Abe Lincoln In Illinois (1938)--Robert Sherwood

I've finally decided to start reading (or in many instances, re-reading) through the books on this ancient list. It is obvious as I get older that the spirit that came up with this list was more attuned with what is likely to bring me a few moments' of pleasant reprieve every day than what I will be able to find in the present times. This will be exceptionally slow going reading, for I will be continuing to read my main list that I have been working on since 1994 and have not attained the halfway point of yet. This Illustrated Encyclopedia list is something I will probably read 10-15 pages of a night before I go to bed, to put myself in a tranquil mood, regardless of the darkness of the story, because I associate it with a time in my life when I was optimistic.

I have always been perplexed about what order to read these books in, but I have finally decided that it is all right to just read them alphabetically, as they are listed, which is the easiest way to approach it. Also most of the really important books I have read once either for my primary reading list or at school. I do plan to read them again as they come up, and look forward in most instances for the excuse to do so, but if I should die before I get back to War and Peace I do have the consolation that I have read it twice already.

The first two selections on the list are short 20th century plays about Abraham Lincoln, which is good for jumping in and feeling one can make some headway through the list right away.

Abe Lincoln in Illinois is the perfect introduction to the worldview embodied in this list, at least for me. It is entertaining and well-written, it is simple and clear, it is optimistic--about America, about democracy, about human freedom, about the potential of the common person to live as a decent and contributing citizen. This optimism is probably rooted in symbols and ideals of men--of Lincoln mainly--rather than actual men, or even actual Lincoln, but it seems genuine to me, in the sense of being motivated by goodwill rather than being platitudes disguising baser instincts. Sherwood appears to have been something of an east coast Brahmin, New York money and connections, all the best schools, Harvard, etc, and he is under no delusions about there being a real hierarchy among men with regard to character, moral sense, mind, power of action and so on, and that the ability of these superior men to rise to their proper station is the most important task that a society faces in organizing itself. It is also suggested, of course, that the United States has known some fortune in this regard.

Sherwood wrote some notes that were appended to the end of the play in which he explained his sources for certain incidents and reasons for taking liberties in some of them or wholly inventing others. He wrote with high praise of Sandburg's once-celebrated biography, though only The Prairie Years (the first volume) had been published at that point. It was noted the The War Years was currently in preparation. I would guess Sherwood was looking forward to it:

"The Prairie Years is an incomparable portrait of Lincoln and of the young, boisterous America in which he grew up."

In another place he refers to a quote about Lincoln about his having a kind of poetry in his nature, and stating that this was why Sandburg was the perfect biographer.    

To give a taste of Sherwood's judgement where personal Greatness was not attained, however, I will quote his summation of the life and character of Lincoln's poor surviving son, Robert, who, to be honest, sounds like he could have been a lot worse. People nowadays would be in awe of his resume:

"Robert justified his name (after his maternal grandfather), by following in the dainty footsteps of the Todds rather than the huge ones of the Lincolns. He was educated at Exeter and Harvard, served as Secretary of War under President Garfield, as Minister to London under President Harrison, became a successful corporation lawyer and president of the Pullman Company--in which capacity his hostility to the interests of labor indicated that he had not paid strict attention to the opinions of his father. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in retirement at his New Hampshire home (sic--I believe Sherwood must be referring here to Hildene, which is actually in Manchester, Vermont, and remains open to the public to this day), playing golf and saying "No" to all who begged him for access to the private papers which had come to him with his father's meager estate. Indeed, he decided to burn these papers and was restrained from doing so only by the timely intervention of Nicholas Murray Butler, who persuaded him at least to place them under seal in the Library of Congress. Robert Lincoln left orders that they shall not be opened until 1976, when a new series of biographies and plays about Abraham Lincoln may be written."

I don't remember reading about anything spectacular being revealed about Lincoln in the 1976 unsealing of these papers. I suppose I ought to look it up.

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

Because there is a danger of my never reading anything published after 1960 again other than the occasional topical book that happens to pique my interest I have devised a Challenge in which using keywords culled from the archaic reading I come up with a list of books from internet searches and score them based on their Amazon ratings (This is exactly what Jonathan Franzen--whose assumption as the person in charge of contemporary literature is the sort of thing that is driving people like me into the arms of the past--does not want us to do, but as I am using this system--really a game--to generate at most 15% of my actual reading, and which I will tweak over time if it fails to produce the desired results, I think it is not going to be do damaging).Here are the results for Abe Lincoln in Illinois:

1. Wagner As I Knew Him--Ferdinand Praeger..................................................5.00
2. Team of Rivals--Doris Kearns Goodwin.........................................................4.71
3.Sailing Alone Around the Room--Billy Collins.................................................4.51
4. Children's Stories in American Literature 1660-1860--Henrietta C Wright...4.40
5. Abraham Lincoln & Coles County, Illinois--Charles H Coleman...................4.00
    The Good Doctors--John Dittmer...................................................................4.00
7. The Wrongs of Women: or, Maria--Mary Wollstonecraft...............................3.83
8. Areopagitica--John Milton..............................................................................3.73
9. The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln--Wayne Whipple................................3.50
10. The Rip Torn Handbook--Emily Smith..................................Received no reviews

The Wagner book vote is based on just one review, but based on the current rules of the Challenge it is our winner (and didn't I dodge that Doris Kearns Goodwin bullet?). Do I accept the Challenge? I would if the book were easily and cheaply obtained. However there is not a single library in the state of New Hampshire that owns the book, and the cheapest paper copy available online is $9, which in this instance is too much. So I will pass on this Challenge and move on to the 2nd book in the Encyclopedia series, John Drinkwater's play of Abraham Lincoln. 

This process turned up three Challengers that were musical recordings.Their tallies:

1. Rodrigo Costa Felix--Fados de Amor..........................................................5.00
    Dick Diver--New Start Again.....................................................................5.00
 3. Peter, Paul & Mary--Songs of Consciousness & Concern........................4.72

I haven't had time to explore these possibilities, though again both winners achieved their perfect scores on the strength of a single review.