2 posts tagged “novel”

One Thousand White Women is a 1998 novel by Jim Fergus, known most for his writing world for Sports Afield magazine and other sporting life. In his preface, Fergus explains the how his novel was born:

In 1854 at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a prominent Northern Cheyenne chief requested of the U.S. Army authorities the gift of one thousand white women as brides for his young warriors. Because theirs is a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother's tribe, this seemed to the Cheyennes to be the perfect means of assimilation into the white man's world -- a terrifying new world that even as early as 1854, the Native American clearly recognized held no place for them. Needless to say, the Cheyenne's request was not well received by the white authorities -- the peace conference collapsed, the Cheyennes went home, and, of course, the white women did not come. In this novel they do.

However, Fergus doesn't give himself adequate credit in this summary. Not only does this novel address the disgusting treatment of the Native Americans at the hands of the United States government, but an even more overt theme deals with the role of women in the society of the time. The women who sign up as "volunteers" to be brides begin as a rag-tag collection of society's outcasts, but by the end, most of the women have become friends, the bonds forged between them only strengthened by the hardships they face together on the plains.

The book is written as a collection of journals and letters written by a woman named May Dodd, the daughter of a well-to-do industrialist in Chicago, who is unlucky enough to find the love of her life in a common laborer named Harry Ames. Since her wealthy family will never hear of a mismatched marriage of this type, she simply moves in with Harry, taking factory work herself and giving birth to two children. For this very public disobedience, May's father has her committed to an asylum. Her disease: promiscuity.

When given a chance at earning her freedom through the "Brides for Indians" program, May leaps to sign up, and on the journey to Laramie the reader is introduced to a group of "brides" that includes fallen Confederate debutantes, common criminals, immigrants, artists, religious zealots, orphans, a runaway slave, and genuinely ill mental inmates. Throughout, Fergus uses a plain-spoken, yet rarely crude, conversational tone, perfectly adapted to the letters and journal entries of an educated but irreverent and independent woman with nothing to lose. Characters are sketched subtly but vividly over the course of the book, especially through the use of phonetic renderings of language, leaving the reader, near the end, with the desire not only to know, "What happened to May?" but really to know, "What happened to all of them?"

While this book, because of the nature of the plot and the well-known outcome of Indian/Cavalry relations, certainly will have no sequel, I can still remain hopeful that Jim Fergus has or will publish more. His knowledge of and obvious affection for the Great Plains and all her species, both four- and two-legged, makes his prose a joy to read.

A link to an interesting Authorlink interview here.

Patricia Marx is a longtime writer -- Harvard Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, New Yorker -- but only recently did she write her first novel, a romantic comedy entitled Him Her Him Again The End of Him. She says that she was urged by her friend, photographer Richard Avedon (you mean you aren't friends with a world-renowned photog? What's the matter with  you?) to write the novel as an expression of her own personal voice, something she says she has never before allowed.

This brings up a good question for everyone who wants to write. Do you write the voice in your head, or is the voice a construct? I'm sure it depends a lot on the situation. Whoever read an English Lit final written in the author's natural voice? However, writers of fiction take note: Marx thinks that her natural voice allows readers to identify better with the character, makes it feel less staged. Hell, she didn't even give this main character a name. Why? Because, as a fellow writer, Marx is bothered by the "contrivance."

Which leads to another question: isn't the entire thing a contrivance, even if your characters have no names, even if you write in a natural voice? The answer is, of course, that it is a contrivance. But the less obvious the staging is, the gauzier the veil between the reader and the character, the better the book. Stream of consciousness was intended to remove the veil completely. Of course, any reader of Ulysses can tell you that the endeavor is not completely successful. In my opinion there is no way to seamlessly interject a characters thoughts and actions into a reader's head. For example, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway was one of the first to use the technique, but although I might sympathize with her thoughts on postwar England, I cannot completely immerse myself in the time or the place. A modern reader may simply be too far removed from the setting.

Although I agree with Marx that finding your own voice is not only important, but possibly vital to success, I think there are limits on the positive effects to be achieved. Improved writing, better characters, and verisimilitude will all result, but I think is unrealistic to hope to completely absorb the reader. Entertain, distract, engage, or even enthrall a reader -- yes. But completely transport -- no. Sadly, no.