Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

The September nonfiction read is A Son of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland. Originally published in 1917, this is another true nonfiction classic by a Pulitzer prize winning author. He won the Pulitzer for A Daughter of The Middle Border, which was also a contender for one of this year's nonfiction reads and came out four years after our Sept read.

From GR: A classic of American realism, A Son of the Middle Border (1917) is the true coming-of-age odyssey of a farm boy who—informed by the full brute force of a homesteaders’ life on the vast unbroken prairie—would become a preeminent American writer of the early twentieth century. Pulitzer Prize–winner Hamlin Garland’s captivating autobiography recounts his journey from a rural childhood to the study of literature and the sciences in Boston, his vital connections with such inspirations as William Dean Howell, and eventually his reclaimed sense of identity as a writer of the Midwest’s beautiful yet hard land. This definitive book placed Garland among such regionalist writers as Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Dreiser.

For more information about Hamlin Garland, check out The Hamlin Garland Society: https://www.garlandsociety.org/

I plan to read this, maybe mid-September.

I liked reading this, but I felt all the time that there were huge gaps in my understanding. This was probably because as a non-American, there was a great disconnect in our background and experiences. I plan to read the sister novel/ biography 'A Daughter of the Middle Border.'

I have been reading this most of the month, two chapters during breakfast every day. I am quite enjoying it. Being from Illinois I have driven by many of the places Garland talks about during travels and stays in Rochester, Minnesota and La Crosse Wisconsin. It is an engaging portrait of a fairly normal young Midwest farm boy working on the farm, going to school and just reading what he can, all while the family moves in steps westward. The first half of the book carries Garland's story forward until he's about 20.

Because it is a memoir, Garland can describe the events of life on the middle border frontier with non-journalistic flourish which fits his descriptive style. His depiction of a day spent threshing and a day spent were both descriptively detailed and emotively expressive; Garland let's his tweenaged inner self wax poetic on the subjects that still strongly linger in his memory. After reading the first half of the book I feel I have a better understanding that I ever have had of what life was like for a young man working on his family farm, an understanding that was likely still somewhat applicable to such a life up until World War II. I anticipate such a life has advanced to be much different by the 2020s.

The "Middle Border" is basically the line between where the homesteaders are taming the land and animals and where the frontiersman are hunting and skinning the more untamable animals. As Garland points out, over time, the middle borderline keeps moving westward. At this point in the book, it has moved form somewhere in Minnesota/Iowa to probably somewhere in the western part of the Dakotas

I am reading this now. It tells me of the story of my ancestors who also went the same route...to America ->to Iowa ->to Minnesota. The author threw me for awhile when he would talk about 'native Americans' because he didn't seem to be talking about indigenous Americans who he refers to a Injuns. I finally decided he must be talking about people who ancestors may have been immigrants but they themselves were born in America.
I may get a lot of reading done this week as I am at home in bed with Covid.

Blueberry wrote: "The author threw me for awhile when he would talk about 'native Americans' because he didn't seem to be talking about indigenous Americans who he refers to a Injuns. I finally decided he must be talking about people who ancestors may have been immigrants but they themselves were born in America. "

I too thought was interesting to see his calling white people born in America "native Americans" to differentiate them from the more recent immigrant white people. That's an example of how such memoirs, and some fiction, can capture the cultural history of the times so much better than a historian looking back can.

I finished this quite a while ago and enjoyed it immensely. Like Brian and Blueberry, this is near my own territory. Years ago I read Main-Travelled Roads for a Western American Literature class but have no memory of it. I have A Daughter of The Middle Border on my TBR now.

At a dinner recently, guests had to bring some object that meant something to them and either tell the story of the object OR tell a lie about it. The other guests had to say if what was said was true or a lie. My nephew showed an old typewriter that he said belonged to Hamlin Garland and talked about him living in Salem, Wisconsin (not far from where he lived) and how he was so happy to have the typewriter. Gullible me fell for the story, of course. My nephew had bought the typewriter at an antique store in LaCrosse.

I finally finished. This book was a comforting read for me.

Blueberry wrote: "I finally finished. This book was a comforting read for me."

Glad you got satisfaction in reading about the Middle Border of your family roots. I bet it also felt good to finish by the end of the year too.

This was my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Brian, I agree with your thoughts of the crusading realist Garland. Made me wonder how the Midwest ever got populated with the bleakness of your toil and homesteaders ultimately continuing west always pursuing a dream. I did think there would have been some mention of some "struggle" with Native Americans while the homesteaders destroyed their way of life. It felt like a much longer read than 384 pgs.

Blueberry wrote: "Made me wonder how the Midwest ever got populated with the bleakness of your toil and homesteaders ultimately continuing west always pursuing a dream. ..."

Excellent point!