Back to the Classics Challenge 2017: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Initially I was going to read The Yearling for the 2017 Back to the Classics Challenge category “Classic About an Animal or With an Animal in the Title”.  However, I have now decided to use it in the “Award Winning Classic” since The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939.  (I think I will read The Call of the Wild for the Animal category instead…but we’ll see 😃. )

I am fairly sure I either saw the movie as a child and/or read an abridged version of the book, because lots of it seemed very familiar.  Since I was aware of the basic story line, I figured the book would make me cry and it did, but probably for different reasons than it would were I still a child. Although as best I can tell (i.e. Wikipedia), the book wasn’t written for children, I can see how it could be marketed to tweens and teens. It is a coming of age story after all. But I think a more mature reader will be able to see points that would probably be overlooked by a child or even a young adult. 

So, clearly the story is more than just a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn in post Civil War Florida.  In fact, the fawn, named Flag, doesn’t even show up until about half way through the novel. The focus of The Yearling is the boy, Jody Baxter, and his transition from 12 to 13 and from boy to man.  Jody is an only child, his parents having lost 6 children before his birth. His father tends to humor him, believing that the trials of adulthood will come soon enough, whereas his mother, hardened perhaps as a preventative to more loss, is more strict,  The Baxter’s nearest neighbors are the rough and slightly dangerous Forresters who live 14 miles away.  The nearest town is Volusia, a day’s ride and across the St. Johns River. This is where the Baxters go to trade and purchase goods they can’t raise themselves and to visit the coquettish Grandma Hutto.  

I appreciated that Rawlings does not romanticize the past or a life lived off the land. The book is pretty clear in its message that neighbors are mandatory for survival and that subsistence farming is hard and precarious work. There is also a strong message about taking only what one needs and hunting only for meat and not for sport.

All the dialogue is in dialect, which is normally a pet peeve of mine, but it didn’t bother me in this case. I had no trouble understanding it and in fact, it enabled me to really “hear” the speech rhythms of the characters. There really wasn’t much I didn’t love about this book. I loved the detail of the Florida scrub and wildlife; I loved the description of the food, clothing and domiciles.  I didn’t even mind the parts about hunting.  Reading The Yearling gave me the same sort of satisfaction  as an adult that I had as a child reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books, that sense of a completely different time and place that you could jump into anytime you opened the pages.

I read the paperback edition pictured above re-issued for the 50th anniversary of the book and with reproduced beautiful woodcut illustrations from previous editions, which I really enjoyed looking at at the start of each chapter. 

Octavia E. Butler at the Huntington Library

I thought I would share my recent trip to the Huntington Library on this blog since it is a piece of bookish tourism which I normally avoid, not for lack of interest, but rather because I am lazy and traffic-phobic, particularly if I have to drive in or near Los Angeles.

However, when I heard about this exhibit featuring the too-soon departed Octavia Butler, I knew I could not let the opportunity pass me by, especially when it was is  a mere 45 minute drive away.   I only found out about science fiction writer Butler when she died in 2006 at the age of 58.  At that point in my life I was morphing from a semi-casual reader to the obsessed dedicated reader I am now.  I have since read four of her books and hope to read more…at the very least I hope to finish the Exogenesis trilogy this year.  

This is one of Butler's notes to her self

In the exhibit, there is a lot of emphasis on the pioneering aspects of Butler’s life as a black woman working in a field which typically published works only by white male authors.  But in my experience of her work, it is Butler’s ability to tell stories that sets her apart from her peers, more so than her gender or her race.  I readily admit that I have not read that much sci-fi or fantasy but what I admire about Butler is her uncompromising ability to challenge the reader into thinking about how the stories have larger implications and echoes in the here and now.  Butler does not pull her punches and she goes places where other writers fear to tread, in my estimation.

I was a little unsure what the exhibit would look like, but it was visually extremely well put together with handwritten notes,  journals, and correspondence  combined with photographs, book jackets etc .  I think my biggest take away was the amount of research Butler did for her books.  There were even some of her library slips for books she checked out for background information (the woman kept everything!).

If you have never read any Butler and are interested, I recommend starting with  Kindred , a standalone novel about a modern African-American woman who time travels to antebellum Maryland and which is considered by many to be her finest book.

I am so very glad I made the effort to go.  Of course, while we were there, we did take a stroll around the gardens (despite the triple digit heat) and looked at some of the permanent exhibits and had lunch.  If you are ever in Southern California, the Huntington is well worth a visit.

One of my favorite parts is the library in the original Huntington mansion.  I wouldn't want a room quite this formal. But the size!  

This is  a picture of the Lily Ponds, just one of the many gardens on the over 100 acre estate. 

And a picture from the desert garden, more conducive to Southern California weather.