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pioneer spirit September 27, 2011
I still plan on getting back to my Kathleen Norris reading, but I got
subverted by some awesome pioneering women this week.
First of all, it being banned books week, I chose to observe it this year by
reading Willa Cather. Since she managed to place no less than THREE books
in the top 100 banned books (to which I can only say WTF?!), I had a
choice, so I chose "O Pioneers". I will probably end up reading her whole
Prairie Trilogy, since My Antonia is a BB as well--and why would I read one
and three, but not two?
And I happened upon a move on Showtime the other day that I had to
see--a 1979 production called "Heartland", and starring Rip Torn and
Conchata Ferrell. It was an interesting piece, and beautifully acted, but with
only a small amount of dialogue. It was about a young widow named Elinore
Pruitt who traveled to the wilds of Wyoming with her young daughter to
become housekeeper to a homesteading rancher named Clyde Stewart. She
ends up homesteading her own piece of land--and marrying the rancher.
One of those movies that seems more a series of vignettes than a fluid
narrative.
But the thing is, I noticed in the credits that it was based on a 1914 book
called "Letters of a Woman Homesteader", by...Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Aha!
And to my great glee, I found that PG not only has "Letters of a Woman
Homesteader", but also "Letters on an Elk Hunt" by the same author.
Basically, these books are just made up of the letters this woman sent from
her wild Wyoming homestead to her dear friend and former employer in
Denver. And when you read them, you would never know they were written
by a woman with not much schooling. Mrs. Stewart was a charming and
captivating storyteller, and she was a sharp judge of character with a delicious
sense of humor. I would recommend these to anyone looking for a damned
good read.
But...here's the thing. After reading "Letters of a Woman Homesteader", I
could weep at the kind of movie they ended up making. They had Conchata
Ferrell, Rip Torn, and a funny, sharp, clever book full of scenes and dialogue
that those two actors would have absolutely rocked. But they didn't make
that movie! Instead, they made a grim, sepia-toned, hardscrabble tale that
was no doubt reasonably true. The Stewarts faced most, if not all, of what
the movie chose to show. But the humor in these people--the very
thing that enabled them to survive and thrive in the hard life they
had chosen, was barely there at all. And what we do see of it is entirely due
to the marvelous acting talents of Torn and Ferrell. It just makes me so
MAD!
Reading:Hobby/General Combo--"O Pioneers" (1913), by Willa
Cather, and "Letters of a Woman Homesteader" (1914) by Elinore Pruitt
Stewart.
Listening: Heard a great interview with Nicholas Pileggi on NPR
today. It was pretty much all him talking about Henry Hill, and how Pileggi
came to write "Wiseguy" (Goodfellas).
Surfing:
At Random:
click here
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