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The Trouble I've Seen
These four interlinked stories encapsulate Martha Gellhorn’s firsthand observation of the Great Depression. Fiction crafted with documentary accuracy, they vividly render the gradual spiritual collapse of the simple, homely sufficiency of American life in the face of sudden unemployment, desperate poverty and hopelessness. They catch the mood of a generation �sucked into indifference’ and of young men who no longer �believe in man or God, let alone private industry’. Martha was the youngest of a squad of sixteen, handpicked reporters who were paid to file accurate, confidential reports on the human stories behind the statistics of the Depression directly to Roosevelt’s White House. In these pages, we understand the real cost of sudden destitution on a vast scale. We taste the dust in the mouth, smell the disease and feel the hopelessness and the despair. And here, too, we can hear the earliest cadences of the voice of a writer who went on to become, arguably, the greatest female war reporter of the 20th century.
306 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
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949 people want to read
About the author
Martha Gellhorn
60 books318 followersMartha Ellis Gellhorn (1908-1998) was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist. She is considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 3, 2021
May 3, 2021 Update: Prolific reader and reviewer MarilynW has recently reviewed an even newer biographical fiction on iconic photographer Dorothea Lange in Jasmin Darznik's The Bohemians (published April 6, 2021).
Feb. 4, 2019 Update: I noticed in today's historical fiction feature from GR that there is new novel about the life of photographer Dorothea Lange called Learning to See by Elise Hooper.
Gellhorn's Observations of the Great Depression
Review of the Eland Publishing paperback reissue (2013) of the Morrow hardcover original (1936)
This 1936 collection of 4 novellas was Martha Gellhorn's 2nd book. Her first was the novel What Mad Pursuit based on her time in Paris in the early 1930's. The fictional novellas in "The Trouble I've Seen" are based on her fact finding trips as part of a group of 16 writers who fanned out around the USA during 1934-35 to send back reports to Harry Hopkins at the Federal Emergency Relief Association to provide ground level information on what people in the nation were experiencing during the Great Depression so that Hopkins could monitor the effectiveness of the "Relief". Photographer Dorothea Lange did similar work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration and her iconic 1936 photograph "Migrant Mother" is used as the cover image for this edition of Gellhorn's book.
The stories here are grim and often end in quite desperate and forlorn circumstances. Gellhorn still manages to convey notes of hope and small victories during each tale, even if these may seem of a tiny nature in the relative scheme of things. "Mrs. Maddison" is an elderly woman who manages to pull a home together in the various bleak situations that she is in, even though she is often in conflict with her grown daughter and son. "Joe and Pete" are two union men battling through a strike and its aftermath. "Jim" is a son in a family that is breaking apart around him who makes a last grasp for happiness when he tries to ensure a memorable wedding day for his bride to be. "Ruby" is the story of an 11-year old girl, alone with her mother after the father has walked out on them, who wants for simple childlike things such as candy and roller-skates. Her almost casual slide into prostitution makes for the most harrowing and disturbing of these tales.
Gellhorn is now known primarily for her journalism and her travel writing. Her fiction is often hard to find, but everything I've read of hers has been worth the search.
Feb. 4, 2019 Update: I noticed in today's historical fiction feature from GR that there is new novel about the life of photographer Dorothea Lange called Learning to See by Elise Hooper.
Gellhorn's Observations of the Great Depression
Review of the Eland Publishing paperback reissue (2013) of the Morrow hardcover original (1936)
This 1936 collection of 4 novellas was Martha Gellhorn's 2nd book. Her first was the novel What Mad Pursuit based on her time in Paris in the early 1930's. The fictional novellas in "The Trouble I've Seen" are based on her fact finding trips as part of a group of 16 writers who fanned out around the USA during 1934-35 to send back reports to Harry Hopkins at the Federal Emergency Relief Association to provide ground level information on what people in the nation were experiencing during the Great Depression so that Hopkins could monitor the effectiveness of the "Relief". Photographer Dorothea Lange did similar work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration and her iconic 1936 photograph "Migrant Mother" is used as the cover image for this edition of Gellhorn's book.
The stories here are grim and often end in quite desperate and forlorn circumstances. Gellhorn still manages to convey notes of hope and small victories during each tale, even if these may seem of a tiny nature in the relative scheme of things. "Mrs. Maddison" is an elderly woman who manages to pull a home together in the various bleak situations that she is in, even though she is often in conflict with her grown daughter and son. "Joe and Pete" are two union men battling through a strike and its aftermath. "Jim" is a son in a family that is breaking apart around him who makes a last grasp for happiness when he tries to ensure a memorable wedding day for his bride to be. "Ruby" is the story of an 11-year old girl, alone with her mother after the father has walked out on them, who wants for simple childlike things such as candy and roller-skates. Her almost casual slide into prostitution makes for the most harrowing and disturbing of these tales.
Gellhorn is now known primarily for her journalism and her travel writing. Her fiction is often hard to find, but everything I've read of hers has been worth the search.
September 17, 2019
About the Author
MARTHA GELLHORN (1908‒98) published five novels, fourteen novellas and two collections of short stories. She wanted to be remembered primarily as a novelist, yet to most people she is remembered as an outstanding war correspondent and for something which infuriated her, her brief marriage to Ernest Hemingway during the Second World War. She had no intention of being a footnote in someone else’s life and nor will she be. Since her death there have already been two biographies of her. As a war correspondent she covered almost every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the Americn invasion of Panama in 1989.
About the Book
This is Gellhorn's first piece of fiction, published in 1936. She saw the poverty surrounding her because of the Depression and chose to write 4 novellas depicting the effects on the ordinary man/family.
Mrs Maddison
"We all had it better once, Mrs Maddison decided. We were real folks once; we had places to live, and we had families, and we knew what we’d be doing the next year and the next."
She and her son and daughter-in-law-try to farm.
Joe and Pete
Joe is a Union organizer. Pete belongs to the Union and is on strike. Bad things happen to both.
Jim
Jim loses his job and his family is distraught.
Ruby
11 year old Ruby finds a way to make money
My Impressions
Gellhorn shows a tender empathy for those affected. There are historical details as well that I appreciated learning. The NRA is National Relief Association (not Rifle!!). I was quite surprised that most people did not want to be on relief. They resented the questions and the feeling of powerlessness that being on relief brought.
I had read Love and Ruin by Paula McLain and became very interested in Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Her struggle to write this book and others led me to experience aof her writing style.
4 stars
MARTHA GELLHORN (1908‒98) published five novels, fourteen novellas and two collections of short stories. She wanted to be remembered primarily as a novelist, yet to most people she is remembered as an outstanding war correspondent and for something which infuriated her, her brief marriage to Ernest Hemingway during the Second World War. She had no intention of being a footnote in someone else’s life and nor will she be. Since her death there have already been two biographies of her. As a war correspondent she covered almost every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the Americn invasion of Panama in 1989.
About the Book
This is Gellhorn's first piece of fiction, published in 1936. She saw the poverty surrounding her because of the Depression and chose to write 4 novellas depicting the effects on the ordinary man/family.
Mrs Maddison
"We all had it better once, Mrs Maddison decided. We were real folks once; we had places to live, and we had families, and we knew what we’d be doing the next year and the next."
She and her son and daughter-in-law-try to farm.
Joe and Pete
Joe is a Union organizer. Pete belongs to the Union and is on strike. Bad things happen to both.
Jim
Jim loses his job and his family is distraught.
Ruby
11 year old Ruby finds a way to make money
My Impressions
Gellhorn shows a tender empathy for those affected. There are historical details as well that I appreciated learning. The NRA is National Relief Association (not Rifle!!). I was quite surprised that most people did not want to be on relief. They resented the questions and the feeling of powerlessness that being on relief brought.
I had read Love and Ruin by Paula McLain and became very interested in Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Her struggle to write this book and others led me to experience aof her writing style.
4 stars
July 21, 2013
As well as her travel and war reporting, Gellhorn also reported on social problems within the US in the mid 30s as part of a group of writers commissioned to supply an accurate picture of the plight of the poor to the heads of the new welfare programmes. This book consists of the 4 novelas she produced from her experience, and they make grim reading. They are all bleakly unsentimental depictions of poverty and despair, candid in the portrayal of racial attitudes and inequality, and with no glib suggestions or happy endings. Almost as tough as Harry Crews' memoir "Childhood", but with a 3rd-person detachment that doesn't provide any more warmth. Crews' account was full of desperate figures struggling for the most life they could get; Gellhorn's creations know they are defeated, and are slowly sinking down in to the ruins of a society that (for them) has failed.
November 10, 2013
I was struck by the recurring theme throughout these stories of the shame people felt when they had no choice but to go on Relief. My Dad was born in 1928 and raised on the Saskatchewan prairies during the Dirty Thirties, as they were known here. He also reacted to the thought of unemployment insurance and welfare as fates worse than death that must be avoided at all costs. I see now that as he was raised during those hard times when all people had was their pride, he couldn't feel any other way. The story of Ruby brought me to tears, such an innocent child.
September 25, 2014
True grit. The American spirit and determination against the odds. All the stories in this collection should have been made into a classic Hollywood film. Managing to show both the terror & tenderness of the great depression. A Diamond in the rough.
December 1, 2014
Extraordinary, compelling,fact based fictional narratives describing 4 experiences of the Great Depression & the relief programme. Gellhorn's prose is beautiful and in contrast to the events.
October 28, 2020
The grey, dismal existence of poverty as seen through the eyes of a reporter
First published in 1936, this book is a gut-wrenching look at the faces behind the statistics of the depression. Gellhorn draws on her work as one of sixteen writers, journalists, and economists (and, at age 25, the youngest) selected by Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) administrator Harry Hopkins in 1934 to “go wherever unemployment and poverty were most acute, to talk to as many people as possible, and to write down everything they saw and heard.” He used the reports to evaluate the success of the Roosevelt Administration’s work relief programs.
Gellhorn created the four fictional stories in this collection from the confidential reports she filed with Hopkins. In these stories, we meet mothers who became single parents because the fathers ran away, children who dropped out of school because the need for money outweighed the need for education, young adults who embraced love wherever they could find it, and union workers who believed they deserved better working conditions.
More poignant, however, is her portrayal of the relief workers Gellhorn incorporates into each of the four stories. Conversations between the relief workers and those “on Relief” highlight the embarrassment, the despair, and the pain of the Depression. Through their words and actions, we see both the desire to help the poor and the disgust that the assistance is necessary. These feelings are not different from what we see today—and that makes The Trouble I’ve Seen as important a read now as it was in the 1930s.
I especially appreciated the book’s introduction by human rights journalist and biographer Caroline Moorehead. In it, she adds historical context to the work accomplished by FERA and quotes directly from several of the individual investigator’s reports. Here’s one of Gellhorn’s:
First published in 1936, this book is a gut-wrenching look at the faces behind the statistics of the depression. Gellhorn draws on her work as one of sixteen writers, journalists, and economists (and, at age 25, the youngest) selected by Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) administrator Harry Hopkins in 1934 to “go wherever unemployment and poverty were most acute, to talk to as many people as possible, and to write down everything they saw and heard.” He used the reports to evaluate the success of the Roosevelt Administration’s work relief programs.
Gellhorn created the four fictional stories in this collection from the confidential reports she filed with Hopkins. In these stories, we meet mothers who became single parents because the fathers ran away, children who dropped out of school because the need for money outweighed the need for education, young adults who embraced love wherever they could find it, and union workers who believed they deserved better working conditions.
More poignant, however, is her portrayal of the relief workers Gellhorn incorporates into each of the four stories. Conversations between the relief workers and those “on Relief” highlight the embarrassment, the despair, and the pain of the Depression. Through their words and actions, we see both the desire to help the poor and the disgust that the assistance is necessary. These feelings are not different from what we see today—and that makes The Trouble I’ve Seen as important a read now as it was in the 1930s.
I especially appreciated the book’s introduction by human rights journalist and biographer Caroline Moorehead. In it, she adds historical context to the work accomplished by FERA and quotes directly from several of the individual investigator’s reports. Here’s one of Gellhorn’s:
“I have been doing more visiting here; about five families a day And I find them all in the same shape – fear, fear driving them into a state of semi-collapse; cracking nerves; and an overpowering terror of the future . . . And there they are; for no reason they can understand; forced to be asking for charity; subject to questions from strangers, and to all the miseries and indignities attached to destitution . . . grim is a gentle word; it’s heartbreaking and terrifying . . .”
October 25, 2013
I hate sentimental renditions of other people's troubles. I feel in order to keep dignity, the last thing you need is to be displayed to teach somebody a lesson or worse to evoke sympathy. Or am I a coward and ostrich, thinking that if I don't know about it, it does not exist? Martha Gellhorn tells how unemployment combined with hunger can render humans hopeless with veracity and completely "free of cant" (from the introduction). Brilliant. No soppiness in sight!
April 5, 2013
Could not put this down! Incredible stories with such an impressive insight into lives of people living in a unique time in US history. I'm now looking for more gellhorn!
March 16, 2021
Carine Morehead in introduction of Gellhorn’s book says: “ In 1932, when the economy had reached it’s lowest point, Herbert Hoover lost the presidential election to Franklin Roosevelt, who came to power determined to halt all further slide into poverty. He set up as rapidly as possible the administration of relief, on a scale never before attempted, to provide work and help those who were suffering the most. Within four months, four million people were back in work.
One of the key members of Roosevelt’s relief program was Harold Hopkins, who had helped creating one of the first public employment in the country.
Hopkins recruited a team of 16 writers, journalists, economists and novelists, to go to wherever in the country that the unemployment and poverty were most acute, to talk and listen to as many people as possible and writing it all simply and clearly and send it back to him. He wanted to know what it felt like for a man to lose his job, his savings and his house and to watch his family sink into misery. Only then, he said, would he really be able to take pulse of the countryand devise a sound relief programme.”
The youngest of Hopkin’s team of investigators was the 25 year old Martha Gellhorn. During her reports for Hopkins, Gellhorn found a subject for his second book which consists of four separate short stories of American people during Great Depression who faced desperate poverty, unemployment and hoplesssness.
The stories are so well written and so heartbreaking. It was really hard for me to enjoy the astonishing style of Gelhorn’s storytelling through the hardship and suffering that those poor people were experiencing during the great depression.
Anyway I can say that it was a great sad book which I really enjoyed it and it really hurt me!
One of the key members of Roosevelt’s relief program was Harold Hopkins, who had helped creating one of the first public employment in the country.
Hopkins recruited a team of 16 writers, journalists, economists and novelists, to go to wherever in the country that the unemployment and poverty were most acute, to talk and listen to as many people as possible and writing it all simply and clearly and send it back to him. He wanted to know what it felt like for a man to lose his job, his savings and his house and to watch his family sink into misery. Only then, he said, would he really be able to take pulse of the countryand devise a sound relief programme.”
The youngest of Hopkin’s team of investigators was the 25 year old Martha Gellhorn. During her reports for Hopkins, Gellhorn found a subject for his second book which consists of four separate short stories of American people during Great Depression who faced desperate poverty, unemployment and hoplesssness.
The stories are so well written and so heartbreaking. It was really hard for me to enjoy the astonishing style of Gelhorn’s storytelling through the hardship and suffering that those poor people were experiencing during the great depression.
Anyway I can say that it was a great sad book which I really enjoyed it and it really hurt me!
December 27, 2020
I thought it was time to get my head out of crime/thriller genre and start on my waiting pile. What I hadn't expected in picking Gellhorn's book The Trouble I've Seen was I was swapping for another form of horror.
Several years ago I watched a doco on the American photographer Dorothea Lange and then read her biography and a range of other work. Her primary bench mark setting was the documentation of the 1930s depression and the witness account of the Dustbowl depression and deprivation. My words cannot describe what you witness so I sought out perhaps the best account Marth Gellhorns.
To read this book is to witness despair and deprivation beyond our imagination. the absence of hope of desolation so absolute.
My next task is to unpick what happened, how this evolved, because it did. To read these accounts is profound, more so because have we really learnt anything, have things changed for those amidst poverty in our world ?
Several years ago I watched a doco on the American photographer Dorothea Lange and then read her biography and a range of other work. Her primary bench mark setting was the documentation of the 1930s depression and the witness account of the Dustbowl depression and deprivation. My words cannot describe what you witness so I sought out perhaps the best account Marth Gellhorns.
To read this book is to witness despair and deprivation beyond our imagination. the absence of hope of desolation so absolute.
My next task is to unpick what happened, how this evolved, because it did. To read these accounts is profound, more so because have we really learnt anything, have things changed for those amidst poverty in our world ?
May 27, 2022
This book was Excellent. Written in 1936 right in the midst of the Depression, Martha Gellhorn shares 4 vignettes of the lives of those in the throes of it. First is the story of an older woman; then a scenario of working men; next is that of a family, and lastly, the experience of the Depression through the eyes of a child.
This book is a great way to understand how the Depression affected real, every day people. It's the first I've read that has helped me to really understand the unbelievable psychological shift people experienced. While my own parents lived through it, they rarely spoke of the Depression, and certainly did not go into the reality and issues as does this book.
Now I want to read everything Martha Gellhorn has written.
This book is a great way to understand how the Depression affected real, every day people. It's the first I've read that has helped me to really understand the unbelievable psychological shift people experienced. While my own parents lived through it, they rarely spoke of the Depression, and certainly did not go into the reality and issues as does this book.
Now I want to read everything Martha Gellhorn has written.
August 22, 2019
As a young journalist, Martha Gellhorn traveled the US gathering information for the US Government on the needs of the ordinary people during the height of the Great Depression. Her findings, as well as those of other journalists, informed the development of many of the social programs developed during this time. This volume is a series of novellas on these "ordinary people." There are many common themes in the novellas, yet each brings a unique perspective. These also provide insights not only into the struggles people faced, the prevailing attitudes about accepting "Relief," but also their attitudes towards government, each other, different classes and races.
July 27, 2019
These 4 stories are not for the faint of heart. The people are folks that you know or have met who are under such desperate circumstances that their whole life and how to live it are changed in the effort to survive. Mrs. Maddison is an older lady struggling to remain positive and keep her family together. Joe is a union organizer, Pete is a believer and follower. Neither is able to accomplish much or maintain faith. Jim commits a crime to give his beloved the wedding she deserves. Ruby is the most heart rending as a girl, not yet in her teens sells her body in order to buy things she wants, help her mom and be able to give presents to her friends.
September 24, 2019
Gellhorn vividly creates four short stories on the Great Depression; based on her reports to the Roosevelt White House as a young reporter. She relates the grinding poverty, hunger, and disease with a critical eye that is unsentimental and yet compassionate. The most devastating of the stories was the final one, "Ruby", the poor, dreamy 11 yr old who becomes a prostitute so she fulfill her dream of buying roller skates. I was curious to read some of Gellhorn's writing after reading "Love and Ruin" by Paula McLain.
March 21, 2020
I became interested in Martha Gellhorn's work after reading Paula McLain's Love and Ruin, about Gellhorn and her marriage to Ernest Hemingway. The Trouble I've Seen is riveting, devastating, intimate - a slice of the Depression as told through the lens of 5 characters over 4 stories. This should be required reading for all Americans.
(One oddity about the book, the current version of which was published in the U.K., is that the spellings are all British spellings although Gellhorn was American).
(One oddity about the book, the current version of which was published in the U.K., is that the spellings are all British spellings although Gellhorn was American).
October 27, 2018
Agonising and viscerally poignant. Fiction but based on her travels around Depression America assessing the state of the impoverished. If ever you feel the need to know the cruelty and insidiousness of poverty then here would be a good place to start.
January 16, 2019
Nobody KNOWS THE TTOUBLE
A realistic account of the hard times of the depression years. The writing is is heart wrenching and the reader sees a time that people talked about and relived for the rest of their lives.
A realistic account of the hard times of the depression years. The writing is is heart wrenching and the reader sees a time that people talked about and relived for the rest of their lives.
December 27, 2018
Brilliant, although completely harrowing.
February 3, 2019
Utterly compelling.
May 1, 2019
A classic. A detailed and human description of life during the depression. I loved it.
Read
August 20, 2019 It would be unfair to rate this book, as it was so completely different from what I expected that it was DNF. Perhaps try again later, with adjusted expectations.
November 21, 2021
An incredibly empathic collection of short novellas about life in the Depression. Remarkable writing by Gelhorn, then a woman in her mid-20s.
September 11, 2023
A sober assessment of what it was like to be alive during the Great Depression in the US. The book is formed of 4 short stories highlighting periods in the lives and tribulations of some of the nations poorest. It’s really interesting to compare the present day success of the nation with what was quite obviously a very difficult time for some. My feeling is that what made the difference here was the Second World War that industrialised much of the country and offered well paid work to those in need. There will always be a gap between those who through no fault of their own fall through the opportunities offered or are excluded because of their class or race. It’s shameful and a blot on a country’s history, but it still happens today.
July 22, 2018
Having previously read Gelhorn's 1940 novel A Stricken Field, written after her marriage to Ernest Hemingway I was interested to tackle The Trouble I've Seen, a group of novellas written during Gelhorn's sojourn as a New Deal reporter and published in 1938 and before she met the famous novelist.
Where A Stricken Field show Papa's influence, The Trouble I've Seen shows none. Were I to characterize the latter, I would call it Steinbeck-esq. It tells the intimate story of a poor and simple, uneducated old women a la Cannery Row.
Gelhorn here is a young unformed writer seeking her muse. Still she tells an interesting and affecting story of the Great Depression. Her empathy and understanding is everywhere apparent. The fact is she cared a great deal more than Hemingway ever did and it shows particularly here. Paradoxically, whether you believe that her meeting with Hemingway was completely serendipitous or that she was a home wrecker who deliberately sought him out, she would have been much better off as a writer had she never met him. She never truly emerged from his shadow. Had she not met him, she just might have received the serious attention her work deserved.
Where A Stricken Field show Papa's influence, The Trouble I've Seen shows none. Were I to characterize the latter, I would call it Steinbeck-esq. It tells the intimate story of a poor and simple, uneducated old women a la Cannery Row.
Gelhorn here is a young unformed writer seeking her muse. Still she tells an interesting and affecting story of the Great Depression. Her empathy and understanding is everywhere apparent. The fact is she cared a great deal more than Hemingway ever did and it shows particularly here. Paradoxically, whether you believe that her meeting with Hemingway was completely serendipitous or that she was a home wrecker who deliberately sought him out, she would have been much better off as a writer had she never met him. She never truly emerged from his shadow. Had she not met him, she just might have received the serious attention her work deserved.
May 22, 2018
Hauntingly apparent premonitions to future economic crises (of distinguished form) to come:
''And so they go on, the gaunt, ragged legion of the individually damned. Bewildered, apathetic, many of them terrifyingly patient''(6-7)
''The daughter is ready to crack under the strain. She's intelligent, good-looking. But there's fire in her eyes''(10)
''Their pride is dying but not without due agony...There are no protest groups, there is only decay. Each family in its own miserable home going to pieces. But I wonder if some day, crazed and despairing, they won't revolt... It seems incredible to think they will go on living like this, patiently waiting for nothing''(12)
''See the world is right, running like hell with some guy running after you''(139)
''And so they go on, the gaunt, ragged legion of the individually damned. Bewildered, apathetic, many of them terrifyingly patient''(6-7)
''The daughter is ready to crack under the strain. She's intelligent, good-looking. But there's fire in her eyes''(10)
''Their pride is dying but not without due agony...There are no protest groups, there is only decay. Each family in its own miserable home going to pieces. But I wonder if some day, crazed and despairing, they won't revolt... It seems incredible to think they will go on living like this, patiently waiting for nothing''(12)
''See the world is right, running like hell with some guy running after you''(139)
August 19, 2018
Résolument moderne, à faire froid dans le dos... le siècle coulé ne nous aura donc que si peu élevés et tant réduits?
A envier, presque, ces figures irrésolues, se brisant telles des vagues sur les rivages écorchés de cette sombre période.
A envier, presque, ces figures irrésolues, se brisant telles des vagues sur les rivages écorchés de cette sombre période.
March 25, 2017
the 1930's depression USA, mid west, look at people's lives and family.
Depressing but well written.
Depressing but well written.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews