"This Proud Heart" by Pearl Buck

On several occasions on this blog, I have written about the works of Pearl S. Buck, one of the small handul of American writers to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature and one of my favorite writers of all time. I have writte3n about "The Good Earth", her most famous novel, which I believe is also one of a very small group of the best novels in all of literature. She followed "The Good Earth" with two other novels in the "Good Earth" trilogy, They are "Sons" and "A House Divided". While either of those novels could have been a career best for many writers, they are not among Buck's best works. I read everything I come across by Buck and still have numerous of her books to be read. Fortunately, a year or so ago, I bought a large collection of books, actually 5 commercial peach boxes full, from the estate of a local school principal. This one we are discussing today I found in a small group of books I bought at a small "junk store" in Rowan county Kentucky which also included a unique first edition of Jack Kerouac's first novel, "The Town And The City", which was published under his legal name John Kerouac, the only one of his books to have been published that way. "This Proud Heart" is one of Buck's lesser known novels which is set in the United States with purely American characters for the most part. The protagnonist is a brilliant woman, Susan Gaylord, and begins when she is a high school student who has shown a great deal of talent in more than one area. She is the daughter of a professor father and a dedicated housewife mother, has one sister, Mary, several years younger and not really close to her older sister. Her father is a somewhat frustrated poet in addition to being a professor in a small college. He has chosen to devote his life to his familiy and his primary profession but does manage to write poetry and publish some of it in small magazines. Susan comes to understand her father's frustration with his life decision and vows to do more to control her own life and its outcomes. She is a talented artist and piano player as the book begins but chooses to marry her high school sweetheart, Mark, who is a totally devoted husband to her and works in the real estate business after they marry. But Susan finds herself interested in sculpture and uses a barn on the old farm they buy to create a piece in wood which is composed of a family of four, a husband, wife, and two children, a son and daughter. That piece is submitted to a contest for a piece to be placed in the lobby of a hospital financed by a very rich man in New York. The piece and her work in general is supported by a famous male sculptor, David Barnes, who has a house in the small New England town in which Susan and her family live. Barnes is a brusque, short spoken man who has strong opinions about Susan's talent and her inablility, as he sees it, to succeed as a sculptor in the United States. He strongly encourages her to come with him to Paris to study under another great sculptor and a man who teaches anatomy to sculptors. She refuses until the untimely death of her husband Mark due to typhoid fever. After his death, she packs up her children and their maid to travel to Paris to actually do what Barnes has suggested. During her time there, she meets another man, Blake Kincaid, who is also a sculptor of much less talent than Susan. They fall in love and she marries Blake which proves to be a less than perfect decision. They return to New York where he lives in considerable wealth and she grows more and more hampered by his efforts to control her, minimize her talent, and disparage her work as a sculptor. She comes to realize these things about Blake and rents a studio in the poor neighborhood near his ostentatious home where she meets and sculpts marble statues of some of the people in the neighborhood. David Barnes returns to the novel from Paris and assists Susan in getting her works into a gallery for an exhibition which confirms her talent and leaves her with a full understanding that she cannot succeed as a sculptor if she remains with Blake. She moves her family back to her hometown after the death of her father and decides to end her relationship with Blake. The novel leaves the whole situation somewhat in midair at the ending but we see that Susan has been able to understand that she must be independent in order to do her best work. The novel is also widely discussed as one of Buck's better works in support of feminism. Susan Gaylord is a strong, successful, competent, talented, and highly motivated woman. For the time in 1938 when the novel was published, she is an amazingly modern woman. I suspect that this novel is somewhat biographical with the sculpting being a substitute for Pearl Buck's writing and Blake being a character based on Buck's missionary first husband whom she divorced to marry her editor and publisher after her early work caused such a stir in the literary world. While I would not say this is one of Buck's best novels such as "The Good Earth", "Imperial Woman", or "The Living Reed", it is a fine novel and well worth reading.

"Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets" by Stephen Crane

Many time on this blog, I have mentioned that I often buy books at what I refer to as "junk stores", Goodwill, Salvation Army Thrift Stores, etc. I find all kinds of less common books in such places. One of my favorite little places to buy such books is at a little shelf outside the door of the snack shop, gift shop near the entrance to Pavilion H at the University of Kentucky Hospital. It is actually located in the hall between the entrance to Pavilion H, the old main hospital section, and the kiosk where patients sign in. I believe the little gift shop is operated by some arm of the hospital auxillary. The little book shelf operates solely from donated books which must come from a variety of sources including medical staff, auxillary members, patients and their visitors and might contain anything at any given time. All the books sell for some minimal price, usually 75 cents. Due to the fact that my wife has frequent appointments at the Kentucky Clinic across the street, I often take a long walk around the medical buildings in order to get my exercise, cruise past the little bookshelf, about 2 feet wide and 4 shelves high, browse what it contains, and buy anything that interests me. My last purchase there included the book I am writing about now, "Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets" by Stephen Crane, the author of "The Red Badge of Courage" which is a much better known book. The edition of "Maggie..." which I found there is actually A Norton Critical Edition which contains a great deal of critical and historical material in addition to the full text of "Maggie..." which is actually a novella of only 58 pages. But this edition also contains about 200 more pages of the supporting writings, photographs, and maps of New York City in the late 19th century. It was edited by Thomas A. Gullason, Ph. D., an English Professor at the University of Rhode Island. It is an excellent piece of work both from the simple aspect of being a fine novella by one of America's best early novelists, and by virtue of being a fine piece of editorial work by someone who clearly understood his materieal well. The book was originally published in 1893 and the text Dr. Gullason used is that original text. He has wisely not fiddled with the language of the time, has inserted numerous and sometimes voluminous footnotes to provide extensive information about the language used, geography at times, and other aspects of life in New York City in the late 19th century. I read the book with my wife Candice as we do nearly every day. I read aloud from our chosen book as she washes our breakfast dishes. When she finishes, I rinse the dishes. We take turns choosing the books we read and it is an exercise that works well for us in terms of both literature and personal relationship. This was obviously a fast read, in terms of the text of novella alone. In light of its brevity, it was a very nice book to read. Crane's writing does use some now antiquated words at times but he was a fine novelist as anyone knows who has ever read "The Red Badge of Courage". His writing style was actually much more modern in nature than most of his peers at the time. The novella still stands up to just about anything from any modern author in today's times. Maggie is the oldest daughter of a poor, Irish, working class family living in an early tenement in New York. Her mother is an abusive, alcoholic. Her father is an abusive, heavy drinking wagon driver in the streets of the city. Her brother Jimmie is a street urchin with a violent nature. The entire family and every one around them is simply striving to stay alive in a very hostile environment. As Maggie matures into a young woman, she becomes enamored with a friend of her brother named Pete who is a bartender and passes himself off as being much more than he actually is in terms of his money, lifestyle, worldly ways, etc. Maggie falls for Pete, leaves home to be with him after a particularly violent incident with her mother. She is wined and dined by Pete early in their relationship, taken to concerts, bars, and other forms of entertainment and comes to believe that Pete will improve her life. As the novella progresses, it becomes apparent that Pete is a womanizer who is totally in everything purely for his own satisfaction. Eventually, Maggie leaves Pete after he tires of her and moves on with an older woman whom he considers more interesting, charming, and attractive. Maggis is rejected by her mother and the family as a "fallen woman", and dies on the streets. It is obviously a very dark novella filled with poverty, alcoholism, womanizing, prejudice toward minorities, and nearly everything negative that New York offered in the 1890's. But it is a fine novella and well worth reading. If you can find a copy, get it, read it, and come to understand the poverty that immigrant working class families suffered in the early days of our country. And, in light of the recent hatred, animosity, and aggression toward the immigrants who once were and still are the real builders of our country, it is fine novella to read in today's politically disastrous times.

"The Town And The City" by Jack Kerouac--Thoughts On A Rereading

 

"The Town And The City" was Jack Kerouac's first published novel and was released by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1950.  It began one of the greatest careers in American fiction for Kerouac and was the initial expression of what would become known as The Beat Writers.  I read it the first time in about 1974 after having been exposed to Kerouac by Robert "Bob" Snyder who was the Director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia.  Bob was a professor, mentor, and friend to me and dozens of other young Appalachian writers.  I had no exposure to Kerouac at all prior to that, especially in the public school system of Knott County Kentucky.  I might have heard his name but had never read a single thing he wrote until that time.  By the time I began to read him, he had published more than a dozen novels and was a household name in most of literate America.  I had slowly evolved from a young Appalachian boy who was deeply interested in literature, politics, and the arts into a more developed reader and writer and a hippy and opponent of the Vietnam War.  That metamorphosis was complete after my time at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the company of Bob Snyder and the other faculty and students at what was a small, somewhat experimental campus Antioch had set up as an outreach to what they considered to be disadvantaged groups in several locations around the country.  I was immediately enthralled with Kerouac's writing and the first of his books I read was probably "Dharma Bums" or "On The Road".  I quickly went on to devour nearly every printed word the man ever wrote and regretted that he did not live to write that much more.  He is truly one of the 8 or 10 greatest writers America has ever produced and one of the few about whom it can be said that he actually established, along with several of his friends, a new school of writing.  

Recently, on one of my many trips to small "junk stores", I wandered into a first edition copy of "The Town And The City" which I had bought in a small pile of other older, less  important books in which I was also interested.  As I was going through the owner's small shelf of used books in what is essentially a small antique shop, now on its way out of business to be replaced by a booth in a Peddler's Mall, I saw the title on the spine of the book, pulled it off the shelf and was amazed to see that Kerouac and Harcourt, Brace, and Company had originally published the book under the name "John Kerouac".  I never said a word to the owner whom I like personally, but who knows little or nothing about books and writing.  I immediately laid the book in "my pile" and moved on, as I always do, to find what I want in such stores and then to negotiate a blanket price for the lot.  To say the least, I paid less for the lot than I would have to obtain this book alone which was published under his legal name instead of the pen name he had adopted later and which became how he will always be known to the world.    Admittedly, the book is an ex-library copy with typical library markings and some clinging evidence of a former library dust jacket, but it still well worth keeping forever to me.  

My wife had previously read only two of Kerouac's books and had liked those: "Visions of Gerard" and "The Subterraneans" which we had actually read together with me reading out loud while she washes dishes which I rinse and put away later.  She had tried one of his other more stream of consciousness novels previously and didn't like it at all.  So I had decided to try the softer, gentler, deeply loving pair of novels to attempt to hook her on Kerouac. It had worked and now we moved on to this unique copy of "The Town And The City".  This book is in most ways a very typical first novel by an American author who is deeply committed to getting himself published.  But is also a very good novel, not great, but quite good, well structured with a well developed group of central characters, the Martin family in a small town in Massachusetts and later in New York City.  It is about their lives as a family unit and as individuals and is quite long at 499 pages compared to most of Kerouac's later works.  It leads us through this large family's lives in the years preceding World War II and the War itself, shows the development of the individual children into unique adults, their individual departure from the family nest, a wonderful old farmhouse on the edge of a small, close knit town.  It also depicts the father's descent into gambling, drinking, and losing his small printing company, and eventually the home.  He becomes a printer in companies owned by others, and eventually moves with the wife and two youngest children to New York where he works the last of his career and dies old and broken down in a small apartment.  

The later sections of the book contain two interesting segments.  First, in an encounter on the streets of New York, one of the Martin sons who seems to most closely depict the author himself meets a small group of other young men who appear to depict the young Ginsberg and Burroughs or perhaps Gregory Corso.  Another of the characters in that small group is called "the young thug Jack" which is a fascinating way for Kerouac to have described himself.  To my knowledge, this is the first time America was exposed in literature to part of the group of people who would become known as The Beat Writers.  At the end of the book, the funeral of the father, George Martin, is set in the small New England town in which he and his wife grew up and were married.  The depiction in the conclusion of the novel is one which could have been typically been written about a funeral and visitation in almost any small, rural town in America.  It could have definitely been written about funerals in general in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  The entire town turns out to bring George Martin home, say goodbye to him, and bury him in the little country church yard.  A large collection of distant relatives from both sides of the family show up, many of whom the Martin children have never met.  But all of them seem to remember George Martin and his wife.  It is a wonderful depiction of a funeral in rural America and points out just how clearly Kerouac intended to contrast his character's lonely death in a small apartment in the largest city in America as opposed to the funeral which his native small town was willing to provide to one who had not lived there in many years.  It is the perfect ending to a long, complex, wonderful first novel by anyone's standards. 

TRAITOR Trump's Lack Of Remose

 

 According to Westlaw.com in their discussion of lack of remorse as a factor in criminal sentencing 

"An egregious lack of remorse means that the defendant's words or conduct demonstrated extreme indifference to harm resulting from the crime [or were affirmatively intended to aggravate that harm]. In determining whether the defendant displayed an egregious lack of remorse, you may consider whether the defendant's words or conduct (a) increased the suffering of others beyond that caused by the crime itself; (b) were of a belittling nature with respect to the harm suffered by [the victim] [others]; or (c) reflected an ongoing indifference to such harm." 

There can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable person that TRAITOR Trump has shown an absolute lack of remorse for the crimes for which he was just found guilty in New York in the Hush Money Trial.  He has denied all responsibility for his actions related to the case both before and after he has been charged, tried, and convicted by one of the most courageous and reasonable juries ever assembled in the United States.  It has been necessary on nine separate occasions for Judge Juan Merchan to hold him responsible for his violations of the gag order against speaking out, belittling, and denigrating the principles in the case including witnesses, prosecutors, jurors, and the judge himself.  Judge Merchan should have sent TRAITOR Trump to jail for at least the course of one day of the trial events after these violations and chose not to do so in order to avoid giving TRAITOR Trump further opportunity to do more of the same actions for which he was just fined.  Now we are faced with the fact that TRAITOR Trump has been found guilty and will be sentenced for his crimes in the case on July 11, 2024.  The most important question about that sentencing is whether or not the judge will actually hold TRAITOR Trump responsible for his widely demonstrated lack of remorse and administer a sentence near the limits of the law including actual incarceration instead of the typical slap on the wrist of probation.  

 

There can no expectation that TRAITOR Trump will stop his egregious verbal assaults on the criminal justice system if he not actually sent to prison and that is exactly what the judge should do in the case.  We are talking about a career criminal who has been indicted on more than 90 felonies in at least 4 separate jurisdictions both federally and in two states, New York and Georgia.  He is also listed as an unindicted  coconspirator in at least two other states, Arizona and Michigan.  He has at least two other even more serious pending cases in the federal court system in Florida and Washington, DC.  He is also being aided and abetted by a judge in the Florida case who is at best incompetent and at worst a coconspirator with TRAITOR Trump who has shown that she will do anything to refuse to hold him responsible for his crimes in the federal stolen documents case. 

 

TRAITOR Trump's lack of remorse must be used in his New York sentencing and he must be sent to prison immediately if the country is to be safe.  We are dealing with a convicted felon who agitated the worse insurrection against the government in our history simply because he lost an election.  He has already demonstrated that there is no crime he will not commit to avoid being held responsible for previous crimes he has committed.  He must be sentenced to serve prison time in the New York case and he must be immediately incarcerated upon sentencing.  Judge Merchan has no other choice and neither does the nation.  

March 30, 2023, A Great Day In American History--A TRAITOR Has His First Indictment-More To Come

Today, March 30, 2023, will go down in history as one of the greatest days in the history of the USA.  The worst TRAITOR in the history of the world has been indicted, finally.  Yes, this is a relatively minor indictment for one of the lesser of his many crimes.  No, this first indictment is not for his TREASON which should have been the first, last, and only indictment which ever had to be brought against TRAITOR Trump.  But the legal process has begun to prove once and for all that no one is above the law in the United States of America, especially if that person is a TRAITOR and an enemy of the state.  And what is truly sad is that this day was ever necessary.  This career criminal, sex offender, pathological liar, domestic and international terrorist, and ultimately a TRAITOR should have been indicted, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned as much as fifty years ago for his thousands of business based crimes, or his sex crimes and the country would never have had to suffer all we have and will continue to suffer because the TRAITOR was allowed to live illegally in the White House for four years after committing TREASON with Russia.  Today, is a great day in America and will come to be known as one of the greatest days in the entire history of the country.  

Walter Tevis, The "Kentucky Writer" Who Didn't Like Appalachians

 

I had known indirectly about the writing of Walter Tevis for many years but had never really read his work until recently after my wife and I had watched a documentary about his life on KET.  Tevis was the author of two books which were made into two of the most well known movies starring Paul Newman, "The Hustler" and "The Color Of Money".  I  had always loved both movies primarily because of Newman's acting.  He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars for both movies and won for "The Color Of Money".  But, somehow, I had never read the books on which those two movies were based and had also never read Tevis' science fiction despite having been a regular reader of the genre for most of my teens and twenties.  Two of Tevis' books are considered among the best science fiction ever written and deservedly so.  I had also not heard Tevis's name mentioned, except perhaps in passing, despite  the fact that we both lived in Lexington, Kentucky, for several years at the same time.  Tevis was inducted into the Carnegie Center Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.

After my wife and I watched the documentary, she wanted us to read his works and she was especially fascinated by his novel "The Queen's Gambit" which has been turned into a Netflix miniseries which has been widely acclaimed.  My wife has now read the book and loved it.  I have still not read that book, but probably will get around to it sooner or later I suspect.  I did read his science fiction classic, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and loved it to the degree that it prompted me to order most of his published works the remainder of which still lie on my always large "To Be Read" shelf.  Tevis's work on "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is as good as any science fiction I have ever read.  It is one of those rare works of science fiction which also falls solidly within the larger and more important body of what we know as "Great Literature".  It is a masterpiece and deserves every accolade it has ever received.  As a largely productive genre of literature, science fiction can boast only a few such masterpieces with other examples being Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and "Stranger In A Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein which can be said to be somewhat similar to "The Man Who Fell To Earth" since both main characters are truly unique creatures from other planets who find themselves on earth. 

But after reading the book and watching the documentary, I became much more interested in Tevis, his life, and his other works.  That led me to the official Walter Tevis website which his agent, The Susan Schulman Literary Agency operates.   The website states in their biography of Tevis that "Walter traveled across the country alone by train at the age of eleven to rejoin his family and felt the shock of entering the Appalachian culture when he enrolled in the local school."  Tevis actually attended high school in Lexington which is not now, nor was it ever, an example of the Appalachian Culture.  The dominant culture in Lexington is vastly different from the Appalachian Culture.  The Appalachian Culture is seen in hundreds, perhaps several thousand residents of Lexington but is vastly different from the Central Kentucky Culture which is rooted in the earlier history of Lexington, Fayette County, and Central Kentucky as an agriculturally based economy which was deeply affected by the pre-Civil War slave holding plantation system while the Appalachian Culture is rooted in an area which was first settled by anti-slavery settlers from the British Isles, many of whom had actually come to North America as indentured servants large numbers of which settled the Appalachian regions of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Western Carolinas.  The predominant culture of Central Kentucky is  rooted in settlers who were often recipients of large land grants due to a combination of justifications ranging from simple political connections to the political kings and king makers in early America to legitimate service in the American Revolution.  Most of the early landowners in the Eastern and South Eastern areas of Kentucky which constitute the Appalachian area of the state were simple homesteaders who traveled to the mountains where they could stake claims to small holdings of land which were never productive of the Thoroughbred horses, Bourbon, and tobacco which characterize early life in Central Kentucky.  While Tevis did use the "hillbilly" ethnic slur in his writings and his literary agency seems to see that as a point of pride, Tevis never lived in the truly Appalachian area of the state.  Whatever contact he had with Appalachian people took place in Lexington where they were just as out  of place and uncomfortable as the somewhat odd genius Tevis who actually was an immigrant from California.  

Tevis was a truly unique and apparently deeply damaged person well before he came to Kentucky to join his family of origin after having spent more than a year alone as an adolescent patient in the Stanford Children's Convalescent Home in San Francisco due to his having been diagnosed with a rheumatic heart condition. His parents placed him in the home and effectively abandoned him to return to their native Central Kentucky until he was released from the convalescent home and required him, at age 11, to travel alone by train across the continent to a place he had never lived to be reunited with a family whose only contact with him had been periodic letters and telephone calls.  Very few children at that delicate age of development would have survived that type of treatment without having been deeply damaged.  Tevis became a chronic alcoholic and was always known as a unique individual at best and a truly odd human at worst.  An argument can also be made that his advanced level of intelligence might well have made his ability to cope with the abandonment even more fragile.  But regardless of how deeply his abandonment affected his later life, it must also be conceded that Tevis was a genius, a tremendous novelist and short story author, and a man deserving of a great deal of respect for his literary output.  In all, he wrote six novels and one collection of short stories all of which are well respected work.  He also spent most of his life as a teacher and college professor at Ohio University where it said that he was a popular professor.  But, I am not convinced that he was ever truly a "Kentucky Writer" or that he ever viewed himself as such.  Yes, his works do have settings in Kentucky  and he does, from time to time, express his written opinions of the state.  But in many ways, he must be viewed somewhat as "a man without a country".  He was deeply traumatized by his last year living in his native California and never truly adjusted to Central Kentucky where he spent his late adolescence and was educated at the University of Kentucky.  He also taught at UK, Northern Kentucky University, and Southern Connecticut University.  He seems to have drifted across a great deal of American geography, spent his last years in New York City where he died, but was buried in Richmond, Kentucky, at the edge of Central Kentucky.  He was a deeply damaged human being who managed to turn his personal history into a productive life as a writer of excellent literature but seems to have been unable to attach himself in a meaningful way to any particular environment either in Kentucky, Connecticut, Ohio, or New York.  

But, he was a genius and he deserves to have his writing survive as long as humans read great literature. 

"Same Sun Here" by Silas House and Neela Vaswani--Book Review

 

This is an adolescent book by Silas House and Neela Vaswani which has been widely applauded for several reasons.  It is a cooperative work by Silas House, who is the Director of The Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, and Neela Vaswani, who has written several other books in a couple of genres including short stories and memoir.  This is the first book I have read by either author.  I read it primarily because my wife and I bought it to possibly give to our 11 year old nephew in Wisconsin and wanted to review it before sending it to him.  The book is written in the form of pen pal letters between a 12 year old Appalachian coal miner's son, River Dean Justice, and an Indian immigrant girl, Meena Joshi, of the same age in Chinatown in New York City.  Obviously, each of the authors wrote the letters for the child of their own heritage and I am willing to assume the book was produced primarily through e-mail exchanges between the authors.  The two children are both bright, quite emblematic of each of their native cultures, and have grandmothers who are very important parts of their lives.  River's "Mamaw" is his primary caregiver due to health and/or mental health problems of his mother who spends most of her time in bed and, for most of the book, takes little active part in his parenting.  Each of the children is facing and attempting to deal with personal and family problems which are common in their cultures and geographic areas.  River's father is an unemployed coal underground coal miner who has gone to South Alabama to find work and comes home only when he can.  Meena's father works in a catering company in New Jersey and comes home only on his days off and both father's are forced to stay near their work at times instead of returning home.  Meena's parents and older brother have immigrated to New York when she was quite young and left her in the care of her grandmother, Dadi, in India for several years due to problems related to money.  Both children love their grandmother's deeply.  

As the book progresses, a coal company opens a mountain top removal mine on Town Mountain overlooking the town near which River's family lives and also overlooking his school where he is a member of the middle school basketball team.  Meena's family live in an illegally sublet rent controlled apartment in Chinatown and they are very close to the elderly Chinese woman whose son is actually the legal tenant of the apartment in which they live.  They are always in fear of being evicted because landlords can sell such apartments for high dollar if they can get rid of the tenants.  River's grandmother is an active member of an anti-strip mining group and fighting to stop the mountain top removal project.  Eventually, Meena's gradmother dies in India, River becomes more actively opposed to strip mining and mountain top removal, and Meena's family continues to live in fear of eviction and homelessness.  The book is loaded with current hot button political issues in both locations with environmentalism, rent control tenant's rights, immigration, and the economic issues related to the low end working class.  

As the book nears its climax, River's basketball team is practicing in the school gym when a massive rock slide caused by the mountain top removal strikes the school and injures several of the players.  Meena's family and all of the other tenants are evicted and become homeless.  River and his grandmother join a protest in Frankfort, Kentucky, and River accidentally becomes a media darling with a planned trip to New York to appear on television and hopefully to finally meet Meena.  The book is well written, especially in light of the fact that is uses the authorial techniques it does.  The social issues discussed are timely and important in America.  This book has a great deal of merit and is well worth buying for an adolescent reader, especially such a reader in a liberal leaning family.  It says a great deal about inclusivity, environmentalism, immigration, Appalachia, tenant rights, and discrimination against both the Appalachian poor and immigrants.  I would suggest that, for the average adolescent reader, it would be a good idea for a parent or grandparent to read the book either before or with the child and have a structured discussion of the social and political issues it raises.  It is a very unique book and well worth placing in your child's private library. 

2020--The Year Of The Meaningless Thoroughbred Triple Crown

This year since about March 1, 2020, the Corona Virus has destroyed or damaged many things in America.  One of those which has been damaged the most and talked about the least is horse racing's Thoroughbred Triple Crown, the three races composed of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.  I have not been involved in any aspect of the Thoroughbred horse business for more than twenty-five years but I spent nearly twenty years in the industry from about 1975 to 1994 in jobs ranging from general farm laborer to a five year stint when I was the broodmare and yearling foreman on a large breeding farm in Lexington.  I also spent one year as the manager of a large breeding farm in the Mid-Hudson region of New York.  I like to think I understand more about the Thoroughbred industry than the average person and I still pay attention to happenings in the industry.  

2011 First Turn, Photo by Churchill Downs, Inc.

When the Corona Virus pandemic made it clear that having thousands of people in a confined area was dangerous, the horse racing industry, especially in New York, Maryland, and Kentucky, where the Triple Crown races are held, realized they had to make serious changes in their plans.  Thoroughbred racing is governed by numerous state racing commissions in the states where tracks exist.  These state commissions regulate the industry in many ways including the establishment of and granting of racing dates to the various tracks.  As Belmont, Churchill Downs, and Pimlico where the races are held worked to decide what to do, they considered many options including changing the dates and distances of the races.  The greatest quality of the Triple Crown and what has always made it the most significant yard stick by which to measure three year old Thoroughbred horses has always been the fact that the three races, held on three different tracks at three different distances in a period of only five weeks has and always will make it an incredibly difficult task for a young race horse, a jockey, a trainer, and the assorted others including owners and handlers to win. The upshot of all the planning by all the parties involved was that not only were the dates of the races changed but the order was shuffled and the distance of the Belmont Stakes was shortened from 1 1/2 miles to 1 1/8 miles.  The Belmont was also changed from the last race in the Triple Crown, always to be run exactly 5 weeks after the Kentucky Derby which was always run on the first Saturday in May at 1 1/4 miles.  The Belmont Stakes was scheduled to be run at this seriously shortened distance roughly 3 weeks later than usual on June 20, 2020.  The Kentucky Derby was scheduled to be run at its usual distance on September 5, 2020, almost exactly two months later than usual.  The Preakness Stakes was scheduled to be run at its usual distance of 1/3/16 miles but on October 3, 2020, nearly five months later than the historic date of the third Saturday in May.  All these decisions were based on a complex combination of monetary issues, open racing dates at each venue, public health mandates from each of the states and the federal government, and an attempt by the entire Thoroughbred industry to run three races at the three tracks on some date sometime, at some distance or other which they could look at the  world with an almost straight face and say "This is the 2020 Thoroughbred Triple Crown!"  You can bet your fanny that the primary factor in the decision making process was always monetary.  

What this bizarre and laughable combination of decisions did was to make the so-called 2020 Thoroughbred Triple Crown meaningless.  Historically, the running of the three races over a period of five weeks and culminating in the Belmont Stakes at 1 1/2 miles made the task of one horse, one trainer, and one team not impossible but incredibly difficult and without any possibility of denial that it was the toughest assignment the world could ever give to a horse and a racing team.  Running the 1 1/4 mile Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May gave the horse and team the difficult task of winning a race at a distance nearly the entire field had never yet run at a time very early in the racing season against the best three year olds alive.  It was always run at a time when the grind of the racing season had not yet winnowed the field with injuries.  The Preakness Stakes then always followed the Kentucky Derby in only two weeks at a distance of 1 3/16 miles around two turns on another track in another state.  The winner would have to ship from Kentucky to Maryland and come back in two weeks with enough speed to accomplish the markedly different task of the Preakness.  Then in exactly three weeks ,usually the first Saturday in June, the Belmont Stakes was run on a third track at the much longer distance of 1 1/2 miles which required the horse who had already run two difficult races in two weeks to develop enough stamina and finish to win at the greater distance.  And for these reasons, the traditional, historical Thoroughbred Triple Crown has been won by only 13 horses since 1875 which was the first year the Kentucky Derby was run which created the troika of races.  Sir Barton was the first Triple Crown Winner in 1919 which was 44 years after the series was composed of the three races.  

In the abbreviated Belmont Stakes of 2020 on June 20, 2020, a horse called Tiz The Law was the winner.  He is scheduled, so far as we know to run in the other two races and attempt this so-called Triple Crown.   He is a fairly good horse and could win all three races.  But we will never know if he is worthy to be called a Triple Crown Winner even if he walks away with all three races.  In my opinion the worst thing that could ever happen for Thoroughbred racing and the Thoroughbred industry would be for Tiz The Law to actually win these three drastically changed races.  In my opinion, the Thoroughbred industry, the three tracks, and their three state racing commissions might just as well have said "We are going to randomly draw a race from each track's scheduled racing and call it one event in the 2020 Triple Crown."  They could suddenly have elevated three claiming races to Grade I status and not done any more harm to the industry.  Let's all hope that Tiz The Law breaks badly from the gate on Saturday, September 5, 2020, trails the field around the track at Churchill Downs, and finishes dead last behind the biggest long shot in the field who gallops away to an easy win.  At that point, the Preakness Stakes in October will be clearly recognized for the farce it already is along with the Belmont Stakes and, sadly, the 2020 Kentucky Derby. It would be truly tragic if Tiz The Law suddenly in October found a few million fools attempting to mention his name along with those Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Citation, Whirlaway, Sir Barton, and the 8 other Triple Crown Winners who actually accomplished the task.