Speaker 1: And I sat down and read it, and I realized
Speaker 1: I could see why it was so popular, but I
Speaker 1: could also see the traces of the real author.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we're going to learn about one of
Speaker 2: the greatest American literary cons of all time, or was
Speaker 2: it a con at all? The good news is that
Speaker 2: at the Navigation Helm, we'll have author and Southern historian
Speaker 2: doctor Dan T. Carter, Professor Emeritus at the University of
Speaker 2: South Carolina, and New York Times bestselling author and crow
Speaker 2: call extraordinaire Steve Runella of Meat Eater. These guys are
Speaker 2: going to talk to us about a book called The
Speaker 2: Education of Littletree and the wild life of its author.
Speaker 2: There aren't any better guests on Planet Earth to tell
Speaker 2: us the story of a double life lies in racism
Speaker 2: that produced a brilliant piece of literature so rooted in
Speaker 2: American wilderness and values it'll make you want to bard
Speaker 2: owt hoot and kiss your mama after the trill.
Speaker 3: I really doubt you're gonna want.
Speaker 2: To miss this one. And Hey, I want to let
Speaker 2: you know that my friend Brent Reeves has a new
Speaker 2: podcast coming out on this feed starting on April twenty first,
Speaker 2: called This Country life. It's incredibly fun and we're thrilled
Speaker 2: to bring it to you on this bear Grease feed.
Speaker 2: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the bear
Speaker 2: Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 2: As we explore, Grandpa stopped and pointed by the side
Speaker 2: of the trail. There she is, Turkey run see. I
Speaker 2: dropped to my hands and knees and saw the tracks
Speaker 2: little stick like impressions coming out of a center hub. Now,
Speaker 2: Grandpa said, we'll fix the trap, and he moved off
Speaker 2: the trail until he found a stump hole. We cleaned
Speaker 2: it out, first the leaves, and then Grandpa pulled out
Speaker 2: his long knife and cut into the spongy ground and
Speaker 2: we scooped up the dirt, scattering it among the leaves.
Speaker 2: When the hole was deep so that I couldn't see
Speaker 2: over the rim, Grandpa pulled me out and we dragged
Speaker 2: branches to cover it and over these spread armfuls of leaves.
Speaker 2: Then with his long knife, Grandpa dug a trail sloping
Speaker 2: down downward into the hole and back toward the Turkey run.
Speaker 2: He took the grains of red Indian corn from his
Speaker 2: pocket and scattered them down the trail and threw a
Speaker 2: handful into the hole. Now we will go, he said,
Speaker 2: and we set off again up the high trail. I
Speaker 2: spewed from the earth like frosting, crackling under our feet.
Speaker 2: The mountain opposite us moved closer as the hollow far
Speaker 2: below became a narrow slit, showing the spring branch like
Speaker 2: the edge of a steel knife sunk in the bottom
Speaker 2: of its cleavage. We set down in the leaves off
Speaker 2: the trail just as the first sun touched the top
Speaker 2: of the mountain across the hollow. From his pocket, Grandpa
Speaker 2: pulled out a sour biscuit and deer meat for me,
Speaker 2: and we watched the mountain while we ate. The sun
Speaker 2: hit the top like an explosion, sending showers of glitter
Speaker 2: and sparkle.
Speaker 3: Into the air.
Speaker 2: The sparkling of the icy trees hurt my eyes to
Speaker 2: look at it, and it moved down the mountain like
Speaker 2: a wave. As the sun backed the night shadow down
Speaker 2: and down, a crow sent three hard calls through the air,
Speaker 2: warning we were there. And now the mountain popped and
Speaker 2: gave breathing sighs that sent little puffs of steam into
Speaker 2: the air. She pinged and murmured as the sun released
Speaker 2: the trees from their death armor of ice. Grandpaul watched
Speaker 2: same as me, and listened as the sounds grew with
Speaker 2: the morning wind that set up a low whistle in
Speaker 2: the trees. She's coming alive, he said, soft and low,
Speaker 2: without taking his eyes from the mountain. Yes, sir, I said,
Speaker 2: She's coming alive. And I knew right there that me
Speaker 2: and Grandpa had an understanding that most folks didn't. Your
Speaker 2: ears and the engine of your imagination have just partook
Speaker 2: of the writings of Forest Carter. In the opening chapter
Speaker 2: of his book called The Education of Little Tree, published
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six, Carter identified himself to the world
Speaker 2: as a Cherokee Indian raised in a cabin with his
Speaker 2: grandparents in East Tennessee. This is the story he told
Speaker 2: to Barbara Walters in nineteen seventy five on The Today Show.
Speaker 2: It would be my guess that you've probably never heard
Speaker 2: of this book, even though it became a New York
Speaker 2: Times bestseller in nineteen ninety one, selling over one million copies,
Speaker 2: and in the heyday of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen nineties, it made her list, staying there
Speaker 2: until two thousand and seven, when she removed it.
Speaker 3: And it isn't surprising because.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly good, with descriptive prose, intriguing plot themes, and
Speaker 2: brilliant displays of the beautiful and functional connection the protagonists
Speaker 2: have to the natural world. That's why I was originally
Speaker 2: interested in it. It's got some turkey trapping, fox hunting
Speaker 2: with hounds, corn and watermelon planting, mules, moonshining, and some
Speaker 2: insight on management. It even takes some big swings at
Speaker 2: the establishment. It has a where the red fern grows
Speaker 2: feel with a young orphaned boy learning moral and practical
Speaker 2: lessons from his Cherokee grandfather in the Great Depression era
Speaker 2: of the nineteen thirties. A big delivery of the book, however,
Speaker 2: is a deep empathy for Native Americans and a display
Speaker 2: of their wisdom and how they got a raw deal.
Speaker 2: Remember that if something hadn't happened to this book. It
Speaker 2: would have been an American classic like the Adventures of
Speaker 2: Huckleberry Finn or Charlotte's Webb. But something did happen, and
Speaker 2: I've got to fess up. You've already been misled. Forest
Speaker 2: Carter wasn't a Cherokee Indian at all, and his name
Speaker 2: wasn't even Forest Carter.
Speaker 3: Here's my friend, Steve Ranella. He knows this book.
Speaker 2: Steve, When is the first time that you read The
Speaker 2: Education of Littletree?
Speaker 4: When you and I first started talking about this book
Speaker 4: a while back, it forced me to try to recollect
Speaker 4: how I became familiar with it. I know now, I
Speaker 4: absolutely I became familiar with it when I was in college.
Speaker 4: I was in a class called the Literature of Political
Speaker 4: Rhetoric by taught by a guy named doctor Gillis, and
Speaker 4: he gave us that book to read. In addition to
Speaker 4: things like some of the works of Martin Luther King Junior,
Speaker 4: writings of the Unibomber, writings of Camille Paglia, just wild
Speaker 4: stuff all over the place, we read works from people
Speaker 4: who had like an axe to grind, okay, and you
Speaker 4: threw that in the.
Speaker 3: Mix, people with an acts to grind.
Speaker 2: I really wish We could have done this different, and
Speaker 2: you could have read this book before you know what
Speaker 2: you're about to know. But I wasn't afforded this privilege either.
Speaker 2: I read the book after I learned that Forrest Carter
Speaker 2: wasn't Forrest Carter at all, but rather his name was
Speaker 2: Asa Earl Carter. I'd be really impressed if you knew
Speaker 2: that name from American Southern history, and you will. Doctor
Speaker 2: Dan T. Carter, who is no relation to Asa Carter,
Speaker 2: is a University of South Carolina professor emeritus and renowned
Speaker 2: Southern historian and acclaimed author. He wrote a biography of
Speaker 2: the Alabama governor George Wallace, who became famous for opposing desegregation.
Speaker 2: Most recently, doctor Carter wrote a book called Unmasking the Clansman,
Speaker 2: just published in April of twenty twenty three. More on
Speaker 2: that in a minute, though, I wanted to ask doctor
Speaker 2: Carter about the Education of Little Tree's unusual rise to
Speaker 2: national fame after being published in nineteen seventy six but
Speaker 2: not becoming a New York Times bestseller until nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: This is an extremely rare thing. Here's doctor Carter.
Speaker 1: That book was reissued in nineteen eighty eight, and then
Speaker 1: it just by word of mouth. It had no advertising.
Speaker 1: It was published by a University of New Mexico press.
Speaker 1: It just kept picking up, picking up more and more
Speaker 1: people reading it, and by the summer of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one it had climbed on to the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller list. Then I did become interested in it. And
Speaker 1: as as it continued, I realized I'd never read the book,
Speaker 1: and I knew about it, and I sat down and
Speaker 1: read it, and I saw on one level why people
Speaker 1: loved it so much. I think we love books about
Speaker 1: coming of age. And as one agent said who represented Carter,
Speaker 1: at one time, Indians were hot. By the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and nineteen nineties, people were interested in Native Americans, and
Speaker 1: particularly at a time when you're trying to develop broader
Speaker 1: ranges of books for adolescents and young people, and the
Speaker 1: education story seemed to fit right within this. You've got
Speaker 1: a story about a young Native American growing up in
Speaker 1: the mountains of East Tennessee, and it's an appealing story,
Speaker 1: and it seems to have a kind of moral core
Speaker 1: to it, because obviously he's learning moral lessons from his
Speaker 1: Cherokee grandfather. And it's the kind of moral lessons that
Speaker 1: you like to believe you'd teach your children or grandchildren.
Speaker 1: But it's also embedded in what Americans were coming to,
Speaker 1: if not revere, at least respect a lot more. And
Speaker 1: that was the Native American frame of cosmic reference and morality.
Speaker 1: And so it was just a winner all the way around.
Speaker 1: And I realized as I read it carefully, I could
Speaker 1: see why it was so popular, But I could also
Speaker 1: see the traces of the real.
Speaker 2: Author, traces of the real author. In storytelling, the listener
Speaker 2: you have to be handled with great care, like a
Speaker 2: little baby ducklin trying to jump out of your hands
Speaker 2: while you're carrying it to the pond. The listener will
Speaker 2: try to jump out of your hands if you don't
Speaker 2: tell him the hook at just the right moment. They've
Speaker 2: got to be intrigued enough by the unknown to keep
Speaker 2: listening but not get bored. So get ready for the hook,
Speaker 2: the down load, the dirty scoop, And here it is.
Speaker 2: The author said his name was Forrest Carter, that he
Speaker 2: was a Cherokee Indian, and that his story was semi
Speaker 2: autobiographical of his upbringing Tennessee. But his real name was
Speaker 2: Asa Carter. We know that he wasn't a Cherokee, we
Speaker 2: know that he wasn't raised by his Cherokee grandfather. We
Speaker 2: know that, But he was actually from Anniston, Alabama, and
Speaker 2: he was a leader in his own strict sect of
Speaker 2: the klu Klux Klan. He was a vehement segregationist and
Speaker 2: an ardent prophet of the white supremacy movement, and his
Speaker 2: message was carried by his successful print publication he founded
Speaker 2: and his radio broadcast. Doctor Carter's book, Unmasking the Klansman
Speaker 2: is the one and only biography on Asa Carter. Asa
Speaker 2: Carter was the Klansman, and Doctor Carter, of no relation
Speaker 2: to A. SA Carter, is undoubtedly the nation's expert on A.
Speaker 3: SA Carter. The book is fascinating.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have thrown all this information on
Speaker 2: you at the end after we've learned about the education
Speaker 2: of Littletree, because it's an amazing book, and it won't
Speaker 2: make a lick of sense when you understand who this
Speaker 2: man was. And as we understand what the book's about,
Speaker 2: we're trying to understand how this dude wrote this book.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't add up. And I haven't even told
Speaker 2: you the wildest part. It involves a man by the
Speaker 2: name of George Wallace, who, on January fourteenth, nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: gave his inaugural speech on the steps of the state
Speaker 2: capital of Alabama after being elected governor. Wallace would become
Speaker 2: the face of opposition to the civil rights movement when
Speaker 2: he delivered his infamous Segregation Forever speech in the name.
Speaker 3: Of the greatest people that have ever tried this earth, I.
Speaker 2: Draw the line in the dust and passed the gauntlet
Speaker 2: before the feet of Tierney, and I say segregation now,
Speaker 2: segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. Wallace's words segregation now, segregation tomorrow,
Speaker 2: and segregation forever, would be an unforgetable moment in American history,
Speaker 2: branding him is the face of racism. However, these weren't
Speaker 2: his words. He had secretly hired Asa Carter to write
Speaker 2: this speech. Those are Ace's words. How could this man
Speaker 2: have written a book so brilliantly empathetic and authentic that
Speaker 2: he fooled the world? And I can tell you We're
Speaker 2: gonna have to guess. Because Asa Carter died unexpectedly and
Speaker 2: tragically in nineteen seventy nine at the age of fifty
Speaker 2: four years old. There is just drama stacked on top
Speaker 2: of drama with this story and with this guy. And
Speaker 2: I want to say up front that I am uninterested
Speaker 2: in villainizing Asa Carter. He didn't need any help with that.
Speaker 2: And I'd like to say that forty three years after
Speaker 2: this man's death, we should not be affected or damaged
Speaker 2: by the things he said or believed. However, we can
Speaker 2: learn something about the extremes of human nature from his life.
Speaker 2: Were in pursuit of uncovering the true identity of Asa
Speaker 2: Carter and decide if he was a.
Speaker 3: Changed man when he died or a con man.
Speaker 2: Here's more from doctor Carter on how he learned about
Speaker 2: the double life of Asa Carter. Your original interest in
Speaker 2: Asa Carter was you were doing a biography on George Wallace, right,
Speaker 2: and then you went to meet Seymour Trammel, who was
Speaker 2: George Wallace's right hand man.
Speaker 3: Right hand man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me about meeting him, but then him telling
Speaker 2: you about about the book, and.
Speaker 1: Well, of all the people, and I interviewed about forty
Speaker 1: people for the bick But this I started this in
Speaker 1: the late eighties, so there were still a lot of
Speaker 1: these people around, manyrem long now.
Speaker 5: Of all the people I.
Speaker 1: Interviewed, by far the most interesting and insightful was Seymour Trammel.
Speaker 1: He was a country boy from South Alabama who became
Speaker 1: Wallace as a finance commissioner in his right hand man.
Speaker 1: As smart as he was, really smart, got in trouble,
Speaker 1: ended up in prison, and by the time I knew him,
Speaker 1: he was a different person. He just prison had changed him.
Speaker 1: He had had trouble drinking, he'd stopped all that, and
Speaker 1: he was introspective in a way that he never was
Speaker 1: as a young man, you know, looking back on his life.
Speaker 1: He could see all the mistakes he had made and
Speaker 1: all the things he said, I've done wrong, you know.
Speaker 1: But he was the one that gave me insight when
Speaker 1: I started talking to him.
Speaker 5: One day.
Speaker 1: We had several long conversations and I was talking to
Speaker 1: him and I said something about this guy. He's a carter,
Speaker 1: I said, I keep running into him. I said, was
Speaker 1: he really George Wallace's speech writer for that famous segregation
Speaker 1: Today's aiation? And he began laughing. He said, of course
Speaker 1: he was. He said anything that was he said George
Speaker 1: was good. But he said the best stuff was always
Speaker 1: from Asa, you know. He said, you know he was
Speaker 1: a real writer. And I knew that Asa had Carter,
Speaker 1: who was a white supremacist and a radio announcer, had
Speaker 1: written a bunch of radio programs in the fifties, published
Speaker 1: a very slick magazine called The Southernert Southern, And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, he wrote novels. He one of them was
Speaker 1: made into a movie. I just thought, I think, Seymour,
Speaker 1: he's not that old, but clearly his mind is slipping
Speaker 1: away here. And because I didn't know about the Double Life,
Speaker 1: you know, all I knew was Asa Carter had written
Speaker 1: this and he was a writer. So that was in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, I think it was. And it wasn't more
Speaker 1: than about six months later that my son and I
Speaker 1: were watching a film called The Outlaw Josie Wales by
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood, sort of his breakthrough film. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I came to the end of it it
Speaker 1: said based on the book by Forrest Carter, and I
Speaker 1: thought Forrest Carter. Didn't think about it. And the next
Speaker 1: morning I woke up and I said, Forrest Carter, Asa
Speaker 1: Carter worshiped Nathan Bedford, Forrest General Nathan, the Confederate General Nathan,
Speaker 1: So I started. It didn't turn out to be hard
Speaker 1: at all. It was like something that was in plain sight. There.
Speaker 1: All you had to do was go back to the
Speaker 1: original publication of the book, which was called Gone to
Speaker 1: Texas but became The Outlaw jose Wells, and it had
Speaker 1: the copyright. I went to the copyright thing in Washington
Speaker 1: and there was his address, Asa Carter's address in Alabama,
Speaker 1: the exact same address. He'll be ten Bears.
Speaker 5: I am ten Bears.
Speaker 1: I'm Josie Wales.
Speaker 5: I have heard you're the great writer.
Speaker 1: You would not make peace with the Bluecoats.
Speaker 5: You may go in peace. I reckon that.
Speaker 3: Got nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: Then you will die.
Speaker 1: I came here to die with you.
Speaker 5: I live, will you.
Speaker 1: It's so hard for men like you and me.
Speaker 2: It's living. It's hard, and all you've ever cared about
Speaker 2: it's been butchered and raped. Asa Carter didn't just write
Speaker 2: The Education of Little Tree. He wrote a book originally
Speaker 2: called Gone to Texas, and Clint Eastwood turned it into
Speaker 2: his breakout movie, The Outlaw Josee Wales. In this scene,
Speaker 2: the Comanche ten Bears respects Josie Wales because he didn't
Speaker 2: give in to the Union Army in the Civil War.
Speaker 2: This is a good movie and it's hard not to
Speaker 2: love the protagonist, Josie Wells, the Confederate soldier played by
Speaker 2: Clint Eastwood. Asa was a prolific novelist. Here's more from
Speaker 2: doctor Carter.
Speaker 1: And then I began looking in this forest. Carter, operating
Speaker 1: out of Applene, Texas, had written four books, The Outlaw
Speaker 1: of Josie Wells, a Vengeance, Trail of Josie Wells, and
Speaker 1: a book called A Watch Far Mail on the Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is a fictional biography of Geronimo.
Speaker 5: It's a really good book.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's the best book he ever wrote,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty accurate, but it's also is just powerfully written.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the major writers and reviewed it
Speaker 1: in New York Times said this is the best book
Speaker 1: ever written by a Native American.
Speaker 2: And then they believed Forrest Carter was.
Speaker 1: From from East Tennessee who had spent years as a
Speaker 1: cowboy out in the way, moved out west and was
Speaker 1: a cowboy out there, a Cherokee cowboy.
Speaker 2: So if Seymour trammell knew this, yes, who would have
Speaker 2: known this?
Speaker 3: Lots of people, So all the people in Alabama.
Speaker 1: Not all but his close friends knew.
Speaker 2: Who knew that Asa Carter was Forest Carter? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I guess there wasn't they were They just kind
Speaker 2: of why wouldn't they have brought that up?
Speaker 3: Or was it just they thought it was his pen name.
Speaker 2: They just didn't see any relevance to it.
Speaker 1: A whole range of things. Sometimes some of them said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, he'd never have gotten anything published as far
Speaker 1: as Asa Carter because of all the trouble he got
Speaker 1: into in the fifties as a white supremacist. A lot
Speaker 1: of it though Clay was I'm going to show those
Speaker 1: Yankee liberals. A lot of his close friends, I mean,
Speaker 1: for example, as Forrest Carter, when the Outlaw Josie Wells
Speaker 1: came out, he was introduced and interviewed on The Today
Speaker 1: Show with Barbara Walters, which is one of the most
Speaker 1: watched television shows in America at the time, and he
Speaker 1: told several people back in Alabama that he was going
Speaker 1: to be on the Today Show, and his friends thought
Speaker 1: it was hilarious that he was tricking this Yankee newspaper
Speaker 1: order and it was kind of a big joke.
Speaker 5: I mean, one of his closest friends.
Speaker 1: Ray Andrews said, I literally lay down the floor laughing,
Speaker 1: and another one of his friends kept saying, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I hope she doesn't ask him about the Cuklut Slam,
Speaker 1: which he had a cuklut Slam group. So that was
Speaker 1: part of it. But here's the other thing that's so
Speaker 1: fascinating to me, Clay is when that show ran, the
Speaker 1: switchboard at the Today Show lit up with people from
Speaker 1: Alabama who were not his friends, say, you people are stupid.
Speaker 1: This isn't Forrest Carter, it's Asa Carter. And they totally
Speaker 1: ignored it. His editor said, this nonsense. You know I
Speaker 1: know him, I've known him for years. Of course he's
Speaker 1: an Indian. Absolutely, he's an Indian. His movie agent, she
Speaker 1: wrote a wire. She said, I couldn't believe that I'd
Speaker 1: had him in my house. I knew he was an Indian.
Speaker 1: He looked like an Indian, he talked like an Indian,
Speaker 1: he acted like an Indian. And it was just a
Speaker 1: kind of to me. It's an example of how you
Speaker 1: get your mindset in a certain way and you just
Speaker 1: don't change it. The other thing that was critical, I
Speaker 1: think you think about this now. This is the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: There's no internet, no internet.
Speaker 1: And there's no way for social media to catch up
Speaker 1: amplify any of this. This could never have happened in
Speaker 1: after two thousand and five or twenty ten, you know.
Speaker 1: But at that time it simply disappeared. The story simply disappeared.
Speaker 1: And the claims Wayne Greenhaw, his friend of mine, I
Speaker 1: discovered and I didn't even know this at the time.
Speaker 1: He wrote a story in nineteen seventy five saying that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities he said, between Asa
Speaker 1: Carter and Forrest Carter. This is when he was big
Speaker 1: time with the movie with Clint Eastwood and everything, and
Speaker 1: he pitched it to the New York Times, and they
Speaker 1: were so scared of being sued that they changed that
Speaker 1: story and it appeared in the New York Times. But
Speaker 1: it was so ambivalent that you couldn't figure out whether.
Speaker 3: He really was or wasn't really.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventy five, yeah, in New York Times said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that Eric Carter.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of similarities between the.
Speaker 2: Two, talk about pulling the wool over the eyes of America.
Speaker 2: And before he died he would outright deny that he
Speaker 2: was as of Carter. In part two of the series,
Speaker 2: We're going to learn a lot more about Ace's life
Speaker 2: and why he did what he did. Before we go
Speaker 2: any further, we've got to understand this book. The first
Speaker 2: thing we have to do is understand The Education of
Speaker 2: Little Tree, because it will show us a window into
Speaker 2: the mind of Ace of Carter. Here's Steve Ranella and I.
Speaker 2: The Education of Little Tree was written in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: six by a man who went by the name of.
Speaker 4: Forrest Carter, and it was initially understood to be a
Speaker 4: was taken to be autobiographic.
Speaker 2: Autobiographical of a young Cherokee Indian boy and his parents
Speaker 2: die and he goes to live with his grandparents in
Speaker 2: the mountains.
Speaker 4: Very late on backstory, I mean it opens with a
Speaker 4: collection of people trying to figure out what to do
Speaker 4: with an orphaned child. Yeah, he latches onto his grandpa's
Speaker 4: leg and stays there without saying anything, without crying, holding
Speaker 4: his legs so long that eventually it's just determined that
Speaker 4: the grandpa will bring him home.
Speaker 3: He's five.
Speaker 5: No one's got a better idea.
Speaker 3: The boys five years old.
Speaker 2: The story is this boy being leaving his mother and
Speaker 2: father who have died.
Speaker 4: I think it was just like out of let's agree
Speaker 4: to use the terminology used by the author.
Speaker 5: Okay, the boy is.
Speaker 4: It's clear up front the boy is regarded as a
Speaker 4: bastard child. Okay, he's but he's not. His parents were
Speaker 4: married in the Cherokee way, but there's a treatment of
Speaker 4: him as such. And he goes to live with his
Speaker 4: full Cherokee grandmother and his half Cherokee, half Waite grandfather,
Speaker 4: who is very much presented to be very much.
Speaker 5: Of the Cherokee.
Speaker 2: And so the book is basically just a few years
Speaker 2: of his of the boy's life. It's just it's a
Speaker 2: small sliver of time when his grandfather teaches him essentially
Speaker 2: how to how to be a man, and how to
Speaker 2: be a Cherokee, and how to survive in the modern
Speaker 2: modern world and time. The opening chapter of the book,
Speaker 2: they go and trap turkeys, They fox hunt with hounds.
Speaker 2: The grandfather in later chapters teaches the boy how to
Speaker 2: make moonshine.
Speaker 5: That's his trade. He's in the whiskey.
Speaker 2: Trade, right, And so the book is about the education
Speaker 2: of Little Tree because the boy quickly when he comes
Speaker 2: home with his grandfather, is named Little Tree.
Speaker 4: He's learning very practical skills, when to plant, how to
Speaker 4: fertilize soil, how to make whiskey, how to catch calffish,
Speaker 4: all these very practical skills. But what he's really getting
Speaker 4: the education is.
Speaker 5: How to be.
Speaker 4: What is your obligation to your family, what is your
Speaker 4: obligation to the natural world around you. He gets a
Speaker 4: moral a very pure moral education by doing very practical things.
Speaker 2: The book like from a literary perspective to me, the
Speaker 2: book just reeks of you feel like you're in western
Speaker 2: North Carolina. You feel like you're in the mountains.
Speaker 4: Oh, I feel it feels completely authentic. Yeah, well, let
Speaker 4: me say this. You know when you're watching some kind
Speaker 4: of poorly done show or movie and there's a scene
Speaker 4: that involves a contractor, okay, and the contractor is doing something,
Speaker 4: someone's doing a construction thing or preparing something, and you're
Speaker 4: watching it and you know that that actor has never
Speaker 4: repaired anything. Yeah, and you know that no one on
Speaker 4: that set has ever watched someone repair something, And it's
Speaker 4: all just a stab in the dark about how someone
Speaker 4: repairing something might approach that, and there's zero authenticity. I'm
Speaker 4: sensitive to that. I don't like to see that that'll
Speaker 4: make me turn something off when I see that. In
Speaker 4: reading this, and I have a lot of exposure, not
Speaker 4: as much in the South, I have a lot of
Speaker 4: exposure to rural culture all across America. In reading this,
Speaker 4: I would say that person knows what they're talking about.
Speaker 4: That person when it comes to the physical stuff, right,
Speaker 4: that person has fished, They've been there. That person has
Speaker 4: been to a still. That person has worked in corn patches.
Speaker 4: That person has raised melons, right, that person has dealt
Speaker 4: with dogs.
Speaker 2: Let me read you another section Steve about when he
Speaker 2: was out at night and as a coon hunter myself.
Speaker 2: When I read this, I was like, this guy has
Speaker 2: been in the mountains at night, because he described it
Speaker 2: better than I could. They were going fox hunting, and
Speaker 2: he said dark fell in close, and the mountains moved
Speaker 2: in on either side as we walked. Before long we
Speaker 2: came to win and the trail Grandpa had taken the left,
Speaker 2: and there was no more room in the trail except
Speaker 2: for right on the edge of the spring branch. Grandpa
Speaker 2: called this the narrows seemed like you could stretch out
Speaker 2: your arms on either side and touch the mountains straight up.
Speaker 2: They went dark and feathered with tree tops, which left
Speaker 2: a thin slice of stars above us. I love that
Speaker 2: when I read that, like a thin slice of stars
Speaker 2: above us. Now this author had been there. He went
Speaker 2: on to say, way off, a mourning dove called long
Speaker 2: and throaty, and the mountains picked it up and echoed
Speaker 2: the sound over and over, carrying it further and further away,
Speaker 2: until you wondered how many mountains and hollows that call
Speaker 2: would travel, And it died away so far it was
Speaker 2: more like a memory than a sound. He said that
Speaker 2: the call of a mourning dove was more like a
Speaker 2: memory than a sound. I mean that's some good writing.
Speaker 3: That's something.
Speaker 4: It's poetic without being pretentious. It's there's just great. All
Speaker 4: the metaphor is great. They hide their still so well.
Speaker 4: He says that a bird couldn't find it. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's it just is good writing. Like it's
Speaker 4: good writing.
Speaker 2: Steve said he recognized authenticity in this author. I want
Speaker 2: to read an excerpt where Grandpa is telling a childhood
Speaker 2: story about a Civil War vet named Coonjack who gets
Speaker 2: offended in church. Coonjack stood up and said, I here
Speaker 2: tell the sum in here been talking about me behind
Speaker 2: my back, and I want you to know that I'm awares.
Speaker 2: I know what's the matter with you. You're jealous because the
Speaker 2: deacon board put me in charge of the key to
Speaker 2: the song box. Well, let me tell you, and if
Speaker 2: you don't like it, I got the difference right here
Speaker 2: in my pocket. Grandpa said, sure enough. Coonjack lifted his
Speaker 2: deer shirt and showed a pistol handle he was stomping.
Speaker 1: Mad.
Speaker 2: Grandpa said that church house was full of some hard men,
Speaker 2: including his Paul, who would soon as not shoot you
Speaker 2: if the weather changed. And nobody raised an eyebrow, he said,
Speaker 2: his pau stood up and said, Coonjack, every man here
Speaker 2: admires the way you've handled the key to the songbook box,
Speaker 2: best handling ever been done. If words have been mistook
Speaker 2: to cause you discomfort, I here and now state the
Speaker 2: sorrow of every man present. Konjack sat down, total mollified
Speaker 2: and contented, as.
Speaker 3: Was everybody else.
Speaker 2: On the way home, Grandpa asked his paw why Konjack
Speaker 2: could get away with such talk, and Grandpa said that
Speaker 2: he got to laughing about Konjack acting so important over
Speaker 2: the key to the songbook box, and he said his
Speaker 2: paw told him Son don't laugh at Coonjack. You see,
Speaker 2: when the Cherokee was forced to give up his home
Speaker 2: and go to the nations, Coonjack was young, and he
Speaker 2: hid out in the mountains, and he fought to hold on.
Speaker 2: When the war between the states come, he saw maybe
Speaker 2: he could fight that same government and get back the
Speaker 2: lands and home. He fought hard both times he lost.
Speaker 2: When the war ended, the politicians set in trying to
Speaker 2: get what was left of what he had. Koonjack fought
Speaker 2: him and run and hid and thought some more. You see,
Speaker 2: Coonjack came up in a time of fighting. All he's
Speaker 2: got now is the key to the songbook box. And
Speaker 2: if Konjack seems cantankerous, well there ain't nothing left for
Speaker 2: Coonjack to fight. He never knowed nothing else. Grandpa said,
Speaker 2: he come might near crying for old Coonjack. He said
Speaker 2: that after that, it didn't matter what Konjack said or did.
Speaker 2: He loved him because he understood him. He loved him
Speaker 2: because he understood that's powerful empathy and deep insight into
Speaker 2: human nature. When we heard Forrest Carter right about the
Speaker 2: natural world, it's clear he had experienced it. But also
Speaker 2: when I hear him talk about empathy and understanding people's issues.
Speaker 2: It feels just as authentic. I want to read you
Speaker 2: one more excerpt, and it's a window into the home
Speaker 2: of Little Tree's grandma and Grandpa. Will learn that Grandpa's
Speaker 2: name is Wales. Grandma's name was Bonnie B. I knew
Speaker 2: that when I heard him late at night say I
Speaker 2: ken ya, Bonnie B. He was saying I love you.
Speaker 2: When they would be talking, Grandma would say, do you
Speaker 2: kin me, Wales, and he would answer, I kenya. It
Speaker 2: meant I understand you. To them, love and understanding was
Speaker 2: the same thing. Grandma said. You couldn't love something you
Speaker 2: didn't understand, nor could you love people nor God if
Speaker 2: you didn't understand the people and God. Grandpa and Grandma
Speaker 2: had an understanding, and so they had a love. Grandma
Speaker 2: said the understanding run deeper as the years went by,
Speaker 2: and she reckoned it would get beyond anything mortal folks
Speaker 2: could think upon or explain, and so they called it ken.
Speaker 2: Grandpa said, back before his time, ken folks meant any
Speaker 2: folks that you understood and had an understanding with, so
Speaker 2: it meant loved folks. But people got selfish and brought
Speaker 2: it down to mean just blood relatives, but that actually
Speaker 2: it was never meant to mean that you can't love
Speaker 2: something you don't understand. These uneducated hill folks mapped out
Speaker 2: and functionalized love in a way they suspected mortal people
Speaker 2: couldn't understand or explain. They recognized that genuine love and
Speaker 2: understanding should be spread much wider than the rudimentary understanding
Speaker 2: of blood relatives. Ken folks are all the people that
Speaker 2: you truly understand and that understand you, and thus you
Speaker 2: love them. This is deeply philosophical, and it sprung from
Speaker 2: the creative loins of a racial supremacist. This would be
Speaker 2: the last thing that we think he'd under stand. Incredible
Speaker 2: writers usually have a uniquely comprehensive grasp on their topic
Speaker 2: of expertise, and in this situation, Asa Carter's expertise was
Speaker 2: on the inner gold and purest character of these marginalized people.
Speaker 2: This man seemed to truly understand love, which begs the
Speaker 2: question of where did he get access to this? We're
Speaker 2: roiling towards a deeper and more difficult question, though. Does
Speaker 2: the outside life of an author matter or should the
Speaker 2: content simply be taken for what it is? Can we
Speaker 2: draw meaningful ideas from a flawed source.
Speaker 3: I want you to be thinking about that.
Speaker 2: And doctor Carter has some ideas, and he's going to
Speaker 2: show us a place where ASA didn't get it quite right.
Speaker 1: Writers are not perfect people, and their backgrounds are off
Speaker 1: on things that make us cringe, and yet we can
Speaker 1: still look at their books and their works. Their writing
Speaker 1: works is great worthwhile we don't know. Shakespeare may have
Speaker 1: been a jerk, you know, for all we know. But
Speaker 1: the other thing I think it was mixed in with
Speaker 1: this Clay was having interviewed Native Americans who did know
Speaker 1: something about Cherokee culture, and they found the book some
Speaker 1: of it interesting. They didn't dislike the book at all,
Speaker 1: but they found it false in some respects, and they
Speaker 1: talked about how he got some of it right, but
Speaker 1: he got some of it fundamentally wrong, and they talked.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that they found most bewildering and
Speaker 1: they disliked the most, was that they felt reading it
Speaker 1: that it was more kind of New Age philosophy in
Speaker 1: which you're embracing Native American ideas but not really authentically capturing.
Speaker 1: I'll give you just one example. I mean, there's some examples.
Speaker 1: One of them is a language which was made up.
Speaker 1: It's not Cherokee. But that didn't that didn't bother them.
Speaker 1: You know, what bothered them, both of them, was that
Speaker 1: the ideas he expressed about the cosmos, about the world
Speaker 1: religious view of Cherokees tended to be vague earth mother,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of thing. And what what both
Speaker 1: of them said is that Cherokee's ideas about God, the
Speaker 1: Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is very
Speaker 1: deeply rooted in specifics. And one of them was very
Speaker 1: eloquent talking about how he talks about how beautiful a
Speaker 1: mountain is, and he said, he's a good writer, you know,
Speaker 1: he can describe just but he said, a Cherokee would
Speaker 1: describe precisely the mountain, the name of it, the exact river.
Speaker 1: Everything has to be specific because it's very specific to
Speaker 1: their world view. And he said this does a site
Speaker 1: specific sites said yes, site specific religion, everything. And one
Speaker 1: of them said, very he grew up in an area
Speaker 1: where there were lots of whites as well as and
Speaker 1: he said, uh, it struck me reading it that it's
Speaker 1: this mixture of both Indian life and white rife. He said,
Speaker 1: for example, virtually no Indians made corn whiskey. Uh it
Speaker 1: was a white man's thing, and it was they didn't
Speaker 1: drink it. They did, but but he said, Scotch Irish
Speaker 1: were pretty tight about that, and you get into trouble
Speaker 1: if you started. They were the ones that controlled control
Speaker 1: of the whiskey making business.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: So it was also that they didn't think nullified the book.
Speaker 5: But and they wasn't quite consistent.
Speaker 1: But it's not really And so their whole thing was
Speaker 1: read it as a I saw it or a kind
Speaker 1: of novel, but don't give it out to students and
Speaker 1: say this is Cherokee life.
Speaker 2: Shakespeare may have been a jerk. That's funny, doctor Dan T.
Speaker 5: Carter.
Speaker 2: And the truth is we don't really know much about
Speaker 2: Shakespeare's private life. And if you remember, we've heard about
Speaker 2: site specific religions and our tacumpsas series Doctor Dave Edmunds
Speaker 2: said that that was part of why relocating Native Americans
Speaker 2: was so devastating to their culture. We're going to now
Speaker 2: get back into the fabric of this book with mister
Speaker 2: Steve Ranella. Did y'all hear that CBS called him the
Speaker 2: Julia Childs of the Campfire?
Speaker 3: That's funny. Here's Steve.
Speaker 4: Part of the education of Little Tree b on the
Speaker 4: things that we spoke about being how to utilize the
Speaker 4: landscape through hunting, fishing, agriculture, how to treat the landscape
Speaker 4: with respect, how to treat the people around you and
Speaker 4: the people you love with respect and empathy, and how
Speaker 4: to not be boastful or prideful, and how to behave
Speaker 4: in a discreete fashion. There is also another thing that
Speaker 4: little Tree is educated on are the evils of pretty
Speaker 4: much everything that is organized. He has taught to understand
Speaker 4: that politicians are by definition corrupt, that the education system
Speaker 4: is corrupt in and of itself, government is corrupt, organized
Speaker 4: religion is corrupt. You have your word, you have the
Speaker 4: promises of the people around you, but anything that comes
Speaker 4: from you that has been institutionalized you should be very
Speaker 4: suspicious of. And that is like a key part of
Speaker 4: the education.
Speaker 2: And it comes about in such natural ways inside the books, sure,
Speaker 2: like for instance, the grandfather is making whiskey and there's
Speaker 2: a whiskey tax, so they have to hide their still
Speaker 2: so they don't pay the tax. So in the book,
Speaker 2: the grandfather loves George Washington until he finds out that
Speaker 2: Washington is the one that instituted the whiskey tax, and
Speaker 2: then he really tries to justify, like, how could Washington
Speaker 2: have done? That?
Speaker 4: Must have been a mistake. Yeah, he seethes. He can't
Speaker 4: get it out of his head. He normally refuses, he
Speaker 4: likes to walk, refuses to be picked up by a car,
Speaker 4: allows himself to get picked up by a car just
Speaker 4: so he can ask the driver of the car what
Speaker 4: he thinks about what Washington did. He can't get it
Speaker 4: out of his head. Yeah, in his mind. If I
Speaker 4: grow corn on my land and I have a contraption
Speaker 4: I made on my land and I can take my
Speaker 4: corn and make a beverage with it, how in the
Speaker 4: world is this anything?
Speaker 5: How does this have anything to do with the government?
Speaker 4: Yeah, explain like what has gone bad? When I've done
Speaker 4: this all with my hands, so on my.
Speaker 2: Property, beautifully laid out. Because the grandfather, you trust him
Speaker 2: so much. He's so straightforward, he's so certain, he's so naive,
Speaker 2: but he's so honest, like you, just the writer wants
Speaker 2: you to think, this man sees the world in his
Speaker 2: most simplistic terms, but the right way. It's hard not
Speaker 2: to love Grandpa. He and little Tree once had to
Speaker 2: bury a fox dog named Ringer that had died on
Speaker 2: the hunt, and little Tree was very sad. This is
Speaker 2: what Grandpa said. And it's important to know that this
Speaker 2: book is written in dialect, so sometimes it sounds kind
Speaker 2: of funny when you take it out of context. Grandpa said,
Speaker 2: everything you lost which you had loved, give you that feeling.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 2: The only way around it was to not love anything
Speaker 2: which was worse, because you would feel empty all the time.
Speaker 2: Grandpa said, supposing old Ringer had not been faithful, then
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be proud of him. That would be a
Speaker 2: worse feeling, which is right. Grandpa said, when I got old,
Speaker 2: I would remember old Ringer, and I would like it.
Speaker 3: He said. It was a funny thing. But when you got.
Speaker 2: Old and remember them you loved, you only remembered the good,
Speaker 2: never the bad, which proved the bad didn't count.
Speaker 3: Know how the bad didn't count. Know how.
Speaker 2: That's deeply philosophical too. It makes me wonder if Asa
Speaker 2: hoped his life would be judged by the same rules
Speaker 2: as Ringer. Here's more from Steve Ranella, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: get into something a bit more serious.
Speaker 4: There's a thing we haven't looked into which is the
Speaker 4: philosophy and viewpoints on poverty. Almost everybody in this book
Speaker 4: is exceptionally poor, very very poor, like cash economies of
Speaker 4: sub one thousand dollars annually. When Little Tree and his
Speaker 4: grandpa go to sell their bootleg whiskey as a store,
Speaker 4: the storekeeper will always have Little Tree do an errand
Speaker 4: for him. The storekeeper wants to reward Little Tree with
Speaker 4: a piece of candy, but he knows that he cannot
Speaker 4: give Little Tree a piece of candy for free, so
Speaker 4: he needs to put it to Little Tree that he
Speaker 4: has expired candy. He can't sell. It feels very wasteful
Speaker 4: throwing it out, and that Little Tree would be doing
Speaker 4: him a favor to take a piece of the candy.
Speaker 4: Under those conditions, Little Tree will eat that candy. Little
Speaker 4: Tree meets the daughter of a sharecropper at the store.
Speaker 4: She has no shoes. Little Tree's grandma makes her a
Speaker 4: pair of moccasins. He gives the girl a pair of
Speaker 4: moccasins the next time they go to the store. When
Speaker 4: the girl's sharecropper father sees her in the moccasins and
Speaker 4: sees how glad she is, he gets a stick and
Speaker 4: whips her until she bleeds, makes her give the moccasins
Speaker 4: back to little tree. You think the grandpa is going
Speaker 4: to condemn the man. The grandpa says, I understand, they
Speaker 4: can't get used to nice stuff. They'll never have nice stuff.
Speaker 4: There's no reason for her to want things she won't
Speaker 4: get them. So I understand why he had to do
Speaker 4: what he had to do, like a great reluctance to condemn.
Speaker 4: And then sometimes I'm like, it's like a vicious scene. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but he's like, I understand. He was not for me
Speaker 4: to judge.
Speaker 2: The grandfather was very empathetic towards people. And that's a
Speaker 2: word that will go back to because when you see
Speaker 2: that whoever wrote this book was trying to I mean,
Speaker 2: it feels like they were trying to promote a message
Speaker 2: of empathy.
Speaker 4: On the issue of empathy, and it is. There is
Speaker 4: a very strong environmental message, like a rigid, very strong
Speaker 4: environmental message. There's a lot of all empathy.
Speaker 2: Nowhere is there an environmental message in this The environmental
Speaker 2: message of that trees are sentient life forms, Okay, that
Speaker 2: you don't cut one down for no reason.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They would mostly try to only use trees that had
Speaker 4: been felled by lightning strucks, or that fell over. You
Speaker 4: could communicate through trees not to take more than your
Speaker 4: share of anything. That if you didn't love birds, birds
Speaker 4: won't show themselves to you. If you didn't love game animals,
Speaker 4: game animals won't come near you. They know that you
Speaker 4: love them, they want to be near you. It's a
Speaker 4: really strong environmental message, and it's got teeth right. Bad
Speaker 4: things can befall people that disrespect nature. It's not just
Speaker 4: appealing to emotion and beauty. It's like these are like
Speaker 4: real things with real implications, like you can cut yourself
Speaker 4: off from life by disrespecting nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But within all that, all the messages of empathy, there's
Speaker 4: another message there too, and it can be read in
Speaker 4: a way that reflects on what I said to you
Speaker 4: when I talked about institutions. It teaches empathy, but it
Speaker 4: teaches something else too. I mean it teaches distrust.
Speaker 2: Distrust for the organized systems of man, primarily the government,
Speaker 2: are strong themes of the book. However, they're presented in
Speaker 2: such conjunction with the lovable protagonists. I feel like it
Speaker 2: would be hard for anyone to disagree with its sentiment,
Speaker 2: as it's presented, and the fact that a Cherokee Indian
Speaker 2: is the one making the judgment, it feels very just
Speaker 2: like he's got the right to believe that, And in general,
Speaker 2: I'd say I feel the same way. Here's Steve bringing
Speaker 2: closure to this book.
Speaker 4: There's something that happens really interesting in the book. From
Speaker 4: a structural standpoint, the main plot point, the main conflict,
Speaker 4: isn't even introduced until the end of the book. There's
Speaker 4: a definition of story that goes that a story is
Speaker 4: someone or something wants something, but there are obstacles to
Speaker 4: them getting it. A story is someone or something overcoming
Speaker 4: obstacles to get what they want. Okay, that's true of
Speaker 4: The Tortoise and the Hair, It's true of Shakespeare's works, right,
Speaker 4: It's like, that's what story is. The conflict in this
Speaker 4: book only comes up in the end. The conflict, the
Speaker 4: real conflict in the book, comes up that eventually the
Speaker 4: institutions that little Tree has been trained to be suspicious
Speaker 4: of the institutions come for him. It emerges you don't
Speaker 4: even know who. It emerges that people have complained that
Speaker 4: this boy is being raised, this bastard child, is being
Speaker 4: raised by heathens and isn't going to get a formal education,
Speaker 4: and that they don't have formal custodial rights over him.
Speaker 4: They're just sort of they fell into being his caretakers.
Speaker 4: And all you've seen is the extremes the grandmother and
Speaker 4: grandfather have gone through to give him, like the best
Speaker 4: of everything, the best moral education, the best work education.
Speaker 4: He has a study from the dictionary. They have the
Speaker 4: librarian recommend books to bring home that neither of them
Speaker 4: can read, so that the grandma can read them the books.
Speaker 4: He's getting a formal education. And then the suits show
Speaker 4: up and say he's not being educated, and they take
Speaker 4: him away. No sooner does he go away though. That
Speaker 4: conflict is resolved and he's back home. It's like the
Speaker 4: thing you expect to be coming the whole time comes
Speaker 4: in the end and it gets resolved very quickly, but
Speaker 4: then you quickly launch into this this other thing, and
Speaker 4: then the heartbreak because then everyone he cares about dies.
Speaker 4: His friend that we haven't talked about, Willow John, dies,
Speaker 4: the grandpa dies, the grandma dies.
Speaker 5: Then you go through.
Speaker 4: All of the dogs dying one by one until he's alone.
Speaker 4: Then the book, without any the book just ends. He
Speaker 4: buries the last dog and it's done. There's not even
Speaker 4: the sentence the mule dies, So it's Southern literature. There's
Speaker 4: a dead mule, all the dogs die.
Speaker 5: It's yeah, and you have no idea like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're left. We don't know what happened.
Speaker 5: Only we don't even know.
Speaker 4: We don't know what kind of person he became, because
Speaker 4: even when you get into the end, when he leaves home,
Speaker 4: he just walks away.
Speaker 5: When he leaves, he walks out, shuts.
Speaker 4: The door behind him, and walks out, And we don't
Speaker 4: see him come up against anything moral. We don't see
Speaker 4: him come up against any conflict. We don't see him
Speaker 4: interact with any other human. We just see him go
Speaker 4: through the act of burying everything he loves in an
Speaker 4: areas alone. You assume that he carries with him this
Speaker 4: strong moral compass, but we don't see it.
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, everything dies. If you choose to read this book,
Speaker 2: which I would recommend, you have to take the big
Speaker 2: boy approach, knowing all the while what's coming, while still
Speaker 2: allowing it to take you on a journey. It's a
Speaker 2: double whammy because you'll also know Asa Carter's story too.
Speaker 2: In this closing section, Steve asked me a very difficult
Speaker 2: question and then delves into a very serious topic in
Speaker 2: today's America. It's good insight from Steve.
Speaker 4: When you were working on this, I've spoke to you
Speaker 4: and you mentioned talking to an academic who said to you,
Speaker 4: you know that book's been blacklist blacklisted. I understand that,
Speaker 4: and I understand why I was given the book not
Speaker 4: as a kid, but as a student, as a college student,
Speaker 4: and I was very quickly after giving the book, I
Speaker 4: was invited to wrestle with the identity of the author.
Speaker 4: Here's a question for you. Do you read this to
Speaker 4: your kid? I can't decide. Hmmm, man, eight ten and twelve.
Speaker 4: My kids are eight ten and twelve. Do I read
Speaker 4: them that book and then say, let me tell you
Speaker 4: something about that person?
Speaker 3: A tough question.
Speaker 5: I haven't.
Speaker 2: But that is the biggest question here is that I
Speaker 2: read this book and was fascinated by it, not even
Speaker 2: looking at what we know about the author, but just
Speaker 2: the connection to nature. The way the grandfather presented the
Speaker 2: world to little Tree was just so interesting, and it
Speaker 2: would be hard to find fault with much of it,
Speaker 2: even the stuff about the government. I mean, a lot
Speaker 2: of people I think would read it and be like, yeah.
Speaker 4: After the fact, after the revelations came out, people came
Speaker 4: forward and like, well, you know, it is very stereotypical,
Speaker 4: and the characters very stereotypical.
Speaker 5: But go find me people that were saying that in
Speaker 5: the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they weren't. It's a full Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 4: It's a real tough one. Once people were armed with
Speaker 4: the truth, then they found all kinds of things. Well,
Speaker 4: once they knew it, you know what, once they knew
Speaker 4: what they were looking for, they found it. But they
Speaker 4: didn't find it ahead of.
Speaker 2: Time, right, Steve, you tell me what you think happened here.
Speaker 2: I could not find an academic person. It's someone that
Speaker 2: worked for university literary professor that would talk to me
Speaker 2: about this book. And it wasn't necessary. At first, I thought,
Speaker 2: this book is well. The first person that did respond said, hey,
Speaker 2: you realize this book has been blacklisted. That was essentially
Speaker 2: his response, and I said, yeah, that's why I want
Speaker 2: to talk about it. And then I began to get
Speaker 2: the feeling that people didn't want to talk about it, yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's just like, hey, don't even go there. But
Speaker 2: I also think that I was sending emails out to
Speaker 2: a bunch of people in contacting a big, wide web
Speaker 2: of people, which we did, to which we had very
Speaker 2: little response, which is unusual. I've rarely been found a
Speaker 2: book that I couldn't find somebody willing to talk to
Speaker 2: me about. I think that might also be a response
Speaker 2: to the thing being blacklisted thirty years ago. Absolutely so,
Speaker 2: just nobody's read it, nobody's read it in thirty years, and.
Speaker 4: They're gonna be afraid to talk about it now. I
Speaker 4: know you don't like to get like overtly political. I'm
Speaker 4: not going to get political, but I'm going to make
Speaker 4: a point about something.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 4: At a time Republicans. At a time, the Republican Party
Speaker 4: was free trade in nation building. Okay, you just go
Speaker 4: back to the Neo kons free trade, nation building. It's
Speaker 4: now not right. So there's protectionism, not free trade, emerging
Speaker 4: as a pronomenant thing in the Republican Party. Protectionism and isolationism,
Speaker 4: not meddling and not meddling in foreign affairs. Okay, protecting
Speaker 4: our own trade, not meddling in foreign affairs. Had you
Speaker 4: said ten years ago what a Republican is, you'd have
Speaker 4: brought up nation building and free trade. So things change
Speaker 4: Universities used to be heralded as a place where there
Speaker 4: was a free exchange of ideas, where you could talk
Speaker 4: about dangerous stuff. They're not now, by and large, universities
Speaker 4: have become places where you need to tread very lightly.
Speaker 4: You do not talk about dangerous stuff because you will
Speaker 4: get reprimanded, and you'll get blacklisted, and you'll lose your job.
Speaker 4: Universities have somehow become somewhat anti intellectual, and they have
Speaker 4: become places where people are afraid of the exchange of ideas.
Speaker 4: So that you're now not going to be able to
Speaker 4: get someone to talk to you about this book. Is
Speaker 4: because they probably want to.
Speaker 5: They're scared.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because someone's going to come for them for talking
Speaker 4: about dangerous stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I guess now, if you want to talk about dangerous
Speaker 4: stuff and free ideas, you got to listen to the
Speaker 4: bar Grease podcast.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Steve Ranella, the old guy in the country that would
Speaker 2: talk to me about the education of Little Tree. We
Speaker 2: ended on a light note, but the content was very serious.
Speaker 2: Often it seems the people who demand tolerance in their
Speaker 2: pursuit of enforcing it are incredibly intolerant. We live in
Speaker 2: a messed up world, and the most powerful contribution we have,
Speaker 2: bigger than voting, bigger than shouting down the crazies, bigger
Speaker 2: than fighting foreign armies, bigger than our political doctrine, is
Speaker 2: to build our individual lives and families intentionally, introspectively, empathetically
Speaker 2: and with an unembittered, humble boldness towards truth. And it
Speaker 2: helps to have a macro perspective of history that shows
Speaker 2: us that life is short, and our lives are like
Speaker 2: the flowers.
Speaker 3: Of the field.
Speaker 2: We pop up, then fade away. And I believe with
Speaker 2: great certainty that will give account for our lives after
Speaker 2: our death, and that knowledge is a powerful driver in
Speaker 2: my life and actions here. I want to have integrity.
Speaker 2: That's why fearlessly looking back into our history at some
Speaker 2: bad stuff and sorting through it will help us navigate
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: I think this is powerful stuff.
Speaker 2: And man as crazy as Asa Carter was, I cannot
Speaker 2: lie my life was enriched by reading the Education of Littletree.
Speaker 3: I don't fully understand it.
Speaker 2: You have to make that decision for yourself if you'd
Speaker 2: read this book to your kids. On the next episode,
Speaker 2: we'll again have Steve Vanella and doctor Dan Carr, and
Speaker 2: we'll look even deeper into the double life of Asa
Speaker 2: Carter and try to make sense of his life to
Speaker 2: decide if he was a changed man, a con man,
Speaker 2: or a crazy man. It's gonna be really good. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for listening to bear Grease, and don't
Speaker 2: forget our big news about my bro Brent Reeves and
Speaker 2: his new podcast, This Country Life that'll be on this
Speaker 2: Bear Grease podcast feed. I hope you have a great
Speaker 2: week and I look forward to discussing this with the
Speaker 2: crew next week on the Bear Grease Render.