Book shelf wandering, Prairie Newspaper Men

One of my tasks today was to pull books on American Literary Realism. One of the authors whose books I was pulling was William Dean Howells.

Now until today, I had only a faint idea of what American Literay Realism was or who the heck William Dean Howells was. No, more interesting for me, just a few books down were books and literary criticism of E. (Ed) W. Howe.

In Kansas, two of most famous early 20th Century newspapermen were William Allen White and Ed Howe. Every Kansas school child knows about William Allen White because of the William Allen White award. The award was created by Ruth Gagliardo in 1952. When I was going to elementary school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I remember that you'd get a certificate with a silver seal embossed with the image of William Allen White if you read maybe 10 books and a certificate with a gold seal if you read 15 or 20. I am not certain but I think I got a certificate with a silver seal in first or second grade

There are several works by William Allen White on the shelves of the Knowledge Factory. But a sense of his literary style is best caught in his Aug. 15, 1896 Emporia Gazette essay What's the matter with Kansas?

Go east and you hear them laugh at Kansas; go west and they sneer at her; go south and they cuss" her; go north and they have forgotten her. Go into any crowd of intelligent people gathered anywhere on the globe, and you will find the Kansas man on the defensive. The newspaper columns and magazines once devoted to praise of her, to boastful facts and startling figures concerning her resources, are now filled with cartoons, jibes and Pefferian speeches. Kansas just naturally isn't in it. She has traded places with Arkansas and Timbuctoo.
Take it by any standard you please, Kansas is not in it.


My knowledge of Ed Howe was from a different source, an article entitled "My Father Was the Most Wretchedly Unhappy Man I Ever Knew," Gene A. Howe in The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia, Pa., October 25, 1941. Ed Howe was known as the "Sage of Potato Hill" and publisher of the Atchison Globe.

According to his son,

in my opinion he made but little of his opportunities and possibilities; but I believe that for every yard of success he hewed out for himself so painfully he should have made miles. I know of no one more endowed as he was who accomplished so little. He should have been another Will Rogers. I am convinced he had the soundest, rarest sense of humor of any man of his time...His path to fame--and no inconsiderable amount of fame came to his doorstep--was strewn with hard work, disappointment, humiliation, discouragement and heartbreaks. He was the most wretchedly unhappy person I have ever known. (p. 43)

I pulled Ed Howe's novel The Story of a Country Town, just to get a feel for his writing style. In the preface, Ed Howe writes

I believe that when I began the story I some sort of an idea that I might be able to write an acceptable work of fiction, but I have changed it so often, I have no idea whether it is very bad or only indifferent. I think that originally I had some hope of that it might enable me to get rid of my weary newspaper work, and help me to more ease than I have ever known, but I am so tired now that I am incapable of exercising my judgement with reference to it. If it prove a success or failure I shall not be surprised, for I have no opinion on the subject." (p. 3)

But as Gene Howe said, it was his humorous writing that sparkles. When I typed Ed Howe into Google, and you come up with dozens of web pages of Ed Howe quotations, like this one from Brainyquote.com

"If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers."

Claude M Simpson in his introduction of Story of a Country Town wrote that Howe sent copies of his novel to Mark Twain and William Dean Howells!!!. According to Simpson, "The most important assistance came from Mark Twain and W.D. Howells, both of whom gave him as a respectful reading as he could wish for." (source: The Story of a Country Town.Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961. p. ix)

That means that another wander through the book shelves has come almost full circle. From William Dean Howells, to Ed W. Howe, to Gene Howe, to William Allen White, and ends with William Dean Howells again. They are all dead, the towns on prairie of Kansas continue to lose population, newspapers around the country on the verge of bancruptcy and books by William Allen White and Ed W. Howe rest on the shelves, waiting for some other wanderer to pull them down.

Capitano Tedeschi

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