can confess that I’ve always had a beef with this book. Why? Because I’d heard how he wrote the manuscript on a continuous reel of paper and a publisher actually accepted it. Kudos to Kerouac, I suppose. He did it his way and he slid by the gatekeepers of convention.

I know many talented writers who can’t get a publisher to look at their work without an agent and even then, if you sent in a manuscript rolled up like a toilet paper roll, I honestly doubt you’d be taken seriously.

Keep in mind, though, that this was the era of Jackson Pollock, so bad behavior was overlooked if you’d been tapped as a genius.

* * * *
My expectations were low for On the Road, despite Time magazine's declaration that this was one of the most important books of the 20th century. Others raved about it and endorsed it, including Dylan, so when I saw it at the library two weeks ago I checked it out.

Photo by Donald Giannatti via Unsplash

Reading On the Road brought two other road trip books to mind--Steinbeck's Travels with Charley and Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip. Both of these were written in the 1960s, with On the Road preceding them. On the Road (1957) is about the travels of Sal Paradise (the narrator) and friends, chiefly Dean Moriarty, from 1947-50. Steinbeck's story was a true account of a road trip in 1960 around the country with his poodle. Tom Wolfe's book is an example of what was labeled the New Journalism, a novel-like account of an LSD-infused magic bus trip with Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. All three go cross-country and back, with Sal and Dean ultimately zagging South into Mexico.

Sidewalk nameplate outside City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco.

The three stories have this in common. They're well-written. On the other hand, I would not go as far as the New York Times went when they described Kerouac's novella, "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."

The central character--almost a fixation for Kerouac--is Dean Moriarty. Wikipedia describes him as "much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to explore all kicks and an inspiration and catalyst for Sal's travels."

As I read the book--and what makes all this praise feel appalling to me--this hero is essentially a juvenile delinquent who never grew up, who lies, is perpetually looking to get laid, abusive to every female character he has a relationship with, wrecks vehicles, vandalizes, steals, betrays his friends and does whatever he pleases without consideration for the others in his life. Great hero he is not.

The big surprise for me was that Kerouac did produce some good sentences. I enjoyed the skill with which he produced some of the descriptive passages, and everywhere there is a vividness in the writing that makes the action come alive in the reader's mind. Throughout the story I was struck here and there by a turn of phrase, by some of the interesting ways he stated things.

When all is said and done, Kerouac's writing was prose. Dean Moriarty is a con. 

12 Powerful Novellas That Spoke To Me When I First Read Them

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him, and travel in his company." --Andre Gide

"We read to know we're not alone." --William Nicholson

* * * *

“But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer.” --Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

* * * *

As they say, too many books, too little time.

For Christmas yesterday one of the three books I received was Ron Chernow's much ballyhooed Grant, an imposing volume of more than a thousand pages that I've been looking forward to since I learned of its appearance. If you're looking for something shorter before you tackle your next massive volume, here are a dozen suggestions from my personal shelves with which you may temporarily divert yourself...

A Dozen Favorite Novellas

1. The Tenth Man, by Graham Greene

“When you reach a certain age you don't care about the future: it is success enough to be alive: every morning you wake with triumph.”

2. Of Mice and Men, by Steinbeck

“At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.”

Par Lagerkvist

3. Barabbas, by Par Lagerkvist

Swedish winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize whose work was introduced to the larger world by French literary giant Andre Gide. Barabbas, the story of a believer without faith, was his first international success.

4. Theseus, by Andre Gide

I became captivated by Gide's journals after discovering him in the early 90's. 1947 Nobel Prize Winner and author of 80 books, Gide stood at the center of the French literary scene from the turn of the century till his death in 1951.

5. A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean

I probably read this book five times (including audio version) and have enjoyed the film based on this story another four or five times. "Eventually, all things merge into one and a river runs through it."

6. Isabelle, by Andre Gide

“Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.” Gide is one reason for the expression belles letrtes, the crafting and transformation of words into fine art.

7. Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow

“A person can become tired of looking himself over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”

1929 Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann

8. Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann

“Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.”

9. The Sibyl, by Par Lagerkvist

“Nothing is more foreign than the world of one's childhood when one has truly left it.” The Sibyl is a strange parable of sorts that speaks to the tragic sense of life.

10. The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis

A response to the moral relativism in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Lewis takes readers on a tour of the Afterlife by means of a bus that leaves England on a dreary afternoon. A rich, insightful read.

11. Mr. Majestyk, by Elmore Leonard

“It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.” I was introduced to Elmore Leonard by Joe Soucheray at a 1985 writer's conference. Joe was trying to write his first novel and lamented at how impressive Leonard was and his own efforts so inferior. This may not be his greatest book, but I found it an enjoyable and memorable read.

12. Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

“He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.”

* * * *

The Chrysanthemums and Dylan's Simple Twist of Fate

"She threw a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate..."

The Chrysanthemums is a powerful yet subtle short story at or near the beginning of John Steinbeck's 1938 collection of stories titled The Long Valley. Though I've not read the book in thirty years, I remember vividly several of the stories, this one especially. All the stories in this collection have California's Salinas Valley as their setting.

There are three characters in this particular story. Elisa, an intelligent and attractive woman in her mid-thirties who works on the farm. Her husband Henry. And a tinker who stops by while she is working on her chrysanthemums.

SPOILER ALERT: If you want to read it yourself, go here and read it first or proceed if it doesn't matter to you. 

The story is simplicity itself. Henry goes to town, a tinker pulls his rickety wagon into her driveway. A conversation ensues, and a transaction. The smooth-talking tinker persuades her to purchase his services to fix a pot or  pan, and during this brief encounter she is enamored by his worldliness, the fact that he has been around. Impressed as he is by her flowers, she gets down on her knees and pulls some chrysanthemums for him, which he graciously receives.

It's all so very understated and appears so simple of a story, until Henry gets home and she has bathed to go out with him, feeling a rush of excitement about life. As she and Henry drive off down the road she sees something that makes her ill, at which she is afraid to look though she knows what it is. The tinker has dumped the flowers on the road. Inwardly she says bitterly that at least he could have dumped them off the road and at least made a pretext of caring.

The transaction is sexually charged even though no sexual action has taken place. Yet the very description of Elisa kneeling before him to provide him with the chrysanthemums is presented in a manner that implies sexual submission. In the end she pays the tinker 50 cents for fixing something for her. Which he tosses into his cup.

This moment of transaction is the second echo that brought to mind Dylan's "Twist of Fate." I can here Elisa's coins as the clink into the tinker's tin. The same sound that we hear as "she dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate / and forgot about a simple twist of fate."

The story ends with Elisa asking questions about what it's like to see a boxing match in person. Men see all kinds of things that are outside the scope of a woman's experience and she wants to know. But I see the description of the fight as metaphor for her own experience with the tinker and the chrysanthemums. Seeing her flowers in the road, yielded from a very personal place within herself, strikes her hard, like the bloodied fists of professional boxers, breaking noses and leaving welts, or worse.

Last year when I wrote about Dylan's song, I using it to illustrate the meaning of cognitive dissonance, that feeling of discomfort that occurs when one holds conflicting ideas, beliefs or convictions. This time around, and maybe my fourth time, I'm struck by a matter that parallels Steinbeck's story here, and which is a recurring theme in both music and literature. One character is living with illusions and the other has no illusions about the relationship. In Steinbeck's story it's Elisa who is living with illusions. In Dylan's here it's the narrator.

The narrator knows she's just a hooker, a woman who's working the waterfront "where the sailors all come in." Yet he secretly believes there's a relationship between them. Or so he lies to himself. She has no such illusions. The transaction in the motel room is forgotten as quickly as it emerged.

But the man is not dissuaded and like a Pavlovian dog he keeps returning to the waterfront to find her. "Maybe she'll pick him out again / How long must he wait?"

Dylan's story here parallels a similar story, though Robert Gover's Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding also has a racial element as well. In Gover's 1962 bestselling novel the main character is a white college student who's heart has been captured by a 14-year-old black girl who works at a house of ill repute in the deep south. The college student has illusions about their relationship, but for Kitty there are no illusions. This is a financial transaction.

When the sun comes up, and we see the light do we hide our heads in the sand so we can hold on to our illusions?

"Like A Rolling Stone" is a song about the stripping away of illusions.

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal

Elisa had something stolen from her. In her case it wasn't everything, but it was something real.... her dignity.

Dylan was not only aware of Gover's novel, he praised it novel in a 1963 interview with Studs Terkel on radio station WFMT. Maybe there was a seed sown which blossomed into one of his many great songs.

Interested in reading more about The Chrysanthemums? Click here. 

Meantime, life goes on.... all around you.

Where the Jobs Are

His opening line in the contact email he sent me was, "I'm so glad that someone else reads books." He'd found Graham Greene in my profile, one of his favorites. He then asked if I read Steinbeck. A yes, naturally. We corresponded. Turns out, his job is to persuade bloggers to link to his company's site.

Serge Lavange is an account manager for Jooble, a job search firm with offices around the world. Its head offices are in Kiev, Ukraine and Limassol, Cyprus. The concept behind the company is to be a type of Google site except that whereas Google helps feed you information but anything and everything, Jooble feeds you info on jobs.

Well, I decided I'd go for the ride if he let me ask a few questions.

EN: What is the current perception of where the best jobs are?
Serge: It depends on the location and of course on a company you search the job at. But if you take a look worldwide market we can tell you that IT specialists are in high demand right now mostly in every company, even if it is not IT related company. Let us explain what we mean here. Internet lets its roots to almost every industry and most of companies are trying to expand their activity on-line (social networks, on-line shops, on-line advertising, etc). Of course engineer related jobs are also in demand.

EN: I get the feeling more people are moving outside of their countries to other places than ever before. Are there stats on this? Where are the places more people are moving to?
Serge: There is a saying: “It is good to be there, where you cannot be right now.” According to statistics we see that permanent migration into OECD countries fell by about 7% in 2009 to 4.3 million people. It is the second consecutive year of decline after a decade of growth.

EN: If you leave your country to go somewhere else, where are the easiest places to find employment?
Serge: Every country has its peculiarities and we cannot say that it is easy to find a job somewhere. Unless you try of course. But we think it all depends on the candidate’s qualification. If you have a Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree and have fresh ideas in your head then you may feel free to apply for a job to any company you dream about. It may be Google, Apple or any other company. You may reach your goals if you work hard and of course believe in what you do.

EN: How big is Jooble as a company and how long have they been around?
Serge: There are 50+ people working at Jooble. The company was founded in 2007 with offices located in Ukraine and Cyprus. Now Jooble operates in 44+ countries and we permanently develop our services to other countries.

If you would like to find a job in other locations you may try to search jobs in:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Chilie, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia , South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey , Venezuela, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

EdNote: Serge wasn't sure whether this information would be relevant to this blog, but he stated that my articles were interesting and easy to read. That's the second time I've heard that in a week. Serge especially liked my post "Moneyball Worth More Than the Price of Admission." Maybe you would, too.

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover’s presidential reputation is not one that smacks of wonderment as it has been presented to us in our modern time. In point of fact, there seems to be little to admire in the man if he is not forgotten altogether, according to the way he is referred to by many historians.

I guess you might say his own words came back to bite him, as happens all too often in the public eye. Hoover had been an entrepreneur and multimillionaire by the start of World War I. One quote that came back to haunt him during his failing presidency was “If a man has not made a million dollars by the time he is forty, he is not worth much.”

Well, as the Roaring Twenties devolved into the Great Depression, Hoover had this and many other such statements thrown in his face.

One book I am currently taking in is The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. Steinbeck made his name writing about the Okies and the hardships of the fictitious Joad family in the dust bowl era. Egan has meticulously researched journals, diaries, newspaper accounts to assemble a retrospective look at the real people who endured this disastrous experience. Egan catalogues the false hopes of those who settled there and the shattered dreams of these same who were destroyed by what can only be called a national travesty.

There are numerous references to President Hoover, resident of the White House during the onset of the Thirties decade. There’s little in this book to alter the image I’ve always believed reflected who he was. But when I sought to find the quotes referenced by Egan in The Worst Hard Time, I came across a collection of other quotes from Hoover’s lips and pen that seem to fill pieces of a picture which has been heretofore incomplete in my mind.

And so, whatever your take on this rich dead Republican, put it aside and enjoy these few snippets of wit and candid observation.

After Losing the Election of ’32

“You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side.

America
“My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope."

On Being President
"Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe."

Privacy

"There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing."

On Children

"Children are our most valuable natural resource."

Politicos
"When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man."

How Capitalism Works

"Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress. Herbert Hoover Depression I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him."

The Wry Humorist

"Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself."

The Realist

"About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends."

The Realist II

"All men are equal before fish."

An Observation
"It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own."

The Knife Cuts Both Ways
"Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party."

Fish Stink from the Head Down

"When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned."

With Impeccably Bad Timing

"In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land."

And Again

"We have not yet reached the goal but.. we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation."

Still True Today

"No public man can be just a little crooked."

Clever

"A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus."

Global Warning

"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains."

On War

"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."

Sad, But True

"Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt."

The Rise & Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yesterday I listened to a lecture called The Rise and Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Dr. Elliot Engel. Professor Engel is a good storyteller and active lecturer on literary subjects. He has also written three plays, many articles and seven books, the most recent being A Dab of Dickens and A Touch of Twain.

According to Engel, Fitzgerald is one of only four significant American authors of the 20th century. As he sees it, all the rest will be forgotten in 200 years, but these four will continue to be studied: John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and the topic of this lecture, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Hemingway’s significance is chiefly due to the impact he made on modern literature. His punchy prose smashed the old rules and replaced them with a new stylebook. Short is strong, shorter stronger. Steinbeck will always be associated with his keenly perceptive Depression-era stories. Faulkner’s landscape was the South, and Fitzgerald’s the Roaring 20’s.

Fitzgerald’s life story is itself like a novel. His sisters died while he was in the womb so that when he was born his mother doted on him excessively. When she lost the two girls she vowed never to have any more children.

Though his mother came from a family with means, his dad managed to do badly in business and when Scotty was eleven they were bankrupt. As a result, they returned to Minnesota to be near her folks who could then help them get on their feet. This and other anecdotes were presented to give a backdrop for Fitzgerald’s personality development and his fascination with the Jazz Age, particularly the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

The irony is that his life seemed to be a repeat of his dad’s. He married a girl from a wealthy background, but somehow failed at providing for her. We’re talking about Zelda here, another tragic character whose insatiable zest for life was greased with wacko zeal. Though at one time the most sought after short story writer of his day, and highest paid, Fitzgerald’s books sold badly, after the first, and Zelda’s spending far exceeded the paltry pittance their sales provided.

Eventually, his nerves were shot, and he wrote about it in a three part feature for Esquire magazine. His extreme candor resulted in his inability to sell any more work. He was “out of favor.” Here are the opening lines of that Esquire piece.

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.

It was actually a three part series --“The Crack-Up,” “Pasting It Together,” and “Handle with Care”-- which was then published as a book. The irony is that several years later, that book helped restore Fitzgerald’s name as a writer of significance. But by this time he was dead.

Now my question is this. Do you believe Professor Engel is right? Is Fitzgerald worthy of being included in the short list of important American authors who will be remembered 200 years from now? Do you think Fitzgerald’s significance is overrated?

A few related questions: Where does Jack London stand in importance as an American writer? Hemingway? Sinclair Lewis? Thomas Wolfe? And who will be remembered from the second half of the twentieth century?

In closing, a description from near the end of The Great Gatsby, a summing up of what Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s lives were about. “They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

Link to The Crack-Up

More facts about Fitzgerald

NOTE: The photo of the painting on the left was taken in a gallery on Madeline Island and is not an Ed Newman original.

This Is My Best

Somewhere along life’s way I managed to acquire the 1180 page compilation of stories called This Is My Best in which Dial Press assembled over 150 self-chosen masterpieces by 93 of America’s greatest living authors. Published in 1942, the book is as interesting for its choices regarding authors as for the authors’ own decisions regarding their work.

The book not only has stories, there are also essays, drama, poems, history, reportage and profiles. Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker – these are names one might expect to see here.

Upton Sinclair offered up a selection from his novel The Jungle, with these sentences as introduction. “Anyone who reads these five thousand words will have his imagination stimulated, his sympathies widened, and his understanding of the world he lives in increased. At least, that is why the book (from which this excerpt was taken) was written, and it doesn’t happen there is something wrong with either you or with the author.”

There were surprises in the list though. Steven Vincent Benet, for example, who here offers The Devil & Daniel Webster. For some reason I’d associated him with the post-Civil War period of the previous century.

The book is a good reminder that American prose had more breadth and depth than just the big names of Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Papa Hemingway. I have always found books like these to be useful for ferreting out new territories to explore, hence the large number of anthologies on my book shelf.

The down side of all this good literature is that one becomes aware there’s just too much to read and not enough time.

As a short story writer myself, I find the short form exhilarating. But there’s not enough “public” to really motivate publishers to produce the works of unknowns. It’s a celebrity culture, so mags that pay money want a name on the cover that will lead to sales. Unknowns don’t have the clout.
For the record, Hemingway selected “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Mencken selected his autobiographical “The Days of the Giants.” Dreiser chose “The Hand.” Katherine Anne Porter gave us “Flowering Judas.”

Steinbeck was indifferent as to what was selected from his body of work, an attitude I understand. Every piece has been crafted with the highest aims in mind, and either reflects this or one doesn't attach one's name to it.

As for me, I’m hoping you’ll read everything I write, but I know you don’t have time. So I’ll point you to a story and a poem. The story is long, the poem short, and both hopefully entertaining while thought provoking. And if I'm lucky you'll rejoin me here on my blog again tomorrow.