Edward Everett Hale (1)Critiques

A long short story (or novella to be generous) "The Man without a Country" by Edward Everett Hale is rightly an American classic. It explores the issues raised by patriotism as seen by an American writer in the mid-nineteenth century through a fictional tragedy. It also teaches us something about the history of American attitudes toward identity.

Philip Nolan, a fictional American army officer during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, played a minor role in a historical conspiracy case in which former Vicepresident Aaron Burr 14arguably the first true psychopath in American politics, tried to carve his own empire out the American frontier. Nolan's courtmartial probably did not need to have such a draconian result as it did because of his minor role, but after Nolan stood up and yelled "Damn the United States! I never want to hear her name again!" his judges decided to grant his wish: He was put on a navy ship and was to be kept at sea for the rest of his life, never to hear about or see his country again.

Nolan lived this way for over fifty years. At first he treated his sentence as a lark, a paid cruise around the world, but during all that time, a number of incidents painfully reminded him of his psychological as well as physical imprisonment, and broke him so that he had to rebuild himself in order to maintain his sanity. (Not a small kaffkaesque touch is how even in this paean to American identity there is the recognition that an American government bureaucracy can lose justice between the cracks: after several years, the government no longer remembers Nolan's sentence 14or pretends not to remember; so his punishment goes on because no one ever decides to end it; the govenrment takes the position that Nolan does not exist and yet his punishment is to continue to be carried out.)

Among the reminders of his statelessness is an encounter with a slave ship. Although the United States continued to practice slavery, it outlawed the importation of slaves. This meant that the U.S. Navy was charged with stopping slave ships in the Atlantic. (The British Navy had been doing the same thing for a while before the U.S.) Nolan, as the only man on board able to interpret, helped find out whether the slaves would be willing to be freed on a nearby island; when the slaves began to cry that they wanted to go home to their own countries, Nolan could barely keep himself together; he too wished he could go home; and he persuaded the captain to take the Africans back to Africa.

Evidently, Hale believed 14or perhaps he just expresses the zeitgeist 14in Manifest Destiny (MD), the idea that America should stretch from sea to shining sea and perhaps acquire even more territory than that. His fictional narrator chides the administration of James Madison for not wanting to claim islands in the Pacific, and another character insists that the United States should claim Bermuda. Hale shows how MD was, indeed, a seductive ideology.

Hale's exploration of the meaning of patriotism still stimulates thought about a perennial question, and does so in an entertaining way.

This venerable 1937 volume contains 8 short stories plus one novel extract, all by British and US authors. I found it of historical interest due to the the eponymous tale by Edward Everett Hale, a work whose nationalism / patriotism probably does not wear well today. Overall, I did not find the collection to be especially interesting or notable, but it probably served its purpose back in the 1940s and 1950s.

The works included are listed below; some are indicated with my ratings on a five star scale.

"Man Without a Country", by Edward Everett Hale
"My Double and How He Outdid Me", also by Hale
"The Phantom Rickshaw" by Rudyard Kipling
"The Bedford Row Conspiracy" by William Makepeace Thackeray
"The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper", by George Meredith (**)
"The Pavilion on the Links", by Robert Louis Stevenson (*)
"A Terribly Strange Bed" by Wilkie Collins (*)
"The Capture of Bill Sikes" (from Oliver Twist) by Charles Dickens
"Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriskie" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (*)

This is the story of Christopher Columbus' exploration based mostly on the writings of Christopher Columbus as told by a fan in celebration of the 400th anniversary of sailing the ocean blue. Hale presents Columbus as an imperfect hero explorer doing the work of God. This is the story of Columbus that I learned in school -- one that presents Columbus' own words written to extol himself to his financiers as the truth in spite of raising some concerns about the accuracy of his reporting.

The Survivors Story [2/5] see Updates for others.

That was pretty good collection. The title story isn't really sci-fi although it does start off as a sort of knockoff of Earth to the Moon but ultimately, like several of the stories, its actually just a social commentary.

A number of the tales are about the benefits of a close-knit social group over the larger society. There's also a good bit of humour here and there and some really dark humour in two of stories. The final story the Survivors Story is actually quite experimental too.

I like the style of writing also but it can be a bit confusing at times due to the age of the stories. First half of the collection was better than the second IMO too.

Four christmas stories and a thanksgiving one if your looking for something seasonal.

Note: I read the gutenberg version and (as of this post) the story Ideals is garbled there due to part of it originally being in two columns. I fixed that and a small typo and added the story One Cent to the contents page from which it was missing and hyperlinked the contents while i was at it.
Fixed version can be found HERE .

4/26/22

An early science fiction story, about some folks who build a moon out of bricks and go live on it.

The Brick Moon is a short science-fiction story in which a group of American researchers attempt to solve “the longitude problem” by building and launching a second moon into space that people can use as a reference point when calculating their location. It is perhaps unintentionally hilarious for a 21st-century reader, but for me that’s part of its charm.

This collection of short stories attracted me because of the title of the first story The Brick Moon, which according to the science fiction encyclopaedia is the first known depiction of an artificial satellite. Published in 1869, it is a mixture of science, speculative fiction and morality although the science is not plausible science, but for the readership of the mid nineteenth century this might not have been an issue. It is well written and as a piece of speculative fiction it works well; with enough realism to make it seem possible.

A group of friends have an idea of launching into space an orbiting artificial moon to aid sailors calculating longitude. It must be brick so as to withstand the heat of air friction when launched (the word satellite is not used at this time). The artificial moon would be a rough sphere 200 feet in diameter and the interior would be a mainly hollow space with interconnected brick supports. The brick moon is launched by means of stored water power through a flywheel contraption that has been patiently constructed over a period of some months. When finally constructed the engineers and workers shelter inside the moon in an exceptional cold spell of weather and wake up to find themselves launched into space.

There are seven other stories, all quite different but none have the same kind of imagination as found in the Brick Moon. I enjoyed Crusoe in New York which has an atmosphere all of its own; a kind of claustrophobia arising from a family living in a house constructed specially in a space between a church wall and another dwelling in the heart of New York. The Lost Palace also has an air of mystery telling the story of a lost carriage when a train jumps a ravine.

Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian and Unitarian minister and was recognised early on as something of a child prodigy where literature was concerned. He wrote 'The man without a Country' which was intended to strengthen the Union Cause in the North. Throughout his life he contributed short stories, articles and sermons to various publications. Some of the stories in this collection are worth a read and I rate them as 3 stars. (free on the internet)

5522. The Man Without a Country & Other Tales, by Edward Everett Hale (read 23 Dec 2017) I read the title story when I was young but it was not in a book (and thus does not show up in my list of books read), so I thought I would re-read it and read the other 'tales' in this book (A Piece of Possible History;The Old and the New, Fact to Face; The Last Voyage of the Resolute; My Double and How He Undid Me; and The Children of the Public). I remembered The Man Without a Country but had forgotten that it was written during the Civil War and was designed to denigrate and shame the Southerners who had turned traitors to their country. The story about the Resolute appears to be factual and relates the valiant efforts to find the Franklin and is quite an account. . The same is true for the fictional story about the Double which did make me laugh at times, somewhat to my surprise, since it is an unlikely scenario. The fictional The Children of the Public also is unlikely but less impressive. But on the whole I am glad I read this book. I read the Wikipedia article on its author and was duly impressed by him and his relatives but surprised and dismayed to learn that he apparently was false to his wife and the religion he preached!

An older (1969) short story collection that contains diverse tales from authors also diverse as Hawthorne and London, O. Henry and Twain. I liked most of the prose within, and would recommend this volume.½

I saw this on a list of"other" books to read this summer and found it on Gutenberg. I remembered the Cliff Robertson movie (TV, 1973), and I'm sure I read it back then, but it was nice to reread. Nice to read a short story after Game of Thrones. Nice to read good writing after Game of Thrones.

A thinker that really needed to be fleshed out.

Very early science fiction (circa 1870) story about a group of men who construct an artificial satellite made of brick ("Brick Moon") which is accidentally propelled into orbit along with various humans residing within.

There is some interesting science along the way, including discussions of the method by which the satellite will be launched (modern rocket technology did not exist), what material will be used so as to resist burning up when exiting the atmosphere at high speed, and how the satellite's orbit around earth will be determined.

The book also contains part fantasy, i.e., how the humans aboard the satellite ultimately begin life anew on their new world in space. Less rooted in science, but still amusing.

A must for any fan of early science fiction. I would have rated this book higher but for the author's stilted writing style that sometimes was difficult to follow.½

This was a short read, but honestly well worth relating to today. How many people are lost in the system to this day? How many people, when handed down what seemed a simple sentence, discovers that the sentence itself takes away more than it was supposed to take? There are repercussions for everything. This was a story that took place during the War of 1812. A number of things were misunderstood by the prisoner, by the courts, and by the general population of that era. After 50 years, these things were never corrected. Just like the things happening today.

An groundbreaking account of the first scientific investigations of monkey/ape language and intelligence. Garner used then cutting edge sound recording techniques to record apes, and play back their sounds with other apes so as to try to understand the meaning of their utterances. His work was denigrated because he was not an academic, but it has proven to be at least 50 years ahead of its time.

Text here: http://www.erbzine.com/mag18/garner.htm

For the most part these essays are extremely outdated; however, the man without a country is a classic.

A classic collection of stories - not the best or worst anthology. Worth reading if you haven't experienced most of the tales in here.

This is the deeply moving story of naval lieutenant Phillip Nolan, a young man who lived to regret a rash and passionately spoken oath. For when Nolan, who had fallen under the spell of the treasonous conspirator Aaron Burr, was court-martialed for his part in Burr's plot, he cursed the United States and avowed that he wished he might never hear of it again. His judges took him at his word, and for the next fifty years, until his death, he was never allowed to set foot on American soil, nor to see nor hear a single word of news about her and her affairs.

The author, Edward Everett Hale, paints a heart-rending portrait of a man who, having abjured his country, comes to regret his rash oath and longs for a home to call his own.

Everett Shinn's beautifully executed illustrations grace every page of this edition, with scenes from the book as well as simple motifs of ship and sea.

Edward Everett Hale has earned a place in American fiction (for that is what this story is) with this woeful tale of a man who made a slip of tongue in front of the wrong person and was condemned to sail on a ship where no one could ever refer or allow him to any way sense the existence of the United States.
Should the one-world concept triumph (as I'm sure it will), this may diminish the epathetic effectiveness of the book.

Available online from the Portal to Texas History:
http://texashistory.unt.edu/permalink/meta-pth-2357:1

Fiction

Published Barse and Hopkins . Old

This copy is very old looking and feeling. The pages are quite brittle and suseptible to tear or loosening