On Sunday we met to review Edna Ferber’s novel So Big. The novel begins in the late 1800s in what was then a small Dutch farming community south of Chicago. Appropriately, Glenn hosted us (along with Gamin) in their century old barn where you could almost see the horses and smell hay bales from bygone days.
So Big was Ferber’s breakout success both by its sales and its being awarded the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for literature. So Big focuses on Selina De Jung and her son Dirk (aka So Big) as they make a life for themselves on a small truck farm south of Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century.
After a peripatetic urban upbringing with a professional
gambler father, Selina comes to the farming village of South Holland some 30 miles
south of Chicago to teach school. She
marries one of local farmers, but after his death must scrape together a life
for her and her young son Dirk. The book
focuses on how Selina uses her artistic instincts to develop a fruit and
vegetable brand that eventually brings her top dollar from upscale Chicago
grocers and restaurants. She attempts to
instill her artistic and aesthetic qualities into both Dirk and a local boy,
Roelf Pool. In the end Selina is
disappointed that Dirk abandons his passion for architecture for the more
lucrative career as a bond salesman but is pleased that Roelf is able to find
artistic success first in France and then in his return to the States. In a final ironic twist, the financially
successful Dirk is smitten by a young female artist, Dallas O’Mara, only to
realize his new wealth does not impress Dallas, who instead is attracted both to
the artist Roelf and to Selina.
It was our host’s setting, a rustic refurbished barn and the
surprisingly strong literary merit of So
Big that won strong praise from the MBC members. Indeed, the men of MBC all awarded the book scores
of 8 or more. There was general praise
for the book’s plot and writing style despite the fact the book was written by
a woman and has a female protagonist – a clear violation of our founding credo! 😉
Host Glenn led off praising Ferber’s expressive language in
describing the boom or bust life that Selina experiences growing up with an
itinerant gambler father. Glenn hadn’t
read the book before proposing it and was genuinely surprised by how good it
was.
Dean also enjoyed the book although he is just more than
half way through. Dean found the premise that a small subsistence
farmer could become as successful as Ferber describes seems a bit of a
stretch. But he did appreciate the book being written in the era of suffrage
struggle.
Jack continued the “surprisingly good” theme and praised
Ferber for being ahead of her time by portraying strong woman characters
succeeding but staying true to their aesthetic principals. Jack saw Ferber
promoting a central thesis that beauty is everywhere.
Terry liked the book, but thought he had heard the storyline
before. He enjoyed Ferber’s use of
language, particularly when she describes a spring day on the farm.
Andrew enjoyed that Ferber’s style was not too
formulaic. He focused on the vapidness of the Julie
character and how Julie tried to be both a mother figure and a love interest to
Dirk. Andrew also commented on how the
success of Roelf, the neighbor boy, as an artist affirms Selina’s
belief in artistic beauty above material wealth.
Larry noted the parallels between So Big and The Great
Gatsby published just one year apart (1924 & 1925) particularly Gatsby’s
Nick Carraway character and So Big’s Dirk De Jong character. Both have financial and social ambitions in
major US cities during the Jazz age.
Both have married girl friends that fuel those ambitions. But the books had different initial public
receptions – So Big being an instant commercial success and winning the
Pulitzer, while The Great Gatsby was an initial commercial flop. Larry too was surprised by how much he
enjoyed the book and thanked Glenn for recommending a book he would not
otherwise have read.
