His Family by Ernest Poole - 1918

The first Pulitzer prize for literature was awarded to Ernest Poole for His Family in 1918.  His Family is set in New York, and is the story of elderly Roger Gale and his three daughters:  Edith, the devoted mother of 5, Deborah, the spinster with a zeal for social work rivaling that of Jane Addams, and the youngest, Laura, a frivolous socialite.  From a modern perspective, it seems clear that each daughter's persona is a reaction to the early loss of their mother, each in her own individual way.  Edith wants to be just like her mother, Deborah wants to fill the mother-gap in her life with purpose and meaning, and Laura wants to make up for everything she missed by not having a mother. Their father's grief for their mother, and his desire to fulfill her dying wishes, is a recurring theme; however, I am not sure it occurred to people in the early years of the 20th Century to look for any sort of psychological cause and effect.

His Family is very much a book for its era.  It begins shortly before the onset of World War I; a time of relentless upheaval, when massive amounts of immigration was changing the very fabric of New York.  This change both troubles Roger Gale, and makes him feel more alive.  He finds his eldest daughter somewhat irritating, with her constant, "It's what Mother would have wished."  His youngest is almost beyond his comprehension. (How can she not want to have children!?)  But Deborah draws him into her world, the teeming city where so much work remains to be done.  He practically adopts a young disabled man, who could have stepped out of the pages of a Horatio Alger novel, especially when the young man's hard work and pluck ends up rescuing Roger Gale's livelihood from almost certain disaster.

There is a clarity and vividness to Poole's writing that reminds me of his contemporary, Willa Cather.  Their words bring alive a time now long gone, and show us what a vibrant age it really was.  Poole's characterization is excellent.  Each member of the family is fully drawn, flaws and all.  There was more character development than plot, since it was nothing more than the story of the final years of one man's life.  One of the things I am looking for in this survey of the Pulitzers is how the winners have changed over time.  Clearly, in the World War I era, good solid writing, telling a universal story with vivid imagery, was highly prized.

Well, I have to start the rankings somewhere, but I highly doubt His Family, good as it is, will hang onto its top spot in every category for long.

Most Enjoyable
His Family - Ernest Poole

Easy to Read
His Family - Ernest Poole

Best Characters
His Family - Ernest Poole

Best Plot
His Family - Ernest Poole

The Pulitzer Challenge

I'm retiring after 30 years on the job this week and I decided I need an intellectual challenge to defrag my brain.  The past few years I have read regency fan-fiction of the Darcy and Elizabeth variety almost exclusively.  Now that I will have some extra time on my hands, I declare my days of purely escapist literature are hereby over.

I think if I were to jump straight into Plato, my big plans would curl up and die in short order.  I need to build up my attention span, and what better place to start then the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction?  There are 90 winners to date, and we own well over half of the titles already.  I have read about 16 of them in the past, and they were all solid reads.  (In comparison, I have read a number of the Mann Booker prize winners, and a few were really out there!)  I am planning to read the Pulitzer's in order by prize year, re-reading the ones I have read previously.

I will be ranking the winners in various, still to be determined, categories like most enjoyable, easy to read, best characterization, best plot, etc.  I am also planning to write a short review of each book as I finish reading it.  I have already finished the first winner, His Family by Ernest Poole, which won the prize in 1918, and I will post a review on it this week.

I am looking forward to getting deeper into this challenge, and welcome anyone who wants to join me on my journey.

Spin List for March

I didn't post this in time for the spin, but I already had the list ready to go.  I haven't checked to see what #8 is in my list yet... Here goes:

1. How German is It Abish
2. A Death in the Family Agee
3. Humboldt's Gift Bellow
4. G Berger
5. The Chaneysville Incident Bradley
6. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain  Butler
7. The Green Lantern Charyn
8. The Woman in White Collins
9. The Inheritance of Loss Desai
10. The Reivers Faulkner
11. The Keepers of the House Grau
12. Snow Falling on Cedars Guterson
13. The Way West  Guthrie
14. Mrs. Kimball Haigh
15. The Bone People Hulme
16. Brave New World Huxley
17. The Executioner's Song Mailer
18. Lonesome Dove McMurtry
19. Tales of the South Pacific Michener
20. Lolita Nabakov

And the winner is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.  Good gracious it's huge!  After reading the back cover, I guess it is not about a nurse.  lol

Plato's Republic

The Republic was the most difficult book I have ever read.  It took me two months of concerted effort to complete, and I feel as if new grooves had to be dug into my brain to get the job done.  Mostly I learned that my brain wants to vociferously resist any kind of improvement of this sort.  My eyes will water and my mouth will hinge into gaping yawns after two pages.  I had to read, and re-read, then re-read again, most of the entire book.  I apparently have the attention span of a gnat.  But the more I read, the more I was drawn in.  It is not a book one just reads; it must be studied and puzzled over, discussed and studied again.  It was a transformative experience.  Mediocre reads I had previously enjoyed seem exceptionally lame now, like I have been spoiled for them.

 

The Republic surprised me on many levels.  Many concepts that I thought came straight out of Catholicism actually had their basis in the philosophy of Socrates.  The cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, and the underpinnings of Catholic social justice teaching, were directly codified by Plato.  Who knew?  And though Socrates gave lip service to “the gods,” at times, he often seemed to unify them into just one.  Also, the story of “Er” while fully supporting reincarnation, definitely gives credence to an early form of Purgatory as well.  And this is all 400 years before the birth of Christ.

I found the portion discussing the various political states very illuminating.  Socrates’ explanation of why a meritocracy will devolve into an oligarchy, which will then devolve into democracy and finally into tyranny is almost chillingly prescient.  It was very odd to see any other form of government held up as being superior to democracy, but his reasoning, of course, is very sound, since he considers democracy a sort of mob-rule.  Surprisingly, Socrates also appears to have believed somewhat in the equality of the sexes, or at least, that exceptional woman could compete on a male playing field.

The Republic is worth all the effort it took to absorb.  I understand now why it is considered a foundational work in the western literary cannon.  It is amazing that so much well-reasoned thought came from a single source.  We are lucky that it has survived, when so many other works perished.  The world would be a completely different place if everyone read Plato; it certainly deserves a place on every classicist’s short list.

Spin Review of The Known World

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 2004, set in the years prior to the Civil War in fictional Manchester County, Virginia, describes the rich tapestry of characters and events that take place after the death of black slave owner, Henry Townsend.  Purchased out of slavery during his youth by his parents, Townsend goes on to later purchase land near his former master, with whom he retains ties of esteem throughout his entire brief life.  Educated by a local freed-woman teacher so light-skinned she could go north to “pass,” Townsend does not follow the path of his free father, but rather purchases slaves to become a master himself.

Throughout the novel, Jones unflinchingly reveals the little known history of black on black slave ownership, as well as the subtle racism of lighter skinned versus darker skinned blacks.  Townsend’s widow, Caldonia, is beset by the pressures of running a plantation in the antebellum south, without the full backing of the law, which only supports freed blacks when it is convenient to do so.  Jones’ depiction of the lives of the Townsend slaves, as well as those of the local sheriff and slave catchers, creates a compelling tale that masterfully weaves in and out of time and place with touches of the surreal.  Things do not always develop as one might expect in Manchester County, some people are better than you would think, and others behave very badly indeed, and sometimes the crazy are proved to understand it best of all.

Spin #19 - The Known World

Oh no, I tried reading that one before and gave up!  I'll have to try much harder this time.

The Known World is by Edward P. Jones, and won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner.  It is my lucky #19, which I will endeavor to read before February 1, 2016.  Wish me luck.

Spin List for December 2015

Here is my spin list for December 2015.  All titles are taken from my list of 50 in 5 years.  I eliminated most of the books I did not think I could complete in a single month, though some of these would be really challenging as well.

"Prometheus Bound" by Aeschylus, 14 pp., c. 480 BC "Medea", "Electra", "The Orestes", "Andromache"  & "Iphigenia Among the Tauri" "The Clouds", "The Birds", "The Frogs" & "The Lysistrata"  by Aristophanes The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, 244 pp. The Annals by Tacitus, 188 pp., c. 109 AD The Confessions by St. Augustine, 128 pp., 398 AD King Henry the Fourth by Shakespeare, 69 pp., 1596 King Lear by Shakespeare, 1608 Pensees by Pascal, 184 pp., 1670 The Social Contract by Rousseau, 52 pp., 1762 Faust by Goethe, 294 pp., 1808 The Essays of Emerson, 262 pp., 1841 Barchester Towers by Trollope, 476 pp., 1857 Middlemarch by Elliot, 831 pp., 1871 Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, 935 pp., 1875 Sons and Lovers by Lawrence, 366 pp., 1913 Brave New World by Huxley, 237 pp., 1932 The Reivers by Faulkner, 305 pp, 1962 The Known World by Jones, 388 pp., 2003 The Sea by Banville, 195 pp., 2005