Thursday, June 24, 2010
On the train
I found the mother rather amusing, especially in her insistence to reporters that her author son was not remarkable among her children and in fact was not even her brightest son. It was somewhat of a disappointment to me when her example of Grover's exceptional maturity and intelligence was his refusal to allow a black man to ride on their train car in Indiana. What were your thoughts?
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Yes, when I read that I wondered whether the author was being deliberately -- is ironic the right word? -- ironic, if it was some element of characterizing a Southern family from that era, or if it was a gaffe on his part from his own lifetime. I need to go back and see when this was written ...
ReplyDeleteLike I can't imagine such a thoughtful scholar-writer to pen something like that, but it does depend on the time. Even my beloved Agatha Christie will knock out something very anti-Muslim from time to time. It's always very shocking to me.
Also, the drawback of commenting without the book with me ... did you get the idea that was an actual reporter or that Luke was searching for details about his older brother and their mother mistook him for a reporter? Like she had dementia or bad eyes or something? That's probably a reader error on my part, but it would be even more poignant if Luke heard himself compared to Grover firsthand like that.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, cl. Agatha Christie is one of my favorite mystery authors, but I also cringe when I read a racially charged passage.
ReplyDeleteThis passage about Grover, though, did make me angry. I didn't think the author was being ironic because the first part of the book makes readers sympathize with Grover, and I don't think the mother's story was to make readers dislike him.
Just my thoughts, though ... and I'm more than willing to admit that I'm a product of my time, probably susceptible to my own hidden biases.
OK, I researched this a little bit:
ReplyDelete"The Lost Boy" was written in 1937 and was originally published in Redbook. The story of the black man on the train was cut from that version to suit modern taste. (It was apparently considered distasteful even in 1937. Interesting.)
The story is mostly autobiographical. Thomas Wolfe really had an older brother named Grover who died when he was young. And Grover really was his mother's favorite. The introduction to the book speculates that was partly because Grover shared her strong racial prejudices. Wolfe thought it was an important part of the story.
I found the mother amusing, too — how she was taught to let other people do all the bragging on your kin and do none of it yourself. That's probably a good policy, but her intense love for Grover kept her from fairly pulling it off!
ReplyDeleteThe mother was interesting because she had this son who's considered a literary genius, but writing talent is just not something she really cares two straws about. She liked her Grover and her way of life, where everyone knew "their place," and she didn't require anything else. She surely taught Grover to be a bigot and was happy that (in his boyish effort to please) he had embraced her values so thoroughly. And he never grew up to refute them, as he may well have done, which probably further ensconced him in the shrine of her memory.
Yeah, I think you're on track with what Wolfe probably intended by including the story of the black man on the train. I don't think he was praising Grover's prejudice, just showing that his mother did. It would certainly change the tone of the story to leave that passage out.
ReplyDelete