Archive for the ‘Joel Chandler Harris’ Category

Unpublished Letter to the Editor of TIME

---

In April TIME Magazine ran a feature on slavery and the Civil War by noted journalist David Von Drehle. It was pretty good, but I took issue with a paragraph about Southern coping mechanisms during Reconstruction:

“But people were eager to forget. And so Americans both Southern and Northern flocked to minstrel shows and snapped up happy-slave stories by writers like Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris. White society was not ready to deal with the humanity and needs of freed slaves, and these entertainments assured them that there was no need to. Reconstruction was scorned as a fool’s errand, and Jim Crow laws were touted as sensible reforms to restore a harmonious land.”

As soon as I read the article I wrote and sent in a letter to the editor. They didn’t publish it, so here you go.

David Von Drehle truly grasped of the influence of storytelling in “150 Years After Fort Sumter: Why We’re Still Fighting the Civil War,” his piece about slavery’s role in the Civil War. That’s why it’s shocking he could so casually dismiss the gravity of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus tales.

Harris’s depiction of plantation life is a far cry from “happy slaves, all faithful to a glorious lost cause,” as Von Drehle writes. The figure of Uncle Remus in particular is a subversive, developed character who tricks his audience—both the little white boy in the stories and the reader of the stories themselves—into witnessing nuanced lessons of cultural understanding and empathy. Fittingly, Uncle Remus introduced the world to Br’er Rabbit, one of literature’s greatest trickster heroes.

Harris first heard these stories while he grew up working amongst slaves on a Georgia plantation during the Civil War. Just a few years after the Jim Crow laws were enacted, he celebrated and preserved African-American culture and folklore that was widely derided and may have otherwise been lost. In doing so, he also satirized the very “plantation school” writers that Von Drehle lumps him in with.

If Von Drehle bothered to study the Uncle Remus tales, as I suspect he has not, I think he’d be delighted to find “Americanism at its best”—literature that tears down borders.

Lain Shakespeare
Executive Director
The Wren’s Nest House Museum
Historic Home of Joel Chandler Harris

For a more detailed look at this particular issue, take a look at “Everything You’ve Heard About Uncle Remus Is Wrong.”

 

Joel Chandler Harris Signed Photograph Up for Auction

---

Do you have $7,000? Great! Let’s spend it.

This signed Joel Chandler Harris photograph is up for auction over on eBay. The starting bid is a mere $6,999.

The date of the photograph isn’t given, but I’d reckon it was taken in the mid-1890s during Harris’s pomade period.

If you’re feeling miserly, feel free to skip the signed photograph and go straight for the Joel Chandler Harris Anniversary Christmas Tree Balls:

At $19.99 these unused Balls are a steal, if a little fuzzy.

Joel Chandler Harris, Soap Collector

---

Yesterday in one of our bookcases I stumbled across a limited-edition retrospective on Joel Chandler Harris. The book was put together by some of Harris’s friends shortly after his death and includes a sunny biography, a few anecdotes, and the eulogy given at his funeral.

I liked this story, recounted by Forrest Adair:

“I am about the extent of a tenth of a gnat’s eyebrow better.”

---

– Joel Chandler Harris’s last words on this day in 1908, answering the question “How are you this morning, father?”

West End Historic Walk by Steven Weitzman

---

We’re honored to be included a new public art project from the City of Atlanta’s Office of Cultural Affairs: the West End Historic Walk.

Artist Steven Weitzman has conjured up a sidewalk installation that will abut our neighborhood’s glorious majestic existent Mall West End.  14 colored cement panels surrounded by specialty pavers will depict the history of our neighborhood.

The Wren’s Nest is featured in one of the panels, above. In front of the house, children are playing jump rope with Brer Rabbit.

Esther LaRose Harris, wife of Joel, is featured in the one about St. Anthony’s.

Esther was instrumental in founding St. Anthony’s in 1903, and  Joel Chandler Harris actually bought the land for the church.  Read up on the history of St. Anthony’s here.

The colored cement, called FOTERA, is several inches deep, so no matter how hard you try to chip it, the image won’t be altered.  Nice try, suckas.

Take a look at Weitzman’s previous work with FOTERA.

Jack Sparrow Before Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean

---

Before Johnny Depp’s role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, there was Jack Sparrow, original gangsta, from the Uncle Remus story “The Fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow.”

Curtis tells a wonderful version of the story. As Uncle Remus explains, Jack Sparrow is a tattler who meets his demise whilst tattling atop Brer Fox’s snout.

I guess the little boy hadn’t seen The Wire yet.

Disney put out both Pirates of the Caribbean and that movie based on the Brer Rabbit tales — oh, what is it called again? — but I think the similarities may stop there. Then again, I haven’t seen the Pirates films so what do I know.  Can anyone who has seen ‘em connect the dots?

Joel Chandler Harris offers this note on the text at the end of the story:

Previously:

• 1937 Uncle Remus Illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg
• “I bin mixin’ up wid fokes now gwine on eighty year”

1906 Brer Rabbit Illustrations by Harry Rountree

---

Lately I’ve been having a hard time deciding which Brer Rabbit illustrations are my favorite.  These illustrations from Harry Rountree are certainly giving Fritz Eichenberg a run for his money, mostly because of Brer Rabbit’s impressive commitment to smoking.

Look at that cigar!  And those pants!  Did M.C Hammer grow up on Brer Rabbit or what?

Lauren, designer of our website and fashionable friend, calls the pin/single suspender combo “a genius sartorial decision!”  I agree!

This picture combines two things I love – little rabbits performing manual labor for nefarious purposes and matching red jumpsuits.

Brer Rabbit and the dark night of the soul.  I really like this one’s composition.

I can’t help but laugh at this little rab crying over spilt milk, with Mrs. Rabbit rushing to the rescue.

Brer Rabbit has never looked so noble and proud as after enlisting his children to steal milk from Sis Cow, who is stuck in a tree.  Hooray raping and pillaging family outings!

Brer Bear is dressed perfectly for a picnic.  A+.

This last illustration is on the cover of our 1913 French copy of L’oncle Remus.

Ugh, I just don’t know — do you like these illustrations best?  Or A.B. Frost’s? Or Eichenberg’s?  Or Don Daily’s?  Or Barry Moser’s?

Arthur Miller’s 1941 Radio Play — “Joel Chandler Harris”

---

In 1941 Arthur Miller wrote a radio play for Cavalcade of America called “Joel Chandler Harris.” Karl Swenson, he of Little House on the Prairie fame, plays the lead role.

The play runs about 26 minutes and is sort of an “aw shucks!” biography. Still, the writing is well done. The accents, however, are questionable.

“Joel Chandler Harris” by Arthur Miller

The play is based in fact but it isn’t entirely factual. For example, there’s a scene where Harris meets Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain at the White House.  In reality the incident in question did occur, but with only Mark Twain and in New Orleans.

Compared with many of the historical inaccuracies we usually deal with, however, this feels like a case of tomato/tomato.

Related: More episodes of Cavalcade of America (presented by DuPont!), Disney’s 1956 “aw shucks!” biography of young Joel Chandler Harris

Georgia Traveler Features the Wren’s Nest, Amelia, and Curtis

---

Georgia Traveler, everyone’s favorite travel show not starring Michael Palin Anthony Bourdain Rick Steves, stopped by the Wren’s Nest a few months back for a segment on their “Book Tour” episode.

Amelia did most of the talking:

Curtis did most of the storytelling:

And Georgia Traveler did a bang-up job.  Thank you, Georgia Traveler! Watch the entire episode online, here (just click on the “Watch” icon next to the page title).

Our segment starts about 4 minutes in, but the whole episode is worth your time.  They stop by the Uncle Remus Museum, Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia, the Margaret Mitchell House, and the Grit.

P.S.  Do you know how hard it is to find a screen grab where people don’t look like they’re drooling?  It’s medium-hard!

Uncle Remus by Henry F. Gilbert — the Opera that Wasn’t

---

Henry F. Gilbert, an important early 20th Century American composer,  collected scores of African-American folk songs and aspired to write an opera called Uncle Remus.

I swear I’m not messing with y’all.

Gilbert never secured the rights to the Uncle Remus tales and couldn’t complete his opera, but he did write its prelude.   Gilbert derived these two songs, performed here by Nadia and Vladimir Zaitsev in 2004, from the prelude –

Nadia and Vladimir Zaitsev — “Uncle Remus”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Nadia and Vladimir Zaitsev — “Brer Rabbit”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thanks to Fleur de Son Classics for permission to use the music.  If you like it, consider ordering the album here.

The Uncle Remus prelude premiered at a Central Park concert in New York in August of 1910.  4,000 people attended.

The Boston Symphony performed the prelude the following year.  Some people objected to the jaunty ragtime rhythms, but most responded positively “to the youthful vigor, the racy humor and the romantic nature of this new music.”   Philip Hale, in the Boston Herald of April 14, 1911, wrote:

“The overture stirred the blood of the audience.  All rejoiced in hearing a new voice with something to say and an original way of saying it.  The fugue did not dampen the interest of the hearers, for the old form was used with dramatic spirit.  No wonder that the audience, surprised and delighted, was for once in no hurry to leave the hall. [...]  The overture is distinctively, but not bumptiously, not apologetically, American.”

Gilbert was one of the first American composers to break free of the Germanic style of classical music.  For Gilbert, African-American folk music was a great source of inspiration and “seemed closely related to the spirit of all America.”

Gosh, sounds a lot like Joel Chandler Harris who, regarding A.B. Frost’s illustrations of Brer Rabbit and his critter friends, remarked: “We shall then have real American stuff, illustrated in real American style.”  Shame he wasn’t around to hear the soundtrack… embedded in a blog post… on the internet. Really woulda blown his mind.

Related: Henry F. Gilbert: a bio-bibliography by Sherrill V. Martin