And the Prize Goes to W.E.B Du Bois for The Quest of the Silver Fleece

Dear W.E.B.,



The 2010 Ellstrom Award for Literature is late in being awarded. It is not that the decision had not been made. It was clear in my mind that this was a stand-out book based on the criteria set up for the award. That is, it is the book that I liked the most and was most deeply affected by during the reading year 2009. However, I stopped posting for longer than I care to think, and you were left waiting.

So, The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W.E.B DuBois is our choice.

This book is now in the public domain, so all of us are welcome to read it online for free. And it is a meaningful read. I believe that you described the overall affect best, yourself, in the introductory note.

He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well, to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth. The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genious, but the third is the Reward of Honesty.

In the Quest of the Silver Fleece there is little, I ween, divine or genious; but, at least, I have been honest. In no fact or picture have I consciously set down aught the counterpart of which I have not seen or known; and whatever the finished picture may lack of completeness, this lack is due now to the story-teller, now to the artist, but never to the herald of the Truth.

And it is so, that you are not a writer of fiction who is fully matured and refined. Your sentences do not leave all of us in awe. Your story has some limits, though I have read far worse that were chosen from the New York Times best seller lists. But I am convinced that you have given us a picture of the angst and dignity of two creative young people, living, and wanting to succeed, in a time and environment that was difficult.

The wholeness of the characters, Zora and Blessed, is striking. We empathize with their dreams. We feel for their plights. They convince us. And they give us hope. And I suppose, in 1911 when this book was published, you, too, had those hopes.

Your dream lived within you until the day before Martin Luther King spoke the words, "I Have a Dream," but by that time you had left us for Ghana, finding, perhaps, at least for yourself, a better vantage point to see your dreams unfold. Perhaps, were you with us today, you could help our country build a new and better quest for interracial relationships that address the complexities of our lives today.

Thanks for your soul and your words.

Betsy

Ellstrom Award for Literature - 2010: The Field

Dear Readers of All Stripes,

Last weekend was the event called, The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports. It's the Run for the Roses. It's the Kentucky Derby.

Well, perhaps, the announcement of the Ellstrom Award for Literature, 2010, is not the most exciting two minutes in literature, but it is one that I prepare for during the course of a full year. The Derby and the Ellstrom award have two things in common. They both have a great field! By that I don't mean the track, for the Derby track was pretty soggy this year. I mean the "horses" in the running.


I studied the horses that ran in the Derby this year. And then I placed a bet ($6.00) on Paddy O'Prado to win, place, or show. At the end of two minutes, I was $3.40 richer. (Paddy showed.)

During the course of the 2009 year I studied a different, but equally pedegreed, field. And I was far richer for the activity. This field of authors includes some of the very best. (See full list.) The contenders for the award are:

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky on The Brothers Karamazov
• Diane Setterfield on The Thirteenth Tale
• W.E.B. DuBois on The Quest of the Silver Fleece
• Sylvia Plath on The Bell Jar
• Bertoldt Brecht on Mother Courage
• Leo Tolstoy on The Death of Ivan Ilych
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery on The Little Prince
• Kurt Vonnegut on Slaughterhouse Five or the Children's Duty Dance with Death
• John Steinbeck on Grapes of Wrath
• Thomas Hardy on Jude the Obscure
• Victor Pelevin on Oman Ra
• Zora Neale Hurston on Seraph on the Suwanee

The also-rans were notable with William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, and Joseph Conrad being eliminated at the gate.

So now is the time to place your bets. Which of these stellar authors, new and old, will take the prize, will win the roses?

BRD

P.S. To sweeten the pot--for anyone betting on this race who also comes to visit me at my house before I announce the winner of the 2010 Ellstrom Award, I will give you a book from the DeGeorge family library. And, yes, I will inscribe it appropriately!

What to Think About Theodore Dreiser

Dear Theodore,

Here is what I said to a friend the other night. "I love Faulkner's sentences, it is his chapters I dislike." Faulkner had a way with words all right. And if I were honest, I would have to say that many of his chapters are fabulous. I would also have to admit that his work has expanded writing styles and approaches in a wonderful way. But, when I read his works, I am always left disappointed. So much promise, yet, for me, so much disappointment.

I am wondering what I will feel about you and your work after I am finished reading and reviewing a few things. The hype is good. As you may know, I have, for a long time been searching for the "Great American Novel." I'm wondering if I will find the great American novel in the books that you have written. Larzer Ziff, some English professor who might be from Johns Hopkins or UC Berkeley, remarked that you "succeeded beyond any of [your] predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel." Some people think that you succeeded "beyond any of [your] predecessors or successors in producing the great American novel." Hm.m.m. Perhaps.

Well, I'm not ready to vote on that yet. As I've been reading Sister Carrie, I haven't been impressed too much by sentences, but the chapters are faring better. And my gray recall of An American Tragedy is positive if not too clear. That is one I must review before I say much.

Anyhow, it is this quote from H.L. Mencken that got me writing this letter, because it reflects on something that is important in my thinking. He said of you, "that he is a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped."

You made a difference, it seems. And that difference was more than the difference of sentence structure. That's what I like about it. Now, I have to repeat, I love a great sentence. Think about the sentences of Annie Dillard. Like the one about the Polyphemus moth walking away from Shadyside school. "He heaved himself down the asphalt driveway by infinite degrees, unwavering." Oh, my. And how about the last sentence of Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." And Dickens two city "Best of times," "Worst of times." Do you think I should publish a survey to ask what the best sentence of all literature might be?

But sentences are an easy thing, I think, compared to the themes. And that, is what I contemplate. Is a book important because it has good sentences or because it has good theme? It is the difference between the artistry of style and the artistry of truth.

Sherwood Anderson of Winesburg fame, said:

Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh at him for so much of his heavy prose ... [T]he fellows of the ink-pots, the prose writers in America who follow Dreiser, will have much to do that he has never done. Their road is long but, because of him, those who follow will never have to face the road through the wilderness of Puritan denial, the road that Dreiser faced alone.

Well, I'm not convinced that you were alone. W.E.B. DuBois was there too, with some of your foibles, but certainly with some of your strengths. He had heavy feet, too, treading and opening roads to reveal what was being denied. You and he, did not have quite the strength of the sentence that I love, but you did face down traditional assumptions and called for a truly new way of being.

I hope that as I review your work I will find a new fearless hero of the written word.

Regards,

BRD