Literature

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott

January 10, 2024 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

I was in 9^th grade, at the time part of the middle school where I grew up. Our English teacher assigned our all-boy class two papers about authors – one English and one American. We were required to read one work by each author for our papers. She had a list of 35 English writers and 35 Americans, one for each person in our class. Our choices, however, were determined alphabetically, which meant whoever was last would get the two no one else wanted. Which meant me.

No one wanted to read a play by William Shakespeare, which meant he would be my English author. And the last American author on the list (remember this was an all-boys class) was Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888).

When my name was called, general laughter erupted. The teacher, with her soft Alabama accent in a roomful of New Orleans boys, was irate. She loved Alcott, she said, and she loved Little Women. And if any of us ever wanted to understand girls, we should read the Alcott novel. I knew what I had better read for my report.

Louisa May Alcott originally published Little Women as two books, Part 1 in 1868 and Part 2 in 1869. The story is based on the lives of Alcott’s sisters, family, and friends. A first read of Part 1 by her publisher found it boring, until he had his two daughters read it. Then he had more girls in the target audience read it. The 2,000-copy first edition sold out almost immediately.

The book has been as popular in Britain as it has in the United States, even though the setting is Civil War Massachusetts (Part 1) and Massachusetts and Europe for Part 2. G.K. Chesterton, when he read it, said it had anticipated the Realism School in literature by about 30 years.

To read it today, you also realize how it anticipated the television mini-series. It’s episodic chapters are almost ideally suited for the small screen (see the 2017 mini-series version developed by Heidi Thomas, she of Call the Midwife). The well-loved work has been adapted countless times for stage, movies, and television. It’s even been adapted as a musical and for anime.

And Little Women is well-loved with good reason. It captures of the lives of the four March sisters living between childhood and adulthood (thus the title, “little women”). The family is living through the Civil War period, with their father serving as a chaplain with the Union army. Each chapter centers on a particular sister – Meg the wise one, Jo the headstrong one with a burning passion to write, Amy the pretty and artistic one, and Beth, the youngest, most frail, and kindest of the girls. In their father’s absence, their mother Marmee presides over the family.

For all four girls, and the next-door neighbor Theodore (“Laurie”), the story is something of a coming-of-age novel. While the story is set during the Civil War, the war itself rarely intrudes, until in Part 1 Mr. March is taken ill with pneumonia and Mrs. March travels to Washington, D.C. to care for him. Part 2 occurs after the war is over.

It’s a well-written, engaging story. As you read, you come to like these sisters, and you keep reading o find out what will happen to them and their mother. I have to admit, having seen the 1994 movie version, I can only identify Susan Sarandon as Mrs. March, although Emily Watson did a fine job in the 2017 BBC television series. Those two adaptations stick very closely to the original novels.

I read the work thinking there would be more about the Civil War than I had remembered from my first reading back in high school. There’s not. The war is a distant and unrelated event in the story. Even Mrs. March rushing to her husband’s bedside is never detailed.

But it’s still a good story. Alcott wrote well, with passion and with humor. Some of the predicaments that Jo and Amy in particular get into are close to hilarious.

For my ninth-grade papers, I read Julius Caesar and Little Women. My lack of choice ended up standing me in good stead with the teacher, who gave the class a Southern evil eye, daring anyone to laugh, when I read my paper (as we were required to do). I saw a few grins, which quickly disappeared when she turned her attention upon the miscreant. No one laughed.

Top illustration: A drawing of the March house.

“The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane

December 13, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

If I have one vivid memory of high school junior English class, it would be the classic coming-of-age assignment of The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. In the spring, anyone could spot a sophomore, because inevitably each and every one of us was carrying our paperback edition of the classic novel about the Civil War. It was assigned at the same time we were studying the Civil War in American history.

Crane published the novel in 1895, two years after he’d published the book that put him on the American literary map – Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the story of a prostitute. Crane belonged to the Naturalist, Realist, Symbolist, or Impressionist School, depending upon which critic you ask. The story of a prostitute had not been done before, at least not in a way that made Maggie something of a heroine.

But it was The Red Badge of Courage that turned Crane into an international literary star. The novel tells the story of Henry Fleming, who lives with his mother, who enlists as a private in the Union army. His mother is deadest against him enlisting, and he does one day on his own and then tells her what he’s done.

We follow Fleming in his new army life. Crane depicts the adulation of the townspeople for his patriotism, how much of army life was characterized by waiting, rumors, and boredom, and Fleming’s fear of facing his first battle and behaving as a coward. In his first military engagement, he performs well, and the enemy is sent running in retreat. But the next day, Fleming and his squad face a renewed attack, and this time it’s Fleming and his cohorts who are running in retreat. He finds himself in dense woods, and in of the most memorable scenes in the novel, he stumbles upon the body of a soldier who died in a battle in the same place.

Still in retreat, he learns that the Union side has prevailed and won the battle. He becomes separated from his regiment, and he’s soon hearing the stories from others. The reader sees how courage and cowardice can exist in the same person at the same time. We learn about the universal complaint of all soldiers in every war – the incompetence of commanding officers. And we see that battles and a war are often won less by brilliant military strategy and tactics and more by who can hold out the longest.

What Henry Fleming experienced was life in the army during wartime, and it was (and remains) a far cry from the colorful accounts and government propaganda common to all wars.

In addition to the first two novels, Crane (1871-1900) also published a poetry collection and another novel, based on his experience as a war correspondent during the Spanish-American War. He published several highly regarded short stories, including “The Open Boat” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” With no actual personal war experience, he said that he drew inspiration for The Red Badge of Courage from football games. His short but eventful life ended when he died in England from tuberculosis.

The Red Badge of Courage is a short, intense, and essentially plotless story. It explores the psychology of solders and war, long before the subject became a popular war. It likely influenced every novel about war written after it. And it explored through fiction, the experience of the Civil War, still the deadliest war ever engaged in by America.

Top photograph: An illustration of the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, showing the Connecticut troops standing firm as the battle turns against them.

“John Brown’s Body” by Stephen Vincent Benet

December 6, 2023 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

It’s likely the most successful poem in American literary history, selling more than 130,000 copies. And it’s epic in length.

In 1925, the highly regarded poet Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943) applied for a Guggenheim Foundation grant to write a long historical poem about the Civil War. The foundation came through with a $2,500 grant that supported Benet and his family. Along with a bit of freelance writing, while he researched and wrote. They moved to Paris for him to write; it was cheaper than living in the United States. He thought the effort would take seven years; in fact, it took only two. John Brown’s Body was published in 1928, catapulting Benet into literary stardom.

The poem contributed to Benet being the most read American poet between 1918 and his death in 1943. His other poems and short stories were widely popular as well, including the short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Book One of a planned nine-volume narrative of the settlement of America, entitled Western Star, was published after his death and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The epic of John Brown’s Body, or “cyclorama,” as Benet called it, begins with John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Even more than the Dred Scott decision, this is the event that the poet indicates was the point of no return. The raid horrified the South and electrified the North; in Benet’s hands, national unity was not possible without a war. In the poem, this first section includes some of the most vivid and dramatic imagery of the entire poem. (And I didn’t know that Brown took hostages, including the great-grandson of George Washington.)

John Brown’s Body seems rather curious today, curious in that it isn’t a rant or filled with pious superiority and virtue signaling. It’s almost scrupulously fair to both sides in the war, depicting both historical and fictional characters as they themselves would have seen and experienced the war. His main fictional characters, Jack Ellyat of Connecticut and Clay Wingate of Georgia, are drawn to popular type, Ellyat being a yeoman Connecticut farmer and Wingate being the son of a large plantation owner in Georgia. They and their families will experience the war in radically different ways.

Benet moves the story from the Harper Ferry’s raid to the firing on Fort Sumter, battles like Bull Run and Antietam, Gettysburg, and finally the surrender at Appomattox. In addition to the fictional characters living the story, historical characters like Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, Ulysses Grant and others describe what is happening. Most of the poem covers the period up to an including Gettysburg; the last two years are rather abbreviated, focusing on Appomattox. But Benet does devote a section to Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea.

It’s rather astonishing that Benet completed the poem in two years. It still makes for an enthralling read as he tells the story of what is (the present moment notwithstanding) the most divisive period in American history, a time when America was torn apart over four years.

Writing years after the poet’s death, historian Bruce Catton said that if you wanted to understand the Civil War, you could read the 120 volumes of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, or you could read John Brown’s Bodyby Benet. Benet makes for much more concise and entertaining read.

Top illustration: A drawing of U.S. Marines storming the engine house at the Harper’s Ferry federal arsenal (National Park Service).

“My Dearest Julia” by Ulysses S. Grant

June 7, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

A favorite place to visit in St. Louis is Whitehaven, the home of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) and his wife Julia Dent Grant (1826-1902). It’s operated by the National Park Service in near southwest St. Louis County. It sits across a road from Grant’s Farm, for decades the country estate of the Augustus Busch family (they of Anheuser-Busch fame). Today, Grant’s Farm is a popular attraction for families, with a petting zoo, views of the Clydesdale horses (in stables and adjacent pastures), and even a train that travels around the property. My regular biking trail, named Grant’s Trail, runs right alongside the pastures, the farm parking lot, and Whitehaven.

Hardscrabble Farm, which Grant operated as a farmer for a short period, is on the Grant’s Farm property, including the log cabin farmhouse. The Dent family had owned about 800 acres in the area and farmed it with the help of slaves. Grant’s Ohio family was not happy at all with their son marrying into a slave owning family in a slave state.

Grant had met Julia Dent while stationed at Jefferson Barracks, in St. Louis County on the Mississippi River and due south of the city of St. Louis. He’d met her through her brother, and he was apparently smitten early on. Because of the many changes in his military assignments (Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, Michigan, the Pacific Northwest, and California), they were often separated, both before and after their marriage in 1848. And then came the Civil War years.

They did what most people did in similar circumstances; they wrote letters. Julia’s letters have not survived, but a considerable number of Grant’s have. Some 85 of them have been assembled into My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife. This edition includes an informative introduction by Grant biographer Ron Chernow.

When we read a biography or a history, we usually don’t get the fully emotional side of the story. You usually have a better opportunity with letters. This is the case with My Dearest Julia. The cigar-smoking, often-ruthless general was deeply in love with his wife. The letters make clear his deep regard, as well as his sense of partnership with her in the marriage. He knew she was a capable woman, and he often entrusted her with legal proceedings and other duties, knowing she would carry them out fully, faithfully, and competently.

Not surprisingly, the letters get shorter during the Civil War. The demands on his time and attention would have been enormous, but he always found the time to send sometimes brief and occasionally longer letters.

The volume includes one non-military letter – the last one he wrote in 1885. Dying from throat cancer, he was finishing his memoirs for publication of Mark Twain. He was determined that Julia would be provided for; their fortune had been wiped out in bad investments. Finish them he did, and he died a few days later:

“With these few inunctions, and the Knowledge I have of your love and affections, and of the dutiful affection of all our children, I bid you a final farewell until we meet in another, and I trust better, world.” Signed U.S. Grant.

Related:

The Missouri Civil War Museum.

Why Poetry Can Make You a Better Writer

May 17, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Like most of my generation, I read poetry in English classes in high school. It wasn’t until I was a high school senior that I read poetry that stuck in my head. And it was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Four Quartets.” I read poetry in college as well, but my English literature professor gave brutal tests that put me off poetry for years.

My professional career eventually led me to corporate speechwriting. I enjoyed the work, the executives I wrote for liked what I did, and I had that sense of “this is what I was meant to do.” It was a good friend, one who wasn’t a speechwriter, who suggested that if I were really serious about it, then I needed to read poetry. He sent me three books – the collected poems of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. He told me to read them and others on a regular basis.

And I thought, seriously? No speechwriter I knew read poetry regularly. Most then and now would read books about current events, developments in science, politics, and a lot of speeches written by others. But poetry? Really?

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph by Nick Fewings via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Reflection on “Winesburg, Ohio”

April 26, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’ve always been attracted to the works of the American Realist and Modernism periods. In fiction, that meant Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser, and moving into Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner, among others. In poetry, that meant Edgar Lee Masters, Sara Teadsale, Vachel Lindsay, and T.S. Eliot, among quite a few others.

This attraction likely relates to my middle school and high school English teachers, almost all of whom graduated from college in the 1940s and 1950s. They would have defined the Realist and early Modernism writers as the ones they were most influenced by, and they tended to wax eloquent on these particular writers and poets in particular. As a high school junior, taking American literature, I read Wharton’s Ethan Frome, Cather’s My Antonia, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and The Waste Land, and Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. It was a challenging year for all my subjects, but what I read in English was wonderful.

What I don’t recall reading at all was anything by Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), not even a short story. And yet Anderson, during the period itself, was considered a major figure in literature. He had a significant influence on both Hemingway and Faulkner, and especially Hemingway, who would eventually write an “anti-Anderson” novel to prove he had broken free and become his own writer.

I recently read Winesburg, Ohio and reviewed it over at Faith, Fiction, Friends. I knew little about it, other than it was a collection of connected short stories that had established Anderson as a significant writer. This edition has an introduction by the writer and literary critic Irving Howe, and it was Howe who helped me understand what had happened to Anderson and even perhaps why he was little mentioned by my English teachers.

What happened was that, in 1941, the year Anderson died, critic Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) wrote an essay that became hugely influential. It was an essay about Anderson and Winesburg, Ohio, and it dismissed the work as something less than great. Howe wrote that the Trilling essay relegated Anderson to something less than the first rank of American writers. It’s not a surprise that my teachers, in college during the period when Trilling’s essay was making its waves, might possibly have discounted Anderson in general and Winesburg, Ohio in particular and instead focused on more lauded writers.

The collection was published in 1919. As I read it, I was surprised by how contemporary it sounded. It’s a clean, simple prose, very straightforward and matter of fact. It’s also almost entirely devoid of dialogue. Its ease of reading is deceptive; you have to read carefully and closely to understand all of what’s going on in the stories.

The characters are all what Anderson called “grotesques,” what Flannery O’Connor in a later generation might have labeled “misfits.” In fact, I wondered if O’Connor must have read Winesburg, Ohio, just like Anderson himself must have read Spoon River Anthology, published four years earlier than Anderson’s collection. I could see how Anderson had influenced Faulkner, and how Hemingway adopted and adapted at least some of Anderson’s bare bones writing style.

The fictional Winesburg is loosely based on the small town of Clyde, Ohio, southeast of Toledo. The stories are all set in the late 1890s, or around the turn of the century, about the time Anderson enlisted in the army and fought in the Spanish-American War. It’s a town still experiencing the lingering effects of the American Civil War and the burgeoning influence of the Industrial Revolution. Many of the stories are about farmers and their family members, storekeepers, bankers, the newspaper reporter, and other community pillars. While the characters are generally drawn in an unflattering portrait, you do come to known them and even like them, flaws and all.

To this day, Clyde proudly proclaims itself as the Winesburg of Anderson’s stories. The author put the small town on the literary map, and the town never forgot it. I suspect the town also didn’t think much of Trilling’s assessment of its most famous son.

Top photograph: Sherwood Anderson in 1898, about the time in which Winesburg, Ohio, is set.

Literature

Footer

Meet the Man