A Miserable Merry Christmas by Lincoln Steffens Being Read
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I intentionally held off to the last Lincoln Steffens about whom, I idea, I knew the about.
Well, I am glad that I did, but I was wrong well-nigh how much I thought I knew!
The entire autobiography is almost 900 pages in length; this first volum
A couple of months ago I decided to read the autobiographies of several major figures in journalism who played a significant part both every bit "muckrakers" in the latter 19th and early on 20th centuries and as important journalists and chroniclers in their own right.I intentionally held off to the last Lincoln Steffens about whom, I thought, I knew the most.
Well, I am glad that I did, but I was wrong nearly how much I thought I knew!
The entire autobiography is almost 900 pages in length; this beginning volume represents only the starting time 350 pages.
Having read the opinion of some of the other journalists of the time, I was prepared to come across a man not but acknowledged as brilliant, simply also one not anybody liked very much because of his conceit and forceful manner.
Suffice it to say that I found the Steffens of the autobiography quite a different person, not because he makes out to be something that he is not — in fact, several times he mentions his failures and inadequacies — but considering he is one of the most beautiful of these writers that I have read deeply about.
His clarification of his youth is amidst the most lyrically beautiful I accept ever read. In fact, if one hesitates to read all of this work, exercise at least spend a petty time with the first ninety pages! His writing about the pony he and so yearned for — and finally received one Christmas — is absolutely stunning in the love and care he shows her. When he later is given a horse of his own, the man conveying it to him warns him that he has to "earn" the horse's respect and not attempt to "break it in" as that would just serve to "intermission her heart."
Then, once mounted on his pony and later equus caballus, he begins to explore the wider world accessible within a day's journey or so and encounters many wondrously fatigued characters, so real that you begin to believe that, why, aye, I know that swain!
You volition also get a good sense of the grime, dirt, but also beauty and amazing pre-machine age silence of the '70s through the '90s, for his memories of those years flows liquidly from his pen to the page to our minds! As in the best of all writing, you feel that you lot have been there, in fact, you ARE at present there with him!
In subsequent pages, we watch him go to higher — several colleges, really — searching for "the meaning of it all," particularly the solid foundation of "ethics." Repeatedly disappointed, he then embarks on a tour of some of Europe's about prestigious colleges — in Federal republic of germany especially — including those in Paris and London. With the very different educational arrangement of the time in Europe, he was able to experience marvelous liberty, taking only those courses — or portions of courses — that interested him. Along the style he met and had some wondrous conversations with leading professors of the day.
He as well met a wonderfully drawn immature German with whom he became close friends, and with whom he had some wonderful adventures. In i series of stories, where he relates, how the two of them enjoyed exploring towns "upriver," and then spent the night languidly floating down the river until they encountered some other modest town, reminded me both of some of Mark Twain'south recollections most floating downwardly the Mississippi likewise as of my three-month long exploration of Europe with 2 buddies fashion back in the summer of 1967.
This same friend reappears once more towards the end of this beginning volume of the autobiography when Steffens is summoned to Deutschland to handle his will following his untimely death. These passages are among the virtually moving here, as he admits how petty he actually understood this beau and how little he, Steffens, had given in return. And yet he had been chosen for this important task. Married past now, Steffens and his wife continue to fulfill the deceased'due south wishes in beautiful and moving ways. Just like the youthful narratives of the first part of the volume, this latter office is worth the price of the journey all lone!
Steffens achieved much prominence in his life, and like the other great journalists of his time, has much to say about his encounters with and knowledge of such people every bit Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Alexander Kerensky, the latter the man who temporarily managed the Russian government after the fall of the Tsar and before the ascension of the Bolsheviks under Lenin.
And, oh yes, at that place is much hither about the all-encompassing graft of the day, in business and in government. Only even those involved in graft — "managing the evils," they would tell him — are given remarkably sympathetic portraits and yous may discover, as I did, that I came to have some amore for these characters fifty-fifty as Steffens admits he did, too.
A remarkable work, ameliorate than fiction, but superbly told. Be forewarned: Steffens will enchant yous!
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Steffens began his career every bit a journalist at the New York Evening Mail service . He later on became an editor of McClure's magazine, where he became part of a historic muckraking trio with Ida Tarbell an Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family unit and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Frg post-obit graduation from the University of California.
Steffens began his career as a journalist at the New York Evening Post . He later became an editor of McClure's magazine, where he became part of a celebrated muckraking trio with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker. He specialized in investigating government and political abuse, and two collections of his articles were published equally The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle for Self-Authorities (1906). In 1906, he left McClure's , forth with Tarbell and Baker, to form The American Mag .
From 1914–1915 he covered the Mexican Revolution and began to see revolution as preferable to reform. In March 1919, he accompanied William C. Bullitt, a depression-level State Department official, on a three-calendar week visit to the Soviet Matrimony and witnessed the "confusing and difficult" process of a society in the procedure of revolutionary change. He wrote that "Soviet Russian federation was a revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan", indelible "a temporary condition of evil, which is made tolerable by hope and a program."
Later on his render, he promoted his view of the Soviet Revolution and in the course of candidature for U.Due south. food help for Russia made his famous remark virtually the new Soviet guild: "I accept seen the future, and it works", a phrase he oft repeated with many variations.
His enthusiasm for communism soured by the fourth dimension his memoirs appeared in 1931. The autobiography became a bestseller leading to a short return to prominence for the author, just Steffens would not be able to capitalize on information technology as illness cut his lecture tour of America short by 1933. He was a member of the California Writers Projection, a New Bargain program.
He died of center failure on August 9, 1936, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. ...more than
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