August 17, 2023 • 45 mins
In all of our research for this show, one of the scholars who has most influenced our thinking on Laura and her work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura obsessives know that Prairie Fires is the motherload when it comes to understanding Laura’s life. It provides a detailed historical account of her childhood and takes a holistic look at the fraught personal and working relationship that Laura had with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. As we put together our final episode, we’ve been revisiting Caroline’s book and the amazing interview we did with her. Today, we wanted to share the extended interview with you, as a deeper dive into Laura’s life, and to help set the scene before Glynnis comes to some big conclusions in our series finale.
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Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello Wilder listeners, it's producer Emily again with one more
very special episode. Thank you for your patients. As we're
working on our final episode and it's going to be
well worth the wait. I promise it's the episode where
Glennis will come to some big conclusions on how to
think and feel about Laura Ingles Wilder. Over the past year,
as we've researched and recorded the show, one of the
(00:24):
people who's really shaped our thinking on Laura and her
work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Poll surprize winning
biography of Laura Prairie Fires. You've heard us mentioned Prairie
Fires a lot in the show, and you've even heard
Caroline in previous episodes. But as we're coming to some
big conclusions on all things Laura, we thought it was
worth airing her full interview before we get started. I
(00:44):
actually have a request for you. We're still accepting listener
voice memos for our final episode. So if listening to
Wilder has changed your thinking on Laura and the Little Housebooks,
or just made you feel some big feelings about topics
like children's literature, native American representation, how we portray American history,
we want to hear your thoughts. Just record a voice
(01:04):
memo through the app that's preloaded onto whatever phone you
have and email it to Wilder podcast at gmail dot com.
If you do, we might just respond to it in
our final episode. We can't wait to hear your voices.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Now on with the show, Caroline. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
We're all such huge fans of your book, and everyone
we've interviewed for this podcast is just blown away by it.
So I think my first question is before we just
get to the direct writing of the book. I'm just curious,
I know because I've been reading you for quite some time,
but I'm just curious if you could talk a little
bit about what your relationship to Laura was prior to
doing Prairie Fires and how you came to write this book,
(01:50):
which is such a huge undertaking.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Yeah. Well, you know, I read the books when I
was a kid, and like millions of other kids, I
just loved them. They were among the books that I
read over and over again. That's what I did with
you know, the things that I really responded to was
just to kind of have it on a loop almost
(02:15):
and just be constantly rereading. And they became very well
known to me and then some years later I had
the experience which I think a number of other fans
of The Little House Books had, which was that I
was listening to MPR in the morning before going to
(02:36):
work and heard a piece about a biography of Laura's daughter,
Rose Wilder Lane that made the argument that Rose was
really the author of The Little House Books. And I
was just you know, shocked and floored kind of by
(02:56):
hearing that, and was just outraged and kind of like,
you know, could this really be true? And that was
the thing that kind of set me on writing initially
first about that biography and the question of Wilder's authorship
of her books. And that was what led many years
(03:16):
after that to my editing The Little House Books for
the Library of America. And it was really preparing that
edited version. I mean, we didn't edit the text, but
I wrote little notes on certain things in the text
and wrote a timeline of Wilder's life. And as I
(03:38):
was writing that timeline, I came to feel like there
was a really great story about her life that hadn't
really been told yet. I mean, there were biographies for children,
there was a biography for adults, which was quite good,
but I didn't really feel that the relationship between Laura
(03:58):
and Rose had really been lord and the authorship question
was still kind of hanging out there.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
We're going to get to Rose in a bit because
I have a number of questions, But since we're on
the writing of the book, I'm curious. You spent so
much time with Laura the real person to write this biography.
Did your sense of her change? How do you think
about her now that you know so much about her?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is there a gap.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Between who she was to you in the Little House
books growing up, in the fully flashed person that you
have come to bring to the page now?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Oh? Sure, yeah. I mean I think as a child
reading the books, I just sort of took the books
at face value, which I think a lot of readers
did and have and probably continue to do that. As
a kid, I didn't have a particularly sophisticated understanding of
what was the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and so
(04:59):
I just Okay, these books are by Laura Ingalls Wilder,
and they're about Laura Ingalls, so they must be true.
So that was who Laura was to me, was the
Laura in the books, the way that she has presented,
but over the years as an adult and doing the
work on the biography, you know, it came to see
(05:20):
that she was a much much more complex person than
I had ever appreciated, and that her adult life was really,
you know, beset by all kinds of you know, tragedies
that are not really dealt with in the books except
for you know, the last one that was not published
until after she had died. And I also, you know,
(05:43):
came to appreciate that her relationship with her daughter was
very complex and was itself you know, kind of a
tragedy in her life that was just you know, never
resolved in the way that a lot of relationships between
mothers and daughters are not resolved, although theirs was possibly
worse than some in the sense that they worked together.
(06:05):
You know, they had a very long and complicated working
relationship that itself engendered all kinds of guilt and shame
and you know joy too. I mean, I don't want
to say that it was all bad, but it was
very complicated in Something that you know, I think has
(06:26):
really stayed with me is the sense that we love
the Little House books in part because they give us
this idea of a kind of ideal family that even
though they went through all these tribulations and adventures and difficulties,
they still remained a cohesive, loving family. But in her
own life, you know, Wilder wasn't really able to achieve that.
(06:50):
Maybe it's not achievable, but I think for her it
was a real struggle to maintain the relationship with her daughter.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Seems to have maintained it with her husband to some degree.
I think you say in the book which she described
it as the weir in great sympathy with each other.
This doesn't use the word love necessarily, but I do
get the sense that that marriage at least was very
close and Almonso had a very high tolerance. It sounds
like for complicated women.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Yeah, for sure, yes she you know, that relationship was strong.
I think till the end, although beset by all kinds
of difficulties and things. I think they probably never really
talked about or addressed directly, because that was just how
you live. You know, if somebody had an illness or
(07:42):
disability or you know, as Almanto did, did you talk
about it? Probably not, And I don't think that they
probably did.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
It almost seems like a survival mechanism, right, I think.
And what you just raised about how complicated and difficult.
Her life was like to talk about why she sat
down to write the books, and the divide between how
hard her life was and the way she manages to
depict it in the books is extremely significant to me.
I'm wondering what you think about that was, if that
(08:13):
was shocking, or why did none of that make it
into the books?
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Do you think they are books for children? And I
think that she, especially and also Rose, had a very
strong sense of what was appropriate for children, what was not,
what was too much. I mean, they did show quite
a bit of the kind of desolation and desperation of
(08:38):
their lives in the Long Winter, that's the book that
comes closest, I think, to showing how on the edge
their lives were at moments. But I also think, and
this is something that became sort of clear to me
as I was writing the timeline of her life, that
there was a there was a huge element of nostalgia
(09:01):
in writing these books for Laura, And while I was
writing the timeline, I could see clearly that when she
and al Manzo come to the point where they have
to give up in South Dakota, that they've gone through
all these losses and tragedies and the houses burned down,
and they realize they're going to have to leave, They're
(09:24):
going to have to leave the state and start over
somewhere else, and that that of course will necessitate leaving
behind her family. That leapt out to me as a
profound emotional moment in her life, because leaving then is
not what it is now. I mean, now you can
(09:45):
visit your family or relatives, even if you move halfway
across the country. You can still be in touch, you
can still have that closeness. But that just was not
available to her, and so it really represents a wrenching
kind of loss of her former life and of her
(10:05):
relationships to her family and what those relationships consisted of.
And that I think is the primary motivation behind her
wanting to write about her life. I mean, it took
a while for her to kind of figure out how
to write about it, whether it was going to be
a memoir or children's books or whatever. That was a
(10:28):
bit of a struggle to kind of figure out. But
she clearly wanted to do that for a very long time.
And I think it's that emotion that nostalgia is so
powerful in the books, that keeps readers coming back to them, you.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Get a sense of that wrenchingness. It always stands out
to me, and the end of these happy golden years,
which is supposed to be the happy ending, and she's
fallen in love and is going off with her husband,
and yet there's an aspect of tragedy to that when
she's leaving her family behind. It well, even as a child,
I just made me want to cry it just like
I can't believe she's leaving, right.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It did make me wonder. I mean, again, we'll get
to Rose.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
But in reading these books, and then in reading your book,
and in really taking a grown up understanding of relationships
to it, the sense of Paw as a child was
this very magical, exciting person, and as a grown up
I sort of look at him and think he's dragging
this family around, he can't quite support them. But part
of me, in reading them books now wonders if she
(11:30):
was sort of redeeming It was like an argument to
redeem her father's life in a way.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Oh yeah, I think that's that's really true. And you
know she says something very similar to that. You know,
she acknowledged that he wasn't a great provider and you
know she said Paw wasn't a business man, he was
a poet. And you know, I forget how the rest
of the sentence goes, but she knew. I think that
he had his limitation to it, that he had presented,
(11:59):
you know, real child, just to her mother for example,
to try and you know, keep the family together and
in away from just complete you know, disintegration based on
you know, losing everything, which you know they approach at
various moments. I think the books are very much an
attempt to recognize and to portray the best of her father,
(12:24):
who she'd obviously adored and loved deeply. And you know,
she again and again in the manuscripts and in her
discussions with Rose, you can see her kind of stepping
back from any printed acknowledgment that he was close to bankruptcy,
or that he couldn't pay his debts or you know,
all that stuff gets left out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
There's also sort of in the same vein all of
the energy and detail she puts towards food. And I
think reading your book again and understanding how hungry they
were and the amount of food that's in these books,
and Farmer Boy has been described us as food Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I think you know, the food in Farmer Boy is intense,
and it makes a really interesting contrast to read that
book with the rest of the series, you know, realizing that,
of course it's written during the Depression, but also kind
of comparing how successful el Mansa's family was as farmers
to the Engles family, which was not putting that kind
(13:24):
of food on the table.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I want to go back to your book for a second.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I'm not the only one who responded to this, but
your decision to open the book with the US Dakota
War was very interesting to me, and I'm curious how
that decision came to be.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What was your thinking behind that.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
That was one of the reasons why I wanted to
write the book in the first place. And that happened
because I was doing that work for the Library of
America and writing notes defining terms or you know, place
names or things that wouldn't be necessarily known to a
general audience that wouldn't you know, occur in a dictionary, whatever.
(14:01):
And one of those things that leapt out at me
while doing that in Little House in the Prairie was
the reference to the Minnesota massacre. And I think, I mean,
how many times had I read that reference as a
kid reading the books, probably a dozen times, if not more.
And when I finally had to define what that was,
(14:23):
I mean, it stopped me because I realized, I don't
even know what this is, Like, what is she talking about?
And so I looked it up, and I was just
blown away, you know, with the answer to what that is.
I mean, I just was transfixed by the story of
that event, which was the US Dakota War of eighteen
(14:44):
sixty two. It was the most bloodiest and most horrifying
spectacles of American history, and certainly you know, as the
event that tipped off the next thirty years in terms
of you know, Indian policy and Indian removal and so forth.
(15:06):
It was really quite shattering to kind of figure out
what that is. And I just thought, I have I
have to write about this. I really want to write
about this because it puts her entire childhood, but also
particularly the events that she covers in Little House on
the Prairie, which is the most important of the series.
(15:28):
I think in an entirely different light than I had
ever understood before. And so I just felt like I
have to open with this. This is just in many ways,
who she was, what her life was, what her mother's relationship,
and fear, intense fear of Indians. That's what that was
all about. And I was also sort of shocked at
(15:50):
my own ignorance, you know, having then discovered what this
is all about, Like why didn't I know about this?
You know, why doesn't everybody know about this? And certainly
people in Minnesota know about it. I think it's now
it's commonly taught there. But it just seemed to me
something that was just waiting to be described and discussed.
(16:14):
In relationship to Little House of the Prairie.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
It changed my entire understanding of that book. I am
fascinated that you think Little House in the Prairie is
her most important book, So I'm curious to know why
you think that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I think it also is the most important historically in
terms of its relationship to history, and you know, the
history of the American Indian on the Great Plains, the
sense of what her father is doing there on that property,
the homesteading movement, and the writing. I mean, there's amazing
(16:52):
stuff in each book, but the presentation of her childish
view of what she's seeing on the prairies, her reaction
to seeing the Indians ride away, as that chapter at
the end has it, I think raises the level of
(17:12):
that book to real literature. It's such a complicated book
in a way, and the ending is so is so
strange and keeps you wondering first her or reaction to
the seeing the Indians right away and the wanting the
Indian baby, you know, like crying out, I want that
(17:33):
Indian baby. Pop, you know, get me that Indian baby.
It's such a weird and and just unforgettable moment about
the acquisitive and appropriation of white settlers on the planes,
and it's just an indelible moment. But then there's also
(17:54):
you know, her father's kind of tantrum at the end
of you know, if I'm going to be denied this land,
I'm going to just pick up and we're leaving this afternoon.
It's just such a precipitous act. And that too kind
of gives you a sense of how entitled settlers were
(18:15):
in a way. I mean, I'm not saying this about
Paw particularly as an individual. I'm just saying, you know
that that's a lasting image of how people felt, how
white people felt about land that they had no title to.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I mean that clearly was a direct memory.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But she was much younger when she was actually in
Indian territory than she is depicted. And I was curious
that you seem to really feel strongly that that book
comes from direct memory, whereas I think I eventually read
it as a combination of her memory and stories she'd
been told by Pa growing up.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
When Ma presumably it's probably a combination of direct memories
and reconstructing from you know, the stories she heard. But
I I think she absolutely remembered going across the plains,
looking out the sort of hole in the wagon cover
and seeing these prairies, you know, in the grass is
(19:13):
I think she totally remembered the scene where they crossed
the river and Paw almost loses control of the wagon
and they're nearly swept away. That seems to have been
very closely remembered. And the thing about the pepoose, which
is I mean, she said as much that this was
(19:34):
she remembered it and just unforgettable moment for her.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
You said just a little bit earlier what we know
today about history and white settlers, But she was writing
this in the thirties, so she had some understanding of
that history at her disposal, and I'm really struck now
not much of that makes it into the book, and
I think this is the source of so much of
the controversy around the book.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I wouldn't exaggerate how much she may have known about
the history. There were a couple of elements that she
tried to find out the name of the chief who
her father may have encountered, But she didn't do very
much in the way of reading history that we know of,
(20:25):
and so I don't really know how much she knew.
She did know that the land that her father had
built on did not belong to much. She knew that
she knew he was a squatter, which is an interesting
term that she uses in letters acknowledging. Of course she
(20:45):
doesn't use that, I don't think in the book itself.
So I would not want to sort of, you know,
bring a lot of present day expectations to try and
explain what she knew what she didn't know. I think
she knew her father was in some ways skating on
than ice in Kansas, and that that's part of why
(21:09):
they ended up leaving. But I don't know that she
had any kind of modern conceptions about the fairness, or
the ways in which her family was illegally appropriating things
that didn't belong to them.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
How do you feel about the more recent criticism. What
do you think is her responsibility? Was her responsibility? And
is this criticism fair? I guess I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Have any problem with criticism. I mean, and I think
the more we do it, the better off we are.
The more we talk about what these books mean, about
what's left out, about what is included, about racism, about this,
(22:00):
you know, language that is disturbing on you know, all
kinds of different levels. So criticism, there's nothing wrong with criticism.
What I think there's something wrong with is banning books
or censoring books that I don't think is appropriate. I
do think that has happened with the Little Housebooks, and
(22:22):
I do think there is an argument for not reading
these books to you know, young children in a completely
uncritical fashion. There have been stories about you know, Native
American kids going to school in Minnesota and other states
and having these books read to them, as if this
(22:45):
is just these books are great and just accept it.
That clearly is just not going to fly anymore. But
can you teach the books? I don't see why not.
I mean, I think you would have to discuss these
kinds of issues that, of course has become a minefield
all over the country, that whole issue. I can't do
(23:07):
anything about that, but I will say that I just
I don't think there's any problem in criticizing or teaching
the books in a critical way, in a way that
opens up all these issues for discussion.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
All right, let's dive into Rose.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
When I finished your book, I wanted to write you
a letter and say, how did you spend this much
time with Rose?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Because she was exhausting to me.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, just generally speaking, what was it like to get
to know Rose?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Well?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I think I have similar feelings about her. She's just
a kind of lavishly talented but incredibly frustrating personality, somebody
who has a lot to you know, offer the world
and makes a lot of really questionable decisions about how
(24:10):
to further her career, you know, in her personal life,
in her relationship with her mother, in her politics, you know.
And people sometimes ask me why did you talk so
much about you know, why is And it was just
it was absolutely inevitable, I mean, because she was wrapped
up so closely in the pushing her mother to do
(24:35):
this writing, in editing and revising and getting the books published,
and even in the post publication phase where she's trying
to control the legacy of the books and how people
think about them, and trying to craft this very political
understanding of their role. She lived with her mother and
(24:58):
with her parents, you know, on the farm for years
of her adult life, very critical years for the creation
of these books in the nineteen thirties, and so it's
impossible to leave her out. She has just woven into
the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I mean, the big elephant in the room question always
that led you to write this. What are your thoughts
on how much of the books she's responsible for.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
I think that we can identify, you know, based on
manuscript evidence and also style. We can certainly identify certain scenes,
you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes in Farmer
Boy and Little Town. I think it is that she
clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her own voice
(25:51):
into writing, and you can definitely recognize. We also know,
you know, from the manuscript evidence that we still have
from you know, the Long Winter, how much Laura resisted
Rose's suggestions and said, no, we're not going to do that.
It was a real contrast of styles where Rose was
bringing this kind of sense of stability and safety and
(26:14):
sort of gentleness to the stories, some of which is
quite necessary, I think, But in other moments you can
see Laura's vision, which was a much more stark, more plain,
more confrontational, a little bit almost like this was the
way it was, This is how hard it was to
(26:37):
live this life. That's Laura. So you can see their
contrasting styles coming through. You can see Rose, I think
you can hear her in some of the dialogue. So
I think we know quite a lot just from the
manuscript stuff that we do have, and they both contributed
a lot. But Laura was the person who wrote the books.
(27:00):
You know, Rose was an editor. She was certainly a
heavier editor than most people might conceive, but that also
is not unheard of. There's a lot of history in
literature that shows you editors who have played a very
outsize role in crafting and cutting, and two people who
(27:23):
don't have that experience with publishing. That may be a shock,
but it's certainly a factor in many works. But I'm
not one of those people who thinks that the book
should be by Laura Ingles Wilder and Rose Wilderland. Now
that's not how it works.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
I think of Rose's career of writing the unauthorized biographies
of Charlie Chaplin and Jack London, and in some ways
it seemed like she was attempting at certain points to
do the same with her mother, and her mother was resisting. Yeah,
that resistance seems to grow stronger in my mind, and
it probably has something to do with her writing about
herself as an older character. But I feel Laura's presence
(28:01):
exert itself increasingly as the books go along.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yes, I think she definitely became more confident as the
books were published and became popular, and you know, kids
were writing to her and saying, oh, you know what
happens next you? And I think she realized her worth
because of those things and really began to assert herself
(28:26):
more confidently with Rose.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And how much of Rose's I mean you say she
was very involved in keeping an eye on the legacy
of the books and the political nature of them. I'm
just curious what you mean by legacy exactly when you
say that.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
she is asserting to various people who are not just readers,
but people who are trying to be involved in the
museum that became of her mother's house in Mansfield. She
becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the books
(29:03):
is true, and that the books represent an argument for
her political stance. You know, that they're an argument for
self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work and
you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all
of that. I mean, she clearly wanted to present them
(29:24):
in a public forum, and did you know, in letters
and to people who she was, you know, working with
and to her Accolyte, Roger McBride, who then himself runs
for president as a libertarian. And so that's kind of
one of the ways one of the outgrowths or you know,
(29:45):
the things that happened as a result of her pushing
this philosophy and including her mother's work as part of
that philosophy.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Do you think Laura shared any of those politics.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
She did. It's quite clear in letters that she wrote
to Rose that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a
lot of roses more you know, crazier assertions and conspiracy theories,
and they certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push
(30:19):
for the New Deal. They shared this dismay and ultimately
contempt for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
of much of what they had to say. So yeah,
she definitely did. She didn't publicize it in the way
(30:41):
that Rose did. I mean Rose made it her life's
work to publicize these ideas in any way that she could.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I mean, their relationship was so complicated. I think about
how when Laura Sold's little house in the Big Woods,
Rose turned around and sort of secretly wrote, let the
hurricane roar.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
How damaging do you think that was to their relationship?
Speaker 4 (31:04):
It was damaging, it was. I think the most surprising
thing about it is that they were able to continue
to work together professionally after that, because I think it
was so upsetting to Laura and Rose. You know, it
was kind of an expression of Rose's you know, passive
(31:25):
aggression of her trying to get back at her mother
for things that had happened. There were all these kind
of old resentments and old you know, sort of assumptions.
You know, she Rose was always saying, you know, she
won't let me grow up. She doesn't you know, see
me as an adult. And I can kind of sympathize
(31:46):
with Laura in that respect, because in a lot of
ways Rose didn't grow up. I mean, she continued to
be very irresponsible about money and about just being you know,
kind of honest with herself and honest in relationship to
other people, I mean people in Mansfield. Still, there's still
(32:06):
memories about this hanging around in Mansfield, the story. That's
how big a deal it was. And so it is
surprising that they were able to kind of continue on
together with the.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Books, especially when you consider, and I know, you make
this point in the book, like Laura had a temper
and she could hold a grudge. It's lucky you were
on his random bad side interaction, you know, in eighteen
eighty six, and lo and behold, one hundred years later,
you're still getting criticized in this book. But she managed
I don't know if it was guilt or what she
managed to forgive her daughter. It seems like that the
(32:39):
divide between those two aspects of her personality really stand
out to me.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think Laura did have a really hot temper.
I think she knew it. She admitted it, you know,
al Manso knew about it, he talked about it. But
I think she could also analyze herself later and say,
you know, I need to apolog for this. I think
she did apologize for some of the ways, you know,
in which she hurt Rose. I don't know that Rose
(33:07):
ever kind of achieved that ability to kind of look
at herself and say, what did I do wrong? And
that seemed to be impossible for her, really painful for her.
And Laura could also just be very sweet, you know.
I mean she she had a sweetness to her character
and a generosity of spirit, which is really admirable and.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Sort of miraculous when you consider that she was working
from the age of nine, She was shouldering extraordinary responsibility.
How does she not become a bitter person after years
of that?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I think some of that resentment of people that she
expressed during the whole FDR period, where she would kind
of rail against people who didn't want to work hard enough,
or couldn't save money or you know, and it was,
as I talk about in the book, was this like
obvious contradiction, you know, because she herself had accepted aid
(34:07):
from the government, and in certain ways her family, the
Engles family, had accepted aid. Why was that okay for
them and not okay for other people? During the depression
the worst economic climate that had ever hit this country,
and she just never seemed to see that. And I
(34:28):
think that some of that bitterness that you're talking about
came out in those moments, and it wasn't expressed so
much personally as it was for Rose, who would attack
people she knew. I mean, Rose could be kind of
vicious and anti Semitic and racist and would attack individuals.
(34:48):
You don't see that so much with Laura. You see
her lamenting, you know, the state of the country and
people who don't work hard and people who should just
suck it up basically. But she was also generous Laura
in her personal life. You know, she would give things
to her sisters who were not as well off as
(35:10):
she was.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
It was amazing understanding her childhood in Minnesota, particularly with
the drought and the grasshoppers as a man made phenomenon,
and then understanding she's writing about that period, experiencing that
period while she's writing it, and that to some degree,
we're experiencing a very similar absence of government environmental calamity,
(35:34):
and it sort of brings me to this idea of Laura,
and maybe it's the now as now idea of Laura
is almost like a time machine.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
We go through her books to these different periods which
are enormously relevant to the time we're living in at
the same time.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Oh yeah, And that's an interesting way to put it,
because I think I think everybody's grandparents are sort of
like that in a way. You know, they are if
you know what to ask them, if you know how
to kind of draw out from them their experience. Everybody
who's lived that long life in which they went from
(36:08):
covered wagons to airplanes or whatever. Everybody is a time machine.
But not very many people wrote down what their experience was.
And that was the difference with Laura. I mean, I
have so many moments now where I regret, you know,
I should have asked my grandmother, you know, what she
thought about this or what happened then, and there's no record,
(36:31):
you know, she's gone, there's no record, and so this
is kind of one of the few records. I mean,
there's certainly others, but this is an important record of
what that experience was.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Like, do you think that speaks to her global appeal?
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Oh? Absolutely, I mean, anybody who has lived through that
kind of privation on any level is going to respond
to her portrayal of that. And that's clearly what happened
when and there were translations made of her work after
the war in Japan that because they had just suffered,
(37:07):
the Japanese, you know, after their houses have been burnt,
you know, the country destroyed, mass starvation and hunger and
all of that. And to read this, you know, account
of people who survived, you know, something like what they
were surviving, I think what became really important for a
(37:30):
lot of Japanese children.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Call and I have to ask you about the television
show which you hate, as I understand it.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
So I never say that I hate the show, but
I do have a lot of problems with Michael Landon
and his I just I feel that he was quite
a you know, narcissist who kind of took over the
whole property and made it about him in a lot
(38:05):
of really funky ways that you know, made the show
really kind of a relic of the seventies, and it's
more about the seventies than it is any other real
time period, and there are certain aspects of that that
are just kind of laughable. You know that she's always
walking around with the shirt off, and you know, he's
such a kind of preening presence in a way that
(38:27):
I think would have been horrifying to actual people, you know,
to Laura englis Weld, I think she would have been
dumbstruck at that portrayal of her beloved father.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I enjoyed you mentioning that in the book.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I was born the year of the television show launch,
so I grew up with them side by side, And
I mean, I'm a book first, but I loved the
TV show at Michael Landon.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
What was the response to this book from Laura fans like?
Speaker 4 (38:58):
For you? Oh, you know, it was kind of a
fascinating because I mean, there are people who would come
up to me and say, you know, do you think
Laura was a good person or you know, be really
upset about the portrayal of Paw, which kind of surprised
me because I liked Charles Ingalls in some ways. I mean,
(39:19):
he obviously was a human being who made a lot
of mistakes and add a lot of inappropriate attitudes or
did things that I may may not have agreed with
or thought were smart, but I thought I portrayed him
in a kind of sympathetic manner as his daughter saw him,
and also just in terms of, you know, his later
(39:42):
life and what that life meant. And yet there were
a lot of people who read the book who came
away saying, oh, Pa was a monster. So I mean,
you just can't I can't always predict how he would react.
But I was very pleased with how strongly most people
(40:03):
really reacted to the history of the books, of the
Descpel stuff and the New Deal stuff. And I think
that was really meaningful to me that I was able
to kind of include a bunch of stuff that, you know,
I mean, it's really an historical biography, not a literary biography,
even though literary stuff is kind of more my experience.
(40:26):
But I was really pleased at how interested and kind
of involved people were with that stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I think Laura functions.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
I mean I have said this earlier, but certainly for me,
she functioned as a door I walked through, because what's
fascinates me about the books is she seems so real,
but there's so absent from it. Sort of a wider
sense of the history she exists, and you understand the
way she exists, but it's not put in the context
of what's happening in the country at the time.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And so for me anyway, it was. And certainly the
opening of.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Your book speaks to this doorway to walk through to
find out all the other things that were happening around her.
To me anyway, that's a very magical, fascinating part of
the books. That all of this is absent from her books.
But yet she's opening us weirdly up to wanting to
know more.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Yeah, that's a great way to put it, because there
were so many things that she could not talk about
in a book for children, say, and yet there are
these little hints, you know, little things that when you
read them as an adult, and I think her books
are very readable, which not all books written for children
are that accessible, you know, when you come back to
(41:35):
them years later, But I think hers are, and I
do think that they open up a whole realm of
fascinating and in some cases quite gruesome history.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Reading this as a grown up, I mean there's an undercurrent.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
As cozy as the books were a nostalgic or magical,
there's an undercurrent of danger and violence.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Maybe not in Farmer Boy, but in every other.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
One of the books that I think appealed to me
as a child, even though I couldn't articulate it, but
I was very aware of as a grown up.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
Absolutely, And I think that's why when you read them
as an adult, they read much darker. That through line
of danger, and you know, the threat of starvation, of ruin,
of the loss of the family comes through much more
strongly when you read them as an adult.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Do you love Laura as much now after doing this book?
That's a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
I mean, in doing this podcast, I'm like, I am
spending a lot of time with a person I loved
deeply as a child. I'm just and all the complicated
things that come out of that, because you're you know,
you look at all of the complicating factors.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But how do you feel about her now on the
other side of this, you.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Know, I do?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
I do. I still I love her as a writer.
I do have now a more sophisticated understanding of who
she was as a person. They're definitely aspects of her
that I don't particularly you know, her politics, I think
her you know, kind of regrettable, you know, it's I
can understand them. I can understand being a farmer at
(43:08):
that time and in that place and being horrified by
what farmers were being asked to do. And I get that.
I can understand that and empathize with it, you know.
And I can see her flaws or you know, her
inability to kind of figure things out with her daughter,
who obviously have lots of issues and problems, but you know,
(43:31):
she was who she was at the time. Those ways
of dealing with problems were survival mechanism. And you know,
I see a lot of her in my own grandparents,
you know, and their experiences and their inability to talk
about sort of the hard things that happened in their lives.
So I do. I think I have a lot of
(43:54):
empathy and admiration for her for her perseverance, you know.
I mean, she capt going despite all kinds of obstacles
in the way of her writing these books, for example,
and really forged ahead in a way that a lot
of people might not have.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
That's a wonderful way to end that. Thank you so much, well,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
This episode was produced by me Emily Maronoff and Mary Do.
Sound design and mixing done by Amanda Rose Smith. Our
theme and additional music is composed, as always by the
fantastic Elise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis McNichol,
Joe Piazza, Nikki.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Tor and Ali Perry.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Again, thanks for waiting as we work on our final episode.
We will be dark next week, but the finale will
be here on August thirty first, so mark your calendars.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
If I could send you all some flatters to keep
you occupied until that episode, I would, But for now,
just bake some bread or churn some butter or something,
or better yet, send us those voice memos. We really
do want them.
Hello Wilder listeners, it's producer Emily again with one more
very special episode. Thank you for your patients. As we're
working on our final episode and it's going to be
well worth the wait. I promise it's the episode where
Glennis will come to some big conclusions on how to
think and feel about Laura Ingles Wilder. Over the past year,
as we've researched and recorded the show, one of the
(00:24):
people who's really shaped our thinking on Laura and her
work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Poll surprize winning
biography of Laura Prairie Fires. You've heard us mentioned Prairie
Fires a lot in the show, and you've even heard
Caroline in previous episodes. But as we're coming to some
big conclusions on all things Laura, we thought it was
worth airing her full interview before we get started. I
(00:44):
actually have a request for you. We're still accepting listener
voice memos for our final episode. So if listening to
Wilder has changed your thinking on Laura and the Little Housebooks,
or just made you feel some big feelings about topics
like children's literature, native American representation, how we portray American history,
we want to hear your thoughts. Just record a voice
(01:04):
memo through the app that's preloaded onto whatever phone you
have and email it to Wilder podcast at gmail dot com.
If you do, we might just respond to it in
our final episode. We can't wait to hear your voices.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Now on with the show, Caroline. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
We're all such huge fans of your book, and everyone
we've interviewed for this podcast is just blown away by it.
So I think my first question is before we just
get to the direct writing of the book. I'm just curious,
I know because I've been reading you for quite some time,
but I'm just curious if you could talk a little
bit about what your relationship to Laura was prior to
doing Prairie Fires and how you came to write this book,
(01:50):
which is such a huge undertaking.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Yeah. Well, you know, I read the books when I
was a kid, and like millions of other kids, I
just loved them. They were among the books that I
read over and over again. That's what I did with
you know, the things that I really responded to was
just to kind of have it on a loop almost
(02:15):
and just be constantly rereading. And they became very well
known to me and then some years later I had
the experience which I think a number of other fans
of The Little House Books had, which was that I
was listening to MPR in the morning before going to
(02:36):
work and heard a piece about a biography of Laura's daughter,
Rose Wilder Lane that made the argument that Rose was
really the author of The Little House Books. And I
was just you know, shocked and floored kind of by
(02:56):
hearing that, and was just outraged and kind of like,
you know, could this really be true? And that was
the thing that kind of set me on writing initially
first about that biography and the question of Wilder's authorship
of her books. And that was what led many years
(03:16):
after that to my editing The Little House Books for
the Library of America. And it was really preparing that
edited version. I mean, we didn't edit the text, but
I wrote little notes on certain things in the text
and wrote a timeline of Wilder's life. And as I
(03:38):
was writing that timeline, I came to feel like there
was a really great story about her life that hadn't
really been told yet. I mean, there were biographies for children,
there was a biography for adults, which was quite good,
but I didn't really feel that the relationship between Laura
(03:58):
and Rose had really been lord and the authorship question
was still kind of hanging out there.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
We're going to get to Rose in a bit because
I have a number of questions, But since we're on
the writing of the book, I'm curious. You spent so
much time with Laura the real person to write this biography.
Did your sense of her change? How do you think
about her now that you know so much about her?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is there a gap.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Between who she was to you in the Little House
books growing up, in the fully flashed person that you
have come to bring to the page now?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Oh? Sure, yeah. I mean I think as a child
reading the books, I just sort of took the books
at face value, which I think a lot of readers
did and have and probably continue to do that. As
a kid, I didn't have a particularly sophisticated understanding of
what was the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and so
(04:59):
I just Okay, these books are by Laura Ingalls Wilder,
and they're about Laura Ingalls, so they must be true.
So that was who Laura was to me, was the
Laura in the books, the way that she has presented,
but over the years as an adult and doing the
work on the biography, you know, it came to see
(05:20):
that she was a much much more complex person than
I had ever appreciated, and that her adult life was really,
you know, beset by all kinds of you know, tragedies
that are not really dealt with in the books except
for you know, the last one that was not published
until after she had died. And I also, you know,
(05:43):
came to appreciate that her relationship with her daughter was
very complex and was itself you know, kind of a
tragedy in her life that was just you know, never
resolved in the way that a lot of relationships between
mothers and daughters are not resolved, although theirs was possibly
worse than some in the sense that they worked together.
(06:05):
You know, they had a very long and complicated working
relationship that itself engendered all kinds of guilt and shame
and you know joy too. I mean, I don't want
to say that it was all bad, but it was
very complicated in Something that you know, I think has
(06:26):
really stayed with me is the sense that we love
the Little House books in part because they give us
this idea of a kind of ideal family that even
though they went through all these tribulations and adventures and difficulties,
they still remained a cohesive, loving family. But in her
own life, you know, Wilder wasn't really able to achieve that.
(06:50):
Maybe it's not achievable, but I think for her it
was a real struggle to maintain the relationship with her daughter.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Seems to have maintained it with her husband to some degree.
I think you say in the book which she described
it as the weir in great sympathy with each other.
This doesn't use the word love necessarily, but I do
get the sense that that marriage at least was very
close and Almonso had a very high tolerance. It sounds
like for complicated women.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Yeah, for sure, yes she you know, that relationship was strong.
I think till the end, although beset by all kinds
of difficulties and things. I think they probably never really
talked about or addressed directly, because that was just how
you live. You know, if somebody had an illness or
(07:42):
disability or you know, as Almanto did, did you talk
about it? Probably not, And I don't think that they
probably did.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
It almost seems like a survival mechanism, right, I think.
And what you just raised about how complicated and difficult.
Her life was like to talk about why she sat
down to write the books, and the divide between how
hard her life was and the way she manages to
depict it in the books is extremely significant to me.
I'm wondering what you think about that was, if that
(08:13):
was shocking, or why did none of that make it
into the books?
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Do you think they are books for children? And I
think that she, especially and also Rose, had a very
strong sense of what was appropriate for children, what was not,
what was too much. I mean, they did show quite
a bit of the kind of desolation and desperation of
(08:38):
their lives in the Long Winter, that's the book that
comes closest, I think, to showing how on the edge
their lives were at moments. But I also think, and
this is something that became sort of clear to me
as I was writing the timeline of her life, that
there was a there was a huge element of nostalgia
(09:01):
in writing these books for Laura, And while I was
writing the timeline, I could see clearly that when she
and al Manzo come to the point where they have
to give up in South Dakota, that they've gone through
all these losses and tragedies and the houses burned down,
and they realize they're going to have to leave, They're
(09:24):
going to have to leave the state and start over
somewhere else, and that that of course will necessitate leaving
behind her family. That leapt out to me as a
profound emotional moment in her life, because leaving then is
not what it is now. I mean, now you can
(09:45):
visit your family or relatives, even if you move halfway
across the country. You can still be in touch, you
can still have that closeness. But that just was not
available to her, and so it really represents a wrenching
kind of loss of her former life and of her
(10:05):
relationships to her family and what those relationships consisted of.
And that I think is the primary motivation behind her
wanting to write about her life. I mean, it took
a while for her to kind of figure out how
to write about it, whether it was going to be
a memoir or children's books or whatever. That was a
(10:28):
bit of a struggle to kind of figure out. But
she clearly wanted to do that for a very long time.
And I think it's that emotion that nostalgia is so
powerful in the books, that keeps readers coming back to them, you.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Get a sense of that wrenchingness. It always stands out
to me, and the end of these happy golden years,
which is supposed to be the happy ending, and she's
fallen in love and is going off with her husband,
and yet there's an aspect of tragedy to that when
she's leaving her family behind. It well, even as a child,
I just made me want to cry it just like
I can't believe she's leaving, right.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
It did make me wonder. I mean, again, we'll get
to Rose.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
But in reading these books, and then in reading your book,
and in really taking a grown up understanding of relationships
to it, the sense of Paw as a child was
this very magical, exciting person, and as a grown up
I sort of look at him and think he's dragging
this family around, he can't quite support them. But part
of me, in reading them books now wonders if she
(11:30):
was sort of redeeming It was like an argument to
redeem her father's life in a way.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Oh yeah, I think that's that's really true. And you
know she says something very similar to that. You know,
she acknowledged that he wasn't a great provider and you
know she said Paw wasn't a business man, he was
a poet. And you know, I forget how the rest
of the sentence goes, but she knew. I think that
he had his limitation to it, that he had presented,
(11:59):
you know, real child, just to her mother for example,
to try and you know, keep the family together and
in away from just complete you know, disintegration based on
you know, losing everything, which you know they approach at
various moments. I think the books are very much an
attempt to recognize and to portray the best of her father,
(12:24):
who she'd obviously adored and loved deeply. And you know,
she again and again in the manuscripts and in her
discussions with Rose, you can see her kind of stepping
back from any printed acknowledgment that he was close to bankruptcy,
or that he couldn't pay his debts or you know,
all that stuff gets left out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
There's also sort of in the same vein all of
the energy and detail she puts towards food. And I
think reading your book again and understanding how hungry they
were and the amount of food that's in these books,
and Farmer Boy has been described us as food Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I think you know, the food in Farmer Boy is intense,
and it makes a really interesting contrast to read that
book with the rest of the series, you know, realizing that,
of course it's written during the Depression, but also kind
of comparing how successful el Mansa's family was as farmers
to the Engles family, which was not putting that kind
(13:24):
of food on the table.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I want to go back to your book for a second.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I'm not the only one who responded to this, but
your decision to open the book with the US Dakota
War was very interesting to me, and I'm curious how
that decision came to be.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
What was your thinking behind that.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
That was one of the reasons why I wanted to
write the book in the first place. And that happened
because I was doing that work for the Library of
America and writing notes defining terms or you know, place
names or things that wouldn't be necessarily known to a
general audience that wouldn't you know, occur in a dictionary, whatever.
(14:01):
And one of those things that leapt out at me
while doing that in Little House in the Prairie was
the reference to the Minnesota massacre. And I think, I mean,
how many times had I read that reference as a
kid reading the books, probably a dozen times, if not more.
And when I finally had to define what that was,
(14:23):
I mean, it stopped me because I realized, I don't
even know what this is, Like, what is she talking about?
And so I looked it up, and I was just
blown away, you know, with the answer to what that is.
I mean, I just was transfixed by the story of
that event, which was the US Dakota War of eighteen
(14:44):
sixty two. It was the most bloodiest and most horrifying
spectacles of American history, and certainly you know, as the
event that tipped off the next thirty years in terms
of you know, Indian policy and Indian removal and so forth.
(15:06):
It was really quite shattering to kind of figure out
what that is. And I just thought, I have I
have to write about this. I really want to write
about this because it puts her entire childhood, but also
particularly the events that she covers in Little House on
the Prairie, which is the most important of the series.
(15:28):
I think in an entirely different light than I had
ever understood before. And so I just felt like I
have to open with this. This is just in many ways,
who she was, what her life was, what her mother's relationship,
and fear, intense fear of Indians. That's what that was
all about. And I was also sort of shocked at
(15:50):
my own ignorance, you know, having then discovered what this
is all about, Like why didn't I know about this?
You know, why doesn't everybody know about this? And certainly
people in Minnesota know about it. I think it's now
it's commonly taught there. But it just seemed to me
something that was just waiting to be described and discussed.
(16:14):
In relationship to Little House of the Prairie.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
It changed my entire understanding of that book. I am
fascinated that you think Little House in the Prairie is
her most important book, So I'm curious to know why
you think that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I think it also is the most important historically in
terms of its relationship to history, and you know, the
history of the American Indian on the Great Plains, the
sense of what her father is doing there on that property,
the homesteading movement, and the writing. I mean, there's amazing
(16:52):
stuff in each book, but the presentation of her childish
view of what she's seeing on the prairies, her reaction
to seeing the Indians ride away, as that chapter at
the end has it, I think raises the level of
(17:12):
that book to real literature. It's such a complicated book
in a way, and the ending is so is so
strange and keeps you wondering first her or reaction to
the seeing the Indians right away and the wanting the
Indian baby, you know, like crying out, I want that
(17:33):
Indian baby. Pop, you know, get me that Indian baby.
It's such a weird and and just unforgettable moment about
the acquisitive and appropriation of white settlers on the planes,
and it's just an indelible moment. But then there's also
(17:54):
you know, her father's kind of tantrum at the end
of you know, if I'm going to be denied this land,
I'm going to just pick up and we're leaving this afternoon.
It's just such a precipitous act. And that too kind
of gives you a sense of how entitled settlers were
(18:15):
in a way. I mean, I'm not saying this about
Paw particularly as an individual. I'm just saying, you know
that that's a lasting image of how people felt, how
white people felt about land that they had no title to.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I mean that clearly was a direct memory.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But she was much younger when she was actually in
Indian territory than she is depicted. And I was curious
that you seem to really feel strongly that that book
comes from direct memory, whereas I think I eventually read
it as a combination of her memory and stories she'd
been told by Pa growing up.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
When Ma presumably it's probably a combination of direct memories
and reconstructing from you know, the stories she heard. But
I I think she absolutely remembered going across the plains,
looking out the sort of hole in the wagon cover
and seeing these prairies, you know, in the grass is
(19:13):
I think she totally remembered the scene where they crossed
the river and Paw almost loses control of the wagon
and they're nearly swept away. That seems to have been
very closely remembered. And the thing about the pepoose, which
is I mean, she said as much that this was
(19:34):
she remembered it and just unforgettable moment for her.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
You said just a little bit earlier what we know
today about history and white settlers, But she was writing
this in the thirties, so she had some understanding of
that history at her disposal, and I'm really struck now
not much of that makes it into the book, and
I think this is the source of so much of
the controversy around the book.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I wouldn't exaggerate how much she may have known about
the history. There were a couple of elements that she
tried to find out the name of the chief who
her father may have encountered, But she didn't do very
much in the way of reading history that we know of,
(20:25):
and so I don't really know how much she knew.
She did know that the land that her father had
built on did not belong to much. She knew that
she knew he was a squatter, which is an interesting
term that she uses in letters acknowledging. Of course she
(20:45):
doesn't use that, I don't think in the book itself.
So I would not want to sort of, you know,
bring a lot of present day expectations to try and
explain what she knew what she didn't know. I think
she knew her father was in some ways skating on
than ice in Kansas, and that that's part of why
(21:09):
they ended up leaving. But I don't know that she
had any kind of modern conceptions about the fairness, or
the ways in which her family was illegally appropriating things
that didn't belong to them.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
How do you feel about the more recent criticism. What
do you think is her responsibility? Was her responsibility? And
is this criticism fair? I guess I don't.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Have any problem with criticism. I mean, and I think
the more we do it, the better off we are.
The more we talk about what these books mean, about
what's left out, about what is included, about racism, about this,
(22:00):
you know, language that is disturbing on you know, all
kinds of different levels. So criticism, there's nothing wrong with criticism.
What I think there's something wrong with is banning books
or censoring books that I don't think is appropriate. I
do think that has happened with the Little Housebooks, and
(22:22):
I do think there is an argument for not reading
these books to you know, young children in a completely
uncritical fashion. There have been stories about you know, Native
American kids going to school in Minnesota and other states
and having these books read to them, as if this
(22:45):
is just these books are great and just accept it.
That clearly is just not going to fly anymore. But
can you teach the books? I don't see why not.
I mean, I think you would have to discuss these
kinds of issues that, of course has become a minefield
all over the country, that whole issue. I can't do
(23:07):
anything about that, but I will say that I just
I don't think there's any problem in criticizing or teaching
the books in a critical way, in a way that
opens up all these issues for discussion.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
All right, let's dive into Rose.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
When I finished your book, I wanted to write you
a letter and say, how did you spend this much
time with Rose?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Because she was exhausting to me.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, just generally speaking, what was it like to get
to know Rose?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Well?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I think I have similar feelings about her. She's just
a kind of lavishly talented but incredibly frustrating personality, somebody
who has a lot to you know, offer the world
and makes a lot of really questionable decisions about how
(24:10):
to further her career, you know, in her personal life,
in her relationship with her mother, in her politics, you know.
And people sometimes ask me why did you talk so
much about you know, why is And it was just
it was absolutely inevitable, I mean, because she was wrapped
up so closely in the pushing her mother to do
(24:35):
this writing, in editing and revising and getting the books published,
and even in the post publication phase where she's trying
to control the legacy of the books and how people
think about them, and trying to craft this very political
understanding of their role. She lived with her mother and
(24:58):
with her parents, you know, on the farm for years
of her adult life, very critical years for the creation
of these books in the nineteen thirties, and so it's
impossible to leave her out. She has just woven into
the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I mean, the big elephant in the room question always
that led you to write this. What are your thoughts
on how much of the books she's responsible for.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
I think that we can identify, you know, based on
manuscript evidence and also style. We can certainly identify certain scenes,
you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes in Farmer
Boy and Little Town. I think it is that she
clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her own voice
(25:51):
into writing, and you can definitely recognize. We also know,
you know, from the manuscript evidence that we still have
from you know, the Long Winter, how much Laura resisted
Rose's suggestions and said, no, we're not going to do that.
It was a real contrast of styles where Rose was
bringing this kind of sense of stability and safety and
(26:14):
sort of gentleness to the stories, some of which is
quite necessary, I think, But in other moments you can
see Laura's vision, which was a much more stark, more plain,
more confrontational, a little bit almost like this was the
way it was, This is how hard it was to
(26:37):
live this life. That's Laura. So you can see their
contrasting styles coming through. You can see Rose, I think
you can hear her in some of the dialogue. So
I think we know quite a lot just from the
manuscript stuff that we do have, and they both contributed
a lot. But Laura was the person who wrote the books.
(27:00):
You know, Rose was an editor. She was certainly a
heavier editor than most people might conceive, but that also
is not unheard of. There's a lot of history in
literature that shows you editors who have played a very
outsize role in crafting and cutting, and two people who
(27:23):
don't have that experience with publishing. That may be a shock,
but it's certainly a factor in many works. But I'm
not one of those people who thinks that the book
should be by Laura Ingles Wilder and Rose Wilderland. Now
that's not how it works.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
I think of Rose's career of writing the unauthorized biographies
of Charlie Chaplin and Jack London, and in some ways
it seemed like she was attempting at certain points to
do the same with her mother, and her mother was resisting. Yeah,
that resistance seems to grow stronger in my mind, and
it probably has something to do with her writing about
herself as an older character. But I feel Laura's presence
(28:01):
exert itself increasingly as the books go along.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yes, I think she definitely became more confident as the
books were published and became popular, and you know, kids
were writing to her and saying, oh, you know what
happens next you? And I think she realized her worth
because of those things and really began to assert herself
(28:26):
more confidently with Rose.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
And how much of Rose's I mean you say she
was very involved in keeping an eye on the legacy
of the books and the political nature of them. I'm
just curious what you mean by legacy exactly when you
say that.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
she is asserting to various people who are not just readers,
but people who are trying to be involved in the
museum that became of her mother's house in Mansfield. She
becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the books
(29:03):
is true, and that the books represent an argument for
her political stance. You know, that they're an argument for
self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work and
you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all
of that. I mean, she clearly wanted to present them
(29:24):
in a public forum, and did you know, in letters
and to people who she was, you know, working with
and to her Accolyte, Roger McBride, who then himself runs
for president as a libertarian. And so that's kind of
one of the ways one of the outgrowths or you know,
(29:45):
the things that happened as a result of her pushing
this philosophy and including her mother's work as part of
that philosophy.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Do you think Laura shared any of those politics.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
She did. It's quite clear in letters that she wrote
to Rose that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a
lot of roses more you know, crazier assertions and conspiracy theories,
and they certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push
(30:19):
for the New Deal. They shared this dismay and ultimately
contempt for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
of much of what they had to say. So yeah,
she definitely did. She didn't publicize it in the way
(30:41):
that Rose did. I mean Rose made it her life's
work to publicize these ideas in any way that she could.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I mean, their relationship was so complicated. I think about
how when Laura Sold's little house in the Big Woods,
Rose turned around and sort of secretly wrote, let the
hurricane roar.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
How damaging do you think that was to their relationship?
Speaker 4 (31:04):
It was damaging, it was. I think the most surprising
thing about it is that they were able to continue
to work together professionally after that, because I think it
was so upsetting to Laura and Rose. You know, it
was kind of an expression of Rose's you know, passive
(31:25):
aggression of her trying to get back at her mother
for things that had happened. There were all these kind
of old resentments and old you know, sort of assumptions.
You know, she Rose was always saying, you know, she
won't let me grow up. She doesn't you know, see
me as an adult. And I can kind of sympathize
(31:46):
with Laura in that respect, because in a lot of
ways Rose didn't grow up. I mean, she continued to
be very irresponsible about money and about just being you know,
kind of honest with herself and honest in relationship to
other people, I mean people in Mansfield. Still, there's still
(32:06):
memories about this hanging around in Mansfield, the story. That's
how big a deal it was. And so it is
surprising that they were able to kind of continue on
together with the.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Books, especially when you consider, and I know, you make
this point in the book, like Laura had a temper
and she could hold a grudge. It's lucky you were
on his random bad side interaction, you know, in eighteen
eighty six, and lo and behold, one hundred years later,
you're still getting criticized in this book. But she managed
I don't know if it was guilt or what she
managed to forgive her daughter. It seems like that the
(32:39):
divide between those two aspects of her personality really stand
out to me.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think Laura did have a really hot temper.
I think she knew it. She admitted it, you know,
al Manso knew about it, he talked about it. But
I think she could also analyze herself later and say,
you know, I need to apolog for this. I think
she did apologize for some of the ways, you know,
in which she hurt Rose. I don't know that Rose
(33:07):
ever kind of achieved that ability to kind of look
at herself and say, what did I do wrong? And
that seemed to be impossible for her, really painful for her.
And Laura could also just be very sweet, you know.
I mean she she had a sweetness to her character
and a generosity of spirit, which is really admirable and.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Sort of miraculous when you consider that she was working
from the age of nine, She was shouldering extraordinary responsibility.
How does she not become a bitter person after years
of that?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I think some of that resentment of people that she
expressed during the whole FDR period, where she would kind
of rail against people who didn't want to work hard enough,
or couldn't save money or you know, and it was,
as I talk about in the book, was this like
obvious contradiction, you know, because she herself had accepted aid
(34:07):
from the government, and in certain ways her family, the
Engles family, had accepted aid. Why was that okay for
them and not okay for other people? During the depression
the worst economic climate that had ever hit this country,
and she just never seemed to see that. And I
(34:28):
think that some of that bitterness that you're talking about
came out in those moments, and it wasn't expressed so
much personally as it was for Rose, who would attack
people she knew. I mean, Rose could be kind of
vicious and anti Semitic and racist and would attack individuals.
(34:48):
You don't see that so much with Laura. You see
her lamenting, you know, the state of the country and
people who don't work hard and people who should just
suck it up basically. But she was also generous Laura
in her personal life. You know, she would give things
to her sisters who were not as well off as
(35:10):
she was.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
It was amazing understanding her childhood in Minnesota, particularly with
the drought and the grasshoppers as a man made phenomenon,
and then understanding she's writing about that period, experiencing that
period while she's writing it, and that to some degree,
we're experiencing a very similar absence of government environmental calamity,
(35:34):
and it sort of brings me to this idea of Laura,
and maybe it's the now as now idea of Laura
is almost like a time machine.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
We go through her books to these different periods which
are enormously relevant to the time we're living in at
the same time.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Oh yeah, And that's an interesting way to put it,
because I think I think everybody's grandparents are sort of
like that in a way. You know, they are if
you know what to ask them, if you know how
to kind of draw out from them their experience. Everybody
who's lived that long life in which they went from
(36:08):
covered wagons to airplanes or whatever. Everybody is a time machine.
But not very many people wrote down what their experience was.
And that was the difference with Laura. I mean, I
have so many moments now where I regret, you know,
I should have asked my grandmother, you know, what she
thought about this or what happened then, and there's no record,
(36:31):
you know, she's gone, there's no record, and so this
is kind of one of the few records. I mean,
there's certainly others, but this is an important record of
what that experience was.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Like, do you think that speaks to her global appeal?
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Oh? Absolutely, I mean, anybody who has lived through that
kind of privation on any level is going to respond
to her portrayal of that. And that's clearly what happened
when and there were translations made of her work after
the war in Japan that because they had just suffered,
(37:07):
the Japanese, you know, after their houses have been burnt,
you know, the country destroyed, mass starvation and hunger and
all of that. And to read this, you know, account
of people who survived, you know, something like what they
were surviving, I think what became really important for a
(37:30):
lot of Japanese children.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Call and I have to ask you about the television
show which you hate, as I understand it.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
So I never say that I hate the show, but
I do have a lot of problems with Michael Landon
and his I just I feel that he was quite
a you know, narcissist who kind of took over the
whole property and made it about him in a lot
(38:05):
of really funky ways that you know, made the show
really kind of a relic of the seventies, and it's
more about the seventies than it is any other real
time period, and there are certain aspects of that that
are just kind of laughable. You know that she's always
walking around with the shirt off, and you know, he's
such a kind of preening presence in a way that
(38:27):
I think would have been horrifying to actual people, you know,
to Laura englis Weld, I think she would have been
dumbstruck at that portrayal of her beloved father.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I enjoyed you mentioning that in the book.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I was born the year of the television show launch,
so I grew up with them side by side, And
I mean, I'm a book first, but I loved the
TV show at Michael Landon.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
What was the response to this book from Laura fans like?
Speaker 4 (38:58):
For you? Oh, you know, it was kind of a
fascinating because I mean, there are people who would come
up to me and say, you know, do you think
Laura was a good person or you know, be really
upset about the portrayal of Paw, which kind of surprised
me because I liked Charles Ingalls in some ways. I mean,
(39:19):
he obviously was a human being who made a lot
of mistakes and add a lot of inappropriate attitudes or
did things that I may may not have agreed with
or thought were smart, but I thought I portrayed him
in a kind of sympathetic manner as his daughter saw him,
and also just in terms of, you know, his later
(39:42):
life and what that life meant. And yet there were
a lot of people who read the book who came
away saying, oh, Pa was a monster. So I mean,
you just can't I can't always predict how he would react.
But I was very pleased with how strongly most people
(40:03):
really reacted to the history of the books, of the
Descpel stuff and the New Deal stuff. And I think
that was really meaningful to me that I was able
to kind of include a bunch of stuff that, you know,
I mean, it's really an historical biography, not a literary biography,
even though literary stuff is kind of more my experience.
(40:26):
But I was really pleased at how interested and kind
of involved people were with that stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
I think Laura functions.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
I mean I have said this earlier, but certainly for me,
she functioned as a door I walked through, because what's
fascinates me about the books is she seems so real,
but there's so absent from it. Sort of a wider
sense of the history she exists, and you understand the
way she exists, but it's not put in the context
of what's happening in the country at the time.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
And so for me anyway, it was. And certainly the
opening of.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Your book speaks to this doorway to walk through to
find out all the other things that were happening around her.
To me anyway, that's a very magical, fascinating part of
the books. That all of this is absent from her books.
But yet she's opening us weirdly up to wanting to
know more.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
Yeah, that's a great way to put it, because there
were so many things that she could not talk about
in a book for children, say, and yet there are
these little hints, you know, little things that when you
read them as an adult, and I think her books
are very readable, which not all books written for children
are that accessible, you know, when you come back to
(41:35):
them years later, But I think hers are, and I
do think that they open up a whole realm of
fascinating and in some cases quite gruesome history.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Reading this as a grown up, I mean there's an undercurrent.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
As cozy as the books were a nostalgic or magical,
there's an undercurrent of danger and violence.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Maybe not in Farmer Boy, but in every other.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
One of the books that I think appealed to me
as a child, even though I couldn't articulate it, but
I was very aware of as a grown up.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
Absolutely, And I think that's why when you read them
as an adult, they read much darker. That through line
of danger, and you know, the threat of starvation, of ruin,
of the loss of the family comes through much more
strongly when you read them as an adult.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Do you love Laura as much now after doing this book?
That's a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
I mean, in doing this podcast, I'm like, I am
spending a lot of time with a person I loved
deeply as a child. I'm just and all the complicated
things that come out of that, because you're you know,
you look at all of the complicating factors.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But how do you feel about her now on the
other side of this, you.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Know, I do?
Speaker 4 (42:46):
I do. I still I love her as a writer.
I do have now a more sophisticated understanding of who
she was as a person. They're definitely aspects of her
that I don't particularly you know, her politics, I think
her you know, kind of regrettable, you know, it's I
can understand them. I can understand being a farmer at
(43:08):
that time and in that place and being horrified by
what farmers were being asked to do. And I get that.
I can understand that and empathize with it, you know.
And I can see her flaws or you know, her
inability to kind of figure things out with her daughter,
who obviously have lots of issues and problems, but you know,
(43:31):
she was who she was at the time. Those ways
of dealing with problems were survival mechanism. And you know,
I see a lot of her in my own grandparents,
you know, and their experiences and their inability to talk
about sort of the hard things that happened in their lives.
So I do. I think I have a lot of
(43:54):
empathy and admiration for her for her perseverance, you know.
I mean, she capt going despite all kinds of obstacles
in the way of her writing these books, for example,
and really forged ahead in a way that a lot
of people might not have.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
That's a wonderful way to end that. Thank you so much, well,
thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
This episode was produced by me Emily Maronoff and Mary Do.
Sound design and mixing done by Amanda Rose Smith. Our
theme and additional music is composed, as always by the
fantastic Elise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis McNichol,
Joe Piazza, Nikki.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Tor and Ali Perry.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Again, thanks for waiting as we work on our final episode.
We will be dark next week, but the finale will
be here on August thirty first, so mark your calendars.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
If I could send you all some flatters to keep
you occupied until that episode, I would, But for now,
just bake some bread or churn some butter or something,
or better yet, send us those voice memos. We really
do want them.
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