"These comic stories are a major literary accomplishment, good enough to be placed beside the best of Ring Lardner or Faulkner or the other American writers of this century who have followed Mark Twain's lead in using folk narration. The creative accomplishment is more impressive when one recalls that these stories are the product not of a "native" who grew up with the sound of cracker speech in her ear, but of a city woman who acquired that speech, having heard it for the first time when she was past thirty. She filled these stories with her own exuberance and enthusiasm for the Florida cracker way of life, her own delight in the wit, the beauty, and the vividness of the language."
-the author's thoughts on Rawlings' use of dialect
I am something of an aficionado of Marjorie K. Rawlings, having read much of her writing and a number of books about her. I have performed a short monologue as Marjorie at the Orange County Regional History Center (Orlando), joined and attended conferences of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society and taught two courses involving her at Rollins College Center for Lifelong Learning. I have begun to feel she is my alter-ego.
It was not so long ago I was surprised to discover this book which I had NOT read. Published in 1966, it has been around a while so I'm not sure how I missed it. I'm glad I read Frontier Eden (rating it a 3) but I'd only recommend it to those who are really into Rawlings. I understand the University of Florida, where Bigelow was a professor of American literature for 30 years, has quite a collection of material by and concerning MKR so it must have been quite handy for his research.
After just one chapter, the reader can tell this is a scholastic treatise, an academic critique of Rawlings' work, part of the reason for my reluctance to recommend. It reminded me of Crossing the Creek, The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by Anna Lillios, associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida---long on information, short on entertainment value.
I knew much of the information but there were a number of quotes from MKR's work and from her letters, or correspondence she received from others, that were new to me. And, of course, it was good review. Bigelow's assessment of the curve of Marjorie's career was similar to my description: like a wave, with work before 1933 being a trough, '39 to mid-40s the crest and after that, another trough. The author states that "Two things happened to release Marjorie's literary potential---the first was her discovery of Florida (I knew THAT) and the second was her learning from Hemingway the use of the blunt declarative sentence (THAT I did not know).
Bigelow lists as Rawlings' work of highest literary value The Yearling and Cross Creek, which he calls a "pastoral idyll." Other pieces he finds especially worthy are: "Alligators," "Benny and the Bird Dogs," (one of my favorites) "Varmints" and "Cocks Must Crow." He goes on to list South Moon Under, "Jacob's Ladder," "Gal Young 'Un" and "Plumb Clare Conscience."
I do want to find and read The Sojourner after all Bigelow had to say about it. Marjorie struggled with it for 10 years, it is NOT set in Florida and certainly this author and others feel it was far from her best work. I think I need to judge for myself.
If you're interested my favorite novels of MKR are The Yearling and Cross Creek but some of her short stories are very humorous.
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