Across Spoon River

by Edgar Lee Masters

 
       This intimate and provocative autobiography, first published in 1936,
        reveals the innermost thoughts of a great American poet. Edgar Lee Masters
        was a transitional figure in American literature with one foot planted
        in the nineteenth century and the other firmly placed on the path of what
        we now think of as the modern period.
      Masters expounds on his own development as a poet and as a human being;
        he shares his views on American culture, politics, and the literary criticism
        of the times. Masters's friends and acquaintances discussed here include
        some of the most prominent writers and politicians of his age. And he
        reflects on his life events that shaped, haunted, and inspired his writings
        of the classic Spoon River Anthology.
     
 

Genres: Poetry

456 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 1991

About the author

Edgar Lee Masters (Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1868 - Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

During most of my reading of this 1936 autobiography, I forgot all about why I'd sought it out in the first place -- which was because I'd wanted to find out everything I could about the making of Edgar Lee Masters' brilliant and deathless work of free verse, Spoon River Anthology. But instead I became totally absorbed in the author's powerful, short evocations of all the people and happenings of his own life. Hardly ever has a work of nonfiction drawn me from sentence to sentence so compellingly as Across Spoon River. "My mother was acute of perception," he writes, "Her mind flashed with divination, she looked through doors and walls with those clairvoyant eyes, all this beyond nearly anyone I have ever known." In strict chronological fashion, Masters begins with the lives of his New England ancestors, then moves on to describe each of his boyhood homes in the small Illinois towns of Lewistown and Petersburg. He tells what all his teachers were like, how he came upon the mentors of his life, and where amidst the world of books he found his lasting literary inspirations as he progressed to manhood and took up the practice of law in Chicago. Obviously his encounters there with the political and literary lights of the age (Bryant, Sandburg, Theodore Roosevelt, Mencken, etc.) are a delight. But what makes all this story hang together is that one spring day when he'd reached his mid-forties -- after a visit by his mother to Chicago and inspired by their long conversations about their small town past -- Masters went up to his room and wrote the first portraits making up Spoon River Anthology. That book -- unexpectedly filled with penetrating insights into the mysteries the human condition -- made him instantly famous. As he would later reflect in Across Spoon River: "Always in my life my head was down, and I was thrusting my way forward. No great luck ever saw me and took me up. Every step I took was against the wind. I did not know that day by day I was living a life that gave me vast understanding of human nature and the world."

[Beth E · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a lovely look at living in times bygone. Masters describes, for example, his grandparent's house in detail and explains why it meant so much to him. It makes history come alive in a way that textbooks do not. I really enjoy reading about these details.

However, there is also no denying that Masters is a giant egoist. He wrote about his sister that she could have been a great help to him, but instead she was a great hindrance all his life. He seems to think she should have devoted her life to improving his career. It's odd. But later, he describes law cases that he got through her and vacations that she took him on, so that makes it even odder.

He wrote about both of his siblings for several pages before he bothers to tell the readers their names. It was very odd.

Masters also continually complains about how hard he worked in life, while also describing how he refused to consider the jobs which his father wished to help him obtain.

I enjoy this book for the descriptions of Master's life, but his ego really bothered me. Everything was about him in a way that seemed excessive even for a biography.

[Greg Locascio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edgar Lee Masters is sort of a one-trick pony, his only success Spoon River Anthology, published in 1915.

Across Spoon River is an autobiography written in 1935. Masters kept publishing novels, books of poetry, a much-vilified book about Abraham Lincoln, and a more celebrated biography of Vachel Lindsay, but none attained the popularity or notoriety of Spoon River. I was hoping this autobiography would give more insight to the inspirations behind the anthology but was disappointed. He only mentions that he spent a few weekends visiting with his mother and sharing stories from his childhood growing up in Petersburg and Lewistown, IL. He also admits that he didn't initially see the novelty or power of the epitaph forms, but was encouraged to produce more at the insistence of William Marion Reedy, publisher of the Mirror, a St. Louis poetry magazine.

What makes Spoon River Anthology such a compelling read is the agony and the ecstasy of its characters, the petty grievances, the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and being misunderstood, the societal institutions in all their hypocrisy and the soulless ways that these institutions bring people down. Spoon River has an edginess to it.

What makes Across Spoon River an insufferable read at times is Masters' tendency to whine and complain about petty grievances in his life and how he describes important characters, such as his mother and sister (deceased by time of publication), in less than flattering terms. Masters was living in near destitution and social isolation in New York City when he wrote his autobiography, and he used the opportunity to grind many an axe. The personal and professional grievances of an early 20th-century Chicago lawyer lost my interest after awhile.

This is almost as annoying as the seemingly endless infatuations he had with any woman who came into his orbit. These dalliances would have been interesting if he did remarkable character studies of the women. But no. Masters employs vague language and references to Greek mythology to cloak his womanizing. He shows vulnerability, admitting he has a "sex addiction," but it's not very interesting reading.

Redeeming elements of this book include understanding the political and moral climate of central Illinois. Virginian sentiments on his father's side are more prevalent in Petersburg, which Masters has more affinity with because of its acceptance of drinking and a looser moral code. The strict New Hampshire Calvinism of his mother's side is predominant in Lewistown.

I visited Lewistown a few summers ago, and the graveyard there has a monument to Spoon River Anthology along with a map to graves of people known to inspire characters in the Anthology. The monument states the Anthology was controversial and that Masters was not a very welcome figure in Lewistown in his lifetime. In Across Spoon River, Masters shows only dislike and contempt for the town, portraying it as being rife with drunks and high-minded society type hypocrites.

Masters strikes me as a tortured, self-sabotaging, lonely soul; an outsider to the various clubs he belonged to; struggling to make connections and get support as a lawyer; and while he acknowledges a debt to Reedy for his support, Masters said that family and friends did not support his writing, seeing him first as a lawyer. It seems to be a poet's lot to be misunderstood, and being an outsider can make one develop a strong sense of perspective, which obviously added to the genius of the Anthology.

But over the course of 400+ pages, this tortured sensibility wears thin, and my final assessment of Masters the man is a whiny, idealistic, navel-gazing womanizer. He captured lightning in a bottle for a brief moment, and thus is immortalized and anthologized, yet in the aggregate comes off as petty and trite.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry that is refreshing and there are some incredibly deep metaphors and some great imagery.