Kenneth Roberts in the Blogosphere: A Few Reads

Ahhh!  The semester is nearly over, and I can now turn to this site!  I apologize for the longer than expected hiatus; after my Ph. D. comps (which I passed!), I was inundated with massive amounts of grading (which finally ended) until this weekend.  Nevertheless, I want to offer some blog links for you to read – blogs that have mentioned Kenneth Roberts – as a means to pass time until I can get a substantive post written.

• Two Nerdy History Girls‘ post “Tin Can Tourists” on Kenneth Roberts’ Sun Hunting.
• Historical Novels‘ post (2011) “‘Arundel’ by Kenneth Roberts (1933)“
• Eastman Living mentions K.R. in an article titled “Dowsing: Sixth Sense or Non-Sense” by Tom Rockett
• John Punshon, an author known in Quaker cirlces, wrote on K.R. and Northwest Passage in a 2007 post titled “Writer’s Choice 100: John Punshon” on normblog.com

Northwest Passage (1940) Movie Trailer

Things have been too quiet here on the website – that will soon change after the first week of March when my comps are complete.  In the meantime, enjoy the official movie trailer for the Spencer Tracy film Northwest Passage (1940).  I’ve been hunting for a copy of the movie lately, but have been unsuccessful in finding a copy, so here’s the next best thing until I locate a copy. Enjoy!

Northwest Passage (1940) Official Trailer

Jan. 19, 1945: NY Times Reports K.R.’s Hospital Stay

As technology has improved and become more accessible to the mass, how one receives their news has expanded from the newspaper only to the internet (computer and phone), TV (cable and network), newspaper (online or print; independent or conglomerate), Twitter, and Facebook (I include the last two apart from the internet as they seem to be “news reporters” in their own right; ABC’s “Good Morning, America” even has a segment in which they report news from Twitter and/or other social media).  With the glut of news sources, the media resorts to pandering to their audience by “reporting” on issues their audience find important.  Issues that, in the grand scheme of things, are unimportant and superfluous. For instance, does it really matter what someone wore to the Grammy Awards?  And when a “news item” hits a nerve with the audience, the news outlet harps on that issue, regardless of the fact that there may be no real news to report.  Such is the world we live in today – a world in which the news we receive is mundane and over-hyped.

While it is easy to view today’s news as over-hyping the mundane, it appears that the same can be said of the news outlets of the past.  On January 19, 1945 the NY Times reported Kenneth Roberts’ stay at the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston.  According to the very brief article (p. 26, 1/19/45 edition, NY Times), Roberts was admitted to the hospital to undergo treatments for a neck infection.  As of the time the article was written, Roberts’ condition “was described as satisfactory.”  He had been ill for ten days prior to being admitted to the hospital.

Apparently, the news of yesterday included the mundane as well, which leads me to think that perhaps the mundane has its place in the news.  If the NY Times had not reported on Kenneth Roberts’ stay at a Boston hospital in January of 1945, we would not be able to know more of Kenneth Roberts’ life.  So, despite my complaints, I guess the tendency of today’s media serves a purpose, at least to provide fodder for the historians of tomorrow.

Kenneth Roberts in the Digital Age

While I enjoy the conveniences technology affords us – such as the iPhone, laptops, internet, etc. – I must confess that I have not taken hold of the e-book craze.  I’ve only bought one Kindle book, and that was out of necessity.  Google Books offers numerous partial-views or full-views of books. One can own thousands of books without owning a book case.  But, that’s not for me.  I’d rather sit in a room flooded with books.  I want to hold a book in my hands and smell the pages as I thumb through them.  And when I need to reference a book previously read, I don’t mind getting out of my desk chair to retrieve the book from across the room.

Nevertheless, Google Books and the move to digitize book has its advantages to poor Ph. D. students like me.  And here is where this post connects to this website.  Ever since I began my hunt for anything Kenneth Roberts – not just his novels, but his books written in the 1920s, his Post articles, his cookbook, and his water dowsing books – I have sought tenaciously for, but never succeeded, his books written in the 1920s during his Post days.  No bookstore that I have visited – from Louisiana to Maine – has carried these books.  No yard sale has happened to miraculously have a rare copy of one of these books. Nope. Only the Ebays, Amazons, Alibris, etc. of the world have carried these books, and at a price that I cannot yet afford. So, for the longest of times, I had to yearn for these books, longing to read what Roberts wrote before his days as a historical fiction writer.

Well, thanks to Google and other digitizing efforts, Kenneth Roberts’ fans can read books such as Why Europe Leaves Home and Europe’s Morning After.  All one needs to do is to access Google Books, and type in the title or Kenneth Roberts’ name, and within seconds one can be reading a rare book in digitized form.  I discovered that one can even purchase Why Europe Leaves Home in Kindle version.

But still, I hesitate reading these titles via Google Books.  There’s part of me that wants to wait to read them until I have the book in hand – literally.

Kenneth Roberts in Current News: “Locke’s Mills” in The Bethel Citizen

Bethel, Maine

Today’s “Kenneth Roberts in Current News” comes from The Bethel Citizen and a piece titled “Locke’s Mills” by Betsey Foster in which, it appears, Ms. Foster provides tidbits of news from the surrounding area.  In today’s piece, Ms. Foster makes mention of Kenneth Roberts.  What I found interesting about Ms. Foster’s piece is that Kenneth Roberts would visit a local farm of a friend to do some of his writing for the Post.

Kenneth Roberts, author of the novels “Arundel,” “Rabble in Arms,” “Northwest Passage” and more, came to an old farm in Ketchum to write his columns for The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. As the story goes, Roberts’ friends, who owned the farm, would drag him up here from Kennebunk, Maine, for a “sobering” few days so he could get the article written.

I find such tidbits of information fascinating, as it gives us a glimpse into the goings on of Kenneth Roberts – stuff you won’t find in scholarly works or biographical works.

A Blast From the Past: St. Petersburg Loved Kenneth Roberts

Back in December I wrote a post highlighting an article from the St. Petersburg Times written on October 21, 1925 of Roberts’ visit to St. Petersburg on a fact gathering trip for a series of article for the Saturday Evening Post.  Though the Post was not able to get much information from Roberts, the plucky reporter gathered enough information from the hotel manager – rather mundane and inconsequential information – to write an article expressing the joy St. Petersburg felt for having Roberts visit the “Sunshine City.”

The article I want to highlight today is by the The Evening Independent (St. Petersburg) written on February 13, 1924.  The title of the article contains a rather long subheading: “Noted Writer Has Longing to Chase News Story Again: Kenneth Roberts, Well Known to Saturday Post Readers, Here for Week, Would Like to Stay Until Braves Come.”  St. Petersburg, apparently was not in 1924 what we know of it today, and seems to have considered itself to be in the wild, far off from the civilization of New England:

The man who has traveled all over the wold looking for material for his writing, the man who is foremost among the human interest writers who combine humor with human interest, feels the call of the wild in his veins and a longing in his heart to answer the call.

This quote contains a couple of interesting tidbits.  First, the reporter labels Kenneth Roberts as a human interest writer.  Roberts indeed wrote quite a bit about immigration, the development of the West, the Mormons, and much more when he was at the Post.  Roberts indeed wrote on important issues of his time, but scholarship since Roberts’ death (the little that exists) seem to place Roberts’ views as building up the the views of white, middle-class America of the early- to mid-twentieth century. A well-written article by Sylvia Whitman, “The West of a Down Easterner: Kenneth Roberts and the Saturday Evening Post, 1924-1928,” is one such article that argues to this end. [I find Whitman's article thought-provoking, but I am not sure I fully agree with her conclusion.  More on this to come in a future post.]

Secondly, what exactly is this “call of the wild” mentioned in the article? While Roberts indeed traveled extensively, particularly during his Post years, I am not sure he did so because of the “call of the wild.”  What Roberts wanted more than anything was to get away from the busyness of the city to a quiet place so he could write.  In his I Wanted to Write, Roberts discusses how often he sought to leave the Post to pursue his passion for writing.  Well, as one reads further into the article, the “call of the wild” Roberts experienced was the spring training site for the Boston Braves: “…and when he saw the Boston Braves training field, he heard the call of the wild, and it got him strong.” The reporter then segues into a brief bio of Roberts’ earlier days in Boston as a reporter – days that prepared him as a preeminent human interest writer for the Post.

Unlike today where one can find pictures, Tweets, articles, and much more on any celebrity or prominent figure, the reading public in 1924 had virtually no access to well-known figures of their day other than what they read.    So, when a well-known figure visits the outer skirts of civilization like St. Petersburg, newspapers apparently took the time to describe the features of said well-known figure. I quote in length The Independent’s description of Roberts:

Kenneth Roberts is a husky, wholesome, handsome man.  You can call him handsome without spoiling him, because he will convince you that you are joking.  The attentions which his admirers among his readers shower upon him, has not turned his head. He is real. He is a type of a fine splendid American who has accomplished something worth while.

Not quite the description you’ll find of a prominent figure today!

Roberts’ visit to the Boston Braves’ field in St. Petersburg in 1924 must have had an impact on him, for the reporter quotes Roberts:

‘How I would love to stay here until the boys come down from Boston…I would give anything this minute if I could fan (sic) with Paul Shannon, see Charlie Young again, sit on the bleachers out there with Clif Carberry and Johnny Moahoney, how is he?  I must not even think of those fellows or I would just stick around St. Petersburg and run around with the fellows from the Boston papers and have one glorious time again.’

I wonder if the reporter was using the phrase “call of the wild” ambiguously here on purpose, first alluding to the Boston Braves (the call of wild Indians?) and second, to the call of St. Petersburg. The former makes some sense, but the latter seems to misunderstand Roberts (if the latter is indeed intended by the reporter).  Roberts did not necessary long for the wild of St. Petersburg, but instead expressed a feature of Roberts that helped define the man – a strong loyalty to his roots.

Boston 1775 on Major Robert Rogers

With some sadness, I am going to place this site on a quasi-hibernation as I prepare for my Ph. D. comprehensive exams in March.  I’ll occasionally write a post, but I will save any serious posts for after my comps.  In the meantime, take a look at Boston 1775‘s post titled: “A Negro servant Man, belonging to Major Robert Rogers.” While the post does not mention or discuss Kenneth Roberts, it highlights an aspect of a character in one of Kenneth Roberts’ more famous novels, Northwest Passage.  It’s information like this that helps to bring alive the historical figures in Roberts’ novels.

In addition to reading this post, I encourage you to look through the entire Boston 1775 site; it’s a joy to read for all lovers of early American history, primarily in the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary time period.