The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas by Jeanette Covert Nolan

Jan25

Stephen Douglas is known now mostly for the debates he had with another famous fellow, Abraham Lincoln. I took a break from my reading of Doris Kearn Goodwin’s massive tome, Team of Rivals, to read a few other books, including this much more brief biography of Stephen Douglas, who was Abraham Lincoln’s rival indeed, but not a member of what Goodwin calls Lincoln’s “team of rivals”.

Douglas was unlike Lincoln in many ways: middle class background, a compromiser, supporter of popular sovereignty, indifferent to the evils of slavery, a judge and a lawyer, and a promoter of the growth and expansion of the United States at all costs. Douglas was short and stocky and sensitive about his height. Lincoln came from poverty and from a frontier background. He was tall and lanky and athletic. He believed that the Union could not grow or even endure half-slave and half-free. He wanted slavery to be contained until it eventually died of its own accord. Lincoln was a country lawyer, never became a judge, but he did become president—over a broken and un-United States.

In other ways the men were much alike. Both made their reputation on the law circuit in Illinois, traveling from place to place, representing their frontier clients in land disputes and other frontier matters, sometimes sleeping two to a bed in crowded inns before moving on to the next court session in the next town. Both believed in the Union, and both claimed to oppose slavery. And both men were known for their public speaking skills which they used to become politicians, U.S. representatives, and eventually presidential candidates.

The book is more about Douglas than Lincoln, but the comparisons are inevitable and run throughout the book. In fact, this same book was originally published in 1942 as The Little Giant: The Story of Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but retitled and republished in 1964 with this title, Lincoln’s name left off. The two books are the same as far as I can tell.

There is an appendix in the back of the book with excerpts from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a fascinating primary source document. Just as the abortion debate in our time is actually more nuanced than just pro-abortion versus anti-abortion and yet it comes down to that in the end, the debate in the 1850’s was more complicated than just anti-slavery versus pro-slavery. This look at the man, Stephen Douglas, and the debates which defined his times is a good discussion starter, and a way to look at our times and the debates and issues that will be remembered from our politics and culture. Stephen Douglas was personally opposed to slavery, but he did not want to impose his views on others. And now he is remembered as the pro-slavery candidate.

The Kings of Big Spring by Bryan Mealer

Jan23

The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream by Bryan Mealer, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

I’m a West Texas girl, not a native of Big Spring but rather of San Angelo, which is about 87 miles southeast of Big Spring on US Highway 87. Bryan Mealer’s extended family and family heritage remind me of mine, lower middle class or poor, mostly, with dreams and sometimes actual accomplishments of striking it rich. However, while my family runs mostly to teachers and retail workers and farmers and insurance salesmen, Bryan’s family seems to have had its fair share of businessmen and high rollers, truck drivers and dirt and cattle haulers. And then there was the oil business, boom and bust and everything in between. I never heard of anyone in my family working as a roustabout or an oil field worker or even anyone involved in the oil business in any way. Bryan’s family members, however, were impacted in many ways by the ups and downs of the oil business.

I’m sure I enjoyed this book as much as I did because it took place, more or less, on my home turf. It was difficult to keep up with all the family members whose stories Mealer tells in his book. But when Mealer writes about his grandfather hauling caliche, I know exactly what that is because I grew up until the age of 11 in a house on a street “paved” with caliche. When he tells about the dust storms and the drought and the people praying for rain, I know exactly what he’s talking about because I experienced all of those things in San Angelo. I never met any oil tycoons, but I knew they were around, and I saw the oil wells, pumping oil out of the ground whenever we drove down the highways of West Texas. Most of all, I knew people just like Mealer’s grandmother Opal, who served the Lord in her Pentecostal church all her life and when she was dying asked the family to sing her into heaven with the old hymns she loved. I also knew a lot of “good ol’ boys” who were married to God-fearing women and eventually got right with the Lord themselves after much prayer and persuasion—and a few who never did.

Mealer’s book takes a kind but truthful look at West Texas culture and West Texas people. There’s a lot more drug use and beer and divorce and domestic violence than I ever experienced in my Southern Baptist upbringing, but maybe I just didn’t know what was goin on under the surface or behind closed doors. I wonder how Mr. Mealer was able to get his family members to be so honest and vulnerable and revealing about their past mistakes and family skeletons, but maybe he has a knack for interviewing people and getting them to open up. The book reminds me of J.D. Vance’s bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, but it’s even more immediate and recognizable to me because these really are my people. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Mealer.

If you want to read a sample of what is in the book, and some more about the latest oil boom in Texas that isn’t covered in the book, check out this article by Mr. Mealer in the magazine Texas Monthly.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens, again

Jan22

I finished reading Bleak House this afternoon, and although David Copperfield is still my favorite among the works of Mr. Dickens that I have read, I must say that Bleak House is quite a story. It’s a fog-infused novel, fog throughout being the sign and symbol of the people in the story and their lives as they are caught up in the fog of a very complicated and never-ending lawsuit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

“The lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a will and the trusts under a will — or it was once. It’s about nothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.”

It’s Shakespeare who wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” as a halfway joking solution to the country’s problems. But Dickens must have had the idea in mind when he wrote such an indictment of the damage that being caught up in the system of law and courts and chancery can do to a man’s or woman’s soul, mind, finances, and health. Several characters fall victim to the vicissitudes of the courts and of lawsuits, while others manage to hold themselves above and at least somewhat untouched by the fog and snare of placing their hopes in a successful settlement of Jarndyce and Jarndyce or any other interminable lawsuit.

“In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.”

This double narrative echoes the many double or contrasting characters in the novel as well as the divided pairs that appear throughout the story. As I’ve already noted, the irresponsible, uncaring Skimpole is a contrast to the extremely passionate Mr. Boythorn, a butterfly versus a bull. Timid, balding, and generous, Mr. Snagsby is the opposite of the grasping, greedy opportunist, Mr. Smallweed. Mrs. Jellyby neglects her home, her husband, and her children while she spends all of her time and energy trying to care for the natives far-off Borrioboola; Her daughter Caddy Jellyby acquires a father-in-law who neglects his responsibilities by focusing on himself and his own comfort and “deportment”. Mr Jarndyce, Ester Summerson’s guardian, refuses to pay any attention the lawsuit that carries his name, but Richard, another party in the suit, becomes so obsessed with Jarndyce and Jarndyce that he loses his money and his health worrying over it. Sir Leicester Dedlock has a “family of antiquity and importance” and is said to “always contemplate his own greatness” while the poor, illiterate orphan boy Jo habitually answers any inquiry made to him with the words, “I don’t know nothink.”
Lady Dedlock is rich, bored and unhappy while Esther Summerson is relatively poor, busy, productive, and generally content. I could go on, but if you read the book you will have fun finding more contrasts between the various characters.

And what are these contrasting and complementing characters supposed to teach us? Maybe we can learn that we all run the risk of going to extremes, of our best qualities turning us into caricatures and even exaggerated hypocrites or immoderate fools. Passion is good, but too much passion about everything looks foolish (Mr. Boythorn). Charity begins at home. Good deportment or manners is less important than a good heart. Taking care of business is good, but immersing oneself in the ever-changing circumstances of a business over which one has no control (like the stock market) is a recipe for anxiety and depression. None of us really can say that we know everything or that we know “nothink”.

The contrast between Esther and Lady Dedlock says something different; it’s not about moderation as much as it is about the difference between a “good woman” and a bad one. Is there really much difference between Esther and Lady Dedlock? Is one perfect while the other is a classic fallen woman? Or are they both just women who are trying to make the best of their own circumstances, women who have been molded by the past and their own upbringing, and who make the best choices that they can make in a Victorian society/sinful world?

I’m definitely curious now to watch the miniseries, Bleak House. Since I know the basic plot of the story, I can watch for more contrasts in the TV version as well as looking to see how the actors, writers and TV producers characterize the various people in the novel. The Perfect Esther and the Ever-Generous Mr. Jarndyce as well as the Evil Mr. Tulkinghorn and the Sponging Skimpole may have more nuance and subtleties to their character in a televised production.

Well done, Mr. Dickens.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Jan15

I’m reading Bleak House by Dickens, finally. Partially inspired by the BBC TV show Dickensian, I am about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I thought I’d capture some thoughts here before they escape into the ether.

Bleak House is an odd book. One of the oddities occurs in almost the exact middle of the 740 page novel, when one of the ensemble of characters dies in a particularly weird and spectacular way: he spontaneously combusts. Spontaneous human combustion, or SHC, is a rare and controversial phenomenon in which a person catches fire and burns to death without an “apparent external source of ignition.” I thought maybe it was a Victorian superstition, but when I looked on Wikipedia there were recent reported cases cited of SHC from 2010 and 2017.I guess it’s a thing, although the explanations for the phenomenon vary.

Then, there are the characters who don’t catch on fire and turn into a pile of fat and ashes. They are odd, too. Dickens tends to use his characters to show the extremes of human personality. I’m also reading Karen Swallow Prior’s new book, On Reading Well, and she points out in her first chapter on prudence that “prudence, like all virtues is the moderation between the excess and deficiency of that virtue.” So, in Bleak House, Dickens has one character, Skimpole, who cares too little about his life, his livelihood, and his responsibilities. SKimpole is depicted as a childlike, carefree (or care-less) man who languishes about, happy and imperturbable, sponging off his friends, while sometimes being upbraided or even jailed by creditors. None of this bothers Skimpole who is content to live without any visible means of support and without caring from where the invisible means of his support, his friends, derives.

Enter Mr. Boythorn, another friend of the family at Bleak House, who has the opposite problem from Skimpole: Boythorn cares too much. He makes bombastic, exaggerated speeches throughout the book about how he would like to deal with anyone who inconveniences him. He “would have the necks of every one of them wrung, and their skulls arranged in Surgeons’ Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession.” Or he breathes “such ferocious vows as were never breathed on paper before” as to his intentions in this or that. Both men, Skimpole and Boythorn, are afflicted with a vice, an excess or deficiency of passion, but neither is very effectual in the world at taking care of his own affairs. Skimpole does nothing to take care of himself or anyone else, and Boythorn makes fantastic, exaggerated claims, threats, and promises that can’t possibly be carried out in real life while calmly feeding his bird and again, doing nothing effectual.

Neither man has the prudence that Ms. Prior defines in her book: “Prudence is the love that chooses with sagacity between that which hinders it and that which helps,” or “the perfected ability to make decisions in accordance with reality.” Mr. Skimpole lives in a fantasy world where money, and possessions, and responsibilities are inconsequential and beneath his notice, while Mr. Boythorn cares deeply about anything and everything but lives in another kind of fantasy where words and threats make reality change and get better, the louder and more violent the threat the better. I have certainly been guilty, and seen others enjoy, both kinds of fantasy, to our joint detriment, although I think the passionate speechmaker is something closer to real prudence than the sponging dilettante. At least Mr. Boythorn has a house and pays his own bills.

Art and Truth and Hope

Jan10

First read this article by Rebecca Black, from The Plough Quarterly magazine: Return to Appalachia, Why two young women went Ohio to teach children art in a barn.

What do you think: does art have anything to do with Christianity and with giving young people life and hope? If so, what is the relationship between art and truth and hope?

The Doctor Who Saved Babies: Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis

Jan9

I knew that sometime in the nineteenth century someone figured out that disease and germs were transferred to well patients by the dirty, contaminated hands of doctors and nurses and that medical personnel needed to wash their hands before examining a patient. But I didn’t know until I read this biography of the Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, that it was he who researched, discovered, and popularized this simple but revolutionary practice, saving thousands of lives in his own practice, and perhaps even millions through the next two centuries. (Interesting sidenote: In the United States, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes also independently discovered and wrote a paper on the efficacy of hand-washing and general hygiene in preventing the occurrence of puerperal fever, but no one believed him any more than they did Semmelweis at first.)

Central European history is a part of this Messner biography (published by Julian Messner publishers mostly in the 1940’s through the 1960’s), as Dr. Semmelweis was born (1818) into the Austro-Hungarian Empire and as an adult took part in unsuccessful efforts to free Hungary from the empire. But the emphasis is on Semmelweis himself and his part in making medical history. The biography doesn’t idealize Semmelweis; his flaws and mental health issues are evident, but not overly emphasized either. Semmelweis was obsessed with what he called his Lehre, his protocol for cleanliness that would keep women during and after childbirth from contracting the deadly puerperal fever. This infection killed up to a third of the women giving birth in hospitals because doctors were unknowingly carrying infection from the autopsy room directly to the maternity ward and because of dirty bed linens and open toilets in the middle of wards.

The biography itself is compelling and highly readable as are all of the Messner biographies I have read. The author takes Dr. Semmelweis from his young adulthood in Hungary, through his medical studies in Vienna, and back to Hungary where he practiced medicine, implemented his Lehre in Hungarian hospitals, and eventually succumbed to overwork, mental illness, and blood poisoning (ironically contracted from a lapse in the care that he usually took to wash and oil his hands before handling cadavers) and died at the age of forty-seven.

However, in spite of his comparatively short life, Dr. Semmelweis left a legacy of life and health to those who give birth or undergo surgery in hospitals. Author Josephine Rich ends her book with this tribute:

“It is almost one hundred years since his death, but the results of his work live on. Somewhere in the world, every minute of the day and night, a baby is born. It lives because a dedicated doctor spent all his lifetime tracking down a disease spread by filth and carelessness. Every mother today owes a debt of gratitude to Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who saved babies.”

And yet . . . from the CDC: “On average, healthcare providers clean their hands less than half of the times they should. On any given day, about one in 25 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection.”

This NPR story about Dr. Semmelweis doesn’t agree in all its details with the biography I read, but it does give the basic information about Semmelweis and his Lehr and his struggle to implement it and get other doctors to do the same. If you’re at all interested in medical history or the particular life of Ignaz Semmelweis, I would urge you to track down the book. It’s fascinating. (I have a copy in my library.)

Baker’s Dozen: Best Fiction I Read in 2018

Jan8

This list is a mixture of adult and children’s fiction that I read in 2018 (minus the 2018 middle grade fiction that I wrote about in two other posts). But a good children’s book is usually also a good book for adults, too.

Brendon Chase by B.B. Three brothers run away from home and hide for more than six months in a nearby woods, living off the land, and having adventures. Amazing, in the same vein as Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.

This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Lee Latham. Historical fiction about Captain John Smith and the settlement of Jamestown.

The Axe (The Master of Hestviken, #1) by Sigrid Undset. Also by the same author, Kristin Lavransdatter. Undset is quite insightful about human nature and family and marriage dynamics, and because she inserts her insights into fiction set in medieval Scandinavia, the “lessons” are subtle and more easily internalized.

The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell. Also by the same author and highly recommended, City of Tranquil Light.

The Stranger from the Sea (Poldark, #8) by Winston Graham. The series goes downhill from this one, but I still enjoyed finishing all of the books in Graham’s Poldark saga.

Little Britches (Father and I Were Ranchers) by Ralph Moody. The entire series by Ralph Moody about his boyhood and young adulthood adventures is so good. Read them all.

Pigeon Post (Swallows and Amazons, #6) by Arthur Ransome. More Swallows and Amazons.

Coot Club (Swallows and Amazons, #5) by Arthur Ransome. No Swallows. No Amazons. But good fun, nevertheless.

Winter Holiday (Swallows and Amazons, #4) by Arthur Ransome.

Lincoln’s Dreams by Connie Willis. A very odd fantastical look at the interaction between past and present.

The Edge of Time by Louella Grace Erdman. I would definitely like to read more of Ms.Erdman’s writing this year, western-ish, mostly set in north Texas, but slowly unfolding and with the emphasis on characters rather than plot.

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton. This one would pair well with The Edge of Time. It’s based on a real cowboy strike that took place in north Texas in 1883. So the time period and the setting are quite similar to Ms. Erdman’s book. The issues of farmers versus cowmen and settlement of a wild and lonely country are similar, too.

At Point Blank: A Suspense Novel by Virginia Stem Owen. Congregation, the sequel to this mystery series set in Texas near Houston, is good, too. I’m looking forward to reading the third book in the series in 2019.

Weird, Creepy, and Occultic

Jan7

A steady stream of curst and outcast female protagonists in my middle grade speculative fiction reading gave rise to this post, Outcast and Cursed. Now, I’m seeing another trend, analogous but not quite so prominent: male lead characters who are fixated on horror, monsters, the supernatural, and the occult. These boys are also outcasts, known for their weird, freaky, loser status.

In Nightbooks by J.A. White, Alex Mosher decides to destroy all of his notebooks full of creepy, scary stories so that he can become like everyone else. Unfortunately, he’s intercepted by a witch on his way to the incinerator, and the stories become the only thing that might keep him alive.

The Haunted Serpent by Dora M. Mitchell presents Spaulding Meriwether, a formerly homeschooled sixth grader who doesn’t fit in at his new public school because he’s consumed with graveyards and ghosts and monsters.

Grump, in the book of the same name by Liesl Shurtliff, is obsessed with monsters, too, but in his case, the monsters are humans who live above ground, and Grump is a dwarf. Grump is fascinated by the stories people tell about the world above the dwarf caverns, and he’s shamefully afraid of going down into the depths of the underground mines. Grump is, of course, outcast and friendless among the dwarves—until he finds a few friends who will accept him as he is.

Tito Bonito (The Boy, the Bird, and the Coffin Maker by Matilda Woods) is half-orphaned and outcast, imprisoned by fear of his abusive father. His only friend is Alberto, the coffin-maker. So, this novel also is a story about death and shadows and fear and graveyards. The magical realism of the story serves as a ray of hope in this otherwise dark tale.

In The Darkdeep by Ally Condie and Brendan Reichs, one of the main characters, Nico, is an outcast because his father has taken an unpopular stand in the small town where Nico lives. Nico is bullied, and he becomes consumed with the Darkdeep, a haunted pool of nightmares, that he and his friends (he does have a couple of friends) find and begin to explore. Definitely supernatural and monstrous, but not occultic.

Have you read any middle grade books in this sub-genre lately?

Happy Birthday to Carl Sandburg, b. January 6, 1878

Jan6

In honor and anticipation of Mr. Sandburg’s birthday, I started reading Abe Lincoln Grows Up a few days ago and finished it last night. It’s a different sort of biography, a poetic biography if you will.

“Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years was first published for Lincoln’s Birthday in 1926. Since then, it has become evident that the book lives for people of all ages, but the earlier chapters on Lincoln’s own childhood hold special interest for young readers. Abe Lincoln Grows Up is drawn from the first twenty-seven chapters of the original biography.” ~from the book jacket blurb

This “taken from and adult biography” aspect of the book accounts for its rich vocabulary, not dumbed down at all, and its sometimes smartly subject matter. Sandburg writes about all of the varied cultural facets of the frontier in Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois where Abe Lincoln grew up, including drunkenness, brawling, death, disease, Indian wars, prejudice, and slavery. And he doesn’t really mince words, although the language is more poetic than graphic.

Maybe some examples, taken at random, would be helpful:

“Abe was the chore-boy of the Knob Creek farm as soon as he grew big enough to run errands, to hold a pine-knot at night lighting his father at a job, or to carry water, fill the woodbox, clean ashes from the fireplace, hoe weeds, pick berries, grapes, persimmons for beer-making. He hunted the timbers and came back with walnuts, hickory and hazel nuts. His hands knew the stinging blisters from using a hoe handle back and for a summer afternoon, and in autumn the mash of walnut-stain that wouldn’t wash off, with all the rinsing and scrubbing of Nancy Hank’s homemade soap.” p. 44.

“He wanted to learn, to know, to live, to reach out; he wanted to satisfy hungers and thirsts he couldn’t tell about, this big boy of the backwoods. And some of what he wanted so much, so deep down, seemed to be in the books. Maybe in books he would find the answers to dark questions pushing around in the pools of his thoughts and the drifts of his mind.” p. 135.

“At Anderson Creek ferry, he saw and talked with settlers, land buyers and sellers, traders, hunters, peddlers, preachers, gamblers, politicians, teachers, and men shut-mouthed about their business. Occasionally there came a customer who looked as if he might be one of the ‘half horse, half alligator men’ haunting the Ohio watercourse those years.” p. 148.

The book is illustrated by James Daugherty, and just as the prose won’t be to everyone’s taste, so the picture are in Daugherty’s style, dark, writhing, pen and ink, almost caricature. It’s not my favorite style, but Daugherty’s talent is evident.

I enjoyed the book, but I’m not sure how accessible it will be to the middle grade or even young adult readers it is meant to engage. The language and the stories that Sandburg tells, many of them handed down from witnesses who heard Lincoln himself tell them, are colloquial and somewhat out of context for the modern reader. Some are more immediate and comprehensible, like the stories of Lincoln’s generosity and his thirst for learning.

For a child who is particularly interested in Lincoln and the stories of his life and times, Abe Lincoln Grows Up would be a treasure, to read and re-read over and over. But I’m afraid that most of those who pick it up just to read about the great president, perhaps for a school assignment, are going to be discouraged by the disjointed and philosophical prose that verges on poetry but isn’t really.

Carl Sandburg won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for books of his poetry and one for the second volume of biography of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. His book of children’s stories, Rootabaga Pigeons, published in 1923, emerges from copyright protection this year. Has anyone read these stories, and do you have an opinion?