The Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir

A budding naturalist in frontier Wisconsin

John Muir is best known as the naturalist who explored the Sierras of California and the glaciers of Alaska, but he was born in Scotland and spent his adolescence and early adulthood in Wisconsin. Muir discusses these years of his life, from his birth in 1838 to his departure from college in 1864, in his partial autobiography The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. This memoir was published in 1913, a year before Muir’s death.

The first chapter tells of Muir’s life in Scotland, where he and his brothers developed a love of the outdoors at an early age. His boyhood adventures aren’t remarkably different from those of a child growing up in rural America, but Muir’s exceptional storytelling renders even familiar childhood experiences into captivating anecdotes. At the age of 11, Muir emigrated to America with his father and two of his siblings to establish a farm in Portage, Wisconsin, before sending for his mother and the rest of the family to cross the Atlantic. Unlike many frontier memoirs, this book is not a lovingly nostalgic and picturesque portrait of nineteenth-century farm life. Rather, Muir paints a realistic picture of the hard work and ceaseless toil involved in clearing land and working a farm on the American frontier, especially under the stern supervision of a strict and rigidly pious father who valued hard labor over education.

Nevertheless, Muir and his brother David found time to enjoy the outdoors, whether hunting game or merely exploring and observing nature. Muir spends a large portion of the narrative discussing Wisconsin’s birds. As a birder myself, I enjoyed these portions of the book very much. Muir describes the behavior of birds with the precision of a scientist yet also manages to convey the thrill experienced by a young boy who simply enjoys the beauty of birds. Particularly valuable is Muir’s description of the huge flocks of passenger pigeons that would darken the sky for scores of miles and break trees with their collected weight. He also details some of the barbaric hunting practices that had rendered the bird extinct by the time Muir wrote this memoir. In many instances The Story of My Boyhood and Youth provides a vivid first-person record of Wisconsin’s natural history in the 1850s and ‘60s. Muir also recounts a few encounters with Native Americans and briefly laments the robbing of their lands and rights.

Muir’s narrative takes a surprising turn when he reveals himself to be an inventor. As a teenager he created clocks, thermometers, and other instruments from materials that happened to be lying around the family farm. He fondly relates how his creations caused a big stir when he displayed them at the Wisconsin State Fair. The way Muir describes some of the other mechanical devices he created calls to mind the ingenuity of Thomas Jefferson and the absurdity of Rube Goldberg. Muir originally left home with the intention of working as a machinist, engineer, or physical scientist before attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he enjoyed studying chemistry and botany. The book ends with Muir’s departure from the university and his turning towards what he calls “the University of the Wilderness.”

Those interested in Muir as a naturalist may not be enthralled by the schoolboy anecdotes of his early youth, but this book does contain plenty of passages of scientific discovery and descriptive beauty indicative of his better-known nature writings. Those who enjoy reading the autobiographies of scientists and naturalists will find this a very well-written one. The Story of My Boyhood and Youth is a pleasure to read and provides a candid inside look at how Muir became one of America’s great environmental philosophers.
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ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter and Nicolas Barker

The arcane terminology of bibliophilia

ABC for Book Collectors is an alphabetical guide to all the arcane terminology used by bibliophiles engaged in the hunting and gathering of antiquarian books and documents, a discipline in which many of the terms employed originated in the printing, publishing, and bookselling industries of centuries past. The ABC is published by Oak Knoll Press, a publisher that specializes in books about book collecting and the history of books and printing. The first edition was written by John Carter (1905-1975) and published in 1952, and it has since been updated by Nicolas Barker. Both are English, so there is a slight Britcentric tilt to the text, but they clarify when American terminology differs from that used in the bookshops of London. I read the eighth edition of this book, which was published in 2006. A ninth edition, illustrated with photographs and diagrams, was published by Oak Knoll in 2016. The eighth edition has no illustrations.

The entries in this ABC include names for different parts of books, different stages in a book’s production, printing and typesetting terminology, and many different binding materials (types of animal skins, cloth, paper, etc.). The main purpose of this book is to serve as a glossary for reading descriptions in booksellers’ and auction catalogues, so frequently used adjectives of condition, rarity, and provenance are also included. Also valuable are references to authoritative texts and bibliographies that collectors and sellers tend to refer to only by the last name of the author (e.g. McKerrow, Greg, Sadleir), or by acronym (e.g. ESTC [English Short Title Catalogue]). The average entry in the ABC is more extensive than a dictionary definition yet smaller than an encyclopedia item. Enough information is provided to not only define the terms but also impart some interesting nuggets of book history.

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) provides a free pdf of the eighth edition on its website. Presumably this is to encourage more people to take up the avocation of book collecting, which of course would be a positive thing for the members of this organization. The way this book is written, however, is not very user-friendly nor very inviting to the prospective collector. I am not a book collector, but I have worked my whole life in publishing, printing, book design, libraries, and archives, and I still found many of these convoluted definitions difficult to decipher. The authors have made more of an effort to be stylish and sound erudite than to be clear and educate the reader. The ABC doesn’t read as if it were written for beginners who actually need the information but rather for experienced aficionados who are sure to chuckle at the inside jokes, roll their eyes at examples of book collecting faux pas, and nod knowingly at statements beginning with, “Of course, everyone knows that . . .” The entries are not just insufficiently clear in their explanation of arcane terminology but also often rather off-putting in tone. This book gives one the impression that book collectors are not a welcoming community but rather a coven of snooty and insecure elitists scornful of novices. Not having seen the earlier editions of the ABC, I can’t say whether this is the fault of Carter or Barker.

Despite its annoying and obscure passages, book lovers can learn a lot from ABC for Book Collectors. Someone seriously interested in embarking in book collecting, however, would probably be better off starting with a non-alphabetic introduction to bibliography, such as those by Ronald B. McKerrow (1927), Fredson Bowers (1947), or Philip Gaskell (1972).
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Why Call Them Back from Heaven? by Clifford D. Simak

Immortality bites

Why Call Them Back from Heaven?, the eleventh novel by prolific Grand Master of Science Fiction Clifford D. Simak, was first published in 1967. Though this novel has been translated into several languages, it is a relatively lesser-known book by Simak standards. The last printed edition in English was published in 1988, and no ebook is currently offered on Amazon. The quality of the work belies its obscurity, however, and Simak fans should hunt down a used copy.

In the year 2148, scientists are on the verge of cracking the secret to immortality. Over the past two centuries, billions of people have chosen to have their bodies frozen after death, waiting for a future “revival day” when they will embark on their “second life.” Humanity has become so invested in this idea, literally, that the corporation researching the process, Forever Center, has become the most powerful entity on Earth, holding much of the world’s wealth and influencing the governments of nations worldwide. The promise of immortality has had profound changes on human society and culture as well. People live squalid, eventless lives, scrimping and saving to shore up financial security for their second life. With the promise of immortal life on Earth, the idea of eternal salvation in the afterlife no longer holds as much appeal, causing a precipitous drop in religious belief and practice. The world is already overpopulated, with billions packed into overcrowded cities. How will humanity cope when the billions of dead are revived? Solutions for mankind’s expansion are sought in outer space and even through time travel.

Why Call Them Back from Heaven? is at its best when Simak is exploring these philosophical and logistical implications of revival and immortality. Less successful is the quasi-spy story that runs through the book, in which ostracized Forever Center executive Daniel Frost is persecuted by his former employers. As a fugitive, Frost encounters an underground movement looking to take down Forever Center and return to the values of an earlier time when immortality was an impossibility. This adventure plot concludes with a less than satisfying ending, one that relies on too many coincidences. Nevertheless, the dystopian future in which the story takes place is innovative and thought-provoking.

Simak has been described by some critics as science fiction’s pastoralist for his repeated advocacy of rural life, Midwestern values, and the spiritual value of nature. These are themes that continually recur in his works, and here, once again, Simak takes the reader back to Southwestern Wisconsin, the land of his youth. In Simak’s dystopian future, wild nature and nostalgia for the past provide relief and salvation from the dehumanizing effects of technology and the ever-expanding cities engulfing the globe. Why Call Them Back from Heaven? is a warning cry to appreciate the simpler pleasures of life before it is too late. Our endless technological search for comfort, security, and a longer life span might just make us Icarus flying too close to the sun. In today’s world, with overpopulation contributing to climate change and environmental destruction, this important message is needed now more than ever.
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The Mystery of the Locks by E. W. Howe

Annoying romance in a dismal town

Edgar Watson Howe (1853-1937) was a newspaper and magazine editor who also published several books of fiction and nonfiction. He lived and worked in Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, and finally Kansas, where he settled in Atchison to publish the Atchison Daily Globe newspaper and E. W. Howe’s Monthly magazine. Similar to such figures as William Allen White, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, and J. A. Wayland, Howe was one of a number of small-town Kansas newspaper editors of his generation that were able to rise to a level of national notoriety and influence as publishers, pundits, and literary figures. His novel The Mystery of the Locks was published in 1885.

If you are looking for a book that celebrates America’s small towns, however, this isn’t it. Howe sets his story in the fictional town of Davy’s Bend (state unknown), an example of everything wrong with small towns. This stagnant, dying community is inhabited by pathetic people with worthless lives who nevertheless often entertain lofty opinions of themselves. It is difficult for the reader to care about these characters when Howe obviously despises them. A physician named Allan Dorris, for reasons unknown, has decided to take up residence in Davy’s Bend. The arrival of a stranger in town is the source of much excitement and gossip. Dorris buys a creepy old house that is called The Locks because . . . well, because it has a lot of locks.

Dorris, who is extolled as the perfect man’s man, predictably stumbles upon the one attractive maiden in town. Annie Benton is an angelic church organist trapped in this insular and abysmal community. The couple’s meeting initiates one of the most godawful romances in popular literature. It is annoying enough that these two are portrayed as flawless paragons of male and female perfection, but their conversations are absolutely cringeworthy. Apparently in the era when holding someone’s hand meant you were engaged to them, lovers had nothing to do but exchange endless recitations of self-psychoanalysis. While Dorris proclaims his love for Annie in lofty, idyllic terms, he simultaneously pushes her away. He says he’s no good for her, but doesn’t explain why.

When Dorris and Annie aren’t wooing each other ad nauseam, they and all the other characters in the book are busy denouncing the institution of marriage. The gist of the novel is that Dorris and Annie’s perfect union is the rare exception to the rule that marriage makes for loveless, miserable lives. I don’t know the details of Howe’s personal life, but this whole story wreaks of the fantasies of a middle-aged man dissatisfied with his own marriage. Dorris is in his thirties romancing a woman of 19. She happens to be as beautiful as a goddess and as talented on the piano as a Paderewski, yet with no self-esteem. This unplucked flower lies undiscovered in a small country town, just waiting for some sophisticated older man to come along and pluck her so she can devote herself to making his life heaven. Annie actually says to Dorris, “I am your slave.”

Despite a brief subplot about a ghost story, the only real mystery in the book is why Dorris moved to Davy’s Bend. He obviously has a hidden past, but Howe offers no clues. Nothing much of import really happens in the book until chapter 20 (out of 23). When Dorris’s back story is finally revealed, it is utterly predictable and calculated to allow Howe to make yet another statement on the misery of marriage. Even readers who agree with his view of matrimony, however, will likely find this story tedious, annoying, and unpleasant.
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The Wisconsin Frontier by Mark Wyman

When Wisconsin was the Wild West

Published in 1998 as part of the Indiana University Press series A History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier, The Wisconsin Frontier is a comprehensive history of the Badger State from the early 17th century, when White explorers first arrived, to 1900, when Western expansion had progressed to the point where Wisconsin could no longer be considered the American frontier. During this time span, the events that shaped the state were largely driven by interactions between Native Americans and Whites. Author Mark Wyman delivers a detailed and balanced history that gives both sides equal consideration and emphasizes the cooperations and conflicts between the two parties in the settling of the state’s lands and the exploitation of its resources.

I was born and raised in the Green Bay area, the history of which Wyman covers extensively because it was the first point of European contact and integral to the fur trade. This book refreshed my memory and taught me more about all the hallowed names that passed through that region—Jean Nicolet, Claude Allouez, Louis André, Louis Jolliet, Jacques Marquette, etc.—as well as the area’s Native inhabitants—the Winnebagos, Foxes, Sacs, Potawotamis, Kickapoos, Ottawas, Oneidas, and more. It was surprising to learn of the prevalence of slavery, of both Blacks and Indians, in Green Bay in the late 18th century. The northern Lake Superior coast, in the area of Ashland and Bayfield, is also much discussed for its importance to the French fur trade. The other major center of activity in early Wisconsin was the Prairie du Chien area, for its access to the Mississippi River and the lead mines of Southwestern Wisconsin. Milwaukee doesn’t really take off until the flood of European immigrants in the 19th century. Roughly the first third of the book focuses largely on the fur trade, Wisconsin’s initial reason for being. Wyman then goes on to examine the mining boom, settlement and agriculture, the waves of immigration from various nations and faiths of Europe, and finally the timber industry.

Through each stage of development discussed in The Wisconsin Frontier, Native Americans are present and accounted for. Wyman rightly portrays them as active agents in the historical events, business dealings, and intercultural transactions that took place rather than merely as passive victims to be pushed aside. Wisconsin does not have quite as brutal a history as some other states, but it does have its fair share of shameful episodes in Indian affairs—broken treaties, forced migrations, violent altercations—which Wyman discusses in frank and sober terms. His writing is neither judgmentally preachy nor romantically flashy but very matter-of-fact, articulate, and loaded with fascinating detail. Wyman concludes the book on a depressing note with the Indians either driven from the state or confined to reservations and much of Wisconsin’s rich natural resources having been destroyed by rapacious hunters, miners, and loggers.

The intended audience for this book seems to be undergraduate college students and general readers interested in the history of the state. For such nonacademic (without PhDs in history) audiences, there has been a trend among publishers to eliminate notes (foot-, chapter-, or endnotes) for fear that tiny numbers in the text may intimidate readers and hinder book sales. In keeping with this intelligence-insulting practice, this book only provides a few notes per chapter. It really should have had complete notes citing the sources for all the information, quotes, and statistics presented. Instead, it provides a bibliographic essay that is harder to read and less useful than a traditional alphabetical bibliography would have been. If you find an interesting nugget of information in the text and really want to learn more, the lack of detailed citations makes it difficult if not impossible to track down the source.
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The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

Kaleidoscope of the American experience, 1900-1917

The first book in the U.S.A. trilogy by American author John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel, was published in 1930. The trilogy continues in the novel entitled 1919 and concludes with The Big Money. If this first volume is an accurate indication of the series as a whole, the U.S.A. trilogy is one of the best written and most important works in American literature of the early 20th century, on a par with great American novels like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.

The 42nd Parallel is a modern Balzacian overview and critique of American society in the first two decades of the 20th century, with a special focus on the class struggle between capital and labor. Stylistically, it combines the muckraking naturalism of works by Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser with the cinematic modernism of Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Although, like Steinbeck, Dos Passos clearly has leftist leanings, this is not a propaganda novel but rather a kaleidoscopic rendering of socioeconomic reality at a crucial time in the history of American labor. Dos Passos writes of Socialism not with the stridently hopeful enthusiasm of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, but rather with the nostalgic melancholy of a lost cause.

Dos Passos constructs the book in a collage-like format. The bulk of the text consists of chapters that chart the individual lives of a handful of characters from childhood through education (or lack thereof) to their entry into the workforce and their subsequent struggle or rise. As the title indicates, the characters gravitate towards cities along the 42nd parallel of latitude—New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh—though the narrative occasionally wanders as far afield as Mexico. Each protagonist navigates the sociopolitical landscape to pursue the American Dream in his or her own way, whether that means striking it rich in big business, living independently as a single woman, or working to promote the cause of Socialism. The unflinching, nothing-is-sacred realism with which Dos Passos writes these lives is remarkable. The intricate narratives vividly illuminate the time period in question, yet readers of today will still find much to identify with in these characters’ experiences, making for a very compelling read.

Interspersed between these meaty chapters are shorter vignettes, including “Newsreels” that combine snippets of newspaper headlines, popular song lyrics, and radio journalism to offer glimpses into the historical events and general atmosphere of the time. The sections entitled “The Camera Eye” are free-form stream-of-consciousness prose poems that resemble personal reflections or dialogues between unnamed characters. Dos Passos also periodically inserts a brief biographical sketch of an important historical figure from the world of industry, labor, politics, or finance, such as Eugene V. Debs, Thomas Edison, Bob La Follette, and Andrew Carnegie. The “Camera Eye” sections often get overly self-indulgent in their surrealist beat-poetry aesthetic, but the “Newsreels” and biographies really do enlarge the reader’s understanding of the times.

Judging by this first book, it would seem the U.S.A. trilogy is not so much a trilogy at all but rather one big novel divided into three volumes. The 42nd Parallel can’t really stand on its own as a complete work of literature. There is no ending to the book nor endings to any of the narrative threads within. Instead, it’s a book comprised of beginnings. Nevertheless, I don’t fault Dos Passos for that because after having read The 42nd Parallel I certainly want to read the next two books to find out what happens to these characters and experience more of the author’s innovative re-creation of this pivotal period in American history.
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The Prairie Print Makers by Karal Ann Marling, Elizabeth G. Seaton, and Bill North

Just the gift prints

The 2001 book entitled The Prairie Print Makers was published in association with a traveling exhibition of prints curated by ExhibitsUSA, a program managed by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, headquartered in Kansas City. The Prairie Print Makers was an organization founded by ten Kansas artists in 1930 for the purpose of staging exhibitions of prints and promoting graphic arts in the media of lithography, etching, and relief prints. The group eventually grew to include over 100 artists from all over the United States and Canada, including some of North America’s finest printmakers. The majority of its members produced art in a realist or regionalist style, with landscapes, nature studies, and images of rural life being common subjects.

The text of this book consists of three short essays by cultural historian Karal Ann Marling and art historians Elizabeth G. Seaton and Bill North. The latter two are both curators at the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University. In addition to providing a very brief overview of the group’s formation and its activities, the essays provide some insightful context on how the Prairie Print Makers fit into the American art scene of their time, growing out of a need for inexpensive art during the Great Depression, and how they eventually disbanded as abstract expressionism rose to prominence.

In addition to active members (the artists invited to join the group), the Prairie Print Makers had associate members. These were not artists but rather patrons and supporters of the arts, print collectors, and so on. In exchange for a modest annual membership fee, these associate members would receive a gift print each year. The Prairie Print Makers produced 34 of these gift prints from 1931 to 1965 (they skipped 1963), usually printed in editions of 200. The exhibition by ExhibitsUSA consisted of these 34 gift prints, and that is what is illustrated in the book. Each gets a full-page reproduction. Four are color prints, the rest black and white. Seeing all the gift prints assembled in one location is nice, but it’s kind of a lazy way to put together an exhibition on the Prairie Print Makers. A few of the gift prints were made by artists who clearly were not among the organization’s best. There are also examples of great artists turning in merely good work, sometimes not in their medium of expertise. One matter I’ve never found explained, in any source on the group, is how these gift prints, and the artists who made them, were chosen. Other than a concerted effort at variety in subject and style, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the selection. Was it a competition, or did the board just delegate an artist to do the job each year? If the latter, on what basis were they chosen?

Each gift print is accompanied by a short write-up, mostly consisting of biographical information about the artist. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is that it lists bibliographical references for most of the artists whose work is included in the volume, which brings the reader’s attention to some sources that are more informative than this one. Though Seaton’s and North’s essays are pretty good, the brief text of the book provides only the barest-bones overview of the Prairie Print Makers. A more thorough and attractive introduction to the Prairie Print Makers is the 1984 book of the same title by Barbara Thompson O’Neill, George C. Foreman, and Howard W. Ellington. It goes into much more detail on the formation of the group and the careers of its founding members, and the images chosen for reproduction are among the best works of some of the more important artists in the group.

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Prints reproduced in the book

Birger Sandzén, A Kansas Creek, lithograph, 1931

Norma Bassett Hall, La Gaude – France, color woodcut, 1943

Luigi Lucioni, Theme in White, etching, 1955