Shade of the Raintree, Centennial Edition

Larry Lockridge

Description

For more information on author Ross Lockridge, Jr., visit www.raintreecounty.com

Raintree County, the first novel by Ross Lockridge, Jr., was the publishing event of 1948. Excerpted in Life magazine, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, won MGM's Novel Award and a movie deal, and stood at the top of the nation's bestseller lists. Unfortunately, Lockridge's first novel was also his last. Two months after its publication the 33-year-old author from Bloomington, Indiana, took his own life. His son Larry was five years old at the time. Shade of the Raintree is Larry's search for an understanding of his father's baffling act. In this powerfully narrated biography, Larry Lockridge uncovers a man of great vitality, humor, love, and visionary ambition, but also of deep vulnerability. The author manages to combine a son's emotional investments with a sleuth's dispassionate inquiry. The result is an exhilarating, revelatory narrative of an American writer's life. With a new preface by the author, this 2014 paperback edition marks 100 years since the birth of Ross Lockridge, Jr.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• América
• Raintree County
• Ross Lockridge, Jr.
• General officer
• General
• American

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253012982
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Commentary on Larry Lockridge s Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr . Viking Penguin, 1994; Penguin Books, 1995.
One senses that the novelist would be proud of his son: he has created a full portrait of life in the Midwest between the wars and of the collision of depression and the creative mind.
Publisher s Weekly
No disappeared father has been more honored by a son s inquiry than is Ross Lockridge, Jr. by his son Larry s utterly engaging biography. The son s gaze is forthright, sparing nothing, accepting and reconciling all, and bringing to this absorbing history the same ancestral powers of narration which distinguished his dazzling, lost father.
Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler s List
It is clear that Shade of the Raintree is [like Raintree County ] destined to become an American classic.
Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe
Larry Lockridge has written a moving account of his father s life . . . I, like many Americans, was stunned by the news of his death in 1948. I am hopeful that the biography will generate renewed interest in Raintree County . The biography is wonderfully evocative of Bloomington [Indiana] in the years before World War II.
Lee Hamilton, U.S. Congressman and former member of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana s 9th district A book whose stirring power and complexity would daunt any reviewer. . . . If it were up to me, I d give this book all the awards and literary rosettes that Raintree County should have received.
Donald Newlove, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Larry Lockridge has written what in my faith we call a Kaddish, for his father and for his mother too, beautiful and memorable.
Herman Wouk
The son of Ross Lockridge, Jr. cuts his father a new suit and redresses an injured great American writer. Larry Lockridge here faces the double task of writing a biography of his father and of finding out what drove him to a ruthless act of self-destruction. An immensely moving book, deserving of the Pulitzer Prize.
Kirkus Reviews
Shade of the Raintree is a riveting book, shattering and shot through with the powerful poignancy of a life undone. . . . Larry Lockridge is no apologist for his father, nor for his father s final act. Rather, Shade of the Raintree tenderly explores the complicated psyche of the gifted young author of an epic novel.
Robin Mather, Detroit News
Out of this tragedy, Larry Lockridge has fashioned a touching, insightful, and affectionate biography. It reveals much about his gifted father, his father s extraordinary family, and a vanished, almost idyllic world-that of the Indiana heartland in the years between World War I and World War II. . . . Larry Lockridge contributes a detailed and dazzling analysis of his father s complex, erudite novel. . . . He also analyzes, with equal brilliance, the mental illness that led to his father s death. . . . This finely wrought, finely researched, moving and loving biography succeeds on all counts.
Pauline Mayer, Cleveland Plain Dealer
Meticulously, unflinchingly, the younger Lockridge has created a biography (it can hardly be called a memoir) that is also a searching clinical study of depression; a remarkably objective essay in literary criticism; an important contribution to rural American history, and, finally, a magnificent and compassionate act of forgiveness.
Tim Page, Newsday
It s an interesting, readable quest by a boy-now a man-who, in his words, grew up with a novel instead of a father.
Jean Graham, New York Daily News
It might be expected that such a biography, dealing as it does with depression and death, would be depressing to read. But Lockridge s book has many uplifting moments and many flashes of wit and humor.
William Lutholtz, Indianapolis News
Shade of the Raintree fits comfortably in the venerable canon of biographies that illuminate the tumultuous progress of American literary history even as they trace its cost in an individual life, but it is something more: a son s moving attempt to come to grips with his father s legacy as a man and an artist.
Wendy Smith, Chicago Sun-Times
Larry Lockridge has written a wonderful biography. . . . [He has] an unsparing yet loving hand, a steady grace and humor that are nothing less than remarkable. . . . Shade of the Raintree is an act of love and of forgiveness. . . . In telling the difficult story of Ross Lockridge s death, he provides a deeply moving portrayal of a good and gifted young man in the grip of something terrible.
Richard Bausch, LA Times
In the annals of twentieth-century American literature, there may be no act more puzzling than [the suicide of Ross Lockridge, Jr.] Shade of the Raintree is a book that is, in its own way, as remarkable and compelling as Raintree County . The answer Larry Lockridge comes up with is long and complex as American literature itself. . . . A review cannot do justice to the richness and detail of Lockridge s analysis of his father s despair. . . . He has produced a wonderful hybrid: a solid, dispassionate biography that is at the same time a tender and understanding homage.
Roger Miller, Milwaukee Journal
Shade of the Raintree

Shade
of the
Raintree
The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr.
Author of Raintree County

Larry Lockridge
Centennial Edition
Frontispiece: Ross Lockridge, Jr. with son Larry, on the boy s third birthday, summer of 1945, South Byfield, Massachusetts
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone] Fax [phone]
First published in 1994 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. 2014 by Larry Lockridge
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following material: Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; James Michener s letter to John Leggett, by permission of the estate of James Michener; Christopher Morley s correspondence, by permission of the estate of Christopher Morley. Photographs are from the author s collection, unless otherwise noted. Page 500 constitutes an extension of the copyright page.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lockridge, Laurence S., Shade of the Raintree: the life and death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., author of Raintree County / Larry Lockridge.-Centennial ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-253-01281-4 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01298-2 (ebook) 1. Lockridge, Ross, Jr. 1914-1948-Biography. 2. Novelists, American-20th century-Biography. I. Title. PS3523.0246Z74-1994 813 .54-dc20 [B]93-26712
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
to Marcia Scanlon
Contents
Photograph sections follow pages 148 and 340
Genealogy
Preface to the Centennial Edition
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
I
Epilogue
Bloomington, Indiana, 1948-1993
II
Avenue of Elms
Fort Wayne Days, 1914-1924
III
Legends in a Class-Day Album
Early Bloomington Days, 1924-1933
IV
A Richly Laden Festal Board
France and Italy, 1933-1934
V
Dream of the Flesh of Iron
Bloomington, 1934-1940
PART TWO
VI
Starting Over
Cambridge, Bloomington, Boston, and Cape Ann, 1940-1943
VII
Writing Raintree County
Boston, Cape Ann, and South Byfield, Fall, 1943-Spring, 1946
VIII
Author in the Epic
IX
Snake Pit in Paradise
Manistee, Michigan, Summer, 1946-Fall, 1947
X
Flu or Something
Hollywood and Bloomington, Fall, Winter, 1947-1948
XI
Hail and Farewell at the Crossing
Bloomington, March 6, 1948-Spring, 1948
Notes and Acknowledgments
Index
Genealogy
(In the interests of brevity, names of many offspring, especially in the larger, older families, are omitted. Names of fictional counterparts in the novel Raintree County are given parenthetically in italic type.)
Preface to the Centennial Edition of Shade of the Raintree
This new printing of Shade of the Raintree , originally published by Viking in 1994, marks the centennial of the birth of Ross Lockridge, Jr. on April 25, 1914. It is fitting that the university press located in Lockridge s hometown, Bloomington, Indiana, is bringing the biography back in print.
Among the reasons I undertook the biography in late 1988 was that an earlier reading of the life in novelist John Leggett s best-selling dual biography Ross and Tom: Two American Tragedies (Simon Schuster, 1974) was under-researched and made much use of novelization to fill the gaps. The portrait that emerged-of a benighted egoist who tempted the fate he suffered-was at best an oversimplification. I did not wish to indulge in hagiography at the other end of character assessment and thought of my undertaking as in part forensic. I wished to know more of who this person was, what he wrote and attempted to writ