Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Literature

Two Short Stories by Louisa May Alcott

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I’ve been reading stories and novels by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) to understand what the popular culture of the 1860s,1870s, and 1880s was like. I could call it research for my historical work-in-progress, and it is that, but it’s also become something more.

Alcott first gained literary notice during the Civil War. In 1863, she published Hospital Sketches, a collection of stories about a volunteer’s experiences in a Washington, D.C., convalescent hospital for wounded Union soldiers. As serious as the subject was, Alcott also treated it with sympathetic humor, and she did it the right way by making herself the object of the jokes and comical situations. 

She continued to write and publish short stories (the family needed her income). And then, in 1868 and 1869, came the two-part publication of Little Women, and international fame for Miss Alcott. (I’ve told the story here of how I came to read Little Women, not exactly voluntarily.) When she did a European tour in 1870, she was surprised to discover that she was famous in England as she was in America. Little Women was a sensation.

It’s also set during the Civil War, and the wounding of the March patriarch in battle becomes one of the significant scenes of the novel. Several of her short stories also referred to the war, set either during or shortly afterward.

A Country Christmas is one of those stories. A young woman visiting relatives gets the idea to invite two city friends to spend “a real country Christmas” with them. It’s not exactly a “city mouse and country mouse” story, but the two rather blasé city friends experience the values of family, community, hard work, and true friendship. It’s a charming story, definitely of its period, and it shows the author using a light touch to extol country values.

Kate’s Choice was published sometime later and most likely after Alcott’s European tour. A teenaged English heiress is sent to America after the deaths of her parents. Her mother had been the only daughter among several brothers in a farm family. All of the children had done well financially, but their lives had taken them away from their mother. 

According to the terms of her father’s trust, Kate is to visit each of her uncles’ families and decide which one to live with. All of them are interested in the girl – she’s charming, pretty, and extremely wealthy. But it’s only when she visits her grandmother that she makes her choice, and the lives of everyone in the family will change. It’s a sweet story and again very much of its time. 

What do these stories tell you about Alcott? She was a woman and author of her time, but she was also something more. Her female characters are strong ones; no damsels in distress are found here. Her stories are straightforward accounts and (fortunately) lack the element of “breathless prose.” G.K. Chesterton would say that she anticipated the School of Realism by about 30 years. 

Alcott also knew her audience – girls and young women. She tapped into an awareness that was growing that would eventually lead to women’s suffrage and equal rights. Her stories may be about well-to-do and middle-class girls at home, but her heroines are independent, with dreams and aspirations of their own. Likely much like Alcott herself.

Related:

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott.

Photograph: Louisa May Alcott about 1870.

It’s Take Your Poet to Work Day

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Today is Take Your Poet to Work Day at Tweetspeak Poetry, and the site has a raft of resources to help you do that. The celebration of poetry and work has been going strong for more than a decade, and I’ve been an enthusiastic participant from the get-go. I even wrote a small book, Poetry at Work, on finding poetry in all aspects of work.

When I still had an office (or a cubicle), I’d pick a poet and bring him or her to work on the designated day in July. Typically, I’d bring my longstanding favorite poet, T.S. Eliot.

Ten years ago, I was preparing to give notice of my intended retirement from work, which I did in September of 2014. I officially retired in May of 2015. It was early, but it was time. Enough said.

I did some freelance work for a time and was even called back to the company for a three-month assignment in 2018. But “work,” if you define it as something like an eight-hour-a-day job, was over in 2015. 

But I still work, mostly with my own writing. And I still bring my poet to work.

For the last three to four years, that poet has been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (see lower right-hand corner of photo). Longfellow has accompanied me on a writing project, serving as guide, resource, break from the pace, and sometimes even reality check. I read his works in three different editions – an 1898 “complete poems” edition by Houghton Mifflin, a 1944 edition published by Illustrated Modern Library, and a 2000 edition of his poems published by Library of America. I also used Nicholas Basbanes biography, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2020) as a resource.

As I read, researched, and wrote, Longfellow was along for the ride, so much so that, while he didn’t become a character in my story, he did become a presence and an influence on one of the principal characters. If the character recited The Courtship of Miles Standish or Poems on Slavery, I’d stand and read them aloud as well.

I was not only taking Longfellow to work, I was also putting Longfellow to work and working alongside him. I’ll have some news about the final result in some weeks, but Mr. Longfellow may be getting his due.

You don’t have to write a novel to take your poet to work. You can read a poem aloud to yourself or others. You can stick a poem on your bulletin board. You can memorize poem or recite one while you’re doing garden work. Over the years, some have gotten rather elaborate in their efforts, including doing poetry readings at work.

What I discovered was that, even simply reading a poem in the office to myself, my understanding changed because the place provided a different context. 

For resources, tips, and background on poets (including ones you can color like Longfellow), head on over to Tweetspeak Poetry and take your poet to work.

Top photograph: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in old age.

A Classic for the 20th and 21st Centuries: The Gulag Archipelago

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Fifty years ago, I was a copy editor at the Beaumont, Texas Enterprise. In December of 1973, we began receiving a series of alerts from the New York Times News Service, saying the Times had acquired a manuscript of worldwide importance and would be publishing soon. The manuscript was The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. 

Solzhenitsyn was living in the Soviet Union at the time. The manuscript had been circulating in samizdat there, and apparently the KGB had gotten its hands on a copy or a portion of a copy. A considerable amount had already been smuggled out to the West. To protect his friends and family, Solzhenitsyn gave the green light to publishing the work in the West, and it would soon be published in French, its first published language, and an English translation was underway.

A few weeks later, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the KGB and taken to the Lubyanka, the infamous prison in Moscow. The world held its breath to see what would happen, but Western governments were urging the Soviets not to do anything stupid. In February, he was officially expelled and put on a plane for Germany. His family, including his wife, their three young sons, and her mother, followed some weeks later. He would not return to Russia for 20 years.

Under the glare of international attention, the Russians did nothing stupid, however much they may have wanted to.

I had started reading Solzhenitsyn’s novels in high school – Cancer Ward, The First Circle, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I read August 1914 while a junior in college. Shortly after Solzhenitsyn’s arrest and expulsion, we moved from Beaumont to Houston, where I was working for Shell Oil in its downtown headquarters. When I heard that the English language edition would soon be published, I walked a few blocks to the downtown Cokesbury Bookstore and ordered a copy. When the call came that it had arrived, I think I might have been the first to rush to the shop and buy mine.

I stopped reading whatever it was at the time and started immediately on The Gulag Archipelago. Having read his novels of camp life (for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature), I was surprised to discover that the novels themselves were based on real stories of real people, including Solzhenitsyn himself. He had done something no Russian or Soviet author had ever dared to do: he’d told the real stories of the zeks, or prisoners. And his real point, and the one for which the Soviets couldn’t abide, was that the Gulag had started not under Stalin but under the saint of Communism, Lenin. Stalin had not corrupted communism; he had built upon what Lenin had already been putting in place.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Gulag Archipelago (Volume 1) is 50 years old this year. It remains a classic of the 20th century; in many ways, it tells the story of the 20th century, particularly in Russia. Professor Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern University calls it “a masterpiece of our time.” And it is still a contemporary story, with a warning. Governments as they grow and become more powerful have an itching desire to control, and they will use any means at hand to establish that control. I can already see the impulse in our own government, with the desire to control what is communicated on social media, for example, and a press that’s become extremely compliant to elitist thinking. 

Yes, Solzhenitsyn was a man of his time, and The Gulag Archipelago was a book for its time. It’s also a book for our time.

“A Shining” by Jon Fosse: It Does Have Punctuation, Which Helps 

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In 2023, Norwegian author Jon Fosse received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He’s a novelist, playwright, essayist, and author of children’s books; in fact, he’s likely better known for his theater plays than his novels. 

When I read about the Nobel, I checked Amazon to see what of his works might be available in English. At the time, there wasn’t much; the situation now is considerably different. There was a short story available in translation, A Shining, translated by Damion Searls. 

A Shining is a short story, longish as in – coming in at 43 pages in the e-book version. It tells the story of man who drives from him home with no destination in mind. He simply keeps driving until his car gets stuck in a narrow forest road. After debating what to do, he decides to try to find help in the forest.

The man moves through a series of dreamlike sequences; the shining of the title happens two or three times, when some kind of shining presence is watching him, then walking with him. He also sees his own parents. By the end, he’s in the presence of his parents and the shining presence, still walking through the forest, barefoot. (And it’s cold and snowy; he shivers from the cold several times and wishes he’d stayed in his car.)

The entire story is a metaphor for death; he never says his parents predeceased him, but they’re barefoot, too. The presence is something of a God-like guide, not directing toward any particular end or goal but just being there.

Jon Fosse

It’s an unusual story. It’s also a 43-page story with one paragraph. While the indent feature on his keyboard might have been broken, the effect of a single paragraph is essentially to compel the reader to keep reading; there’s no good place to stop or even pause. The story does have punctuation (another Nobel Prizewinner, William Faulkner, could often be bad about that), and punctuation helps.

The story is rather haunting. It builds a sense of frustration; how long is this guy going to continue to wander in the dark and not find help? The help does come, of course, but it’s not what the reader’s expecting. It’s a story about death, but it’s also a story about faith. The story may have been influenced by his own childhood when he suffered a serious accident and came close to death. He speaks of seeing “a shimmering presence.” He was raised in the Quaker and Pietest traditions, and he’s now a practicing Catholic.

His Nobel lecture is entitled “A Silent Language.” It’s available to watch on YouTube (he’s introduced in English but his lecture is Norwegian) and it can be read in English here.

Top photograph by Casey Horner via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Why I Write” by George Orwell

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Why I Write is a small volume of four essays by George Orwell (1903-1950), the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and many other works. The essays include the title one, “Why I Write;” “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,” “A Hanging;” and “Politics and the English Language.”

Orwell’s writing, and his understanding of it, reflected his political beliefs. He had a five-year stint with the Burma Division of the Indian Imperial Police, but eft with a medical certificate because his health was ruined, he dabbled in writing and a somewhat itinerant life and married, but then joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. That experience shaped the rest of his life, his politics, and the books and essays he wrote. He became a democratic socialist, but he was opposed to totalitarianism in all its form, both right and eft.

He identified four motives for writing, all of which are present in a writer but to varying degrees, depending upon the immediate context. The four are sheer egotism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. “Writing a book,” he wrote, “is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon who one can neither resist nor understand.”

George Orwell

“The Lion and the Unicorn,” the longest essay in the volume, is a meditation upon writing England, socialism, and how they all have mixed together. In its own way, it’s Orwell’s manifesto for a very specific kind of socialism.

“A Hanging” is one of Orwell’s best-known essays, a short account of the hanging of a prisoner in Burma. Orwell formed part of the police escort for the execution. “It is curious,” he says, “but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.” When the prisoner steps to avoid a puddle, he sees “the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.” The essay is not a direct discussion of writing, but it is an example of writing very well done.

The last essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is one with which I was familiar. Some 30 years ago, a new CEO at the company where I worked said that everyone in communications, and everyone in the company, in fact, should read this essay by Orwell. To my knowledge, I believe I was the only communications who did so. The previous CEO had had an inclination toward the writings of Winston Churchill and the novels of Charles Dickens. I was his speechwriter, and so I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

I read the Orwell essay. It’s about the decline of the practice of the English language in writing; Orwell saw it descending into a staleness of imagery and a lack of precision. He also identified the problems of dying metaphors; what he called “verbal false limbs,” or sentence padding; pretentious diction; and meaningless words. 

The former CEO, whether he wrote for himself or used what I’d written for him, was never guilty of any of that; he had run through half a dozen speechwriters and freelancers before me and booted them all until he was satisfied. The new CEO, however, the one who urged everyone to read the Orwell essay, spoke from notes and memory. 

It might have helped if he’d read it himself. 

“Across Five Aprils” by Irene Hunt

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In 1964, author Irene Hunt (1907-2001) published the middle-grade novel Across Five Aprils. It’s the coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Jethro Creighton, the youngest of five brothers and a sister. They live and work with their parents Matt and Emma on a farm in southern Illinois.

This coming-of-age story is set during the Civil War, beginning in 1861. It’s so well done, and such a good story, that it’s no wonder that it was runner-up to the Newberry Medal in 1965 (her second book, Up the Road Slowly, won the medal in 1966). In 212 pages, Hunt manages to tell both the story of the Creighton family and the story of the Civil War itself. 

Told from Jethro’s perspective, we watch what happens when the reports come of the fall of Fort Sumter. The oldest brother has not been heard from in years, having gone to California for the Gold Rush. Two brothers and the cousin who lives with the family join the Union army; Jethro’s favorite brother Bill joins the Confederate army. Jenny’s beau, the schoolteacher Jethro adores, eventually throws his lot in with the Union. 

While it is the story of the war and how his brothers fare, Across Five Aprils is also Jethro’s story and what happens back home. When Jethro is 10, his father suffers a heart attack, and the boy suddenly finds himself of being head of the family. Through Jethro’s eyes, we see the violence that happens in a region of conflicted loyalties, the impact of the war’s news on the family, and how the war meant unexpected struggles on the home front. 

The characters seem like real people. Hunt had a gift for characterization, and even the minor characters come alive on the page. Hunt based the story on the tales and letters of her own grandfather, who experienced the Civil War much as Jethro does in the novel. She also did extensive research in newspaper reports, government documents, histories, biographies, and memoirs.

Irene Hunt

Hunt, a native of Illinois, taught English and French in Illinois schools and later psychology at the University of South Dakota. She returned to Illinois to become director of language arts at a junior high school. Including Across Five Aprils, she published eight novels between 1864 and 1985, and she won several awards for children’s literature. She died on her 98th birthday in 2001.

After 60 years, Across Five Aprils has stood the test of time. It’s a riveting read as we watch, through a boy’s eyes, as the war unfold. The Creighton family will endure heartbreak and tragedy, fear and violence. But it is the family that endures. 

Top photograph: A farmer and two boys cutting hay in Kentucky during the Civil War.