Writers Read

In the last part of the 19th century one of the most influential voices in literature was the magazine editor, author, and critic, William Dean Howells. Howells was the Oprah Winfrey of his time. His praise could almost a gurauntee of an author's reputation, and many of the authors he championed had bold, new voices: Zola, Ibsen. Tolstoy, Crane, Dunbar.

William Dean Howells knew Emerson and Hawthorne. He was friends with Henry James and Mark Twain. He was deeply admired by his contemporaries. In a letter to Howells, Twain wrote: "You are my only author; I am restricted to you; I wouldn't give a damn for the rest".

And yet, if you were asked to name a William Dean Howells novel, could you do it?

It is astonishing that a man who was so influential, prolific, and respected during his lifetime could fade to almost obscurity less than a century after his death.

Until graduate school, I had never heard of Howells. I first read The Rise of Silas Lapham in a class on American Realism, alongside Henry James and Edith Wharton. I was impressed by the novel, and especially by the way Howells treated his female characters. At the end of the semester, my professor had us choose one book from the syllabus that we would want to teach to high school students and write a paper defending our choice. I picked Silas Lapham.

Last week, I was sick. It started off mid-week as take-Tylenol-and-soldier-on-sickness, but by Friday night I was sick, sick, sick. Go-to-bed-and-stay-in-bed sick. I was so sick that I called my mother (crying) and asked her to make me chicken and dumplings and macaroni-and-cheese. It was in this state that I reached for Indian Summer, a novel by William Dean Howells that only recently came back into print. It was a lovely read.

Howells was a realist, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not subscribe to the belief that novels had to have a depressing end. Indian Summer tells the story of forty-one year old bachelor Theodore Colville. As a young man Colville spent time in Italy, where he dreamed of studying architecture and had his heart broken. Instead of pursuing architecture, he devoted his life to the newspaper business. Now, nearing middle age, he decides to sell his newspaper and return to Florence, hoping to regain an appreciation of all that was lost.

Jane Austen wrote famously that, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This maxim holds true in Indian Summer. In Florence, Colville runs into Mrs. Bowen, the best friend of the woman who jilted him almost twenty years earlier. Mrs. Bowen is now a widow with a young daughter and a twenty-year old guest named Imogene Graham. Dialogue was one of Howells greatest strengths, and much of the action in the novel is revealed through pitch-perfect conversation so that the reader has a sense of eavesdropping on three extremely interesting and likable characters.

Indian Summer is not a grand or ambitious novel, but it is well-crafted and delicious to read. For readers out there who find themselves re-reading Pride and Prejudice or Room With A View as a form of literary comfort food, I highly recommend William Dean Howells. It is truly a pity that he has been largely forgotten.