Friday, February 03, 2006

Journal of a "Novel"-Entry 6

Mutt's Research Begins

Back on with my journal to mark the beginning of my official "research period" for this "novel" I am looking to "write" so I can someday "publish" it and be a real "writer" for once in my life! "Dream on," the world chimes in........I will, and gladly.

As you can see on the right, I've begun my Depression-era reading with an out of print book called, simply enough, "The Great Depression", edited by David A. Shannon, who may or may not even be around anymore since the book was published in 1960. Using this book as the place to start my research seems nearly Providential in a few ways: 1) I stumbled on it while out visiting a library used book sale last year, when Duke still lived in the area I live in, and he was there too. We took two of our children - I had my older daughter, and John had his oldest son, my godson. I found this book shoved in a box for $0.25, beat up but salvageable, and I snagged it only because I vaguely thought I wanted to write about the Depression some day (as I've noted previously, it's been nagging me for years), and it seemed like a good resource. It is. More on that below. Also, 2) it turns out the book was published by Prentice Hall, which is where Duke was employed for years until they ground him down and he got a new job in Maryland which caused him to move. But at the time he worked for the company that had published this book.

Perhaps it didn't stay in print, but for me the book is a major find and the perfect place to begin my research on the Depression. This is because it is a collection of items from a variety of interesting sources, which gives a lot of different perspectives on the times; also, it aspires, as it says on the back of the book, to tell the story of the Depression 'in human terms', which is in a way exactly what I want to do with the story I plan to write. Although I am not done with the book yet, it has proven to be thoroughly informative and interesting. The pieces are from the actual time - they are not retrospective - and they are written in tone, flavor and language of that era. They range from newspaper columns - mostly from the New York Times, but also from Chicago and other mid-Western newspapers - to essays in major magazines (Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Saturday Evening Post), to transcripts of Congressional hearings, to case studies of individual families. The sections of the book focus on urban level unemployment, farmers, students and education, small towns in Middle America, and there is even a section solely about the possibility of Social Revolution. One of the things I did not infer from what I know and have never understood was how much speculation was going on at the time in this country about the possibility of their being a Soviet-style revolution during this time in the United States. That seems ludicrous to someone from my generation, but one can see why at the time it did not seem silly at all to many people. People were totally destitute in America; in the Soviet Union, the Communist era was in its youth, and the proletariat was gainfully employed. Did you know that at one time in the early 1930s more than 100,000 Americans applied for jobs in the Soviet Union??

Books Begin This Way.....

Pretty much only trying to convince myself by that heading, but what the heck......I am very glad I started out on my research with this obscure book because I have noticed that with other novelists I admire, some of their best books began the same way. For example, T.C. Boyle has commented that a friend gave him a book called 'The Nuts Among the Berries', about food fads in the early 20th century. This led to one of his best known and best received novels, 'The Road to Welville', which was also turned into the Alan Parker film. Ron Hansen, whose 'Mariette in Ecstasy' is easily one of the best novels in English in the last 25 years, at least, was partially inspired to write that book by Thomas Merton's 'The Waters of Siloe', which described daily life in the Trappist monasteries of the past. Similarly, it's my hope that I can use 'The Great Depression' as a catalyst for some of my novel ideas. There are a lot of interesting stories in the book that can be turned into fiction, if I had the chops to perform this kind of alchemy......

I have lots more to say, but for now let me leave it there. Leave my other thoughts for future posts. 3/4 of the way through one book of reading for research, but the juices are flowing.......the only thing I don't have that Hansen and Boyle have are books under my belt to give me the confidence that I can actually write this novel, but if I don't have the confidence there, I will need to come up with it on my own.

1 comment:

Duke Altum said...

Looks like you've started out on the right track there Mutt... one small step at a time, building up within your mind a sort of sensibility and "feeling" for Depression-era America... it seems to me that the only read way one could ever begin to write credibly about another time, from this vantage point, would be to totally immerse themselves in the writings and other cultural/artistic expressions of the people who lived then and experienced it first-hand. What other strategy could there be? Therefore this spate of reading you're starting here makes good sense. Sure, it may get dry at times (just as singular focus on any topic will inevitably do), but it will be worth it, I am sure, when it comes time to start writing the dialog or descriptions that will accompany whatever scene you manage to cook up in your head.

Great examples you cite there too, with 'Wellville' and 'Siloe'... no doubt many others could be named... so many writers who have immersed themselves in historical circumstances have prepared for it by plumbing the journals and writings of real people "on the ground," as it were. As long as you continue to do that, and maybe supplement it by looking at how other great writers have written about the same period (i.e. Steinbeck), I would think that you have as much a chance as anybody to write something credible about that bygone era. But you have to be willing to do the legwork... so far, Mutt is showing such willingness...