Peter Boody's Blog: Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life - Posts Tagged "thomas-jefferson"
The TJ book - constant tweaking
Although it's been up as a Kindle book since October 2010 (too early, really), it has gone through multiple tweaks. I have just completed the latest (February 11, 2011) and I hope final tweak before arranging for this book to be produced on paper.
I've added these acknowledgments after the very slightly revised epilogue. Just want to share them with anyone, curious about the book, who wonders onto this page:
I would not have kept working at this odd little novel without the encouragement and support of my wife Barbara, an avid reader of fiction who loved the tale and whose suggestions, editing and proofing kept me going through a two-year rewriting and revising process.
I am grateful to our friend in publishing, Gabrielle Brooks, for her brilliant and hard-nosed critique of an early draft, and to another family friend, also in the publishing business, Lisa Higgins, for her professional editing and guidance.
This story was inspired by Thomas Jefferson, his family’s devotion to him and his marvelous homes near Charlottesville and Lynchburg; and by Annette Gordon-Reed’s landmark Jefferson history, “The Hemingses of Monticello,” which brought him to life for me more vividly than any book I’d ever read — until this one.
I've added these acknowledgments after the very slightly revised epilogue. Just want to share them with anyone, curious about the book, who wonders onto this page:
I would not have kept working at this odd little novel without the encouragement and support of my wife Barbara, an avid reader of fiction who loved the tale and whose suggestions, editing and proofing kept me going through a two-year rewriting and revising process.
I am grateful to our friend in publishing, Gabrielle Brooks, for her brilliant and hard-nosed critique of an early draft, and to another family friend, also in the publishing business, Lisa Higgins, for her professional editing and guidance.
This story was inspired by Thomas Jefferson, his family’s devotion to him and his marvelous homes near Charlottesville and Lynchburg; and by Annette Gordon-Reed’s landmark Jefferson history, “The Hemingses of Monticello,” which brought him to life for me more vividly than any book I’d ever read — until this one.
Typos fixed
A terrific professional proofreader combed thru the TJ mss 3 times and I think caught everything. Hundreds of little errors including typos, style issues, repeated attributions, inconsistencies. New clean version is up on kindle and print version is in the works. Apologies to past readers. We really thought it was clean as it was. Wrong.
Great unsolicited, unexpected review from a friend whom i did not even know was reading it as follows:
I just finished reading "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel, and Me" -- started and finished over the course of the weekend -- and wanted to tell you I enjoyed it immensely. Got caught up in the story, looked forward to getting back to it after I'd put it down, etc. Thinking about it, I've got to say you really pulled it off, as far as getting a reader (this reader, at least) to buy into a, shall we say, unlikely premise. And that carried through the book, was just sort of out of the way once we were all in this kooky scenario together, as I got into the story unfolding.
Great unsolicited, unexpected review from a friend whom i did not even know was reading it as follows:
I just finished reading "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel, and Me" -- started and finished over the course of the weekend -- and wanted to tell you I enjoyed it immensely. Got caught up in the story, looked forward to getting back to it after I'd put it down, etc. Thinking about it, I've got to say you really pulled it off, as far as getting a reader (this reader, at least) to buy into a, shall we say, unlikely premise. And that carried through the book, was just sort of out of the way once we were all in this kooky scenario together, as I got into the story unfolding.
Talk at Canio's June 9, SI Library July 13 ...
Some people call writing fun. And that I should be so proud I’ve written a novel!
Well.
Over the years, I’ve sweated out of myself four novels and this is the only one my wife really really liked. She loved it in fact. She’s read it 10 times (mostly to help proof evolving versions) and she claims she still loves it every time. I tell you that because more than anything else I can say or do, it might convince you that maybe you’d like it too and you’d buy it. I never question my wife’s judgment. I know she must be right. When she says it’s a really really good book, I believe her.
How did I have the “conceit,” as a friend once put it, of thinking I could write a novel in which Thomas Jefferson appears as a major character, if not THE major character. I wish I could give you a simple answer. What I CAN tell you is how immensely relieved, and happy I was to have an idea for a novel that I thought was going to work as a story that might grab people; and to be off and running --doing my research and my rough drafts and false starts and my notes and voice memos to myself on my iphone as the idea for the story fully hatched itself. Those were hopeful times.
It was a gamble and I did have to comfort myself now and then with a reminder: how successful Richard Adams’s very weird book “Watership Down” had been in the mid 1970s; how it was precisely the kind of book I’d never read; and how I took a peek at it, and how it hooked me, and I couldn’t help myself, and I spent a rainy weekend on the couch devouring it. A book about a rabbit civilization under our feet? Good God! I loved it, to my own continuing astonishment.
Any story works, no matter how absurd its essential concept, if the characters are true and appealing and believable and you can make readers care about them; if the narrative voice is strong and commanding --- in charge, a force to which the reader is happy to surrender; if the dialogue is lively and right and never hits a sour note; and if there’s a grabber of a plot and tight, brisk pacing — and if the writing never gets in the way.
A book about talking rabbits a bestseller? So what’s to worry about bringing Thomas Jefferson back to life?
I had no bolt-of-lightning moment but I can give you some clues to the origins of this book.
My first visit to Monticello came when I was in college, on my first long solo road trip from the Northeast to what for me was the exotic Southland, to which I’d barely ever been, to see a buddy at UVA. It was raw and cold up here and a little lonely I think but way down there the dogwoods and azaleas were out and so were the girls all over the frat house field and the sky was blue and the night warm and on my way down I wore a new pair of Ray Bans.
An old black man waved at me from the grassy strip in the middle as I whizzed by on Route 29 in my Chevy Vega with my dog Archie in the hatchback. I waved back a little frantically maybe. Guys waving on the side of Route 46 in New Jersey? No way! THIS was another country.
The second day of my visit my friend and I stood in the sun, in line, on the East Lawn of Monticello waiting to go in, back in the days when slaves and slavery and God forbid Sally Hemings were never ever mentioned there, and a big tall older gent next to us was obviously listening to our conversation about the ideological and personal battles between Jefferson and Hamilton, stuff we’d each been learning about in our own separate history courses. This big tall professorial type (who was in fact a professor At UNC, we’d learn) complimented us on our enlightened conversation and asked us where we came from: both New Jersey by birth, both Bridgehampton by summers, our own separate New England prep schools and our own separate colleges, his below the Mason Dixon line and mine in Mr. Hamilton’s mean old New York.
We asked where he was from: North Carolina, he said. Do you know what they call North Carolina, he asked? No, we said.
“A valley of humility between two mountains of conceit.”
I was enchanted. I went on to read a fair amount about Virginia and South Carolina, and North Carolina too. I’ve always loved going back to Charlottesville and Monticello with my wife, like the narrator of my book, Jack Arrowsmith. The spirit of Jefferson is utterly visceral at Monticello, as Jack says in so many words in his story. By the way: Jack is not me. He’s taller, thinner, a bit younger, has more hair, and he holds his tongue when disturbed. I admire him. I wish I could sit and have a talk with the guy.
I think it was the first time that I went to Monticello with my wife – perhaps only a decade after that first visit with my friend – that I saw Jefferson’s shirt. A creamy off-white, it was in a display case, nicely folded to show off his embroidered initials on the left breast. How modern! How like today! A famous man, a president, a founding father, with his initial on his shirt! You know, Sally Hemings was a seamstress at Monticello.
To think of the eyes that saw that shirt. It drove home for me a powerful realization about Jefferson ‑- and all the historical figures I find fascinating: they were real people, not so different from us.
Their brilliance and their importance to our history did not extinguish their humanity. They were living, breathing people, like us – although it’s usually very very hard to get a sense of that from history.
A major exception for me was Annette Gordon-Reeds wonderful bestseller “The Hemingses of Monticello.” Her lawyerly style of analysis and argument, and her interest in Jefferson’s quirks and foibles and transgressions as man, a master and a parent, really bring him to life -- So much so I think I may have read a few things into one particular episode in her book, involving Sally Hemings and her brother James, that Ms. Gordon Reed herself did not see the way I did. She told me so herself at a bookstore appearance. She thought my interpretation went overboard.
Well, I’m not convinced. She is the historian. I am the novelist, in this case; and if I can pull it off, I am allowed to imagine the truth. I made it something that my character Rachel Carter gets into quite the snit about with Mr. Jefferson, as does her grumpy father, a black man with a coffee shop in Yonkers at which he serves French food.
I could tell you all the interesting things I learned about Jefferson in my casual readings over the years -- and in the half year or so of intense reading I did before writing TJRM. Cool, calm, in command, that was him. He wrote of “perfect sangfroid” as his goal in meeting all adversaries and all adversity …… But he was also touchy, delicate, snobby, prone to migraines and diarrhea and easily deluded … and now and then perhaps a little mean. And yet I find the man immensely appealing, for all the difference between his dreams and reality, for all the conflict and contradictions we may find in him and the lessons we may learn from him not only about the great ironies of the American experience but about ourselves and our delusions, the angels of our better natures and the devils of our daily sins.
My novel that my wife loves so much, thank goodness, is not really a book about Thomas Jefferson -- just as “The Great Gatsby” (if you will forgive the presumption of any comparison) is not really a book about Jay Gatsby.
But what a wonderful man to spend some time with. I envy my narrator, Jack Arrowsmith. I’d love to have the chance to show Mr. Jefferson around.
Well.
Over the years, I’ve sweated out of myself four novels and this is the only one my wife really really liked. She loved it in fact. She’s read it 10 times (mostly to help proof evolving versions) and she claims she still loves it every time. I tell you that because more than anything else I can say or do, it might convince you that maybe you’d like it too and you’d buy it. I never question my wife’s judgment. I know she must be right. When she says it’s a really really good book, I believe her.
How did I have the “conceit,” as a friend once put it, of thinking I could write a novel in which Thomas Jefferson appears as a major character, if not THE major character. I wish I could give you a simple answer. What I CAN tell you is how immensely relieved, and happy I was to have an idea for a novel that I thought was going to work as a story that might grab people; and to be off and running --doing my research and my rough drafts and false starts and my notes and voice memos to myself on my iphone as the idea for the story fully hatched itself. Those were hopeful times.
It was a gamble and I did have to comfort myself now and then with a reminder: how successful Richard Adams’s very weird book “Watership Down” had been in the mid 1970s; how it was precisely the kind of book I’d never read; and how I took a peek at it, and how it hooked me, and I couldn’t help myself, and I spent a rainy weekend on the couch devouring it. A book about a rabbit civilization under our feet? Good God! I loved it, to my own continuing astonishment.
Any story works, no matter how absurd its essential concept, if the characters are true and appealing and believable and you can make readers care about them; if the narrative voice is strong and commanding --- in charge, a force to which the reader is happy to surrender; if the dialogue is lively and right and never hits a sour note; and if there’s a grabber of a plot and tight, brisk pacing — and if the writing never gets in the way.
A book about talking rabbits a bestseller? So what’s to worry about bringing Thomas Jefferson back to life?
I had no bolt-of-lightning moment but I can give you some clues to the origins of this book.
My first visit to Monticello came when I was in college, on my first long solo road trip from the Northeast to what for me was the exotic Southland, to which I’d barely ever been, to see a buddy at UVA. It was raw and cold up here and a little lonely I think but way down there the dogwoods and azaleas were out and so were the girls all over the frat house field and the sky was blue and the night warm and on my way down I wore a new pair of Ray Bans.
An old black man waved at me from the grassy strip in the middle as I whizzed by on Route 29 in my Chevy Vega with my dog Archie in the hatchback. I waved back a little frantically maybe. Guys waving on the side of Route 46 in New Jersey? No way! THIS was another country.
The second day of my visit my friend and I stood in the sun, in line, on the East Lawn of Monticello waiting to go in, back in the days when slaves and slavery and God forbid Sally Hemings were never ever mentioned there, and a big tall older gent next to us was obviously listening to our conversation about the ideological and personal battles between Jefferson and Hamilton, stuff we’d each been learning about in our own separate history courses. This big tall professorial type (who was in fact a professor At UNC, we’d learn) complimented us on our enlightened conversation and asked us where we came from: both New Jersey by birth, both Bridgehampton by summers, our own separate New England prep schools and our own separate colleges, his below the Mason Dixon line and mine in Mr. Hamilton’s mean old New York.
We asked where he was from: North Carolina, he said. Do you know what they call North Carolina, he asked? No, we said.
“A valley of humility between two mountains of conceit.”
I was enchanted. I went on to read a fair amount about Virginia and South Carolina, and North Carolina too. I’ve always loved going back to Charlottesville and Monticello with my wife, like the narrator of my book, Jack Arrowsmith. The spirit of Jefferson is utterly visceral at Monticello, as Jack says in so many words in his story. By the way: Jack is not me. He’s taller, thinner, a bit younger, has more hair, and he holds his tongue when disturbed. I admire him. I wish I could sit and have a talk with the guy.
I think it was the first time that I went to Monticello with my wife – perhaps only a decade after that first visit with my friend – that I saw Jefferson’s shirt. A creamy off-white, it was in a display case, nicely folded to show off his embroidered initials on the left breast. How modern! How like today! A famous man, a president, a founding father, with his initial on his shirt! You know, Sally Hemings was a seamstress at Monticello.
To think of the eyes that saw that shirt. It drove home for me a powerful realization about Jefferson ‑- and all the historical figures I find fascinating: they were real people, not so different from us.
Their brilliance and their importance to our history did not extinguish their humanity. They were living, breathing people, like us – although it’s usually very very hard to get a sense of that from history.
A major exception for me was Annette Gordon-Reeds wonderful bestseller “The Hemingses of Monticello.” Her lawyerly style of analysis and argument, and her interest in Jefferson’s quirks and foibles and transgressions as man, a master and a parent, really bring him to life -- So much so I think I may have read a few things into one particular episode in her book, involving Sally Hemings and her brother James, that Ms. Gordon Reed herself did not see the way I did. She told me so herself at a bookstore appearance. She thought my interpretation went overboard.
Well, I’m not convinced. She is the historian. I am the novelist, in this case; and if I can pull it off, I am allowed to imagine the truth. I made it something that my character Rachel Carter gets into quite the snit about with Mr. Jefferson, as does her grumpy father, a black man with a coffee shop in Yonkers at which he serves French food.
I could tell you all the interesting things I learned about Jefferson in my casual readings over the years -- and in the half year or so of intense reading I did before writing TJRM. Cool, calm, in command, that was him. He wrote of “perfect sangfroid” as his goal in meeting all adversaries and all adversity …… But he was also touchy, delicate, snobby, prone to migraines and diarrhea and easily deluded … and now and then perhaps a little mean. And yet I find the man immensely appealing, for all the difference between his dreams and reality, for all the conflict and contradictions we may find in him and the lessons we may learn from him not only about the great ironies of the American experience but about ourselves and our delusions, the angels of our better natures and the devils of our daily sins.
My novel that my wife loves so much, thank goodness, is not really a book about Thomas Jefferson -- just as “The Great Gatsby” (if you will forgive the presumption of any comparison) is not really a book about Jay Gatsby.
But what a wonderful man to spend some time with. I envy my narrator, Jack Arrowsmith. I’d love to have the chance to show Mr. Jefferson around.
Believing in ghosts
Officially, I don't believe in ghosts and I'm sticking to that rule whenever I'm in some dark and spooky spot in life and feeling the ominous presence of grim spirits. Unofficially, I believe the universe is ultimately beyond comprehension so anything goes.
Have I seen any ghosts? I saw something I've never forgotten, something I used in "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me" as the model for Mr. Jefferson's descent from the woods across from the Visitor Center at Monticello to Jack Arrowsmith's old BMW 325, in which Jack and Rachel Carter are waiting to take their new pal off to see something of the world.
I was 15 years old, spending my first night on a trip across half the country to Grandby, Colorado, to Vagabond Ranch. My father had been sent to a dude ranch when he was 15 so now he was sending me. The kids from the Northeast all convened in late June at the Rumsey Hall School in Washington, Connecticut for a cookout. The next morning, very early, we were to start our week-long journey in a caravan of cars with trailers including a chuck wagon, the whole assemblage referred to as "Wagons West."
We all slept that night in a row of two-man mountain tents pitched along the edge of a soccer field across the road from the school's office — a lovely old 18th century white clapboard house on a knoll with a lighted sign by its driveway.
I wound up with a tent all to myself — I was shy or a jerk, whatever. I woke up for no particular reason, rolled over on my stomach and flipped open the flap of the tent to look outside. It was a clear, dry night and I gazed at the swirl of stars -- something that most 15 years olds from the Northeast never see anymore (too much light pollution even far from the big cities).
It was 2 a.m. I remember because I had a new watch on and I gave it a lot of attention.
I was not dreaming.
A ball of pale white light appeared off to the right across the soccer field from me. It was moving along the road that bordered the other side of the field, its lowest part hidden from my view by an old stone wall, the kind that crisscross the New England landscape. This ball of light was about the height of a man and it moved at the speed of a walk.
I watched it carefully, without alarm, wondering what it was. There was no focal point to the glow; it was a uniform fluorescent oblong blob. My reaction was something like, "Huh. Wonder what THAT is."
It tracked along the road, from my right to left, and when it reached the driveway of the Rumsey Hall School office, it changed course to follow the driveway up the little hill until, reaching the hanging sign alongside the driveway that was lit by a single bulb, it merged into its pool of light and disappeared.
That's it. That's what I saw.
In the morning, I excitedly told all the kids in my Wagons West car all about what I'd seen. I got branded the ghost seer for the rest of the summer. But I did not see any more, even though I kept an eye out for them.
When I came home late that summer, I was telling my Aunt Jean about it. She asked me to repeat where the Rumsey Hall School was located.
Washington, Connecticut, I told her.
"Why, Washington, Connecticut is known for ghost sightings! Didn't you know that?"
No, I didn't, but I eventually found some articles that confirmed its reputation. I vaguely recall one that reported a theory that had something to do with the place having a lot of static electrical activity or something and it produced these blobs of light people were seeing now and then.
I saw my blob of light way back in 1965.
I made Mr. Jefferson into that ball of light for his foray off his mountaintop along the path through the woods to Jack and Rachel. It's a scene that feels real to me even though, of course, I made it up.
One of these days I'm going to visit the Rumsey Hall School. It's still there, apparently. Wonder if the kids have seen anything weird.
Have I seen any ghosts? I saw something I've never forgotten, something I used in "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me" as the model for Mr. Jefferson's descent from the woods across from the Visitor Center at Monticello to Jack Arrowsmith's old BMW 325, in which Jack and Rachel Carter are waiting to take their new pal off to see something of the world.
I was 15 years old, spending my first night on a trip across half the country to Grandby, Colorado, to Vagabond Ranch. My father had been sent to a dude ranch when he was 15 so now he was sending me. The kids from the Northeast all convened in late June at the Rumsey Hall School in Washington, Connecticut for a cookout. The next morning, very early, we were to start our week-long journey in a caravan of cars with trailers including a chuck wagon, the whole assemblage referred to as "Wagons West."
We all slept that night in a row of two-man mountain tents pitched along the edge of a soccer field across the road from the school's office — a lovely old 18th century white clapboard house on a knoll with a lighted sign by its driveway.
I wound up with a tent all to myself — I was shy or a jerk, whatever. I woke up for no particular reason, rolled over on my stomach and flipped open the flap of the tent to look outside. It was a clear, dry night and I gazed at the swirl of stars -- something that most 15 years olds from the Northeast never see anymore (too much light pollution even far from the big cities).
It was 2 a.m. I remember because I had a new watch on and I gave it a lot of attention.
I was not dreaming.
A ball of pale white light appeared off to the right across the soccer field from me. It was moving along the road that bordered the other side of the field, its lowest part hidden from my view by an old stone wall, the kind that crisscross the New England landscape. This ball of light was about the height of a man and it moved at the speed of a walk.
I watched it carefully, without alarm, wondering what it was. There was no focal point to the glow; it was a uniform fluorescent oblong blob. My reaction was something like, "Huh. Wonder what THAT is."
It tracked along the road, from my right to left, and when it reached the driveway of the Rumsey Hall School office, it changed course to follow the driveway up the little hill until, reaching the hanging sign alongside the driveway that was lit by a single bulb, it merged into its pool of light and disappeared.
That's it. That's what I saw.
In the morning, I excitedly told all the kids in my Wagons West car all about what I'd seen. I got branded the ghost seer for the rest of the summer. But I did not see any more, even though I kept an eye out for them.
When I came home late that summer, I was telling my Aunt Jean about it. She asked me to repeat where the Rumsey Hall School was located.
Washington, Connecticut, I told her.
"Why, Washington, Connecticut is known for ghost sightings! Didn't you know that?"
No, I didn't, but I eventually found some articles that confirmed its reputation. I vaguely recall one that reported a theory that had something to do with the place having a lot of static electrical activity or something and it produced these blobs of light people were seeing now and then.
I saw my blob of light way back in 1965.
I made Mr. Jefferson into that ball of light for his foray off his mountaintop along the path through the woods to Jack and Rachel. It's a scene that feels real to me even though, of course, I made it up.
One of these days I'm going to visit the Rumsey Hall School. It's still there, apparently. Wonder if the kids have seen anything weird.
Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me: a partial bibliography
This list does not include all the reading I did before starting TJRM in late 2009.
I also did much focused browsing through many other titles, including cookbooks, coffee table books about Monticello and its contents, and other misc. titles, including "Jefferson Vindicated," the self-published and unconvincing critique of Annette Gordon Reed's and others' research on the Hemings family.
Throughout the novel, I was true to historic events in TJ's and his family's life except for a few details here and there that became elements in the plot, such as the correspondence between himself and his wife, which I believe are obviously fictional elements. Otherwise, I remained true to the sense of the man I developed over many months of careful reading.
He was usually cool as a cucumber, if not arrogant and haughty, but he was a passionate and emotional man who easily fooled himself for all his brilliance.
A YEAR AT MONTICELLO – 1795; Donald Jackson, Fulcrum
(See pp35-36 freckles admonition to Polly; smothering obsessive love)
JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME, 6 volumes, Dumas Malone, 1948 – 1981, Little Brown
Jefferson the Virginia, Vol 1, appendix on Walker Affair p. 449) MALONE dismisses Sally story but is the one who established that TJ was at Monticello 9 months before each of her births.
SCENE of TJ breaking down in tears at Board of Visitors meeting with students, page 466 of "Sage of Monticello"; appendix info on the Walker affair, including Walker's affidavit.
JEFFERSON HIMSELF, Bernard Mayo, 1942, Riverside Press
Collected extracts of TJ writings from youth to old age. Wishes trees at Monticello were full grown; mockingbirds has superior beings who haunt …)p180
THOMAS JEFFERSON & SALLY HEMINGS: An American Controversy, Annette Gordon-Reed, 1997, UVa Press
Historiography: critique of how the Sally Hemings matter was handled for 150 years
Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson, Edited Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, 1999, University Press of Virginia
Historiography includes Annette Gordon Reed’s “The Memories of a Few Negroes”
THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO, An American Family, Annette Gordon-Reed, 2008, WW Norton
How common light skinned children were around the slaves quarters and in the house; how common it was in Virginia for plantation masters to have sex with slaves;
Jamie Hemings White House job offer, suicide
THOMAS JEFFERSON Fawm M Brodie, 1974, WW Norton
First historian to credit the Sally Hemings story
“without Virtue happiness cannot be” p434
THE ADAMS-JEFFERSON LETTERS, Lester Cappon, editor, 1959, UNC Press
Letters about death and returning to hover over his family
THE ROAD TO MONTICELLO, Kevin J. Hayes, Oxford U Press, 2008. Complex portrait of a complex man who called "delicious" the painting he bought in Europe and that still hangs at Monticello, "Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham."
AMERICAN SPHINX: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis, 1996, Vintage
“Understanding” of revolutionary generation that southerners would work out the slavery issue themselves – violated by the Missouri Debate; transference of good vs evil forces to the South and opponents of slavery. “He was linking his legacy to the destruction of the republic he helped create.”
Sally story: consensus it is almost certainly not true; (Ellis later admitted he had been in error).
GARY WILLS TALK at UVA on YouTube: TJ as head of theVirgina cabal that controlled government for 32 years, based on his book "The Negro President."
VISITORS TO MONTICELLO, edited by Merrill D. Peterson, University Press of Virginia, 1989
Personal accounts of seeing TJ at Monticello; running into a just-arrived British man TJ had hired to be a prof. at UVA. TJ's first words to him were: "You're awfully young, aren't you?" Commentery about TJ's tendency to seem aloof and cool and then intemperately enthusiastic in conversation after warming up.
JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO Edited by James A Bear Jr. 1967 UVA press
Edmund Bacon and Isaac Jefferson memoirs, TJ’s use of whip – threatening field workers; temper with a stubborn horse (I think these are in here)
Library of America: THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, Thomas Jefferson
Includes assertions about orangutans preferring black women to their own kind
THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF TJ, Sarah N. Randolph,1978 UVA Press, reprint of 1871 memoir
TJ’s great granddaughter: …reminiscences and letters “as being the most faithful witnesses of the warmth of his affections, the elevation of his character, and the scrupulous fidelity with which he discharged the duties of every relation in life.”
SALLY HEMINGS, Barbara Chase-Riboud, 1979, novel
I SCRUPULOUSLY AVOIDED READING ANY OF THIS while writing tj
JEFFERSONS SECRETS: Death and Desire at Monticello, Andrew Burstein, 2005,
beliefs about the body and mind and nerves; the importance of sex. Epicurean: happiness in terms of sensations. The art of living. Pursuit of bodily health and removal of bodily pain. “It is more than a little curious that he deliberately hi is chronic diarrhea from his immediate family for years.”
THE NEGRO PRESIDENT: Gary Wills, 2003, Houghton Mifflin
The 3/5 clause as political weapon that allowed the south to dominate national politics
“My Jefferson is a giant, but a giant trammeled in a net, and obliged (he thought) to keep repairing and strengthening the coils of that net.” P.xvii
TWILIGHT AT MONTICELLO, Alan Pell Crwford,2008, Random House. Jeff Randolph's education and future standing cut short by TJ to keep him tied to the task of managing Monticello. See TJ's comment to him on page 160 on paperback edition just above break. "Had you been educated, you would have been entitled to a place" in his first tier of portraits instead of the second.
I also did much focused browsing through many other titles, including cookbooks, coffee table books about Monticello and its contents, and other misc. titles, including "Jefferson Vindicated," the self-published and unconvincing critique of Annette Gordon Reed's and others' research on the Hemings family.
Throughout the novel, I was true to historic events in TJ's and his family's life except for a few details here and there that became elements in the plot, such as the correspondence between himself and his wife, which I believe are obviously fictional elements. Otherwise, I remained true to the sense of the man I developed over many months of careful reading.
He was usually cool as a cucumber, if not arrogant and haughty, but he was a passionate and emotional man who easily fooled himself for all his brilliance.
A YEAR AT MONTICELLO – 1795; Donald Jackson, Fulcrum
(See pp35-36 freckles admonition to Polly; smothering obsessive love)
JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME, 6 volumes, Dumas Malone, 1948 – 1981, Little Brown
Jefferson the Virginia, Vol 1, appendix on Walker Affair p. 449) MALONE dismisses Sally story but is the one who established that TJ was at Monticello 9 months before each of her births.
SCENE of TJ breaking down in tears at Board of Visitors meeting with students, page 466 of "Sage of Monticello"; appendix info on the Walker affair, including Walker's affidavit.
JEFFERSON HIMSELF, Bernard Mayo, 1942, Riverside Press
Collected extracts of TJ writings from youth to old age. Wishes trees at Monticello were full grown; mockingbirds has superior beings who haunt …)p180
THOMAS JEFFERSON & SALLY HEMINGS: An American Controversy, Annette Gordon-Reed, 1997, UVa Press
Historiography: critique of how the Sally Hemings matter was handled for 150 years
Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson, Edited Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, 1999, University Press of Virginia
Historiography includes Annette Gordon Reed’s “The Memories of a Few Negroes”
THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO, An American Family, Annette Gordon-Reed, 2008, WW Norton
How common light skinned children were around the slaves quarters and in the house; how common it was in Virginia for plantation masters to have sex with slaves;
Jamie Hemings White House job offer, suicide
THOMAS JEFFERSON Fawm M Brodie, 1974, WW Norton
First historian to credit the Sally Hemings story
“without Virtue happiness cannot be” p434
THE ADAMS-JEFFERSON LETTERS, Lester Cappon, editor, 1959, UNC Press
Letters about death and returning to hover over his family
THE ROAD TO MONTICELLO, Kevin J. Hayes, Oxford U Press, 2008. Complex portrait of a complex man who called "delicious" the painting he bought in Europe and that still hangs at Monticello, "Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham."
AMERICAN SPHINX: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis, 1996, Vintage
“Understanding” of revolutionary generation that southerners would work out the slavery issue themselves – violated by the Missouri Debate; transference of good vs evil forces to the South and opponents of slavery. “He was linking his legacy to the destruction of the republic he helped create.”
Sally story: consensus it is almost certainly not true; (Ellis later admitted he had been in error).
GARY WILLS TALK at UVA on YouTube: TJ as head of theVirgina cabal that controlled government for 32 years, based on his book "The Negro President."
VISITORS TO MONTICELLO, edited by Merrill D. Peterson, University Press of Virginia, 1989
Personal accounts of seeing TJ at Monticello; running into a just-arrived British man TJ had hired to be a prof. at UVA. TJ's first words to him were: "You're awfully young, aren't you?" Commentery about TJ's tendency to seem aloof and cool and then intemperately enthusiastic in conversation after warming up.
JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO Edited by James A Bear Jr. 1967 UVA press
Edmund Bacon and Isaac Jefferson memoirs, TJ’s use of whip – threatening field workers; temper with a stubborn horse (I think these are in here)
Library of America: THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON
NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, Thomas Jefferson
Includes assertions about orangutans preferring black women to their own kind
THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF TJ, Sarah N. Randolph,1978 UVA Press, reprint of 1871 memoir
TJ’s great granddaughter: …reminiscences and letters “as being the most faithful witnesses of the warmth of his affections, the elevation of his character, and the scrupulous fidelity with which he discharged the duties of every relation in life.”
SALLY HEMINGS, Barbara Chase-Riboud, 1979, novel
I SCRUPULOUSLY AVOIDED READING ANY OF THIS while writing tj
JEFFERSONS SECRETS: Death and Desire at Monticello, Andrew Burstein, 2005,
beliefs about the body and mind and nerves; the importance of sex. Epicurean: happiness in terms of sensations. The art of living. Pursuit of bodily health and removal of bodily pain. “It is more than a little curious that he deliberately hi is chronic diarrhea from his immediate family for years.”
THE NEGRO PRESIDENT: Gary Wills, 2003, Houghton Mifflin
The 3/5 clause as political weapon that allowed the south to dominate national politics
“My Jefferson is a giant, but a giant trammeled in a net, and obliged (he thought) to keep repairing and strengthening the coils of that net.” P.xvii
TWILIGHT AT MONTICELLO, Alan Pell Crwford,2008, Random House. Jeff Randolph's education and future standing cut short by TJ to keep him tied to the task of managing Monticello. See TJ's comment to him on page 160 on paperback edition just above break. "Had you been educated, you would have been entitled to a place" in his first tier of portraits instead of the second.
Poetic license and Monticello
My wife and I went back to Monticello for the first time since I wrote "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me." (We are at UVA's Cavalier Inn as I write this - Oct. 19, 2012.)
I was stunned to see no huge tulip poplar tree in the angle of the north terrace.
TJRM readers will recall that this magnificent tree is an important element in the opening scene and in a climactic scene late in the book.
Had I got that totally wrong as I wrote the book back home in Sag Harbor, NY? Had I imagined it being there when in fact I was really remembering another big tree, a cedrela, not a tulip poplar, very near the office at the end of the terrace?
No. I hadn't imagined that unforgettable tree. Turns out they cut the poplar down within the past year, afraid it could destroy the house if it fell in a storm as did two other trees in the east front of the house without hitting anyone or anything.
The old poplar was planted in Jefferson's time, it turns out. The foundation had believed it was a later addition but analysis done after it was felled proved its age. The tree balanced another poplar the foundation had known Jefferson planted (he mentions it in his notes) at the angle of the south terrace.
It was cut down in 2008 because it was sick and a threat to the house.
Now there are two big stumps cut close to the ground where those trees had stood sentry through the centuries. The house looks naked from the west lawn — as it did in TJ's time. He fretted about the absence of majestic trees near the house. They were all too young to be grand then.
Tragic, Those poplars, trees TJ knew himself, grew to a majestic height and size and now they are both gone.
Does it matter in terms of the book? Does it spoil those scenes, which are now even more fictional than they were before?
I don't think so. Not only does TJ survive in TJRM, so does that vanished tree.
I was stunned to see no huge tulip poplar tree in the angle of the north terrace.
TJRM readers will recall that this magnificent tree is an important element in the opening scene and in a climactic scene late in the book.
Had I got that totally wrong as I wrote the book back home in Sag Harbor, NY? Had I imagined it being there when in fact I was really remembering another big tree, a cedrela, not a tulip poplar, very near the office at the end of the terrace?
No. I hadn't imagined that unforgettable tree. Turns out they cut the poplar down within the past year, afraid it could destroy the house if it fell in a storm as did two other trees in the east front of the house without hitting anyone or anything.
The old poplar was planted in Jefferson's time, it turns out. The foundation had believed it was a later addition but analysis done after it was felled proved its age. The tree balanced another poplar the foundation had known Jefferson planted (he mentions it in his notes) at the angle of the south terrace.
It was cut down in 2008 because it was sick and a threat to the house.
Now there are two big stumps cut close to the ground where those trees had stood sentry through the centuries. The house looks naked from the west lawn — as it did in TJ's time. He fretted about the absence of majestic trees near the house. They were all too young to be grand then.
Tragic, Those poplars, trees TJ knew himself, grew to a majestic height and size and now they are both gone.
Does it matter in terms of the book? Does it spoil those scenes, which are now even more fictional than they were before?
I don't think so. Not only does TJ survive in TJRM, so does that vanished tree.
As John Adams said: "TJ survives"
So ... there's still life in the old boy. He ain't done yet.
Nineteen copies of the paperback edition of "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me" sold in 24 hours overnight Friday-Saturday.
This comes after 1 paperback sale in all October and none before this in November.
Good reviews are wonderful but the best thing, I've learned, is sales.
Was a class assigned to read TJRM? A book club? Where? What time zone buys so many books in the wee hours of Eastern Standard Time? Most showed up between 3 and 6 am.
Nineteen individual one-copy orders directly through Amazon, one after the other. Never sold so many books in one day. Have been doing almost no marketing, no promotion. This is an Indie book that fits no genre ... a niche book.
Could it actually catch on one of these days, despite all the odds against it?
Can't find anything on the web that gives a clue why this little burst of sales occurred but it's a good feeling to know that something is still going on out there.
Nineteen copies of the paperback edition of "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me" sold in 24 hours overnight Friday-Saturday.
This comes after 1 paperback sale in all October and none before this in November.
Good reviews are wonderful but the best thing, I've learned, is sales.
Was a class assigned to read TJRM? A book club? Where? What time zone buys so many books in the wee hours of Eastern Standard Time? Most showed up between 3 and 6 am.
Nineteen individual one-copy orders directly through Amazon, one after the other. Never sold so many books in one day. Have been doing almost no marketing, no promotion. This is an Indie book that fits no genre ... a niche book.
Could it actually catch on one of these days, despite all the odds against it?
Can't find anything on the web that gives a clue why this little burst of sales occurred but it's a good feeling to know that something is still going on out there.
Dazzled kids and their Monticello find
Here's my theory on the surprising sale of 19 paperback copies of TJRM Nov 9 -10 thru individual Amazon orders, one after the other (a thrill to see after weeks with almost no paperback sales).
I've convinced myself those buyers were the classmates of the girl, maybe a 7th grader, who found the signed copy I purposely left atop a brick buttress in the dim all-weather passageway under Monticello, during a visit my wife and I made in October.
I brought the book along with the plan of leaving it somewhere in Charlottesville or on the mountain; it was my wife's idea to leave it in the passageway, which I instantly realized was a cool concept for a lot of reasons — one being a little detail at the end of the book.
A couple of hours after leaving it in there, I spotted her with the book, sitting on a bench outside the passageway with a classmate — obviously they were with a group of school kids milling all around them.
It's my guess that her teacher, after checking out this curious find from the bowels of Monticello, assigned it to the class. (Must have been a private school for that to happen so fast or at all.)
Several people have suggested it should be marketed as a YA book — something I never intended when I wrote it. They say it's a fun way to teach some history. (See Joan Baum's review in Dan's Papers in May, 2012.)
So. That's my little fantasy. I'm hoping there will be 19 people out there who will, as the grow up, fondly remember TJRM as a very engaging experience.
If anyone out there knows who that group of 19 buyers is, I'd love to know.
I've convinced myself those buyers were the classmates of the girl, maybe a 7th grader, who found the signed copy I purposely left atop a brick buttress in the dim all-weather passageway under Monticello, during a visit my wife and I made in October.
I brought the book along with the plan of leaving it somewhere in Charlottesville or on the mountain; it was my wife's idea to leave it in the passageway, which I instantly realized was a cool concept for a lot of reasons — one being a little detail at the end of the book.
A couple of hours after leaving it in there, I spotted her with the book, sitting on a bench outside the passageway with a classmate — obviously they were with a group of school kids milling all around them.
It's my guess that her teacher, after checking out this curious find from the bowels of Monticello, assigned it to the class. (Must have been a private school for that to happen so fast or at all.)
Several people have suggested it should be marketed as a YA book — something I never intended when I wrote it. They say it's a fun way to teach some history. (See Joan Baum's review in Dan's Papers in May, 2012.)
So. That's my little fantasy. I'm hoping there will be 19 people out there who will, as the grow up, fondly remember TJRM as a very engaging experience.
If anyone out there knows who that group of 19 buyers is, I'd love to know.
Interview on WLIU FM Bonnie Grice Show
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wli...
This was early last summer. Discussing THOMAS JEFFERSON, RACHEL & ME
This was early last summer. Discussing THOMAS JEFFERSON, RACHEL & ME
My favorite bad review
"Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me" has gotten a lot of 4- and 5-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. But there have been some less enthusiastic reviewers/raters. Here's my favorite, from "Kindle Lover," which was posted recently on Amazon. Kindle Lover gave it only 2 stars, bringing the book's average rating down to a more realistic 4.5. I'm surprised it took so long before a review like this appeared:
After reading this book cover to cover, I was interested to go and read the authors bio. I felt that this book came from a very bias place and that the author twisted history and used the power of Thomas Jefferson to sell this book. The author took a historical figure and brought him to life in the 21st century with the sole purpose of focusing our attention on the inequality of race in the modern world. I gave the book two stars because I felt that the character of Thomas Jefferson was poorly developed. The supporting characters stories were developed in starts and fits throughout the book, but no real flow to the overall development. The only reason I continued to read this one to the end was that I want to see how it was all tied to together in the end - and that was to be blunt not very well. The author shows talent, but when you invoke the name of one of our Founding Fathers and the writer of The Decleration of Independence you need to be prepared to preform on a higher level and this author did not prove himself equal to the task.
After reading this book cover to cover, I was interested to go and read the authors bio. I felt that this book came from a very bias place and that the author twisted history and used the power of Thomas Jefferson to sell this book. The author took a historical figure and brought him to life in the 21st century with the sole purpose of focusing our attention on the inequality of race in the modern world. I gave the book two stars because I felt that the character of Thomas Jefferson was poorly developed. The supporting characters stories were developed in starts and fits throughout the book, but no real flow to the overall development. The only reason I continued to read this one to the end was that I want to see how it was all tied to together in the end - and that was to be blunt not very well. The author shows talent, but when you invoke the name of one of our Founding Fathers and the writer of The Decleration of Independence you need to be prepared to preform on a higher level and this author did not prove himself equal to the task.
Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life
Bits and pieces from my newspaper column as well as some riffs on the horrors of novel writing and trying to get one's work the attention it deserves.
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