Is Edna Ferber being considered for LOA?

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Is Edna Ferber being considered for LOA?

1Truett
Modifié : Août 17, 2019, 6:37 pm

First, apologies if I seem to purposely be dominating discussions of late: got two tears -- count 'em, two tears -- in one of my shoulder muscles, and I'm looking for distractions -- albeit, interesting distractions).

HAS ANYONE HEARD OF EDNA FERBER? IS SHE BEING CONSIDERED FOR LOA?
DCLOYCESMITH? Anyone?

Or is her writing not all that great (merely popular at the time of writing)?
Ran across her name while reading about someone else -- Barbara Stanwyck (a great actress) -- and "discovered" her.
I'd actually read one of her essays in the True Crime LOA anthology, but I apparently didn't absorb the details of her writing background.

She wrote the novels, SHOWBOAT, CIMMARON, and GIANT.
Most folks know at least one or two of those titles from either the movie or the musical, since they've all had both treatments (Showboat, multiple times). And the adaptations have won Tony awards and Oscar awards!
At least four, maybe five, other novels -- ICE PALACE, SARATOGA TRUNK, to name two -- have also had cinematic and/or stage adaptations.

And her novel SO BIG (1924) won the Pulitzer the following year (I know, not always a great bellwether, since the committee can be so conservative and uptight they either ignore the nominees and not hand out a prize -- Pynchon; Karen Russell -- or ignore the nominees -- Sinclair Lewis, MAINSTREET (which was too hard-hitting) -- and give the prize to a somewhat lesser, but still worthy, nominee (THE AGE OF INNOCENCE). Still, a Pulitzer. Nothing to sneeze at.

In addition to a baker's dozen novels, she wrote 10 short story collections, two autobiographies (!!), two books of essays and collections of some of her reporting (she did time as journalist), and a screenplay (for her novel, SARATOGA TRUNK), for a movie starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman (she probably wasn't thrilled that whoever did the casting chose and English actress to play a Haitian maid -- they used make-up (blackface!) -- instead trying to hire a proper actress of color.
(Her novels usually featured strong woman protagonists and -- supposedly -- pretty well-written secondary, ethnic characters).
When did she find time to eat, sleep and breathe?

Also: Ferber as a member (waitforit!) of the Algonquin Round Table! She co-wrote 8 different, original, plays with one of her Round Table buddies, G.S. Kaufman. And (!) her visage was included in a commemorative series of postage stamps in 2002.

So: Has anyone on the board read much -- or any -- of her work?
DCLOYCESMITH: have you heard her name bandied about in the halls of the LOA?

Just curious.
She appears to have been a remarkably successful woman writer.


Post script: I DID just notice a volume devoted to George S. Kaufman. Since I'm gonna look around for a book or two by Ferber (to sample more of her writing myself), I'm definitely gonna get that book (one of the plays in the book is cowritten with Ferber).

2DCloyceSmith
Août 27, 2019, 11:51 pm

>1 Truett:

Edna Ferber has been discussed, but we've come to no resolution. She is a lot like other prolific early-twentieth-century authors we've been adding to the roster lately: Bierce, O. Henry, Tarkington, Anderson, et al.--who are well-served by one or two, maybe three volumes collecting the best of their work.

Two items of interest, however:

--The Kaufman volume actually include three plays coauthored by Ferber: Stage Door (1926), The Royal Family (1927), and Dinner at Eight (1932).

--Early next year we will be issuing, as an eBook Classic, So Big, her Pulitzer Price winner from 1924, which will enter the public domain. As we did to great success with The Able McLaughlins we want to be early out of the gate with a cheap ($1.99), carefully proofread, and authoritative edition to compete with the horrid OCR copies that are sure to flood the market. We plan to do many more of these in future years.

--David

3elenchus
Août 28, 2019, 12:55 pm

>2 DCloyceSmith: we want to be early out of the gate with a cheap ($1.99), carefully proofread, and authoritative edition to compete with the horrid OCR copies that are sure to flood the market. We plan to do many more of these in future years.

This sounds like a strong strategy generally, and so encouraging to hear that the Wilson example proved to be financially successful. Good on LOA for the approach, clearly it serves the mission and does so in a sustainable way.

4euphorb
Août 28, 2019, 2:41 pm

>2 DCloyceSmith:
>3 elenchus: ". . . we want to be early out of the gate with a cheap ($1.99), carefully proofread, and authoritative edition to compete with the horrid OCR copies that are sure to flood the market. We plan to do many more of these in future years."

Aha! That explains the appearance of eBooks on the LOA website that are not in the Main Series. Besides The Able McLaughlins, there is also Through the Wheat by Thomas Boyd. I've been wondering why these otherwise unaccounted for eBooks have been showing up. Perhaps a formal explanation on the LOA website would be in order (and maybe also a special category under either "Formats" or "Topics" other than merely eBook Classics, since these evidently have a different purpose than the other eBook Classics that are merely eBook versions of books that are also included in the Main Series volumes).

5Podras.
Août 29, 2019, 2:19 pm

>4 euphorb: >2 DCloyceSmith: I second the idea of adjusting LOA's web site a bit. As it is, one almost has to know in advance that LOA even has an e-book category before starting to hunt around for the rather understated link to it. People interested only in e-books (like my son) can easily miss it.

6Truett
Oct 23, 2019, 8:43 pm

DCLOYCESMITH: it might be noteworthy -- for ThoseWhoMakeTheDecisions -- to know that EDNA FERBER and GIANT are still held in high -- and sometimes low -- regard in the Lone Star state. But that book and it's author definitely made an impact. A chapter is dedicated to GIANT, and the reaction of many Texans, Stephen Harrigan among them (he loves the book for many reasons, and rolls his eyes at many other passages).

Harrigan just published BIG WONDERFUL THING: A History of Texas. The title comes from something Georgia O Keefe once said about the state (many people have, at one point or another, been Texans, including yours truly). It is a VERY well-written, vastly entertaining overview of the history of that strange, wonderful, screwed up state.

Bytheby: For those who are interested, Harrigan has written novels AND essays as well. In the novel arena, ARANSAS, JACOB'S WELL and THE GATES OF THE ALAMO -- his first three novels -- are brilliant. Snuggled up close behind them on the quality scale are REMEMBER BEN CLAYTON and A FRIEND OF MR. LINCOLN. He was born in '48, so the time isn't yet ripe for consideration in the LOA. But when it comes around, he definitely should be considered.

7Truett
Nov 4, 2019, 4:56 pm

FYI, DAVID CLOYCE SMITH (might not hurt to pass this on to Those Who Make the Decisions): and for ANYONE INTERESTED in FERBER and her work: EDNA FERBER's Pulitzer Prize book, SO BIG!) was adapted to cinema by the same director (not the same screenwriter, of course) that made Walter Van Tilburg Clark's THE OXBOW INCIDENT into a classic film (and, later, filmed THE TRACK OF THE CAT: William A. Wellman.

Thought the creative, connecting tissue, between Van Tilburg Clark and Ferber (both of whom -- since Ferber is in the Kaufman volume -- LOA authors) was interesting.

8Truett
Juil 17, 2020, 10:16 am

Since -- I assume (don't do e-books myself) -- SO BIG by Edna Ferber has been issued on ebook, thought I'd take a minute to put her name back at the top of the list, for suggestion to Those Who Make the Decisions. In addition all of the above, in the first entry, I get the feeling Ferber _may_ have been gay, and definitely was feminist (when a male remarked to her that her suit made her look like a man, she replied, "So does yours". Classic comeback). After traveling on one of the last showboats for research, Ferber wrote the novel SHOWBOAT, dealing with, among other things, miscengation, and other racial issues. Not a common theme way back in the 1920s. Here's biographer and critic Gary Giddins, from his notes in the recent Criterion Collection issue of the movie, "Showboat":

"Everybody loves 'Showboat', but where is the love for the woman whose name alone sits above the title in James Whale's dazzling 1936 film version? Edna Ferber was a best-selling novelist for decades, and in her peak years also a thriving playwright, memorist, and Algonquin kibitzer, who noted of the clubby socializing at the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, 'It made you want to resign as a member of the human race and cable Hitler saying, "Well, butch, you win."' ...in an era when lynching was not uncommon, when the Harlem Renaissance liberated black voices and William Faulkner struggled to find his own white, southern one, when the economy went book before it went bust, Ferber (SHOWBOAT, 1926)...explored the fragility of racial identity amid the contradictions of minstrelsy..." -- "Rollin' on the River" by Gary Giddins, 2020