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Civil War Trilogy #2
THE WAVE
When published in 1929, Evelyn Scott's The Wave was lauded as "magnificent," "monumental," and "masterly" in its experimental, almost cinematic, narrative technique and its modernist view of war and history. For those same reasons, less visionary reviewers labeled it "a failure." Without sentimentality, nostalgia, or a hint of southern apology, Scott takes as her subject the Civil War and shapes it into a kaleidoscopic design. She tells the story not of a single family or person, but of countless characters - northern, southern, black, white, male, and female - from nearly every conceivable background in many different predicaments. Like drops of water in a wave, they are all caught up in the overwhelming force of war, of history. The Wave set a standard against which all subsequent war novels have been compared. It was partly responsible for inspiring a trend in sprawling books on the Civil War that culminated in Margaret Mitchell's romanticized version in 1936, but it remains unique as a literary mosaic of the human condition, a novel of international consequence and boldly innovative method.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1929
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395 people want to read
About the author
Evelyn Scott
45 books17 followersEvelyn Scott was an American novelist, playwright and poet. A modernist and experimental writer, Scott "was a significant literary figure in the 1920s and 1930s, but she eventually sank into critical oblivion.
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September 2, 2015
A masterpiece by an unjustly forgotten Modernist
In 1929 William Faulkner's publisher felt that his status as minor but provocative author would need critical support if his new book, The Sound and the Fury, was to be well received. It was submitted to a better-known writer, and the result was a small pamphlet, distributed to the great and the good.
It began: ''This essay by Evelyn Scott, whose recent novel "The Wave" placed her among the outstanding literary figures of our time, has been printed in this form and is being distributed to those who are interested in Miss Scott's work and the writing of William Faulkner. "The Sound and the Fury" should place William Faulkner in company with Evelyn Scott. The publishers believe, in the issuance of this little book, that a valuable and brilliant reflection of the philosophies of two important American authors is presented to those who care for such things.''
Eleven years later, a very successful Faulkner was asked whether there were any good female writers. ''Well,'' he answered, ''Evelyn Scott was pretty good, for a woman."
You may hear the sound of me banging my head against the table from wherever you are…
And where is she now? She wrote 13 books and all but one are out of print (and have been for a long long time). There is almost nothing about her on the internet, and she is not included in any of the studies of the period. She is entirely buried, forgotten and ignored.
An introduction to Evelyn Scott
Rather than re-invent the wheel, I quote the following from here:
https://johnacaseyjr.files.wordpress....
The publications of Evelyn Scott (1893-1963) have for a long time sat at the edge of the literary canon. Consequently, among the handful of scholars who have studied Scott’s fiction, the recurring image of “the Lost Modernist” is often associated with her life and writings. Scott’s most recent biographer, Mary White, notes that: “The historical record clearly shows that Scott, throughout her career, had the attention and esteem of her fellow critics and authors”. Nonetheless, White goes on to state, “most scholars of American literature have either no knowledge of or no opinion about her work”.
White attributes this critical neglect to a number of factors. Among them are the “physical and emotional problems” that Scott suffered throughout her life. Suspected by both of her biographers (Mary White and D.A. Callard) of having a personality disorder, Scott struggled with alcohol and drug addiction throughout her tumultuous life and attempted suicide on a number of occasions. She also suffered from medical complications associated with the birth of her first and only child, Creighton Scott (a.k.a. Jig), who was the product of Scott’s disastrous romance with a much older, married man, Frederick Creighton Wellman. These numerous difficulties may have led to the labelling of the author as a crackpot and emotional rollercoaster, effecting future publication and sales of her work, much of which remains (in spite of the efforts of Second Wave feminist critics) out of print.
These personal problems alone, however, are not enough to explain the obscurity of Evelyn Scott and her literary creations. Many other Modernist authors were just as difficult and troubled as Scott. But they were men and she was a woman. Gender, therefore, must be considered as a factor for her relative obscurity in comparison to her “Lost Generation” Modernist contemporaries. This explanation fueled the efforts of feminist scholars in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s as they attempted to edit and publish new editions of Evelyn Scott’s fiction and nonfiction writings.
Scott’s rambling lifestyle also played a role in her marginal status in southern literary history. Born Elsie Dunn in Clarksville, TN, she moved with her family first to St. Louis, MO and then to New Orleans, LA as her father attempted to restore his financial situation. It was in the Crescent City that Elsie met Frederick Wellman and eloped with him, ending up eventually in Brazil with a husband, baby, and a new name--Evelyn Scott. These peregrinations where simply the first of her many moves about the globe. Scott’s early biographer D.A. Callard quips that “This very American novel [i.e. The Wave] was written in the south of France, a Portuguese hotel, an Algerian oasis town, the Hollywood Hotel in Montreal and sundry points in between”
Why should you bother to read it?
Because it is a masterpiece.
It is a Big, Bold, Brave, Experimental text in a style and manner women are often accused of being unable to pull off. It holds its own next to any of its peers the Academy has placed in the canon in its stead.
It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best book I have ever read on the Civil War or, really, any historical event, and is perhaps one of the best novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
She recognises that there was no such thing as The Civil War or the Battle of Gettysburg until they were delineated, invented, by the historical gaze. The experience of each participant was confused, chaotic, uncertain, limited - a soldier fighting in a particular battle has no conception of its relative importance in the story of the war, nor of anything but his own meager consciousness - the argument last night with a friend, his thoughts of his mother, his fear, his uncomfortable boots, his hunger and exhaustion - there is no mythology until after the fact.
So this novel is, in a sense, hundreds of short flashes of experience - we move from mind to mind, in place and time - including newspaper reports, letters, the thoughts of Brazilian cotton magnates, Lincoln himself - all at a point the wave of war hits...sometimes for the hundredth time, sometimes for the first. One could almost see them as interlinked short stories, though the connective tissue and the structure of the whole text makes clear we are reading a cohesive whole.
To do this successfully requires extraordinary skill - each "character" has its own voice, its own viewpoint, and we must gain insight into them in a very short time - how she manages to make it all connect so beautifully and hold together in a coherent fashion is beyond me. Her stylistic range, and her confidence, is breathtaking.
For those of you (and I am probably one) for whom "historical fiction" triggers the galloping yawns, this is entirely unlike any other such text I have read - though, to be fair, and to allow a moment of criticism, there are the odd short sections (usually from Grant or Lee's perspective) that stray a little too much into that field for me.
The prose itself is perhaps where she impressed me most. It is hard to quote, not least because there are so many styles at play, but here is one sentence, from page 6, which was the first to truly alert me to the presence of genius:
""Behind the spit of sand, the flat-spread claws of the groined palmettos spread their glistered fans."
There is alliteration and assonance and all the rest here, wonderfully done, but I was struck by her choice of "glistered" (to have used "glistening" would have lessened the effect) and "groined" (not, as my brain initially suggested, relating to the human groin, but a vault formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults, usually with plain groins without ribs). As thus:
to whit:
The music of this sentence is just lovely, and its imagery avoids cliche without simply diving into the surreal.
It would, of course, be too much for a novel to be written entirely in sentences like this - one would be sicker than a kid at Halloween bed-time - and, indeed, such ornate sentences are (relatively) few.
If you are interested, take a gander at some of my updates for more examples of her prose stylings.
She writes dialogue and thought in phonetics where appropriate, capturing some wonderfully and subtly different Southern drawls, as well as the rhythms of afro-american speech, all of which worked perfectly for me. There is a refreshing equanimity to her authorial gaze - all are given equal weight - from slaves to polish Jews, from Southern deserters to Lincoln himself, from prostitutes to old and wealthy spinsters. The confidence, the ambition, displayed in doing this is incredible.
So, in summary, this is deserving of your attention. Though out-of-print there are cheap copies all over the internet, and I am sure those of you in the US will be able to find ones in your local libraries.
Some of her earlier work can be found at Project Gutenberg, though I have not read it yet and cannot vouch for its quality.
I look forward to watching her readership grow, and hearing what some of you think.
In 1929 William Faulkner's publisher felt that his status as minor but provocative author would need critical support if his new book, The Sound and the Fury, was to be well received. It was submitted to a better-known writer, and the result was a small pamphlet, distributed to the great and the good.
It began: ''This essay by Evelyn Scott, whose recent novel "The Wave" placed her among the outstanding literary figures of our time, has been printed in this form and is being distributed to those who are interested in Miss Scott's work and the writing of William Faulkner. "The Sound and the Fury" should place William Faulkner in company with Evelyn Scott. The publishers believe, in the issuance of this little book, that a valuable and brilliant reflection of the philosophies of two important American authors is presented to those who care for such things.''
Eleven years later, a very successful Faulkner was asked whether there were any good female writers. ''Well,'' he answered, ''Evelyn Scott was pretty good, for a woman."
You may hear the sound of me banging my head against the table from wherever you are…
And where is she now? She wrote 13 books and all but one are out of print (and have been for a long long time). There is almost nothing about her on the internet, and she is not included in any of the studies of the period. She is entirely buried, forgotten and ignored.
An introduction to Evelyn Scott
Rather than re-invent the wheel, I quote the following from here:
https://johnacaseyjr.files.wordpress....
The publications of Evelyn Scott (1893-1963) have for a long time sat at the edge of the literary canon. Consequently, among the handful of scholars who have studied Scott’s fiction, the recurring image of “the Lost Modernist” is often associated with her life and writings. Scott’s most recent biographer, Mary White, notes that: “The historical record clearly shows that Scott, throughout her career, had the attention and esteem of her fellow critics and authors”. Nonetheless, White goes on to state, “most scholars of American literature have either no knowledge of or no opinion about her work”.
White attributes this critical neglect to a number of factors. Among them are the “physical and emotional problems” that Scott suffered throughout her life. Suspected by both of her biographers (Mary White and D.A. Callard) of having a personality disorder, Scott struggled with alcohol and drug addiction throughout her tumultuous life and attempted suicide on a number of occasions. She also suffered from medical complications associated with the birth of her first and only child, Creighton Scott (a.k.a. Jig), who was the product of Scott’s disastrous romance with a much older, married man, Frederick Creighton Wellman. These numerous difficulties may have led to the labelling of the author as a crackpot and emotional rollercoaster, effecting future publication and sales of her work, much of which remains (in spite of the efforts of Second Wave feminist critics) out of print.
These personal problems alone, however, are not enough to explain the obscurity of Evelyn Scott and her literary creations. Many other Modernist authors were just as difficult and troubled as Scott. But they were men and she was a woman. Gender, therefore, must be considered as a factor for her relative obscurity in comparison to her “Lost Generation” Modernist contemporaries. This explanation fueled the efforts of feminist scholars in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s as they attempted to edit and publish new editions of Evelyn Scott’s fiction and nonfiction writings.
Scott’s rambling lifestyle also played a role in her marginal status in southern literary history. Born Elsie Dunn in Clarksville, TN, she moved with her family first to St. Louis, MO and then to New Orleans, LA as her father attempted to restore his financial situation. It was in the Crescent City that Elsie met Frederick Wellman and eloped with him, ending up eventually in Brazil with a husband, baby, and a new name--Evelyn Scott. These peregrinations where simply the first of her many moves about the globe. Scott’s early biographer D.A. Callard quips that “This very American novel [i.e. The Wave] was written in the south of France, a Portuguese hotel, an Algerian oasis town, the Hollywood Hotel in Montreal and sundry points in between”
Why should you bother to read it?
Because it is a masterpiece.
It is a Big, Bold, Brave, Experimental text in a style and manner women are often accused of being unable to pull off. It holds its own next to any of its peers the Academy has placed in the canon in its stead.
It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best book I have ever read on the Civil War or, really, any historical event, and is perhaps one of the best novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
She recognises that there was no such thing as The Civil War or the Battle of Gettysburg until they were delineated, invented, by the historical gaze. The experience of each participant was confused, chaotic, uncertain, limited - a soldier fighting in a particular battle has no conception of its relative importance in the story of the war, nor of anything but his own meager consciousness - the argument last night with a friend, his thoughts of his mother, his fear, his uncomfortable boots, his hunger and exhaustion - there is no mythology until after the fact.
So this novel is, in a sense, hundreds of short flashes of experience - we move from mind to mind, in place and time - including newspaper reports, letters, the thoughts of Brazilian cotton magnates, Lincoln himself - all at a point the wave of war hits...sometimes for the hundredth time, sometimes for the first. One could almost see them as interlinked short stories, though the connective tissue and the structure of the whole text makes clear we are reading a cohesive whole.
To do this successfully requires extraordinary skill - each "character" has its own voice, its own viewpoint, and we must gain insight into them in a very short time - how she manages to make it all connect so beautifully and hold together in a coherent fashion is beyond me. Her stylistic range, and her confidence, is breathtaking.
For those of you (and I am probably one) for whom "historical fiction" triggers the galloping yawns, this is entirely unlike any other such text I have read - though, to be fair, and to allow a moment of criticism, there are the odd short sections (usually from Grant or Lee's perspective) that stray a little too much into that field for me.
The prose itself is perhaps where she impressed me most. It is hard to quote, not least because there are so many styles at play, but here is one sentence, from page 6, which was the first to truly alert me to the presence of genius:
""Behind the spit of sand, the flat-spread claws of the groined palmettos spread their glistered fans."
There is alliteration and assonance and all the rest here, wonderfully done, but I was struck by her choice of "glistered" (to have used "glistening" would have lessened the effect) and "groined" (not, as my brain initially suggested, relating to the human groin, but a vault formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults, usually with plain groins without ribs). As thus:
to whit:
The music of this sentence is just lovely, and its imagery avoids cliche without simply diving into the surreal.
It would, of course, be too much for a novel to be written entirely in sentences like this - one would be sicker than a kid at Halloween bed-time - and, indeed, such ornate sentences are (relatively) few.
If you are interested, take a gander at some of my updates for more examples of her prose stylings.
She writes dialogue and thought in phonetics where appropriate, capturing some wonderfully and subtly different Southern drawls, as well as the rhythms of afro-american speech, all of which worked perfectly for me. There is a refreshing equanimity to her authorial gaze - all are given equal weight - from slaves to polish Jews, from Southern deserters to Lincoln himself, from prostitutes to old and wealthy spinsters. The confidence, the ambition, displayed in doing this is incredible.
So, in summary, this is deserving of your attention. Though out-of-print there are cheap copies all over the internet, and I am sure those of you in the US will be able to find ones in your local libraries.
Some of her earlier work can be found at Project Gutenberg, though I have not read it yet and cannot vouch for its quality.
I look forward to watching her readership grow, and hearing what some of you think.
March 31, 2020
This takes an approach similar to books like 42nd Parallel and Europe Central, exploring a historical event - in this case, The Civil War - through the perspectives of a multitude of characters. The Wave revisits its characters even less frequently than the two previously mentioned works, and yet I would say, it is more successful at accessing their psychology. The unfortunate exception is of course, the characters of color. On a personal note, I've been more intentional about reading works by women this year, and this book, in its approach and in its shortcomings, has illustrated yet again that there are always more perspectives to explore.
September 22, 2020
I think this one lost a star just for the heavy-handed racism (though with debateable intent) and its antisemitism (which has no ambiguity about it). This book is oftentimes rather impressive in its writing, though occasionally turgid, and this combined with the above issues at hand had me put it down for weeks at a stretch. Glad I finished it, but definitely one of those books that is more admired in the fullness of its fact rather than in the minutiae of its reading.
Worth the effort despite any misgivings I may have of it—a giant of a novel truly and unduly forgotten.
Worth the effort despite any misgivings I may have of it—a giant of a novel truly and unduly forgotten.
unfinished-books
January 29, 2008Unfortunately, I couldn't finish this book and thus I won't be giving it any stars. I was deeply disappointed, as I had sought out this title and was very excited when I finally found it. It is a Civil War novel (I love these) written in 1929. At the time it was written (and by some reviews since) it was hailed as one of the best books about the Civil War ever written, and is considered an "important" book no matter
how you feel about the subject matter. However, the dialect is
very difficult; the pacing is dreadfully slow (I made it 70 pages in before giving up, and she was still introducing the characters), the plot and situations are incredibly confusing (there is one sequence I read three times, I still couldn't figure out who was doing what), and the tone is racist even for when it was written.
how you feel about the subject matter. However, the dialect is
very difficult; the pacing is dreadfully slow (I made it 70 pages in before giving up, and she was still introducing the characters), the plot and situations are incredibly confusing (there is one sequence I read three times, I still couldn't figure out who was doing what), and the tone is racist even for when it was written.
March 6, 2023
It’s an ambitious goal to cover the entire Civil War in one novel. There’s some truly impressive imaginative writing here, but I was disappointed in the lack of depth in the portrayal of the black characters and the blatant antisemitism (though written by a white author in 1927, maybe I shouldn’t be?) It’s basically a collection of narratives — most were really well done, but some were kinda boring. I could never ease into the writing style (so. many. commas.), and some of the internal monologues were too lengthy for me. I really felt like it needed a good editor! That said, I feel like I accomplished something in finishing it as it’s one of the first books of its kind. Today, I do think its merit is found in its representation of the Civil War from the POV of a Southern author…worth the read, but with a critical eye.
November 13, 2022
This is an intense character study of a multitude of characters during the Civil War. It reads like a collection of short stories. The author’s understanding of human emotions, actions, strengths, and flaws is amazing. Some may be disturbed by the realistic terminology as was used at the time, particularly racial terms. My only criticism is that it was a bit long and slow in some sections, but definitely worth the read.
January 3, 2020
First published in 1929, this book will not be for everyone but for avid readers who are interested in learning about the Civil War, this book is amazing. Scott was a masterful writer who presented the Civil War, chapter by chapter, in vignettes. Each chapter is a different story featuring different characters. She progresses through the war, looking at the conflict through the eyes of children, privileged men, fallen women, and includes major events along the way. This is not a war novel that takes the reader from one battle to the next. Instead, Scott views the war from the perspective of the common people in all its gritty details. At the time of its publication, the book was celebrated as a masterpiece. Scott was so revered as a writer, that her publisher asked her to look at the manuscript of a little-known author named William Faulkner, to get her opinion if he was worth publishing or not. They wrote: ""The Sound and the Fury" should place William Faulkner in company with Evelyn Scott. The publishers believe, in the issuance of this little book, that a valuable and brilliant reflection of the philosophies of two important American authors is presented to those who care for such things."
Unfortunately, however, Scott's star faded while Faulkner's continued to shine bright for decades to come. If you are considering this book, and are not intimated by constant dips into varying POVs, dive right in. You will not be disappointed. Those teaching the Civil War should consider this book as an interesting look at events that shaped the social life of the everyday people (like the draft riots - the biggest riots in US history, the bread riots - where women who were desperate and starving had had enough and decided to take matters into their own hands, ...). Scott was way ahead of her time with this novel.
Unfortunately, however, Scott's star faded while Faulkner's continued to shine bright for decades to come. If you are considering this book, and are not intimated by constant dips into varying POVs, dive right in. You will not be disappointed. Those teaching the Civil War should consider this book as an interesting look at events that shaped the social life of the everyday people (like the draft riots - the biggest riots in US history, the bread riots - where women who were desperate and starving had had enough and decided to take matters into their own hands, ...). Scott was way ahead of her time with this novel.
December 1, 2018
It seemed to her that the demoralization of war-time had made them both unclean.
Chapter IV Section IV
The demoralization of war--the things war makes men and women think and do. With the specter of death looming overhead, why not let your desires run rampant, why follow the norms of society? Why do what it tells us to do? Or think, or feel? In war, men proclaim their love, but without a commitment to marriage; women choose to be with men and think bold thoughts.
But The Wave is about so much more than the loss of morals during wartime. It is a sweeping novel in which Scott gives us a portrayal of the Civil War from the first salvos at Fort Sumter to the parades in Washington DC to commemorate the end of the war and Union victory. And she does so through the eyes and minds of a hundred characters--wounded soldiers, destitute civilians, freed slaves, generals, even Lincoln. It is staggering to consider the imagination it took to write a novel as vast as The Wave.
The Wave is not an easy read. Such is often the case with great works of literature, where the novelist is an artist with words and language. And The Wave is great literature...but sadly forgotten by modern readers.
Chapter IV Section IV
The demoralization of war--the things war makes men and women think and do. With the specter of death looming overhead, why not let your desires run rampant, why follow the norms of society? Why do what it tells us to do? Or think, or feel? In war, men proclaim their love, but without a commitment to marriage; women choose to be with men and think bold thoughts.
But The Wave is about so much more than the loss of morals during wartime. It is a sweeping novel in which Scott gives us a portrayal of the Civil War from the first salvos at Fort Sumter to the parades in Washington DC to commemorate the end of the war and Union victory. And she does so through the eyes and minds of a hundred characters--wounded soldiers, destitute civilians, freed slaves, generals, even Lincoln. It is staggering to consider the imagination it took to write a novel as vast as The Wave.
The Wave is not an easy read. Such is often the case with great works of literature, where the novelist is an artist with words and language. And The Wave is great literature...but sadly forgotten by modern readers.
October 22, 2023
To be more accurate, I *tried* to read this one ... and quicly found out why it so quickly gor eclipsed by Margaret Mitchell's more famous book. I admire the structure and skill that went into "Wave", and yet it stands as a clear example that not all experimental writings stand the test of time so spectacularly well as say, "Moby Dick". A shame.
Read
January 23, 2011Apparently considered by some as one of the greatest novels written about the Civil War, The Wave is written by a native of Clarksville TN, Evelyn Scott who left Clarksville very young and in some disgrace. I actually have two copies of this book, neither of which is the edition noted in Goodreads. My paper copy is a 1985 Carroll and Graf Publishers version, in relatively good condition considering the cheap paper that is yellowing and brittle. I also have a hard copy without jacket, a 1st edition 1929 copy purchased in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
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