Speaker 1: Hello Wilder listeners, it's producer Emily again with one more
Speaker 1: very special episode. Thank you for your patients. As we're
Speaker 1: working on our final episode and it's going to be
Speaker 1: well worth the wait. I promise it's the episode where
Speaker 1: Glennis will come to some big conclusions on how to
Speaker 1: think and feel about Laura Ingles Wilder. Over the past year,
Speaker 1: as we've researched and recorded the show, one of the
Speaker 1: people who's really shaped our thinking on Laura and her
Speaker 1: work is Caroline Fraser, author of the Poll surprize winning
Speaker 1: biography of Laura Prairie Fires. You've heard us mentioned Prairie
Speaker 1: Fires a lot in the show, and you've even heard
Speaker 1: Caroline in previous episodes. But as we're coming to some
Speaker 1: big conclusions on all things Laura, we thought it was
Speaker 1: worth airing her full interview before we get started. I
Speaker 1: actually have a request for you. We're still accepting listener
Speaker 1: voice memos for our final episode. So if listening to
Speaker 1: Wilder has changed your thinking on Laura and the Little Housebooks,
Speaker 1: or just made you feel some big feelings about topics
Speaker 1: like children's literature, native American representation, how we portray American history,
Speaker 1: we want to hear your thoughts. Just record a voice
Speaker 1: memo through the app that's preloaded onto whatever phone you
Speaker 1: have and email it to Wilder podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you do, we might just respond to it in
Speaker 1: our final episode. We can't wait to hear your voices.
Speaker 2: Now on with the show, Caroline. Thank you.
Speaker 3: We're all such huge fans of your book, and everyone
Speaker 3: we've interviewed for this podcast is just blown away by it.
Speaker 3: So I think my first question is before we just
Speaker 3: get to the direct writing of the book. I'm just curious,
Speaker 3: I know because I've been reading you for quite some time,
Speaker 3: but I'm just curious if you could talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about what your relationship to Laura was prior to
Speaker 3: doing Prairie Fires and how you came to write this book,
Speaker 3: which is such a huge undertaking.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know, I read the books when I
Speaker 4: was a kid, and like millions of other kids, I
Speaker 4: just loved them. They were among the books that I
Speaker 4: read over and over again. That's what I did with
Speaker 4: you know, the things that I really responded to was
Speaker 4: just to kind of have it on a loop almost
Speaker 4: and just be constantly rereading. And they became very well
Speaker 4: known to me and then some years later I had
Speaker 4: the experience which I think a number of other fans
Speaker 4: of The Little House Books had, which was that I
Speaker 4: was listening to MPR in the morning before going to
Speaker 4: work and heard a piece about a biography of Laura's daughter,
Speaker 4: Rose Wilder Lane that made the argument that Rose was
Speaker 4: really the author of The Little House Books. And I
Speaker 4: was just you know, shocked and floored kind of by
Speaker 4: hearing that, and was just outraged and kind of like,
Speaker 4: you know, could this really be true? And that was
Speaker 4: the thing that kind of set me on writing initially
Speaker 4: first about that biography and the question of Wilder's authorship
Speaker 4: of her books. And that was what led many years
Speaker 4: after that to my editing The Little House Books for
Speaker 4: the Library of America. And it was really preparing that
Speaker 4: edited version. I mean, we didn't edit the text, but
Speaker 4: I wrote little notes on certain things in the text
Speaker 4: and wrote a timeline of Wilder's life. And as I
Speaker 4: was writing that timeline, I came to feel like there
Speaker 4: was a really great story about her life that hadn't
Speaker 4: really been told yet. I mean, there were biographies for children,
Speaker 4: there was a biography for adults, which was quite good,
Speaker 4: but I didn't really feel that the relationship between Laura
Speaker 4: and Rose had really been lord and the authorship question
Speaker 4: was still kind of hanging out there.
Speaker 3: We're going to get to Rose in a bit because
Speaker 3: I have a number of questions, But since we're on
Speaker 3: the writing of the book, I'm curious. You spent so
Speaker 3: much time with Laura the real person to write this biography.
Speaker 3: Did your sense of her change? How do you think
Speaker 3: about her now that you know so much about her?
Speaker 2: Is there a gap.
Speaker 3: Between who she was to you in the Little House
Speaker 3: books growing up, in the fully flashed person that you
Speaker 3: have come to bring to the page now?
Speaker 4: Oh? Sure, yeah. I mean I think as a child
Speaker 4: reading the books, I just sort of took the books
Speaker 4: at face value, which I think a lot of readers
Speaker 4: did and have and probably continue to do that. As
Speaker 4: a kid, I didn't have a particularly sophisticated understanding of
Speaker 4: what was the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and so
Speaker 4: I just Okay, these books are by Laura Ingalls Wilder,
Speaker 4: and they're about Laura Ingalls, so they must be true.
Speaker 4: So that was who Laura was to me, was the
Speaker 4: Laura in the books, the way that she has presented,
Speaker 4: but over the years as an adult and doing the
Speaker 4: work on the biography, you know, it came to see
Speaker 4: that she was a much much more complex person than
Speaker 4: I had ever appreciated, and that her adult life was really,
Speaker 4: you know, beset by all kinds of you know, tragedies
Speaker 4: that are not really dealt with in the books except
Speaker 4: for you know, the last one that was not published
Speaker 4: until after she had died. And I also, you know,
Speaker 4: came to appreciate that her relationship with her daughter was
Speaker 4: very complex and was itself you know, kind of a
Speaker 4: tragedy in her life that was just you know, never
Speaker 4: resolved in the way that a lot of relationships between
Speaker 4: mothers and daughters are not resolved, although theirs was possibly
Speaker 4: worse than some in the sense that they worked together.
Speaker 4: You know, they had a very long and complicated working
Speaker 4: relationship that itself engendered all kinds of guilt and shame
Speaker 4: and you know joy too. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 4: to say that it was all bad, but it was
Speaker 4: very complicated in Something that you know, I think has
Speaker 4: really stayed with me is the sense that we love
Speaker 4: the Little House books in part because they give us
Speaker 4: this idea of a kind of ideal family that even
Speaker 4: though they went through all these tribulations and adventures and difficulties,
Speaker 4: they still remained a cohesive, loving family. But in her
Speaker 4: own life, you know, Wilder wasn't really able to achieve that.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's not achievable, but I think for her it
Speaker 4: was a real struggle to maintain the relationship with her daughter.
Speaker 3: Seems to have maintained it with her husband to some degree.
Speaker 3: I think you say in the book which she described
Speaker 3: it as the weir in great sympathy with each other.
Speaker 3: This doesn't use the word love necessarily, but I do
Speaker 3: get the sense that that marriage at least was very
Speaker 3: close and Almonso had a very high tolerance. It sounds
Speaker 3: like for complicated women.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, yes she you know, that relationship was strong.
Speaker 4: I think till the end, although beset by all kinds
Speaker 4: of difficulties and things. I think they probably never really
Speaker 4: talked about or addressed directly, because that was just how
Speaker 4: you live. You know, if somebody had an illness or
Speaker 4: disability or you know, as Almanto did, did you talk
Speaker 4: about it? Probably not, And I don't think that they
Speaker 4: probably did.
Speaker 3: It almost seems like a survival mechanism, right, I think.
Speaker 3: And what you just raised about how complicated and difficult.
Speaker 3: Her life was like to talk about why she sat
Speaker 3: down to write the books, and the divide between how
Speaker 3: hard her life was and the way she manages to
Speaker 3: depict it in the books is extremely significant to me.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering what you think about that was, if that
Speaker 3: was shocking, or why did none of that make it
Speaker 3: into the books?
Speaker 4: Do you think they are books for children? And I
Speaker 4: think that she, especially and also Rose, had a very
Speaker 4: strong sense of what was appropriate for children, what was not,
Speaker 4: what was too much. I mean, they did show quite
Speaker 4: a bit of the kind of desolation and desperation of
Speaker 4: their lives in the Long Winter, that's the book that
Speaker 4: comes closest, I think, to showing how on the edge
Speaker 4: their lives were at moments. But I also think, and
Speaker 4: this is something that became sort of clear to me
Speaker 4: as I was writing the timeline of her life, that
Speaker 4: there was a there was a huge element of nostalgia
Speaker 4: in writing these books for Laura, And while I was
Speaker 4: writing the timeline, I could see clearly that when she
Speaker 4: and al Manzo come to the point where they have
Speaker 4: to give up in South Dakota, that they've gone through
Speaker 4: all these losses and tragedies and the houses burned down,
Speaker 4: and they realize they're going to have to leave, They're
Speaker 4: going to have to leave the state and start over
Speaker 4: somewhere else, and that that of course will necessitate leaving
Speaker 4: behind her family. That leapt out to me as a
Speaker 4: profound emotional moment in her life, because leaving then is
Speaker 4: not what it is now. I mean, now you can
Speaker 4: visit your family or relatives, even if you move halfway
Speaker 4: across the country. You can still be in touch, you
Speaker 4: can still have that closeness. But that just was not
Speaker 4: available to her, and so it really represents a wrenching
Speaker 4: kind of loss of her former life and of her
Speaker 4: relationships to her family and what those relationships consisted of.
Speaker 4: And that I think is the primary motivation behind her
Speaker 4: wanting to write about her life. I mean, it took
Speaker 4: a while for her to kind of figure out how
Speaker 4: to write about it, whether it was going to be
Speaker 4: a memoir or children's books or whatever. That was a
Speaker 4: bit of a struggle to kind of figure out. But
Speaker 4: she clearly wanted to do that for a very long time.
Speaker 4: And I think it's that emotion that nostalgia is so
Speaker 4: powerful in the books, that keeps readers coming back to them, you.
Speaker 3: Get a sense of that wrenchingness. It always stands out
Speaker 3: to me, and the end of these happy golden years,
Speaker 3: which is supposed to be the happy ending, and she's
Speaker 3: fallen in love and is going off with her husband,
Speaker 3: and yet there's an aspect of tragedy to that when
Speaker 3: she's leaving her family behind. It well, even as a child,
Speaker 3: I just made me want to cry it just like
Speaker 3: I can't believe she's leaving, right.
Speaker 2: It did make me wonder. I mean, again, we'll get
Speaker 2: to Rose.
Speaker 3: But in reading these books, and then in reading your book,
Speaker 3: and in really taking a grown up understanding of relationships
Speaker 3: to it, the sense of Paw as a child was
Speaker 3: this very magical, exciting person, and as a grown up
Speaker 3: I sort of look at him and think he's dragging
Speaker 3: this family around, he can't quite support them. But part
Speaker 3: of me, in reading them books now wonders if she
Speaker 3: was sort of redeeming It was like an argument to
Speaker 3: redeem her father's life in a way.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think that's that's really true. And you
Speaker 4: know she says something very similar to that. You know,
Speaker 4: she acknowledged that he wasn't a great provider and you
Speaker 4: know she said Paw wasn't a business man, he was
Speaker 4: a poet. And you know, I forget how the rest
Speaker 4: of the sentence goes, but she knew. I think that
Speaker 4: he had his limitation to it, that he had presented,
Speaker 4: you know, real child, just to her mother for example,
Speaker 4: to try and you know, keep the family together and
Speaker 4: in away from just complete you know, disintegration based on
Speaker 4: you know, losing everything, which you know they approach at
Speaker 4: various moments. I think the books are very much an
Speaker 4: attempt to recognize and to portray the best of her father,
Speaker 4: who she'd obviously adored and loved deeply. And you know,
Speaker 4: she again and again in the manuscripts and in her
Speaker 4: discussions with Rose, you can see her kind of stepping
Speaker 4: back from any printed acknowledgment that he was close to bankruptcy,
Speaker 4: or that he couldn't pay his debts or you know,
Speaker 4: all that stuff gets left out.
Speaker 3: There's also sort of in the same vein all of
Speaker 3: the energy and detail she puts towards food. And I
Speaker 3: think reading your book again and understanding how hungry they
Speaker 3: were and the amount of food that's in these books,
Speaker 3: and Farmer Boy has been described us as food Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: I think you know, the food in Farmer Boy is intense,
Speaker 4: and it makes a really interesting contrast to read that
Speaker 4: book with the rest of the series, you know, realizing that,
Speaker 4: of course it's written during the Depression, but also kind
Speaker 4: of comparing how successful el Mansa's family was as farmers
Speaker 4: to the Engles family, which was not putting that kind
Speaker 4: of food on the table.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to your book for a second.
Speaker 3: I'm not the only one who responded to this, but
Speaker 3: your decision to open the book with the US Dakota
Speaker 3: War was very interesting to me, and I'm curious how
Speaker 3: that decision came to be.
Speaker 2: What was your thinking behind that.
Speaker 4: That was one of the reasons why I wanted to
Speaker 4: write the book in the first place. And that happened
Speaker 4: because I was doing that work for the Library of
Speaker 4: America and writing notes defining terms or you know, place
Speaker 4: names or things that wouldn't be necessarily known to a
Speaker 4: general audience that wouldn't you know, occur in a dictionary, whatever.
Speaker 4: And one of those things that leapt out at me
Speaker 4: while doing that in Little House in the Prairie was
Speaker 4: the reference to the Minnesota massacre. And I think, I mean,
Speaker 4: how many times had I read that reference as a
Speaker 4: kid reading the books, probably a dozen times, if not more.
Speaker 4: And when I finally had to define what that was,
Speaker 4: I mean, it stopped me because I realized, I don't
Speaker 4: even know what this is, Like, what is she talking about?
Speaker 4: And so I looked it up, and I was just
Speaker 4: blown away, you know, with the answer to what that is.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just was transfixed by the story of
Speaker 4: that event, which was the US Dakota War of eighteen
Speaker 4: sixty two. It was the most bloodiest and most horrifying
Speaker 4: spectacles of American history, and certainly you know, as the
Speaker 4: event that tipped off the next thirty years in terms
Speaker 4: of you know, Indian policy and Indian removal and so forth.
Speaker 4: It was really quite shattering to kind of figure out
Speaker 4: what that is. And I just thought, I have I
Speaker 4: have to write about this. I really want to write
Speaker 4: about this because it puts her entire childhood, but also
Speaker 4: particularly the events that she covers in Little House on
Speaker 4: the Prairie, which is the most important of the series.
Speaker 4: I think in an entirely different light than I had
Speaker 4: ever understood before. And so I just felt like I
Speaker 4: have to open with this. This is just in many ways,
Speaker 4: who she was, what her life was, what her mother's relationship,
Speaker 4: and fear, intense fear of Indians. That's what that was
Speaker 4: all about. And I was also sort of shocked at
Speaker 4: my own ignorance, you know, having then discovered what this
Speaker 4: is all about, Like why didn't I know about this?
Speaker 4: You know, why doesn't everybody know about this? And certainly
Speaker 4: people in Minnesota know about it. I think it's now
Speaker 4: it's commonly taught there. But it just seemed to me
Speaker 4: something that was just waiting to be described and discussed.
Speaker 4: In relationship to Little House of the Prairie.
Speaker 3: It changed my entire understanding of that book. I am
Speaker 3: fascinated that you think Little House in the Prairie is
Speaker 3: her most important book, So I'm curious to know why
Speaker 3: you think that.
Speaker 4: I think it also is the most important historically in
Speaker 4: terms of its relationship to history, and you know, the
Speaker 4: history of the American Indian on the Great Plains, the
Speaker 4: sense of what her father is doing there on that property,
Speaker 4: the homesteading movement, and the writing. I mean, there's amazing
Speaker 4: stuff in each book, but the presentation of her childish
Speaker 4: view of what she's seeing on the prairies, her reaction
Speaker 4: to seeing the Indians ride away, as that chapter at
Speaker 4: the end has it, I think raises the level of
Speaker 4: that book to real literature. It's such a complicated book
Speaker 4: in a way, and the ending is so is so
Speaker 4: strange and keeps you wondering first her or reaction to
Speaker 4: the seeing the Indians right away and the wanting the
Speaker 4: Indian baby, you know, like crying out, I want that
Speaker 4: Indian baby. Pop, you know, get me that Indian baby.
Speaker 4: It's such a weird and and just unforgettable moment about
Speaker 4: the acquisitive and appropriation of white settlers on the planes,
Speaker 4: and it's just an indelible moment. But then there's also
Speaker 4: you know, her father's kind of tantrum at the end
Speaker 4: of you know, if I'm going to be denied this land,
Speaker 4: I'm going to just pick up and we're leaving this afternoon.
Speaker 4: It's just such a precipitous act. And that too kind
Speaker 4: of gives you a sense of how entitled settlers were
Speaker 4: in a way. I mean, I'm not saying this about
Speaker 4: Paw particularly as an individual. I'm just saying, you know
Speaker 4: that that's a lasting image of how people felt, how
Speaker 4: white people felt about land that they had no title to.
Speaker 2: I mean that clearly was a direct memory.
Speaker 3: But she was much younger when she was actually in
Speaker 3: Indian territory than she is depicted. And I was curious
Speaker 3: that you seem to really feel strongly that that book
Speaker 3: comes from direct memory, whereas I think I eventually read
Speaker 3: it as a combination of her memory and stories she'd
Speaker 3: been told by Pa growing up.
Speaker 4: When Ma presumably it's probably a combination of direct memories
Speaker 4: and reconstructing from you know, the stories she heard. But
Speaker 4: I I think she absolutely remembered going across the plains,
Speaker 4: looking out the sort of hole in the wagon cover
Speaker 4: and seeing these prairies, you know, in the grass is
Speaker 4: I think she totally remembered the scene where they crossed
Speaker 4: the river and Paw almost loses control of the wagon
Speaker 4: and they're nearly swept away. That seems to have been
Speaker 4: very closely remembered. And the thing about the pepoose, which
Speaker 4: is I mean, she said as much that this was
Speaker 4: she remembered it and just unforgettable moment for her.
Speaker 3: You said just a little bit earlier what we know
Speaker 3: today about history and white settlers, But she was writing
Speaker 3: this in the thirties, so she had some understanding of
Speaker 3: that history at her disposal, and I'm really struck now
Speaker 3: not much of that makes it into the book, and
Speaker 3: I think this is the source of so much of
Speaker 3: the controversy around the book.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't exaggerate how much she may have known about
Speaker 4: the history. There were a couple of elements that she
Speaker 4: tried to find out the name of the chief who
Speaker 4: her father may have encountered, But she didn't do very
Speaker 4: much in the way of reading history that we know of,
Speaker 4: and so I don't really know how much she knew.
Speaker 4: She did know that the land that her father had
Speaker 4: built on did not belong to much. She knew that
Speaker 4: she knew he was a squatter, which is an interesting
Speaker 4: term that she uses in letters acknowledging. Of course she
Speaker 4: doesn't use that, I don't think in the book itself.
Speaker 4: So I would not want to sort of, you know,
Speaker 4: bring a lot of present day expectations to try and
Speaker 4: explain what she knew what she didn't know. I think
Speaker 4: she knew her father was in some ways skating on
Speaker 4: than ice in Kansas, and that that's part of why
Speaker 4: they ended up leaving. But I don't know that she
Speaker 4: had any kind of modern conceptions about the fairness, or
Speaker 4: the ways in which her family was illegally appropriating things
Speaker 4: that didn't belong to them.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about the more recent criticism. What
Speaker 3: do you think is her responsibility? Was her responsibility? And
Speaker 3: is this criticism fair? I guess I don't.
Speaker 4: Have any problem with criticism. I mean, and I think
Speaker 4: the more we do it, the better off we are.
Speaker 4: The more we talk about what these books mean, about
Speaker 4: what's left out, about what is included, about racism, about this,
Speaker 4: you know, language that is disturbing on you know, all
Speaker 4: kinds of different levels. So criticism, there's nothing wrong with criticism.
Speaker 4: What I think there's something wrong with is banning books
Speaker 4: or censoring books that I don't think is appropriate. I
Speaker 4: do think that has happened with the Little Housebooks, and
Speaker 4: I do think there is an argument for not reading
Speaker 4: these books to you know, young children in a completely
Speaker 4: uncritical fashion. There have been stories about you know, Native
Speaker 4: American kids going to school in Minnesota and other states
Speaker 4: and having these books read to them, as if this
Speaker 4: is just these books are great and just accept it.
Speaker 4: That clearly is just not going to fly anymore. But
Speaker 4: can you teach the books? I don't see why not.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you would have to discuss these
Speaker 4: kinds of issues that, of course has become a minefield
Speaker 4: all over the country, that whole issue. I can't do
Speaker 4: anything about that, but I will say that I just
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any problem in criticizing or teaching
Speaker 4: the books in a critical way, in a way that
Speaker 4: opens up all these issues for discussion.
Speaker 2: All right, let's dive into Rose.
Speaker 3: When I finished your book, I wanted to write you
Speaker 3: a letter and say, how did you spend this much
Speaker 3: time with Rose?
Speaker 2: Because she was exhausting to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just generally speaking, what was it like to get
Speaker 3: to know Rose?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I think I have similar feelings about her. She's just
Speaker 4: a kind of lavishly talented but incredibly frustrating personality, somebody
Speaker 4: who has a lot to you know, offer the world
Speaker 4: and makes a lot of really questionable decisions about how
Speaker 4: to further her career, you know, in her personal life,
Speaker 4: in her relationship with her mother, in her politics, you know.
Speaker 4: And people sometimes ask me why did you talk so
Speaker 4: much about you know, why is And it was just
Speaker 4: it was absolutely inevitable, I mean, because she was wrapped
Speaker 4: up so closely in the pushing her mother to do
Speaker 4: this writing, in editing and revising and getting the books published,
Speaker 4: and even in the post publication phase where she's trying
Speaker 4: to control the legacy of the books and how people
Speaker 4: think about them, and trying to craft this very political
Speaker 4: understanding of their role. She lived with her mother and
Speaker 4: with her parents, you know, on the farm for years
Speaker 4: of her adult life, very critical years for the creation
Speaker 4: of these books in the nineteen thirties, and so it's
Speaker 4: impossible to leave her out. She has just woven into
Speaker 4: the whole story in ways that you cannot ignore.
Speaker 3: I mean, the big elephant in the room question always
Speaker 3: that led you to write this. What are your thoughts
Speaker 3: on how much of the books she's responsible for.
Speaker 4: I think that we can identify, you know, based on
Speaker 4: manuscript evidence and also style. We can certainly identify certain scenes,
Speaker 4: you know, the famous Fourth of July scenes in Farmer
Speaker 4: Boy and Little Town. I think it is that she
Speaker 4: clearly wrote and kind of inserted herself her own voice
Speaker 4: into writing, and you can definitely recognize. We also know,
Speaker 4: you know, from the manuscript evidence that we still have
Speaker 4: from you know, the Long Winter, how much Laura resisted
Speaker 4: Rose's suggestions and said, no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 4: It was a real contrast of styles where Rose was
Speaker 4: bringing this kind of sense of stability and safety and
Speaker 4: sort of gentleness to the stories, some of which is
Speaker 4: quite necessary, I think, But in other moments you can
Speaker 4: see Laura's vision, which was a much more stark, more plain,
Speaker 4: more confrontational, a little bit almost like this was the
Speaker 4: way it was, This is how hard it was to
Speaker 4: live this life. That's Laura. So you can see their
Speaker 4: contrasting styles coming through. You can see Rose, I think
Speaker 4: you can hear her in some of the dialogue. So
Speaker 4: I think we know quite a lot just from the
Speaker 4: manuscript stuff that we do have, and they both contributed
Speaker 4: a lot. But Laura was the person who wrote the books.
Speaker 4: You know, Rose was an editor. She was certainly a
Speaker 4: heavier editor than most people might conceive, but that also
Speaker 4: is not unheard of. There's a lot of history in
Speaker 4: literature that shows you editors who have played a very
Speaker 4: outsize role in crafting and cutting, and two people who
Speaker 4: don't have that experience with publishing. That may be a shock,
Speaker 4: but it's certainly a factor in many works. But I'm
Speaker 4: not one of those people who thinks that the book
Speaker 4: should be by Laura Ingles Wilder and Rose Wilderland. Now
Speaker 4: that's not how it works.
Speaker 3: I think of Rose's career of writing the unauthorized biographies
Speaker 3: of Charlie Chaplin and Jack London, and in some ways
Speaker 3: it seemed like she was attempting at certain points to
Speaker 3: do the same with her mother, and her mother was resisting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that resistance seems to grow stronger in my mind, and
Speaker 3: it probably has something to do with her writing about
Speaker 3: herself as an older character. But I feel Laura's presence
Speaker 3: exert itself increasingly as the books go along.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think she definitely became more confident as the
Speaker 4: books were published and became popular, and you know, kids
Speaker 4: were writing to her and saying, oh, you know what
Speaker 4: happens next you? And I think she realized her worth
Speaker 4: because of those things and really began to assert herself
Speaker 4: more confidently with Rose.
Speaker 3: And how much of Rose's I mean you say she
Speaker 3: was very involved in keeping an eye on the legacy
Speaker 3: of the books and the political nature of them. I'm
Speaker 3: just curious what you mean by legacy exactly when you
Speaker 3: say that.
Speaker 4: Well, there's this whole period after her mother's death when
Speaker 4: she is asserting to various people who are not just readers,
Speaker 4: but people who are trying to be involved in the
Speaker 4: museum that became of her mother's house in Mansfield. She
Speaker 4: becomes quite adamant about insisting that everything in the books
Speaker 4: is true, and that the books represent an argument for
Speaker 4: her political stance. You know, that they're an argument for
Speaker 4: self reliance, that they're a monument to hard work and
Speaker 4: you know, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all
Speaker 4: of that. I mean, she clearly wanted to present them
Speaker 4: in a public forum, and did you know, in letters
Speaker 4: and to people who she was, you know, working with
Speaker 4: and to her Accolyte, Roger McBride, who then himself runs
Speaker 4: for president as a libertarian. And so that's kind of
Speaker 4: one of the ways one of the outgrowths or you know,
Speaker 4: the things that happened as a result of her pushing
Speaker 4: this philosophy and including her mother's work as part of
Speaker 4: that philosophy.
Speaker 2: Do you think Laura shared any of those politics.
Speaker 4: She did. It's quite clear in letters that she wrote
Speaker 4: to Rose that she just accepted kind of unquestioningly a
Speaker 4: lot of roses more you know, crazier assertions and conspiracy theories,
Speaker 4: and they certainly shared at the beginning of FDR's push
Speaker 4: for the New Deal. They shared this dismay and ultimately
Speaker 4: contempt for New Deal policies for FDR, especially for Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 4: I mean Eleanor Roosevelt somehow came in for the worst
Speaker 4: of much of what they had to say. So yeah,
Speaker 4: she definitely did. She didn't publicize it in the way
Speaker 4: that Rose did. I mean Rose made it her life's
Speaker 4: work to publicize these ideas in any way that she could.
Speaker 3: I mean, their relationship was so complicated. I think about
Speaker 3: how when Laura Sold's little house in the Big Woods,
Speaker 3: Rose turned around and sort of secretly wrote, let the
Speaker 3: hurricane roar.
Speaker 2: How damaging do you think that was to their relationship?
Speaker 4: It was damaging, it was. I think the most surprising
Speaker 4: thing about it is that they were able to continue
Speaker 4: to work together professionally after that, because I think it
Speaker 4: was so upsetting to Laura and Rose. You know, it
Speaker 4: was kind of an expression of Rose's you know, passive
Speaker 4: aggression of her trying to get back at her mother
Speaker 4: for things that had happened. There were all these kind
Speaker 4: of old resentments and old you know, sort of assumptions.
Speaker 4: You know, she Rose was always saying, you know, she
Speaker 4: won't let me grow up. She doesn't you know, see
Speaker 4: me as an adult. And I can kind of sympathize
Speaker 4: with Laura in that respect, because in a lot of
Speaker 4: ways Rose didn't grow up. I mean, she continued to
Speaker 4: be very irresponsible about money and about just being you know,
Speaker 4: kind of honest with herself and honest in relationship to
Speaker 4: other people, I mean people in Mansfield. Still, there's still
Speaker 4: memories about this hanging around in Mansfield, the story. That's
Speaker 4: how big a deal it was. And so it is
Speaker 4: surprising that they were able to kind of continue on
Speaker 4: together with the.
Speaker 3: Books, especially when you consider, and I know, you make
Speaker 3: this point in the book, like Laura had a temper
Speaker 3: and she could hold a grudge. It's lucky you were
Speaker 3: on his random bad side interaction, you know, in eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty six, and lo and behold, one hundred years later,
Speaker 3: you're still getting criticized in this book. But she managed
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was guilt or what she
Speaker 3: managed to forgive her daughter. It seems like that the
Speaker 3: divide between those two aspects of her personality really stand
Speaker 3: out to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think Laura did have a really hot temper.
Speaker 4: I think she knew it. She admitted it, you know,
Speaker 4: al Manso knew about it, he talked about it. But
Speaker 4: I think she could also analyze herself later and say,
Speaker 4: you know, I need to apolog for this. I think
Speaker 4: she did apologize for some of the ways, you know,
Speaker 4: in which she hurt Rose. I don't know that Rose
Speaker 4: ever kind of achieved that ability to kind of look
Speaker 4: at herself and say, what did I do wrong? And
Speaker 4: that seemed to be impossible for her, really painful for her.
Speaker 4: And Laura could also just be very sweet, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean she she had a sweetness to her character
Speaker 4: and a generosity of spirit, which is really admirable and.
Speaker 3: Sort of miraculous when you consider that she was working
Speaker 3: from the age of nine, She was shouldering extraordinary responsibility.
Speaker 3: How does she not become a bitter person after years
Speaker 3: of that?
Speaker 4: I think some of that resentment of people that she
Speaker 4: expressed during the whole FDR period, where she would kind
Speaker 4: of rail against people who didn't want to work hard enough,
Speaker 4: or couldn't save money or you know, and it was,
Speaker 4: as I talk about in the book, was this like
Speaker 4: obvious contradiction, you know, because she herself had accepted aid
Speaker 4: from the government, and in certain ways her family, the
Speaker 4: Engles family, had accepted aid. Why was that okay for
Speaker 4: them and not okay for other people? During the depression
Speaker 4: the worst economic climate that had ever hit this country,
Speaker 4: and she just never seemed to see that. And I
Speaker 4: think that some of that bitterness that you're talking about
Speaker 4: came out in those moments, and it wasn't expressed so
Speaker 4: much personally as it was for Rose, who would attack
Speaker 4: people she knew. I mean, Rose could be kind of
Speaker 4: vicious and anti Semitic and racist and would attack individuals.
Speaker 4: You don't see that so much with Laura. You see
Speaker 4: her lamenting, you know, the state of the country and
Speaker 4: people who don't work hard and people who should just
Speaker 4: suck it up basically. But she was also generous Laura
Speaker 4: in her personal life. You know, she would give things
Speaker 4: to her sisters who were not as well off as
Speaker 4: she was.
Speaker 3: It was amazing understanding her childhood in Minnesota, particularly with
Speaker 3: the drought and the grasshoppers as a man made phenomenon,
Speaker 3: and then understanding she's writing about that period, experiencing that
Speaker 3: period while she's writing it, and that to some degree,
Speaker 3: we're experiencing a very similar absence of government environmental calamity,
Speaker 3: and it sort of brings me to this idea of Laura,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's the now as now idea of Laura
Speaker 3: is almost like a time machine.
Speaker 2: We go through her books to these different periods which
Speaker 2: are enormously relevant to the time we're living in at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And that's an interesting way to put it,
Speaker 4: because I think I think everybody's grandparents are sort of
Speaker 4: like that in a way. You know, they are if
Speaker 4: you know what to ask them, if you know how
Speaker 4: to kind of draw out from them their experience. Everybody
Speaker 4: who's lived that long life in which they went from
Speaker 4: covered wagons to airplanes or whatever. Everybody is a time machine.
Speaker 4: But not very many people wrote down what their experience was.
Speaker 4: And that was the difference with Laura. I mean, I
Speaker 4: have so many moments now where I regret, you know,
Speaker 4: I should have asked my grandmother, you know, what she
Speaker 4: thought about this or what happened then, and there's no record,
Speaker 4: you know, she's gone, there's no record, and so this
Speaker 4: is kind of one of the few records. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's certainly others, but this is an important record of
Speaker 4: what that experience was.
Speaker 2: Like, do you think that speaks to her global appeal?
Speaker 4: Oh? Absolutely, I mean, anybody who has lived through that
Speaker 4: kind of privation on any level is going to respond
Speaker 4: to her portrayal of that. And that's clearly what happened
Speaker 4: when and there were translations made of her work after
Speaker 4: the war in Japan that because they had just suffered,
Speaker 4: the Japanese, you know, after their houses have been burnt,
Speaker 4: you know, the country destroyed, mass starvation and hunger and
Speaker 4: all of that. And to read this, you know, account
Speaker 4: of people who survived, you know, something like what they
Speaker 4: were surviving, I think what became really important for a
Speaker 4: lot of Japanese children.
Speaker 2: Call and I have to ask you about the television
Speaker 2: show which you hate, as I understand it.
Speaker 4: So I never say that I hate the show, but
Speaker 4: I do have a lot of problems with Michael Landon
Speaker 4: and his I just I feel that he was quite
Speaker 4: a you know, narcissist who kind of took over the
Speaker 4: whole property and made it about him in a lot
Speaker 4: of really funky ways that you know, made the show
Speaker 4: really kind of a relic of the seventies, and it's
Speaker 4: more about the seventies than it is any other real
Speaker 4: time period, and there are certain aspects of that that
Speaker 4: are just kind of laughable. You know that she's always
Speaker 4: walking around with the shirt off, and you know, he's
Speaker 4: such a kind of preening presence in a way that
Speaker 4: I think would have been horrifying to actual people, you know,
Speaker 4: to Laura englis Weld, I think she would have been
Speaker 4: dumbstruck at that portrayal of her beloved father.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed you mentioning that in the book.
Speaker 3: I was born the year of the television show launch,
Speaker 3: so I grew up with them side by side, And
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a book first, but I loved the
Speaker 3: TV show at Michael Landon.
Speaker 2: What was the response to this book from Laura fans like?
Speaker 4: For you? Oh, you know, it was kind of a
Speaker 4: fascinating because I mean, there are people who would come
Speaker 4: up to me and say, you know, do you think
Speaker 4: Laura was a good person or you know, be really
Speaker 4: upset about the portrayal of Paw, which kind of surprised
Speaker 4: me because I liked Charles Ingalls in some ways. I mean,
Speaker 4: he obviously was a human being who made a lot
Speaker 4: of mistakes and add a lot of inappropriate attitudes or
Speaker 4: did things that I may may not have agreed with
Speaker 4: or thought were smart, but I thought I portrayed him
Speaker 4: in a kind of sympathetic manner as his daughter saw him,
Speaker 4: and also just in terms of, you know, his later
Speaker 4: life and what that life meant. And yet there were
Speaker 4: a lot of people who read the book who came
Speaker 4: away saying, oh, Pa was a monster. So I mean,
Speaker 4: you just can't I can't always predict how he would react.
Speaker 4: But I was very pleased with how strongly most people
Speaker 4: really reacted to the history of the books, of the
Speaker 4: Descpel stuff and the New Deal stuff. And I think
Speaker 4: that was really meaningful to me that I was able
Speaker 4: to kind of include a bunch of stuff that, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's really an historical biography, not a literary biography,
Speaker 4: even though literary stuff is kind of more my experience.
Speaker 4: But I was really pleased at how interested and kind
Speaker 4: of involved people were with that stuff.
Speaker 2: I think Laura functions.
Speaker 3: I mean I have said this earlier, but certainly for me,
Speaker 3: she functioned as a door I walked through, because what's
Speaker 3: fascinates me about the books is she seems so real,
Speaker 3: but there's so absent from it. Sort of a wider
Speaker 3: sense of the history she exists, and you understand the
Speaker 3: way she exists, but it's not put in the context
Speaker 3: of what's happening in the country at the time.
Speaker 2: And so for me anyway, it was. And certainly the
Speaker 2: opening of.
Speaker 3: Your book speaks to this doorway to walk through to
Speaker 3: find out all the other things that were happening around her.
Speaker 3: To me anyway, that's a very magical, fascinating part of
Speaker 3: the books. That all of this is absent from her books.
Speaker 3: But yet she's opening us weirdly up to wanting to
Speaker 3: know more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great way to put it, because there
Speaker 4: were so many things that she could not talk about
Speaker 4: in a book for children, say, and yet there are
Speaker 4: these little hints, you know, little things that when you
Speaker 4: read them as an adult, and I think her books
Speaker 4: are very readable, which not all books written for children
Speaker 4: are that accessible, you know, when you come back to
Speaker 4: them years later, But I think hers are, and I
Speaker 4: do think that they open up a whole realm of
Speaker 4: fascinating and in some cases quite gruesome history.
Speaker 2: Reading this as a grown up, I mean there's an undercurrent.
Speaker 3: As cozy as the books were a nostalgic or magical,
Speaker 3: there's an undercurrent of danger and violence.
Speaker 2: Maybe not in Farmer Boy, but in every other.
Speaker 3: One of the books that I think appealed to me
Speaker 3: as a child, even though I couldn't articulate it, but
Speaker 3: I was very aware of as a grown up.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And I think that's why when you read them
Speaker 4: as an adult, they read much darker. That through line
Speaker 4: of danger, and you know, the threat of starvation, of ruin,
Speaker 4: of the loss of the family comes through much more
Speaker 4: strongly when you read them as an adult.
Speaker 2: Do you love Laura as much now after doing this book?
Speaker 2: That's a lot of time.
Speaker 3: I mean, in doing this podcast, I'm like, I am
Speaker 3: spending a lot of time with a person I loved
Speaker 3: deeply as a child. I'm just and all the complicated
Speaker 3: things that come out of that, because you're you know,
Speaker 3: you look at all of the complicating factors.
Speaker 2: But how do you feel about her now on the
Speaker 2: other side of this, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I do?
Speaker 4: I do. I still I love her as a writer.
Speaker 4: I do have now a more sophisticated understanding of who
Speaker 4: she was as a person. They're definitely aspects of her
Speaker 4: that I don't particularly you know, her politics, I think
Speaker 4: her you know, kind of regrettable, you know, it's I
Speaker 4: can understand them. I can understand being a farmer at
Speaker 4: that time and in that place and being horrified by
Speaker 4: what farmers were being asked to do. And I get that.
Speaker 4: I can understand that and empathize with it, you know.
Speaker 4: And I can see her flaws or you know, her
Speaker 4: inability to kind of figure things out with her daughter,
Speaker 4: who obviously have lots of issues and problems, but you know,
Speaker 4: she was who she was at the time. Those ways
Speaker 4: of dealing with problems were survival mechanism. And you know,
Speaker 4: I see a lot of her in my own grandparents,
Speaker 4: you know, and their experiences and their inability to talk
Speaker 4: about sort of the hard things that happened in their lives.
Speaker 4: So I do. I think I have a lot of
Speaker 4: empathy and admiration for her for her perseverance, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, she capt going despite all kinds of obstacles
Speaker 4: in the way of her writing these books, for example,
Speaker 4: and really forged ahead in a way that a lot
Speaker 4: of people might not have.
Speaker 2: That's a wonderful way to end that. Thank you so much, well,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by me Emily Maronoff and Mary Do.
Speaker 1: Sound design and mixing done by Amanda Rose Smith. Our
Speaker 1: theme and additional music is composed, as always by the
Speaker 1: fantastic Elise McCoy. We are executive produced by Glennis McNichol,
Speaker 1: Joe Piazza, Nikki.
Speaker 2: Tor and Ali Perry.
Speaker 1: Again, thanks for waiting as we work on our final episode.
Speaker 1: We will be dark next week, but the finale will
Speaker 1: be here on August thirty first, so mark your calendars.
Speaker 2: Trust me.
Speaker 1: If I could send you all some flatters to keep
Speaker 1: you occupied until that episode, I would, But for now,
Speaker 1: just bake some bread or churn some butter or something,
Speaker 1: or better yet, send us those voice memos. We really
Speaker 1: do want them.