Happy Birthday Juliet

Saturday, January 7, is the birthday of a Hoosier original, Juliet Strauss, who was born on that day in 1863 in Rockville, Indiana.

During her life, Strauss wrote for her hometown Rockville Tribune newspaper and produced a steady stream of common-sense, down-to-earth observations on life for Indiana readers of her weekly “Country Contributor” column in the Indianapolis News and, from 1905 until her death in 1918, for the approximately one million Ladies' Home Journal subscribers through her column “The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman.”

Strauss came to be considered as one of the most widely read female writers in America. Indiana historian Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., who noted that Strauss’s writing possessed the Hoosier characteristic of “optimism and wholesomeness,” claimed that the Rockville writer was “more widely read than any American essayist has ever been.” In the history of the world, Dunn went on to say of Strauss, “nobody ever wrote so much about the common things of everyday life, and held their readers.”

I first came across Strauss while doing research for an article on Indiana’s centennial celebration for Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History in 1991. Her life and work intrigued me and I subsequently wrote an article about her career for the spring 1995 issue of Traces, which examined Hoosier literature. Through the years, I have developed a genuine fondness for this Hoosier original whose column "The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman" in the Ladies’ Home Journal attracted readers from throughout the country. It was not only her work for the Journal, and her columns in both the Rockville Tribune and Indianapolis News, that drew me into investigating her life, but also her dedicated efforts at saving from destruction the scenic splendor that now is Turkey Run State Park. The result was my biography, The Country Contributor: The Life and Times of Juliet V. Strauss, published in 1998.

What writer could resist examining the life of a person who had so dedicated a following that the Woman’s Press Club of Indiana spearheaded an effort to erect a statue in Strauss’s honor at the park, which was sculpted by Myra R. Richards of Indianapolis. What was it about “The Country Contributor” that inspired this intriguing work, titled Subjugation? The impressive statue features a graceful figure of a woman with one arm outstretched holding aloft a slender goblet. Her other hand rests on the head of a peacock, which symbolizes pride. Crouched before the woman are a lion, representing brute force, and a tiger, signifying treachery. In the folds of the gown that fall from her figure are an ape, representing imitation in contrast to the genuine, and a wild boar, signifying gluttony. How many hikers have passed by this site and wondered how it came to be at Turkey Run?

There are, however, more complex reasons for a biographer to devote time and energy to their craft. I would be remiss if I failed to point out that I was drawn to Strauss in part because she captivated me with her frank comments about her life and career. In one example, she wrote George Cottman, Hoosier historian and Indiana Magazine of History founder, expressing her frustration early in her career over her failed attempts at convincing publishers to print her work. She confessed to Cottman that it made her “sick to see others who have scarcely a grain of talent printing their trash in respectable publications.” A bitter and self-serving statement perhaps, but it is also an honest one.

Zionsville Library Talk January 10

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I will be at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, 250 North Fifth Street in Zionsville, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, January 10, to talk about my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary.

On April 4, 1968, Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, came to Indianapolis as part of his campaign for the Indiana Demcoratic presidential primary. Instead of a standard stump speech, he passed along the tragic news of King's death to a stunned crowd at the Broadway Christian Center at Seventeenth and Broadway streets.

The news of King’s death had sparked outrage and violence across the country. Riots had broken out in more than a hundred cities and approximately 75,000 National Guard and federal troops were called out to maintain some semblance of order. Thanks, in no small part to Kennedy’s calming words, the streets of Indianapolis remained quiet; there were no riots in the Circle City.

For more information on the program, call the library at (317) 873-3149.

Wallace Talk at Lebanon Public Library

At 6:30 p.m. Monday, November 21, I will be at the Lebanon Public Library, 104 East Washington Street, Lebanon, Indiana, to talk about the life and times of Hoosier author and Civil War general Lew Wallace. My talk before the local Civil War Roundtable will concentrate on Wallace's service in the war, including his early successes with the Eleventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, saving the day at the Battle of Fort Donelson, the controversey about his actions at the Battle of Shiloh, and the resurrection of his career thanks to helping save such Union cities as Cincinnati and Washington, D.C. (Battle of Monocacy)

In preparing my talk, I realized that while Wallace is best known today for writing the best-selling novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, his Civil War soldiering does not get the attention it deserves. On January 11, 1910, a large crowd gathered at the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington for the unveiling of a Wallace statue to join the one of Oliver P. Morton representing Indiana. Although Wallace was the first author to be represented with a statue, you will notice that in the photograph he is not in author garb, but wearing his Civil War uniform.

Holiday Author Fair December 3

For the ninth year in a row (a new record, perhaps), I will be participating in the annual Holiday Author Fair from noon to 4 p.m. at the Indiana History Center, 450 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis. (That's me with Philip Gulley at the 2009 Author Fair.)

More than 60 Hoosier authors will be at the Fair selling their wares. Among those in attendance will be filmmaker Angelo Pizzo, Chef Daniel Orr and local media personalities Howard Caldwell, Dick Wolfsie and Lou Harry along with bestselling authors James Alexander Thom and Dark Rain Thom and 2009 Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf.

There will be speakers throughout the day, holiday music, refreshments, and free gift wrapping. The Author Fair is free with admission to the Indiana Experience. For complimentary admission tickets, please drop me an e-mail at reboomer@yahoo.com.

Author interview

Here's an interview I did a few months back with Smithville Communication's Rob Ramsey to help highlight the 50th anniversary of Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 mission into space. Here is the interview.

Nov. 8 Book Signing

To commemorate the upcoming Veteran's Day holiday, I will be at the UPUI Barnes & Noble Bookstore from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, November 8, signing copies of my World War II-themed books.

The books that will be available are:

* Fighter Pilot: The World War II Career of Alex Vraciu
* The Soldier's Friend: A Life of Ernie Pyle
* "One Shot": The World War II Photography of John A. Bushemi

Lessons from a Master

When I sit down to write a nonfiction book or article, one of the authors I try to emulate is longtime New Yorker writer John McPhee. The other day I came across an interview McPhee did with the Paris Review in spring 2010. In the interview, McPhee offered details on how he prepares for his well researched books and offered advice any nonfiction writer could use.

Some of the gems that attracted my attention included:

"The thing about writers is that, with very few exceptions, they grow slowly—very slowly."

"At one point I said, Mr. Shawn, you have this whole enterprise going, a magazine is printing this weekend, and you’re the editor of it, and you sit here talking about these commas and semicolons with me—how can you possibly do it? And he said, It takes as long as it takes. A great line, and it’s so true of writing. It takes as long as it takes."

"There are zillions of ideas out there—they stream by like neutrons. What makes somebody pluck forth one thing—a thing you’re going to be spending as much as three years with? If I went down a list of all the pieces I ever had in The New Yorker, upward of ninety percent would relate to things I did when I was a kid."

"Structure is not a template. It’s not a cookie cutter. It’s something that arises organically from the material once you have it."

"With nonfiction, you’ve got your material, and what you’re trying to do is tell it as a story in a way that doesn’t violate fact, but at the same time is structured and presented in a way that makes it interesting to read.

I always say to my classes that it’s analogous to cooking a dinner. You go to the store and you buy a lot of things. You bring them home and you put them on the kitchen counter, and that’s what you’re going to make your dinner out of. If you’ve got a red pepper over here—it’s not a tomato. You’ve got to deal with what you’ve got. You don’t have an ideal collection of material every time out."

"You write a lead. You sit down and think, Where do I want this piece to begin? What makes sense? It can’t be meretricious. It’s got to deliver on what you promise. It should shine like a flashlight down through the piece."

"You look for good juxtapositions. If you’ve got good juxtapositions, you don’t have to worry about what I regard as idiotic things, like a composed transition. If your structure really makes sense, you can make some jumps and your reader is going to go right with you. You don’t need to build all these bridges and ropes between the two parts."

"Stories are always really, really hard. I think it’s totally rational for a writer, no matter how much experience he has, to go right down in confidence to almost zero when you sit down to start something. Why not? Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you."

"All these labels—I’ve been called an agricultural writer, an outdoor writer, an environmental writer, a sportswriter, a science writer. And so you just grin. I’m a writer who writes about real people in real places. End of story."