The History of Literature podcast is a member of the Pod Glamorit Network and Lit Hub Radio.
Hello, we begin today with a quote by a legendary 20th century American novelist. Quote, only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch digging, mountain climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never. End quote.
The speaker was Edna Ferber, author of Showboat and Giant and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big. Her string of adjectives for writing could equally be applied to her. Or, well, let's see, it's a fairly long list. Interesting, definitely absorbing, exhilarating, check and check.
Racking? Well, I'm not sure about that one. Relieving? I'm not sure about that one either. I'm using never or always. It seems I need some help. Luckily, I have help. Julie Gilbert, who knows all about Edna Ferber and who knew the great novelist from a privileged position, will be here to explain it all. Edna Ferber with Julie Gilbert, today on the history of literature.
Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Glad you're here. That was quite a run of adjectives from Ms. Ferber. I guess that's how writers talk like a Thesaurus. What about the string of gerunds? Does it apply to writing?
i'll take her word for it she's the expert but can we apply those words to podcasting in that i think i will have to claim a bit of authority certainly over miss forber who died in nineteen sixty eight before the first apple computer let alone the ipod let alone the first podcast so ditch digging is that a podcasting
Term, I think my very first episode saw me in a ditch with a towel over my head if I recall correctly. So yes, mountain climbing. I talk about that a lot. Treadmill. Oh, that sounds familiar. And that sounds familiar. 673 episodes and counting treadmill is appropriate. Last one, childbirth. Well,
That too, I suppose there's the labor, there's the exhilaration, there's the pride, the squawking, the sleeplessness, more pride, frustration, the feeling of being hollowed out. And ultimately, if one is lucky, pride and love.
Edna Ferber is a writer who isn't often read these days. Her movies endure the musical, both the stage and screen version of showboat was based on her work and the movie giant with James Dean and Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor is still viewed. It's a shame we don't read Edna Ferber more because she is formidable. Born in Kalamazoo, although my
home state of Wisconsin has a strong claim to Edna Ferber as well as she lived in Appleton from the age of twelve and attended Lawrence University. Her mother was from Milwaukee.
Ferber eventually moved to New York City, where she became a member of the famed Algonquin Roundtable, and even among those celebrated fops, she was notable for the sharpness of her mind and wit. Alexander Wolcott, she is reported to have said, is, quote, a New Jersey Nero who has mistaken his pinafore for a toga.
End quote, touche, as they might say in lat, or as they might say in Latin, rem aku tatagisti, or as Nero himself might have said, hand me my fiddle. That expression, by the way, is anachronistic. Nero could not have fiddled while Rome burned, not in the sense we understand fiddle, because the fiddle wasn't invented for another several centuries.
He's believed to have played music while Rome burned, if anything, and I'm assuming that he played Bolero on his hi-fi at a very loud volume as my mother's college roommate used to do every morning while smoking a cigarette to get herself juiced up for the day. Another historical mystery cleared up here on the history of literature podcast. You are welcome.
Let's get some real experts in here. Julie Gilbert knew Edna Ferber, the girl from Appleton who wound up on a postage stamp honoring the most distinguished of Americans. I'll let Julie tell you just how she knew her. And then let's hear from Jessica Kurzane, our expert in translating Yiddish literature. One of your dream guests, recommended by a listener.
who will be back to select a book that will serve as her last. But first, we'll have Julie Gilbert after this.
Okay, joining me now is Julie Gilbert, who is the author of four books, including a biography of 20th century literary giant Edna Ferber. She's also taught creative writing at NYU's School of Continuing Education and heads the Writers Academy at the Kraviss Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida.
She's here today to discuss her new book Giant Love, which details Edna Ferber's life and works with a particular emphasis on her novel Giant and the famous screen adaptation of it. Julie Gilbert, welcome to the History of Literature.
Thank you very much. Good to be here. So I think a lot of listeners will have heard of some of Edna Ferber's works. They probably heard her name. They probably are familiar with showboat and giant, even if they didn't necessarily associate those with Edna Ferber, but they might not have actually read her books and they might not know much about her.
So I thought what we could do is go through kind of the public conception of Edna Ferber in the first half of our conversation and then talk about the revelations that you've been able to come up with from your biography of her and your new book about giant in the second half. Does that sound good? Yeah, very good. Sure. Okay, so who was Edna Ferber?
Well, I think that Edna Ferber was so old that she's new again. And I'm hoping for that to reintroduce her to the public at large. She was a woman born at the turn of the century, 1885. And she was a Midwestern girl brought up in a German Jewish family.
of liberal, intelligent people who traveled through the Midwest with a store called My Store. It was a dry, good store. And she was exposed to a lot early, which I find interesting in terms of her output, her outlook, everything, that she was a kind of a liberal kid in many ways.
in small towns in the midwest and uh... well in fact one of her classmates or people who work at her school at that time was hudini all right right because she was in uh... appleton wisconsin which is my homestead yeah oh my god i didn't know that uh... yeah well uh... appleton actually has the adifer for high school all right named after her
So she was a very motivated girl from the time she was little and she had a theatrical streak and wanted to be an actress. But she didn't have, certainly at that time, there was a real criteria of going on the stage and one had to have the looks and the height and the weight and all of that. And she just didn't have that.
And so her aspirations eventually turned to storytelling and then to play writing. But she was early on a power force everywhere she went. And in her high school, she was editor of the yearbook. She was already writing and performing at that time.
And then when she was still quite young, she became a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. And so her byline preceded her actual fame. And she was known locally as that reporter girl. And she early on was political. She was an ardent Democrat all of her life.
and covered the Democratic Republican Convention of 1919 in Chicago. So she began to be known in Wisconsin in Chicago all through the Midwestern states. And then she wrote a novel. And she threw it in the trash. She didn't think it was very good. And she was frustrated. And her mother rescued it and sent it to a publisher.
And that was really the beginning of the novelist, Edna Ferber. Right. And it was called Don O'Hara, the girl who laughed. And then she began to write short stories. And that's where she gained traction and fame, local at first, and then more and more fame until Theodore Roosevelt, when he was president, called her the best damn woman writer in America at that time, at that, you know,
of the day. And so she never had really a downtime except when she was young and kind of, you know, just getting her footing, but she always believed in herself. And then, you know, when fame gets you, it doesn't let you go so easily. And she earned it and began to write
other novels, and then wrote a little thing called So Big, which won her the Pulitzer Prize. Right, right. And was this now at the time she was also a member of the Algonquin Roundtable? Yes, she was. It was 1920, and it was just forming, so it didn't have
this sort of reputation of barbed wits and exclusivity that it gained quickly. But she was one of the charter members. And she was a member along with Dorothy Parker and Alexandra Walcott. And then George Kaufman came in, spotted her. He was theater critic.
at that time, but you know, scratch a theater critic and they favorite plays usually. And so he asked her if she wanted to write a play with him. And she liked him and thought that, you know, she would try that because she loved the theater. And so she wrote a play with George Kaufman called Minic. And it didn't do as well as they'd hoped, just often first plays don't.
But the producer said one of these chilling projections of what is to come. And he said, well, don't worry. We'll all just read a showboat and go cruising down the Mississippi River. And Ferber said, what's a showboat? And then she found out. And then she wrote showboats.
And then that was a huge success as well. And then that was also made into a musical and a film, right? That's right. It was made into a Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein wrote the, you know, the classic score, beautiful score. And Vigfeld produced it in New York. And it never looked back. I mean, it never had a misstep. It never
had a tryout of town that they said, well, I don't know. It was just a hit from the beginning. And then they made, and Paul Robeson started in London, and then he did the movie, the first movie of showboat. And then, of course, there was the MGM movie with Ava Gardner, and that was sort of a big, big, splashy one. But the first one was Irene Donne and Robeson.
It's really, really a glorious one in Helen Morgan as Julie, and I'm named after Julie in showboat. Right. We have not yet revealed that, but we can do so now. Ed Nefurber was your great aunt.
Oh, we haven't. That's right. Yes. Yes. This is work of love and respect. Yeah. So I will ask you more questions about that when we come back from the break. But I wanted to ask a little more about her writing. And let's just stick to so big and showboat in this era before we get to giant.
What was she writing about and with these short stories? Would you say that she had a favorite topic or theme that you could generalize, or how would you describe her works? She wrote about women. She was an ardent feminist early on, and she was always writing about women who
often in the early days of her work, middle-class Jewish American women forging ahead with juggling families and burgeoning careers. And then her novels focused more on American heroines venturing into the workplace and how that affected the supposed harmony of the sexes.
Mm. Mm-hmm. So. Boy. Yeah. Yeah. This, you know, there is, she is a great representative of something. I mean, in a way, everything she did probably felt like she was pioneering, but there are also, I mean, this is sort of something we see over and over when I saw that she was born in 1885, I guessed. I bet she had a stint as a journalist.
You know, if there were just these women who were coming out of places like Wisconsin and Kansas City and Nebraska and they were heading to New York and, you know, with aspirations of writing fiction maybe, but were finding work with newspapers and periodicals and doing the work of journalists and kind of becoming women of the workplace in this era.
Right. Right. They were. And a lot of them though were writing kind of domestic things and recipes and sort of small stuff. But she really did have an exceptional mind. And so she was very political early on. And so a friend, when I say friend, they weren't buddies.
but very much recognized by Franklin Roosevelt and certainly by Eleanor Roosevelt and was on panels and asked her opinions about the world. So it wasn't only her focus was squarely on
women heroines, instead of women in a drudgery situation. Right. I've got a couple of great quotes here I wanted to touch upon, to give a sense of who she was. And one is this Algonquin wit, and the story I read is that after Noel Coward joked about how the suit that she was wearing made her resemble a man, she replied, so does yours.
Yeah. Yeah. And then the other one I liked was that she wrote an autobiography in 1938 and dedicated it to Adolf Hitler. So she was a little bit ahead of the game here in recognizing him for what he was. And she said to Adolf Hitler, who has made me a better Jew and a more understanding human being as he has four millions of other Jews,
This book is dedicated in loathing and contempt. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's when you said, who said Nefurber and why should we know her? And most people, if they do, they know showboat, they know giant, but they don't know that it really incredible protest volume.
where she always had been known as a Midwestern gal, but not necessarily a Jewish woman. And she just couldn't sit quietly anymore at all. She was really tormented by the rise of Hitler and World War II. And in fact, went overseas as a reporter.
Uh, what years were she went and, uh, like, I want to say 44 43 44 right in there. Yeah. Yep. Right. Okay. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with, uh, the rest of the story. We'll fill in more of her biography and we'll talk about giant. Okay.
Okay, we're back. So Julie Edna Ferber was your great aunt. What kind of relationship did you have with her? A great one. People don't think of a small child and a great and is having anything except maybe, you know, a bar of chocolate or something being given to them. But she, she was, we lived 20 blocks away from her.
She was a maiden lady, as they used to say, she was never married, and she had no children. And so, and I was the first born of my two cousins. So that I remember her voice, which was a very beautiful, velvety kind of crisp, but soft, I don't know, a really interesting
actress's voice, actually. And I remember that early, early on, when, you know, it was a little bit of a matriarchy in my family. And I do remember her voice. Yeah. And then, of course, I got, I got to know her very, very well. And she was like, my fairy got mother truly. She was just wonderful to meet all of the time I knew her. Yeah. And you were so you were in New York City.
Yes, I was. Oh, we were at 90th Street and she was at 71st Street. So that's a brisk walk. It's nothing. Yeah. So we saw her quite often. And would you go there and see kind of other literary luminaries who were hanging around? Or did she take you to plays and things like that? Or was it more like you saw a personal side of her that wasn't connected to the world of literature?
That's a good question. It was both. Very much both. But yes, she took me. I have a such a vivid memory of going to Peter Pan with her. She would take me to matinees because she wanted to induct me in to theater going.
And her very good friend was Mary Martin, who played Peter Pan at age 50 or something. And so we were at Peter Pan, and I do remember going backstage and seeing this green woman who, because she was all dressed like Peter, and she looked old up close, but she certainly didn't from the stage.
And she gave me a handful of pixie dust. And I took it home with me and I wouldn't unclench my fears.
And I went to bed with my mother said, you know, you've got to come on, release it. And I went to bed with it. I had the worst eye infection in the neck. Oh, no. Yeah. So, but, but she would introduce me to a lot of very illustrious people to my time knowing her.
Yeah. Okay, so that kind of brings me to my next question, which is, as you're writing a biography of her, what sources did you have to draw upon and how did they deepen your understanding of her life? Well, you mean the first time out when I just I wrote the whole biography? Well,
I was very lucky in it because her editor, almost all of her career, she was a double day writer and her editor was a man named Ken McCormick. And so years after her death, when I wrote my biography, he was my editor and it was his last book. So that was quite moving, you know, it was really very affecting. And I
had at that time, people were still alive. So that I could, I got most of what I wanted. I never got to talk to Elizabeth Taylor, but I certainly got to have an afternoon with Rock Hudson, an afternoon with Catherine Hepburn, a lot of people, Katie Carlisle Hart. So I was just at the right time. I was really young. I had no idea how to write a biography.
but I did it. Sometimes you go forth unafraid when you don't know what to watch out for. Everybody was very good and kind to me and opened the doors.
And everything. And I went to Madison, Wisconsin, where her archive is. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Yeah. Did she have letters and papers and things? Or was there anything that you had access to as a family member that hadn't been used before? Very much so. Diaries, diaries, and all kinds of correspondence.
with very famous people. I mean, Noel Coward was one of her best friends, lots of witty, you know, repartee between the two of them. So, lunch, Katherine, Mary Martin, Moss Hart, Kitty Carlisle,
Of course, Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rogers, Dorothy Rogers, and Phyllis just goes on and on. Were you worried at all? I mean, on the one hand, it just sounds like such a magical period of time, and you had this window into it, and I'm sure you were very excited to be spending more time with these people and with the memory of your great aunt.
I could also imagine having a little bit of anxiety about, well, what if I start learning things about this beloved relative that I would rather not know? What if there are some, some aspects of her? Or did you have any concerns about that when you started or that came up along the way? No. So you had a good sense of who she was and that's who she turned out to be.
It's a really deep question you just asked pretty much. I knew that she could be very... I knew that she could be difficult, that I knew. She could give people really, you know, a sort of stomach-turning time because she could be scary. She was very imperious and
She would drill you down, and I saw it happen. She never did it with me ever, ever. But she could be impatient with people that she saw were sluggish, I think. Because she was holding them to her standard, maybe. Exactly. And trying to make them the best they could be. And she just didn't believe that they could give
dumb answers. Right. Or do shoddy work. Yeah. Yeah. So in that sense, I mean, I did see some things that were, you know, at one point, we were walking down the street after dinner and a woman came up and stopped her and said, you know, oh, Miss Ferber, because in those days, people could do that in New York. They just could stop an idol and start talking. I just loved giant. And Ferber said, Oh, really?
What did you love about it? So she could give somebody a little bit of a dart. And do you remember the response? No, I don't. The woman was, she must have been very flustered. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Yeah, right. But I didn't, at that time, I had tons of help, lots of material. What I didn't have,
was that at the University of Wisconsin, where her papers are, somebody had misfiled the collection of giant. And so I didn't have the letters and correspondence that I would have wanted for one of her most famous books of all. And it had been years later, misfiled under another author. So yeah,
Well, that gave you room to write this book. It did. Yeah. That's exactly it. Okay, so let's talk about that. What was the novel giant about and what made it so popular, do you think? Well, from further standpoint, it was about a woman marrying for love and passion who did not know really what was behind the man she was marrying.
and she was from Virginia and he was a Texan and he was big and tall and handsome and looked just like Rock Hudson and she was a genteel, you know, very well-read young woman and she was horrified by the imperiousness, you know, the kingly way that
people with land behaved in Texas. And so I think a good book is sometimes about more than it's about because it's about marriage and how you just can't know what you don't till it unfolds and comes out. Because everybody puts their best foot forward, you know, at first. But there was love there. And what happened was that he grew to
the man she married grew to respect their differences. And she held her ground. And she never would, you know, she never would go back on what she was or what she believed in. So it's the dynamics of a marriage. But it's also because for
never turned a blind eye to bad politics and bad policies. And it's also about the treatment of the Mexican American.
in Texas at that time in the 40s and 30s, 40s and 50s and still. Right. So what exactly happened? She went to visit Texas and why did she go to visit Texas and what was it about Texas that kind of struck her? I mean, did she know right away like this is going to be the place that I'm going to write my next novel?
No, not right away. It took her about 10 years a decade to really, you know, get ahold of it. William Allen White, who was editor of the Emporia Gazette, back in the turn of the century, really, and he was older than Ferber and was a kind of paternal figure. And he thought she was terrific and a real pioneer. And he said, you should turn your lens to Texas. And I know some people that I can introduce you to.
And so she went and she was repelled and fascinated and kind of attracted because you know it is, they're very charming in Texas. And yet she felt that it was too much of a state for her to probe. And so she kept backing away from it.
and saying, you know, well, a Hemingway or a Manken should do this, but not me. This is not my book. And then finally, she never really backed down from anything ever. And she just didn't like it that she had walked away from it. And finally, she embraced it.
Yeah. And she seems to have found an angle of something that had kind of stuck with her and maybe it was a bit of a stone in her shoe the way these landowning men were behaving. That's such a fascinating idea to kind of, you know, want to want to take that on directly without falling into the myth of it, but to kind of expose it for its flaws as well.
That's right. Well, it was that they behaved like emperors and they were kingdoms. And she found also the charm combined with the flinty power was something kind of alarming in America. And so she felt it was
a state other than it wasn't part of the union. It was like a kingdom. Yeah. And does it feel to you like giant holds up? That's a hard question for me. Having just written all about it. I think it does. I think it's a good story. It's a wonderful story. And even if you haven't seen the movie,
Maybe it holds up better if you haven't seen the movie i think that the natural succession would be to read the novel and then see the movie you know if one hasn't done either right right so let's talk about the movie Elizabeth Taylor james dean and rock Hudson. I mean it's such a it's such an iconic.
Production and just the visuals of it or so. I mean, I'm just I just have this image of my mind of it being so wide on the screen. So, so grand. So what did she have a role in the filmmaking? Was she part of it or did she just hand off the novel and then, you know, they they showed it to her when it was done. Usually she handed off the novel, her novel.
and just said, you know, thank you, Mr. Goldwyn, do it, you know? But with this one, not at all, because she, the novel had caused a lot of controversy certainly in Texas and by Texans. And so,
when george stevens who is a very courageous film maker and he he made his conscience if you know what i mean and he he did not do something that he didn't feel strongly about and so he approached her and she just thought he was terrific and liked him very much and she and george stevens and henry ginsburg uh... decided
be the producers of giant and Warner Brothers would subsidize it. And so that's what they did. So she had more power than just selling the rights to her novel. Yeah. And so she had as a woman who was a new producer on a picture, she was outspoken anyway.
So she really said her mind whenever she wanted to. And they took it pretty well. But she didn't like a lot and would say that. And at one point, she tried to write the screenplay herself. But she was a novelist and not a screenwriter because it is a technique. And eventually, she backed off on that. But she did. She was very much a participant.
not so much in the filming. She never went to Martha, and she was already involved in her next novel, which was Ice Palace in all about Alaska and the statehood of Alaska. But she was very involved with Stevens and certainly the cast, very friendly with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, and her special glow came from James Dean. She thought he was just terrific.
And you have a line that George Stevens perhaps borrowed her heart along with her novel giant. And Ferber, I guess she would have been in her 60s at this time. Early 70s. Early 70s. Okay. And she hadn't married. Had she had relationships or was she known as going through life as a solo artist, so to speak?
So that's a leading question. You're going to have to have people might want to read my book and find everybody always thought that she just had nothing and a life. A life does not have nothing. I really don't think. I mean, it's very rare. And this was the book where I was challenged to go deeper and to find out what was going on. If anything, I'm not saying, you know, Oh my gosh, you know, there was this
huge love affair nobody knew that but there were things that were very fascinating and layered and sophisticated that I did find. Yeah and then there's also the anecdote where she was asked if she was ever lonely and she said oh no never the characters in my books are my friends they provide sustenance. Yeah.
So she does seem like someone who also, I mean, her passion for what she did seems to have been kind of a primary driving force in her life. It was all consuming. And the reason for it, the output and
I think discipline feels passion and then passion complements discipline so that she just wrote every day. She just would turn her back to the view and write for three, four hours in the morning and then she'd have the afternoon to do her business and shopping or whatever or socializing. But every day she just was probably one of the most disciplined writers in America ever.
Yeah. Did you feel like with the relationship you had with her that it was her kind of expressing a maternal instinct or side or were you sort of a project that she was taking on, you know, like creating one of her characters where she wants to make sure like, well, I want the character to be well read and I wanted to be cultured.
No, I don't. I feel the first part, the first question. I feel that we were birds of a feather, that she taught me how to, in a sense, experience life as she did. And when I was very young, we would go to a very fancy lunch and then to a big toy store in New York called Schwartz's Toy Store.
And I'd pick a doll or something. And then we'd go to the park in Winchester, in any weather. We'd sit on a bench and she would have me look at a passerby and say, tell me the story of that woman. So she was kind of mentored me, if you will. And it was exceptional. I will say that. It really was. She, when I was a young actress,
in New York, she came, she'd go down basement steps to some grubby little theater in the village to see me. And she was wonderful to me, really.
I know you've written about her, but what I would like to do is read that story or read a, see the film version of it or something. It's such a beautiful relationship that the two of you had, and it's such a great era. It's so New York that only in New York really could you have that kind of
backdrop for the kind of things you were doing and and just the whole you know her as a presence and then Being able to learn from her in that way is it just sounds magical It was it really was I mean she was known that she was no anti-name in that she wasn't at all kooky and she was a real person with with
so many layers and she was so interesting. The only time she ever got mad at me was or showed temperament to me was when I was about 15 years old and I had a bad cold and the painters were all over our apartment in New York and Edna said, well, you know, tell Julie to come here and she gave me her bedroom and I slept in, you know, her beautiful bedroom.
And then because I'm 15 and I was a teenager, I smoked, I felt better and I had a cigarette in her bathroom. And she didn't like that at all. She didn't care for that. Yeah. And that was the only time that I upset her and I was so upset by upsetting her, but it was over very quickly. Yeah. Was it, was she worried about your health or was she just, she didn't want the smoke in her house?
I don't know. I don't know. Um, maybe both. I mean, she would have a cigarette occasionally because people did, but she was not a smoker. I think she was just shocked that first of all, I had been this little sick thing coming in and lying in her bed and having trays brought to me. And then, you know, I'm sneaking a cigarette and I don't know. She just didn't like it.
Yeah. My sister has a story like that with our grandfather, where he was, you know, this kindly presence. He doted on us. He was kind of a fiery guy. But with us, he was always, you know, sweet and everything. And there was one time where she did something wrong and he kind of let her have it. He was a teacher. And so I think his disciplinarian side came out to just explain to her why what she did was wrong.
She said she just felt this feeling of. She said I knew I was wrong and he was right and I knew that I shouldn't have done what I did and I just felt so bad that I had let him down like that and there's something about that generation gap you know where they're not our parents.
but they are figures in our lives that are like parents and so they sort of indulge us a little more but then they can also let us know when we've gone off you know when we've gone astray not that you're smoking a cigarette was necessarily any great departure from the. Yeah i just i think i i don't know i i don't remember
All I remember is that she was displeased with me and that was horrible. And I didn't know how to make it up or what to do to take it back. And then it was over. And then the next thing she said, Julie Darling, would you like to wear my pen or whatever it was? Well, she probably saw it on your face that she had gotten through and had said all she needed to say.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, she was everything. Everything else had been so rosy that it stands out in my memory just because it shocked me into that same place that your sister was in. Just, oh my God, what can I do to make this up?
Do people like Edna Ferber exist anymore? Is that a bygone era, would you say, or would you say that now there are more Edna Ferbers than ever? And we've kind of turned the corner on that. I think there are more Edna Ferbers than ever in the sense of what's going on today of women just having had it and speaking their mind.
going about their business and defending other women and other people. Um, and in that sense, yes, but she was famous and with fame, tremendous fame in that time comes a kind of, I won't, I don't want to say it diva because she really wasn't.
but because she earned her, you know, she earned everything, but she did like top service and people being rather courtly to her. You know, she liked that. I would say, oh, BS is either, but she did like service and good service. So I don't know. It's a very, it's a trick question and I'm not sure.
I think that carving her own life is very today. I think women are doing that. They're saying, you know, all of what's expected of me, I'm going this way instead. And I'm not afraid of what people think.
And that's very much who she was. But I'm not sure if there is one thing that's different. I'm not sure people can do that as a professional writer in quite the same way as she was able to do.
Yeah, maybe not. First of all, there weren't that many women writers, and she wrote these. She was a commercial writer, but she also was compared to Dickens. She was somebody that most people knew. Oh my God, Edna Ferber was one of those.
if they didn't know her, their mother's newer. I mean, she was she she was the leading I'm trying to think of an example. She's the leading woman writer in America for about 30 years and held that position. Yeah. And and and books meant more back then. And books meant more they really did. And also, you know, that was
what what aided her were supplements in magazines that people would read before and then they'd give you like three chapters and then you had to buy the book, but you were hooked by that time. So you wanted to buy the book, you know? Yeah. So and book clubs, of course. But there was no there wasn't a lot of media because she she never people always asked me if she went on television. I don't think once I really don't.
Really? I thought I saw a clip of her on like one of those, you know, black and white, you bet your life kind of shows or something. But you don't think that was maybe I'm mistaken about that. She did some recordings of her work. So there are recordings of her voice. But to my knowledge, you know, I've tried to find when she was in Europe,
She came back from Europe in 54, 55. She'd been to Europe. She came back and she found New York very dirty, very terribly dirty city. And she spoke out about it. She said, New York is filthy. And where is the garbage man? And where is this
And it became kind of a meme. I mean, it was all over the city that Edna Ferber disapproved of the way the city was kept. It's housekeeping. And there might have been a news clip there, but I'm not sure. And I haven't been able to find it.
Yeah, right. Okay. Well, this has been wonderful to talk to you about Edna Ferber and the book I would say it's a perfect, it's called Giant Love and I would call it a perfect book for anyone who loves Hollywood or 20th century American literature. Julie Gilbert, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature. It was my big pleasure. You're welcome. Thank you.
Hmm. Wasn't that fun? That was Julie Gilbert talking about her great aunt Edna Ferber and finally today Jessica Kurzane who joined us about a hundred episodes ago in number 567. After she and I discussed what it's like to translate Yiddish literature and the writer Miriam Karpalov in particular, I asked Jessica this special question.
Okay, we're here with Professor Jessica Kurzane, expert in Yiddish language and literature. Jessica, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
Um, okay. Uh, one thing that makes this a hard question is that I'm usually reading more than one book at a time. So I think I'll probably, you know, die reading five books. My son has a t-shirt with a picture of an octopus and in every tentacle, there's a different book. Uh, but I'm going to give you one in Yiddish and one in English. I guess it's fitting for a Yiddish English translator. So the Yiddish one is going to be the collected stories at the end of Serdatsky.
which is kind of a book that doesn't exist. The Andes Surdapsky's early stories were collected in a volume, but most of her work was published in newspapers and it hasn't been collected. It's fierce and angry and feminist and intimate and bitter but also kind. I really like her writing. I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work in translation and hopefully also collected in its original. And there is work being done on this by Saul Noamzerit at Harvard who has a
New Project called shund.org to make Yiddish literature in the press more easily searchable and recoverable. And also by Valia Wolfson, who's a PhD candidate at Harvard, who's writing about and translating to Dasky. So I'm very optimistic that between the two of them.
maybe we'll have a collective work of Yandasar Datsky at some point before I die. And then my English one is going to be my first literary love, which is Jane Austen. I actually, I read Pride and Prejudice every spring when the academic year ends as a kind of like palette cleanser ritual. So like as soon as I turn in by last grades, I pick up Pride and Prejudice that's
this point, it kind of like has a personal meaning for me beyond the book itself of like a kind of breath of fresh air. But I just, I love the, the dramatic tension, the slice sense of humor in Jane Austen. I think she's actually in some ways kind of similar to Miriam Carpalov. She observes gendered dynamics in their absurdity. She writes about people as foolish, even her heroines as foolish sometimes, but she
also has sympathy for them. And so she's very clever and no matter how many times I read her, now I've read her so many times. I really find her completely absorbing and satisfying. So I hope she'll be my last English book.
You know, I was thinking that when you were reading the excerpt from a provincial newspaper and by Miriam Carpalov that one of the things that was so appealing was just her take on the world and it almost as much as what was going to happen to the character from a plot perspective. I was interested just in spending time with her as someone who was observing those people around her and thinking,
Well, if there was anybody in the room that I would want to talk to about what's happening in the room, it would be this narrator that she's she's got the wise uptake and she's got the powers of observation that is kind of transcended time. Yeah. Yeah. And in that way, also Jane Austen is a similar kind of figure where what's happening in the room is interesting, but what's happening in their head about what's happening in the room feels more interesting. The character, the narrator, the narrator perspective is somehow
Like the most interesting thing in the room right she can be just the most minute of things that are happening and the way that Jane Austen will kind of penetrate the psychology of the people and why they're saying what they're saying.
You really do get, you fall into it and that happens when I watch the, the, a lot of the adaptations as well. You, if you described it to somebody, you think, okay, so who, you know, how could you even care about that? But when you're watching it, it feels so momentous and, you know, it feels like the, the fates of empires are rising and falling. It's something, it feels like there's that kind of dramatic stakes. Yeah, yeah. And the kind of eye rolling, the kind of subtlety of,
some of the poking fun. If you read it one way, it can sound serious, but if you read it another way or with another kind of voice or angle, you can really see how she's laughing at everyone while she's writing it. It's of enormous consequence and also it is absurd that it's of such enormous consequence.
When a character who has our trust like that, when they have a friend or a sibling or a parent who can share that with them, then it feels like you're so happy for her that, oh yes, you're with this person who gets it. But then when they're with the sibling or whoever who doesn't get it,
You just feel like, oh, this is just the worst where she's all alone in kind of seeing through everybody and seeing the, the, the absurdity of the situation or the humor here. You feel like she's, you want to just go and be her friend and say, I get it. I'm with, I'm with you. You're not alone here. Yeah. I don't want to, you know, spoil it too much, but in, in dire of a lonely girl, the main character is largely a mirror, a couple of very lonely girl. The main character is largely alone.
And hence, lonely girl. And I think part of what makes her so lonely is this having a different perspective from everyone around her and seeing how funny everyone is. And there's no one to laugh with about it. She has a friend, but that friend only shows up from time to time.
They wouldn't pass the backtell test. They only talk about boys. She doesn't have, you know, Elizabeth's father and pride and prejudice who kind of like gets it like she does and they can kind of look at each other across the dinner table and understand how ridiculous everyone else is being.
And so in a certain way, like we, the readers have to be that for the character. Right. I was just going to say that sort of the revenge is that we, the readers are supplying it, but it's not to save from a reader's perspective as being able to see that another character is sharing that wink with them or, or, you know, that you know that they have it in their lives. Okay. Well, that's wonderful. So it is Yenta Sudatsky and Jane Austen.
Yeah. Okay, Jessica, Christine, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature. Thank you.
Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of The History of Literature. My thanks to Julie Gilbert and Jessica Curzane for joining me. We're pulling something out of the archives for the next episode, which is the last Thursday of the month. That's our new pattern. And then we'll have another story with Mike Poundrom, the week following. We're trying to do one of those a month, too.
2025 has a few patterns that we will try to keep. And Zora Neale Hurston is next week too. That's a wonderful conversation I had. Black History Month starts in February. It's a good choice. Zora Neale Hurston. We have a good episode for kicking things off. Also in February, Dylan Thomas and Fernando Pessoa, two great 20th century poets.
and a deep dive into a wintry and regime story. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
What role do books play in shaping who we are? Find out on the Five Books, the brand new podcast hosted by me, Tolly Rosenblatt Cohen. Each week, I sit down with acclaimed Jewish authors to discuss the top five books that have shaped them. Hear from notable guests like Booker Prize finalist Yael van der Bowden and literary influencer Zibi Owens as we delve deep into what it means to live as a Jewish American today. Join me and listen to the five books wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Dan Cummins. If you're into the weird, the wild, and the downright bizarre, check out my podcast, Time Suck. Each week, I dive into shocking stories like the rise of the Nexium cult, the origins of conspiracies like QAnon, and the San Francisco witch killer murders. With deep dives and dark humor, Time Suck brings you the stories that'll fascinate you, make you laugh, and fill your head with lots of strange facts. New episodes drop every Monday. Join the cult of the curious, follow Time Suck wherever you get your podcasts.