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Show Boat
The novel that inspired the Broadway classic—a saga of romance, revenge, and a riverboat theater “First-rate storytelling . . . irresistible.” —The New York Times Book Review
Spanning four decades and three generations, and journeying from the post–Civil War South to Chicago to New York, Show Boat has been adapted for radio, stage, and screen, becoming a landmark of American culture.
The bestseller by Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber follows a cast of characters who live and work aboard a riverboat, traveling in order to perform for audiences along the banks of the Mississippi. It is a story of adventure, drama, destructive passions, racial conflict, and romantic entanglements, set amid the changing times of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Spanning four decades and three generations, and journeying from the post–Civil War South to Chicago to New York, Show Boat has been adapted for radio, stage, and screen, becoming a landmark of American culture.
The bestseller by Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber follows a cast of characters who live and work aboard a riverboat, traveling in order to perform for audiences along the banks of the Mississippi. It is a story of adventure, drama, destructive passions, racial conflict, and romantic entanglements, set amid the changing times of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
236 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 20, 1926
125 people are currently reading
1474 people want to read
About the author
Edna Ferber
280 books285 followersEdna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
September 24, 2020
The love story doesn't even come close to the plot the novel tries to be, namely "Gone With the Wind." (To her credit, Ferber's novel is ten years older...) No. This is really much like GWTW-lite. It is, in fact, a weirdly paced paint-it-by-numbers type endevour. The love story is inauthentic & sporadically... pedophilic? Plot points are given to us by the (waaay) articulate writer prematurely (such as the dad's death, Kim's birth) and then are played out in a very predictable way. Expected better.
But there is an urge to make something of this by Edna Ferber. For instance, she begins to employ 2nd person narration inexplicably at the last third. Also begins semi streams-of-consciousness, just to, you know, add flavor. Like adding salt to ocean water, I suppose. She is trying to make it memorable to us, even a bit... experimental. The urge, the attempt, is clearly there. The main protagonist explains her world to us in such annoying detail. She's true green ingenue that I could certainly give less a damn about. The mother is a two dimensional person to hate--but I actually did just the opposite of that. (Despite the fact that everything out of her mouth is a brazen cliche.) It is outlandish. It tells us less about the Mississippi than originally predicted, other than, you know, the main metaphor of "life as river."
But there is an urge to make something of this by Edna Ferber. For instance, she begins to employ 2nd person narration inexplicably at the last third. Also begins semi streams-of-consciousness, just to, you know, add flavor. Like adding salt to ocean water, I suppose. She is trying to make it memorable to us, even a bit... experimental. The urge, the attempt, is clearly there. The main protagonist explains her world to us in such annoying detail. She's true green ingenue that I could certainly give less a damn about. The mother is a two dimensional person to hate--but I actually did just the opposite of that. (Despite the fact that everything out of her mouth is a brazen cliche.) It is outlandish. It tells us less about the Mississippi than originally predicted, other than, you know, the main metaphor of "life as river."
July 24, 2008
This book took me away from a difficult childhood and helped me escape into the world of books. It was a large and involved three generation, post civil war story of a strong, rigid Parhenia Hawks whose husband wanted to purchase a showboat and involved their children in the world of theatre. She was opposed. They travelled on the "Cotton Blossom" down the mighty Mississppi. Edna Ferber is a forgotten author now, but very popular in her day.This book went on to play on Broadway. You might know her other work "Giant" She's one of the best at imagery and weaving stories of a nation after war and families epic sagas. If you relish a good, long involved story spanning generations, you will enjoy getting lost in this book. I first read it in 1965 while in high school and it is still one of my favorites. The strength of the story follows Parthenia's daughter Magnolia who falls for a professional gambler. The journey Magnolia travels with the unsavory character finds her in Chicago in places a nice girl should never see.
May 13, 2009
You know that seminal story from your childhood? The one you watched/read/listened to so often that your parents were ready to bribe you out of doing so again in order to save their own sanity? For me, that story was Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat. Specifically, a tape-recording of Show Boat that my dad dubbed for me off a library CD. I still have that tape; I listened to it so often as a kid that any articulation the bass may have had is completely worn away to a muddy "wahmmm" sound that threatens, during emotional passages, to swamp everything else. My huge early Walkman and that Show Boat cassette went with me everywhere at the age of seven or eight. I remember listening to it lying in the grass of our backyard; cleaning my room; riding in my grandparents' RV. Show Boat introduced me to such diverse concepts as the power of a reprised melody, the localized economies of post-Civil-War America, the pernicious "one drop of black blood" doctrine, and the deep cultural nostalgia, even on the part of Northerners, for a lost Old South. Whenever "Old Man River" came on, I would make a point of stopping whatever I was doing, closing my eyes, and letting the music envelop me as I "contemplated the evils of slavery." That was how I put it to myself: contemplating the evils of slavery. I'm not sure where I got this idea, and I kind of wish I'd confided the practice to an adult, who could perhaps have suggested a more concrete way to fight present-day racism, but there you go. That's how I rolled.
I've toyed with reading Edna Ferber's 1926 Show Boat, upon which my childhood favorite is based, ever since I found out about its existence around the age of seven. I even checked it out of the library, but the word "miscegenation" was slightly advanced for my second-grade vocabulary. I recently decided to give it another go and I'm glad I did, even if Ferber's writing isn't something to which I would normally be drawn.
Ferber is at her best when describing generalities, ways of life, as in this passage about the tawdry, hackneyed, yet beloved show boat performances:
The swelling emotion here, the wry yet heartfelt romanticism directed toward the lives of certain kinds of white folks on the Mississippi of yesteryear, make it easy to understand what attracted Kern and Hammerstein to this material. The reader can practically hear the string section already. I get the impression that most of Ferber's strong feeling, most of her motivation for writing the novel, came from a desire to evoke a lost, rowdy, rough yet lovely lifestyle. She does this effectively, but at the cost of developing most of the characters beyond stock "types" (the impetuous young girl, the dashing Southern riverboat gambler) or polishing the dialogue to a believable level. The plot moves a bit jerkily, with an awkward piling of disconnected anecdotes on top of each other. And Ferber seemed reluctant to let her characters actually speak, instead of merely describing how they spoke and the kinds of things they said.
There was one character I did find vibrant and believable, about whom I really cared, and she was a surprising exception: Parthenia Ann Hawks, shrewish mother of the main character, Magnolia. Edna Ferber's entry on Wikipedia has one of the shortest "Personal Life" sections I've ever read, and it begins "Ferber had no children, never married, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship with anyone of either gender." Given her own preference for the single life, I was at first surprised at the harshness of her portrayal of Parthy, who remains a kind of spinster even after her marriage to Magnolia's father, Captain Andy Hawks. Parthy is described in viciously satirical terms: a fun-hating tyrant, obsessed with cleanliness and order, who nags and scolds her father, and then her husband and daughter, whenever they suggest something remotely enjoyable. Yet, as the novel progresses, one realizes that there is a certain affectionate humor in Ferber's portrayal, lurking under the antipathy: Parthy does enjoy herself on the show boat, as loathe as she may be to admit it, and as she gradually adapts to river life, she becomes the most incongruous and by far the most dynamic character in the novel.
Despite its shortcomings, I did quite enjoy Show Boat. If nothing else, it was interesting to analyze the ways in which Kern and Hammerstein chose to adapt the plot to the musical stage. Julie, for example, the character who is discovered to have mixed blood, was originally part of the "character team" rather than, as in the Kern/Hammerstein version, the beautiful leading lady - a less Romantic but slightly more interesting setup. In both versions, Magnolia encounters Julie again years later in compromising circumstances, but Kern/Hammerstein alter her from a competent, well-dressed bookkeeper in Chicago's leading brothel, to a pathetic, tattered drunk. Both of these outcomes are equally shocking from Magnolia's perspective, but I thought Ferber's version was substantially more optimistic (and again, less Romantic) in terms of Julie's life after she leaves the show boat. Similarly, Kern/Hammerstein have Magnolia reunited, in the end, with her estranged gambler husband, whereas in Ferber the break is final. I preferred the Ferber version of all of these plot elements: she shows a refreshing respect for un-beautiful women making their own way.
Also notable, of course, is Ferber's treatment of race. Both novel and musical suffer from the casual racism of their time; "Negroes" are treated as picturesque bits of scenery rather than humans, and even when individual black folks emerge, they are portrayed as eye-rolling and childlike. This, despite the best efforts of both productions to be anti-racist: including a miscegenation plot with a sympathetic mixed-blook character in 1926-27 was a daring statement, and the spirituals of Jo and Queenie (the show boat cooks) are an important source of solace and revenue for Magnolia in both versions. Ferber's novel, though, has no equivalent to the most famous Show Boat song, "Old Man River": it does not attempt to foreground, in the same way, the hard, demoralizing labor of African-American people, or the systemic oppression of black folks under white rule ("you gets a little drunk, and you lands in jail"). There are even moments in Ferber when the reader is meant to cheer Magnolia for exercising her white privilege, as when she aggressively insists that a black doorman let her into a house we want her to enter. It's debatable how anti-racist even the Kern/Hammerstein version manages to be - it does, after all, use the words and melodies of a white Jewish duo from New York rather than incorporating actual slave or southern songs. But I'd say it gives it a better shot than the source material.
In any case, I'm glad finally to have read the novel behind the drama, and I'll be interested to see, next time I break out the old cassette, whether having read Ferber's novel affects my perception of its musical offspring.
I've toyed with reading Edna Ferber's 1926 Show Boat, upon which my childhood favorite is based, ever since I found out about its existence around the age of seven. I even checked it out of the library, but the word "miscegenation" was slightly advanced for my second-grade vocabulary. I recently decided to give it another go and I'm glad I did, even if Ferber's writing isn't something to which I would normally be drawn.
Ferber is at her best when describing generalities, ways of life, as in this passage about the tawdry, hackneyed, yet beloved show boat performances:
The curtain rose. The music ceased jerkily, in mid-bar. They became little children listening to a fairy tale. A glorious world of unreality opened before their eyes. Things happened. They knew that in life things did not happen thus. But here they saw, believed, and were happy. Innocence wore golden curls. Wickedness wore black. Love triumphed, right conquered, virtue was rewarded, evil punished.
They forgot the cotton fields, the wheatfields, the cornfields. They forgot the coal mines, the potato patch, the stable, the barn, the shed. They forgot the labour under the pitiless blaze of the noonday sun; the bitter marrow-numbing chill of winter; the blistered skin; the frozen road; wind, snow, rain, flood. The women forgot for an hour their washtubs, their kitchen stoves, childbirth pains, drudgery, worry, disappointment. Here were blood, lust, love, passion. Here were warmth, enchantment, laughter, music. It was Anodyne. It was Lethe. It was Escape. It was the Theatre.
The swelling emotion here, the wry yet heartfelt romanticism directed toward the lives of certain kinds of white folks on the Mississippi of yesteryear, make it easy to understand what attracted Kern and Hammerstein to this material. The reader can practically hear the string section already. I get the impression that most of Ferber's strong feeling, most of her motivation for writing the novel, came from a desire to evoke a lost, rowdy, rough yet lovely lifestyle. She does this effectively, but at the cost of developing most of the characters beyond stock "types" (the impetuous young girl, the dashing Southern riverboat gambler) or polishing the dialogue to a believable level. The plot moves a bit jerkily, with an awkward piling of disconnected anecdotes on top of each other. And Ferber seemed reluctant to let her characters actually speak, instead of merely describing how they spoke and the kinds of things they said.
There was one character I did find vibrant and believable, about whom I really cared, and she was a surprising exception: Parthenia Ann Hawks, shrewish mother of the main character, Magnolia. Edna Ferber's entry on Wikipedia has one of the shortest "Personal Life" sections I've ever read, and it begins "Ferber had no children, never married, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship with anyone of either gender." Given her own preference for the single life, I was at first surprised at the harshness of her portrayal of Parthy, who remains a kind of spinster even after her marriage to Magnolia's father, Captain Andy Hawks. Parthy is described in viciously satirical terms: a fun-hating tyrant, obsessed with cleanliness and order, who nags and scolds her father, and then her husband and daughter, whenever they suggest something remotely enjoyable. Yet, as the novel progresses, one realizes that there is a certain affectionate humor in Ferber's portrayal, lurking under the antipathy: Parthy does enjoy herself on the show boat, as loathe as she may be to admit it, and as she gradually adapts to river life, she becomes the most incongruous and by far the most dynamic character in the novel.
Despite its shortcomings, I did quite enjoy Show Boat. If nothing else, it was interesting to analyze the ways in which Kern and Hammerstein chose to adapt the plot to the musical stage. Julie, for example, the character who is discovered to have mixed blood, was originally part of the "character team" rather than, as in the Kern/Hammerstein version, the beautiful leading lady - a less Romantic but slightly more interesting setup. In both versions, Magnolia encounters Julie again years later in compromising circumstances, but Kern/Hammerstein alter her from a competent, well-dressed bookkeeper in Chicago's leading brothel, to a pathetic, tattered drunk. Both of these outcomes are equally shocking from Magnolia's perspective, but I thought Ferber's version was substantially more optimistic (and again, less Romantic) in terms of Julie's life after she leaves the show boat. Similarly, Kern/Hammerstein have Magnolia reunited, in the end, with her estranged gambler husband, whereas in Ferber the break is final. I preferred the Ferber version of all of these plot elements: she shows a refreshing respect for un-beautiful women making their own way.
Also notable, of course, is Ferber's treatment of race. Both novel and musical suffer from the casual racism of their time; "Negroes" are treated as picturesque bits of scenery rather than humans, and even when individual black folks emerge, they are portrayed as eye-rolling and childlike. This, despite the best efforts of both productions to be anti-racist: including a miscegenation plot with a sympathetic mixed-blook character in 1926-27 was a daring statement, and the spirituals of Jo and Queenie (the show boat cooks) are an important source of solace and revenue for Magnolia in both versions. Ferber's novel, though, has no equivalent to the most famous Show Boat song, "Old Man River": it does not attempt to foreground, in the same way, the hard, demoralizing labor of African-American people, or the systemic oppression of black folks under white rule ("you gets a little drunk, and you lands in jail"). There are even moments in Ferber when the reader is meant to cheer Magnolia for exercising her white privilege, as when she aggressively insists that a black doorman let her into a house we want her to enter. It's debatable how anti-racist even the Kern/Hammerstein version manages to be - it does, after all, use the words and melodies of a white Jewish duo from New York rather than incorporating actual slave or southern songs. But I'd say it gives it a better shot than the source material.
In any case, I'm glad finally to have read the novel behind the drama, and I'll be interested to see, next time I break out the old cassette, whether having read Ferber's novel affects my perception of its musical offspring.
August 22, 2017
My wife and I have stumbled across a delightful little tradition. Each summer we go to one of the shows in the Utah Festival Opera & Musical. Whichever one we end up going to, my wife learns the piano sheet music to one of the songs and I read the literature it was based on--mine is in an effort to maximize my smugness and unsupportable behavior as I compare book to performance throughout! (Okay, I try to limit my commentary … but the nerd in me sometimes can’t hold it back!) Last year, that meant reading Don Quijote to match up with Man of La Mancha, the before that was Les Miserables for Les Miserables.
This year, I read the book Show Boat for (wait for it …) Show Boat, and what a treat it was. Those two previous years matched up with heavyweights of classic literature, whereas this year I had no clue that there was a book attached to the musical (which I also had not seen but had at least heard of) until I did a bit of research. I guess that meant I was expecting a decent, perhaps melodramatic story that would provide enough of a backdrop for a musical rendition. Instead, what I got was a powerful, veteran piece of literature that is a match for the heavily popular musical that was inspired by it.
Depending on your mood, you may need to exercise some patience while going through the first half of the novel. Mainly because it is less a story as it is a bunch of collected snippets of imagery and sensory-rich scenes that span a couple of generations. My wife read the back of the book and asked a question about the main protagonist and I (almost halfway through) commented, “There’s a main protagonist?” If you’re not in a hurry or expecting anything to happen, what a visceral grouping of character-capturing, culture-depicting, setting establishing scenes. Then, once things start to happen, Ms. Ferber continues to lead us on in a determinedly un-traditional storyteller manner. She still jumps years and events on a whim. She brashly drops any pretense at foreshadowing and instead just tells us when something in the future will happen or how long it will take. Yet it fits, and I stayed interested.
In the end, I am satisfied with the strong female protagonist (yes, there is one!) that Ferber presents. Incredibly, I took that character’s side through the whole tale, even in decisions that turned out to be mistakes, and I loved Ferber’s choice for where that character ended up--it helped that investment of long, lolling descriptions in the first part of the book pay off. In fact, all of the characters are stark and interesting. All of them earn a spot of sympathy or regard in spite of otherwise intolerable actions. I was amazed by the realistic look at the lifestyle and relationship of someone with an addiction that feels as if it could have been written today (substitute gambling for drugs or pornography).
To conclude, I loved my experience reading Edna Ferber’s Show Boat and perhaps the greatest compliment I can give is that, after finishing I immediately looked up other titles of hers that I could read--something I didn’t do after finishing Les Miserables and Don Quijote! (Though that, admittedly, might have more to do with their length than their quality … still, though, it wasn’t the shortness of Show Boat that captured my fancy.)
This year, I read the book Show Boat for (wait for it …) Show Boat, and what a treat it was. Those two previous years matched up with heavyweights of classic literature, whereas this year I had no clue that there was a book attached to the musical (which I also had not seen but had at least heard of) until I did a bit of research. I guess that meant I was expecting a decent, perhaps melodramatic story that would provide enough of a backdrop for a musical rendition. Instead, what I got was a powerful, veteran piece of literature that is a match for the heavily popular musical that was inspired by it.
Depending on your mood, you may need to exercise some patience while going through the first half of the novel. Mainly because it is less a story as it is a bunch of collected snippets of imagery and sensory-rich scenes that span a couple of generations. My wife read the back of the book and asked a question about the main protagonist and I (almost halfway through) commented, “There’s a main protagonist?” If you’re not in a hurry or expecting anything to happen, what a visceral grouping of character-capturing, culture-depicting, setting establishing scenes. Then, once things start to happen, Ms. Ferber continues to lead us on in a determinedly un-traditional storyteller manner. She still jumps years and events on a whim. She brashly drops any pretense at foreshadowing and instead just tells us when something in the future will happen or how long it will take. Yet it fits, and I stayed interested.
In the end, I am satisfied with the strong female protagonist (yes, there is one!) that Ferber presents. Incredibly, I took that character’s side through the whole tale, even in decisions that turned out to be mistakes, and I loved Ferber’s choice for where that character ended up--it helped that investment of long, lolling descriptions in the first part of the book pay off. In fact, all of the characters are stark and interesting. All of them earn a spot of sympathy or regard in spite of otherwise intolerable actions. I was amazed by the realistic look at the lifestyle and relationship of someone with an addiction that feels as if it could have been written today (substitute gambling for drugs or pornography).
To conclude, I loved my experience reading Edna Ferber’s Show Boat and perhaps the greatest compliment I can give is that, after finishing I immediately looked up other titles of hers that I could read--something I didn’t do after finishing Les Miserables and Don Quijote! (Though that, admittedly, might have more to do with their length than their quality … still, though, it wasn’t the shortness of Show Boat that captured my fancy.)
December 8, 2016
Did you know that the notes in the refrain of “Cotton Blossom” are the inverted notes of the refrain of “Old Man River.” Go ahead, sing it in your head: Cot-ton Blossom……Old Man River.
See? Now good luck getting that out of your head.
We’re speaking, of course, of the musical Show Boat, which was based on the novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. I took a compilation of five of her novels out of the library, because I actually wanted to read Saratoga Trunk. But Show Boat was there and it won the mental coin toss and I read it first.
I hadn’t read anything by Edna Ferber before and was just blown away by her writing. Her sentence structure and cadence make the paragraphs read like songs. And her sensory descriptions are beyond everything. You don’t read Show Boat, you see, hear, smell, feel, touch and eat it. The food was unbelievable! So much so that I felt compelled to make one of my “Literary Eats” blog posts so I could share some of these passages.
Read it here: http://suannelaqueurwrites.com/litera...
See? Now good luck getting that out of your head.
We’re speaking, of course, of the musical Show Boat, which was based on the novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. I took a compilation of five of her novels out of the library, because I actually wanted to read Saratoga Trunk. But Show Boat was there and it won the mental coin toss and I read it first.
I hadn’t read anything by Edna Ferber before and was just blown away by her writing. Her sentence structure and cadence make the paragraphs read like songs. And her sensory descriptions are beyond everything. You don’t read Show Boat, you see, hear, smell, feel, touch and eat it. The food was unbelievable! So much so that I felt compelled to make one of my “Literary Eats” blog posts so I could share some of these passages.
Read it here: http://suannelaqueurwrites.com/litera...
December 20, 2011
I think there's a little of everyone's childhood in this book. The magic part at any rate. I've never lived on a showboat and have no real connection to rivers in general and the Mississippi in particular. There's really very little in the main character with which I personally relate my own history. But the nectar-sweet nostalgia of this story still pulled me in, with its portrayal of a charmed childhood and the inevitable progression into the often harsh bubble-burstings of adulthood. As a novel, the story offers reasonably entertaining and insightful characters and a marvelous setting. Like all of Ferber's works, this one isn't a plot-driven story, and it flags in its second half, due in large part to what feels like a personality transplant for the main character. But, all in all, an enjoyable, if purple, classic.
June 24, 2017
This story is a little slow if you are used to action and adventure fiction. But it is considered a classic. The writing initially takes you to a time before 1900, and puts you with a group and a family that owns a Mississippi riverboat and entertains on that boat a la plays and singing. It goes on to the times when showboats become passe and Broadway perhaps gets its feet under it. The family has its conflicts, and some have hard times and some have wild and wooly times. The thing is, cars don't show up until the last 70 pages or so, and there are no phones for the majority of it, and no electrical. It very successfully does this and I think it is a charming story. The writing has the right kind of description to put you in the scene, without describing it to death. The right words, and a comparison put the feeling in you to let you feel what it is like to be there. It has a cheesy ending reminiscent of old movies where people fade off into the sunset and it WORKS. I don't know if I would recommend this book to everyone. But I would recommend it to people I think are thoughtful, patient, and willing to allow themselves to be slowly brought into a time and place that was special in that era.
January 11, 2022
2022 Reading Challenges
• ATY #1 - A book with a main character whose name starts with A, T, or Y [Andy]
• Back to the Classics #3 - A classic by a woman author
• Read Harder #14 - Read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you’ve seen (but haven’t read the book) [1936 film]
• Popsugar #2 - A book set on a plane, train, or cruise ship
How I selected this book
Edna Ferber was a popular American author in the first half of the 20th century, but she seems barely remembered compared to other authors who have achieved "classic" status. She won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big. This book, Show Boat, was adapted into a musical and several films, and Giant was adapted into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson. Her books sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But I never heard of her until my musicals class in college, and I never see her books on lists of "classics" (though she does show up often in crossword puzzles, "Edna" is great crosswordese). So why hasn't she had longevity?
I purchased an omnibus edition containing Show Boat, So Big, and Cimmaron at a library used book sale a few years ago. I'll start this year with Show Boat, and see if the source material lives up to the highly popular musical.
Plot summary
A three-generation American family saga spanning ~50 years, 1870s-1920s...
Likes
• I love a sprawling family saga
• The three generations are traced through the female line (Parthy --> Magnolia --> Kim)
• Strong characterization of the main characters
Dislikes
• Racism (it was written in 1926)
• Huge time jumps - I love sprawling epics, but prefer a more natural flow between time periods
Final thoughts
It makes sense that this doesn't stand up as a classic - it's good source material for the groundbreaking musical. Watch the musical, but there's no need to read the book. There's nothing in particular about the book itself that stands out. It doesn't hold up for a modern audience, nor does it have strong themes that make it "English class" worthy.
• ATY #1 - A book with a main character whose name starts with A, T, or Y [Andy]
• Back to the Classics #3 - A classic by a woman author
• Read Harder #14 - Read a book whose movie or TV adaptation you’ve seen (but haven’t read the book) [1936 film]
• Popsugar #2 - A book set on a plane, train, or cruise ship
How I selected this book
Edna Ferber was a popular American author in the first half of the 20th century, but she seems barely remembered compared to other authors who have achieved "classic" status. She won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big. This book, Show Boat, was adapted into a musical and several films, and Giant was adapted into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson. Her books sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But I never heard of her until my musicals class in college, and I never see her books on lists of "classics" (though she does show up often in crossword puzzles, "Edna" is great crosswordese). So why hasn't she had longevity?
I purchased an omnibus edition containing Show Boat, So Big, and Cimmaron at a library used book sale a few years ago. I'll start this year with Show Boat, and see if the source material lives up to the highly popular musical.
Plot summary
A three-generation American family saga spanning ~50 years, 1870s-1920s...
Likes
• I love a sprawling family saga
• The three generations are traced through the female line (Parthy --> Magnolia --> Kim)
• Strong characterization of the main characters
Dislikes
• Racism (it was written in 1926)
• Huge time jumps - I love sprawling epics, but prefer a more natural flow between time periods
Final thoughts
It makes sense that this doesn't stand up as a classic - it's good source material for the groundbreaking musical. Watch the musical, but there's no need to read the book. There's nothing in particular about the book itself that stands out. It doesn't hold up for a modern audience, nor does it have strong themes that make it "English class" worthy.
July 5, 2020
Before I commence with my own review, I want to share Carol Ayers' 'review' from 1930:
it was keen, the book ended different than the show. I liked the way the show ended best.
Honestly, I would probably agree with my great-grandmother's assessment if I saw the show, considering the ending of the book wasn't great. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Setting: The dominant setting is on the Mississippi River and its tributaries (the Kanawha, Monongahela, La Fourche, and Bayou Teche Rivers are mentioned as some of the many waterways traveled) but Chicago is also a major setting. The cultures of the Southern states, the more dangerous places (full of riff-raff) like West Virginia, and the later very cultured setting of New York are established and compared pretty well. There were a lot of general statements describing the everyday sights down in the south, but I could get a small picture of the Negroes' lives in the late 1800's, which I enjoyed. As for the dates in the book, it was often vague, but at one point 1877 is mentioned. Before the book begins, a page sets the time: "From the gilded age of the 1870's, through the '90's up to the middle of the Twenties." On this same page the scene is explained, beginning with this sentence: "The earlier parts of the story take place on the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre."
Characters: I found the characters fascinating and written largely unbiasedly. Andy Hawks was definitely shown with a favorable perspective, and he was one of the only people I liked wholeheartedly. He was a hard worker, jovial, and knowledgeable. In reality, he probably wouldn't have been the best father, letting Magnolia live with the uncultured riff-raff, but in the book those decisions he made were good. His wife, Parthenia, was quite an interesting character. I still don't know if the reader is supposed to like or dislike her. The classic Puritan, strict woman, she had a generally unpleasant personality, but her upright character--and her fierce support of Andy's occupation, in the face of her immense displeasure--was Christian-like, and I did get the sense that she was a true Christian woman. And though the reader is obviously meant to disagree with her in certain aspects, I couldn't help but agree with Parthenia in the areas of Magnolia's marriage and the culture of the show boat industry.
Magnolia, likewise, was an interesting character. In a weird, twisted way, I admired her in regard to the way she treated Gaylord Ravenal. But honestly, besides that, I didn't feel she had much of a personality. So, about Gaylord .... he was a complicated character. To describe him simply, he was an evil bad horrible person. But that doesn't really say the whole story, and he was also described as charming. This was a sort of a romance, after all, and in an effort to avoid spoilers, I'll just leave it at that. Problem is, Gaylord resembled too much the men of today, and of course people of today aren't black and white. They may be mostly black, but for some reason others see the white in them. It did get me thinking about humanity.
Most of the other characters weren't developed much. Kim, the first person mentioned in the whole book, didn't get much page time, although her personality was described. I didn't relate to her much, not like Parthenia. Plus, she was too cultured. As seedy as the show boat audiences were, they were real--not like the cultured Chicago and New York theater show audiences. Like Magnolia, I preferred the old actors--Schultzy and Julie and Steve. Elly, not so much, although I imagine her actions are quite realistic (sadly).
Plot: The plot basically revolves around the show boat The Cotton Blossom. In that sense, it was done well, though it took a while for me to be interested. The events that led to the conclusion of the story were morose, but it was satisfactory to Magnolia (kind of). Was it a happy ending? Eh, I wouldn't say yes or no. Was it an ending that reflects the gospel of Jesus? No, not really.
Recommended for those who are interested in the history of show boats, the lifestyle of poorer folk, and show business, but also recommended for people like me, who just want to read old popular books and see why they were well-loved.
it was keen, the book ended different than the show. I liked the way the show ended best.
Honestly, I would probably agree with my great-grandmother's assessment if I saw the show, considering the ending of the book wasn't great. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Setting: The dominant setting is on the Mississippi River and its tributaries (the Kanawha, Monongahela, La Fourche, and Bayou Teche Rivers are mentioned as some of the many waterways traveled) but Chicago is also a major setting. The cultures of the Southern states, the more dangerous places (full of riff-raff) like West Virginia, and the later very cultured setting of New York are established and compared pretty well. There were a lot of general statements describing the everyday sights down in the south, but I could get a small picture of the Negroes' lives in the late 1800's, which I enjoyed. As for the dates in the book, it was often vague, but at one point 1877 is mentioned. Before the book begins, a page sets the time: "From the gilded age of the 1870's, through the '90's up to the middle of the Twenties." On this same page the scene is explained, beginning with this sentence: "The earlier parts of the story take place on the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre."
Characters: I found the characters fascinating and written largely unbiasedly. Andy Hawks was definitely shown with a favorable perspective, and he was one of the only people I liked wholeheartedly. He was a hard worker, jovial, and knowledgeable. In reality, he probably wouldn't have been the best father, letting Magnolia live with the uncultured riff-raff, but in the book those decisions he made were good. His wife, Parthenia, was quite an interesting character. I still don't know if the reader is supposed to like or dislike her. The classic Puritan, strict woman, she had a generally unpleasant personality, but her upright character--and her fierce support of Andy's occupation, in the face of her immense displeasure--was Christian-like, and I did get the sense that she was a true Christian woman. And though the reader is obviously meant to disagree with her in certain aspects, I couldn't help but agree with Parthenia in the areas of Magnolia's marriage and the culture of the show boat industry.
Magnolia, likewise, was an interesting character. In a weird, twisted way, I admired her in regard to the way she treated Gaylord Ravenal. But honestly, besides that, I didn't feel she had much of a personality. So, about Gaylord .... he was a complicated character. To describe him simply, he was an evil bad horrible person. But that doesn't really say the whole story, and he was also described as charming. This was a sort of a romance, after all, and in an effort to avoid spoilers, I'll just leave it at that. Problem is, Gaylord resembled too much the men of today, and of course people of today aren't black and white. They may be mostly black, but for some reason others see the white in them. It did get me thinking about humanity.
Most of the other characters weren't developed much. Kim, the first person mentioned in the whole book, didn't get much page time, although her personality was described. I didn't relate to her much, not like Parthenia. Plus, she was too cultured. As seedy as the show boat audiences were, they were real--not like the cultured Chicago and New York theater show audiences. Like Magnolia, I preferred the old actors--Schultzy and Julie and Steve. Elly, not so much, although I imagine her actions are quite realistic (sadly).
Plot: The plot basically revolves around the show boat The Cotton Blossom. In that sense, it was done well, though it took a while for me to be interested. The events that led to the conclusion of the story were morose, but it was satisfactory to Magnolia (kind of). Was it a happy ending? Eh, I wouldn't say yes or no. Was it an ending that reflects the gospel of Jesus? No, not really.
Recommended for those who are interested in the history of show boats, the lifestyle of poorer folk, and show business, but also recommended for people like me, who just want to read old popular books and see why they were well-loved.
July 31, 2013
I think I love Edna Ferber’s ideas more than actually reading her novels. This is the third novel of hers that I have read (the others were “So Big” and “Cimarron”) and it seemed to take forever. I felt like I had to force myself to read a chapter a day. I love the idea of women who made our nation great, not by ambition but strength of character and rising above the dire circumstances of their marriages. I love her expansive language, put to especially grand use in the first half of “Show Boat” in describing the Mississippi River of the 1870’s. What I have grappled with in “Show Boat” and “Cimarron” is where the words and attitudes of the author stop and those of the characters begin. It is one thing for a white character to talk condescendingly to or about minorities in the setting of a novel; it is another for Jo’s hands to be described as paws or to describe an audience of “black faces, teeth gleaming, eyes rolling.” One of Ferber’s great qualities is her attention paid to the minorities in the world surrounding her heroines, which somewhat (but not fully) acknowledges that the West was not opened by white people alone. However, for a New York writer in the 1920’s, I feel that she could have done slightly better in her omniscient descriptions. I don’t want to think that she is using the shortcuts of stereotyping because I do not believe she is a lazy writer at all. For this reason I will abstain from reading “Saratoga Trunk” – I don’t think Ferber is up to the task of portraying the racial masala of New Orleans (seeing Flora Robson play a mulatto in the movie was quite enough).
That said, of her first three novels I would have to recommend “Show Boat” because there is no film version faithful to it, and it has a lot to offer in what is excised. The novel is chiefly concerned with the dynamic between Magnolia and her mother, and later her daughter. Parthenia Hawks is primarily a comic relief/irritant in the musical and its film adaptations. Here she looms over all the proceedings, even from afar. Her visit to Chicago sets in motion Gaylord’s eventual abandonment of the family and Magnolia’s eventual success as an entertainer. The novel ends when Magnolia comes to certain realizations about her mother’s life as a working widow and her adopting her mother’s lifestyle. It’s ultimately a touching relationship, mostly played out long distance – much like today!
On the other hand, the musical improves on the novel by throwing a little more emphasis on Julie, although even in the musical I wish there was more of her. She does reappear on the day Magnolia auditions in Chicago, but it is not in the same capacity as in the musical, and also missing the pathos in her situation and the affection she has for Magnolia. Queenie and Jo are barely mentioned in the novel, whereas they are the two of the three most memorable characters (along with Julie) in the musical. Basically the black characters get expanded.
In the novel, I could have done without most of Gaylord Ravenal. I don’t care about his perspective, his refined taste, or his wicked ways. “Just hurry up and leave,” was my attitude. I would like to have given this book four stars, but I’m only giving it three because it took me so much effort to get through, so it must not have been as pleasant as I want to remember it. I certainly recall it was not consistently enjoyable. I loved the writing in the first half, but after Magnolia leaves the river I could not stand it.
That said, of her first three novels I would have to recommend “Show Boat” because there is no film version faithful to it, and it has a lot to offer in what is excised. The novel is chiefly concerned with the dynamic between Magnolia and her mother, and later her daughter. Parthenia Hawks is primarily a comic relief/irritant in the musical and its film adaptations. Here she looms over all the proceedings, even from afar. Her visit to Chicago sets in motion Gaylord’s eventual abandonment of the family and Magnolia’s eventual success as an entertainer. The novel ends when Magnolia comes to certain realizations about her mother’s life as a working widow and her adopting her mother’s lifestyle. It’s ultimately a touching relationship, mostly played out long distance – much like today!
On the other hand, the musical improves on the novel by throwing a little more emphasis on Julie, although even in the musical I wish there was more of her. She does reappear on the day Magnolia auditions in Chicago, but it is not in the same capacity as in the musical, and also missing the pathos in her situation and the affection she has for Magnolia. Queenie and Jo are barely mentioned in the novel, whereas they are the two of the three most memorable characters (along with Julie) in the musical. Basically the black characters get expanded.
In the novel, I could have done without most of Gaylord Ravenal. I don’t care about his perspective, his refined taste, or his wicked ways. “Just hurry up and leave,” was my attitude. I would like to have given this book four stars, but I’m only giving it three because it took me so much effort to get through, so it must not have been as pleasant as I want to remember it. I certainly recall it was not consistently enjoyable. I loved the writing in the first half, but after Magnolia leaves the river I could not stand it.
March 25, 2020
I love books of this time in history.. although certainly PC by today's standards that's the way it was back 'then.' Show Boat is one of my favorite movies... no surprise I guess that the movie is very different from the book... but thanks Kristin for passing on your copy.. what great names.. Parthenia.. Gaylord Ravenal... Thank you Edna Ferber
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April 18, 2023Showboat is a weird book. It was written in 1924 and one dumb reviewer called it a “Gone With the Wind” wannabe…an impressive feat given that it came out a decade before…the two books do have parallels (spoiler alert – this book is better). Both deal with a a reeling South after the war, both deal with a panoply of roguish characters, and romance and soapiness. But only one is a mouthpiece for vile racist bullshit…I forget which one though….and one, while being truly vile has the temerity to be 1000 pages….I forget which one though. Showboat isn’t devoid of weird little racist moments, but it does have the self-respect to put those in the voice of characters instead of mainly the narrator.
This book is a classic kind of three generations of a family in a particular field being a way to tell the story of a time and a place….the Mississippi river in the decades after the Civil War through the experiences and geographical positioning of Show Boat performers/crewspeople. There’s not much of a story, so much as a cast of characters, and the story is mostly soap opera. That’s ok. It has charm. It’s interesting.
What it most reminds me of, in much less Gothic ways is “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn and “Swamplandia” by Karen Russell, neither of which I am the biggest fan of, but it has the same kind of plot structure. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dunn had this book in some kind of mind when she wrote hers, and Russell definitely stole everything she could from Dunn, so she can get credit too.
This book is a classic kind of three generations of a family in a particular field being a way to tell the story of a time and a place….the Mississippi river in the decades after the Civil War through the experiences and geographical positioning of Show Boat performers/crewspeople. There’s not much of a story, so much as a cast of characters, and the story is mostly soap opera. That’s ok. It has charm. It’s interesting.
What it most reminds me of, in much less Gothic ways is “Geek Love” by Katherine Dunn and “Swamplandia” by Karen Russell, neither of which I am the biggest fan of, but it has the same kind of plot structure. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dunn had this book in some kind of mind when she wrote hers, and Russell definitely stole everything she could from Dunn, so she can get credit too.
March 20, 2011
My mother always told me that the spelling of my name came from Kathryn Grayson,
who was in the 1951 film of Show Boat. And as a child living along the Ohio River, I remember the Delta Queen stopping and giving open-air concerts from the boat. But I never saw the Kathryn Grayson movie, nor read the book, until now; and it’s a wonderful book, especially for a former river town girl to read (and review).
The book starts in the 1890′s, with the birth of Kim Ravenel on a show boat; she was given her unusual name (unusual for that time), because the Mississippi was in high flood, so she was born either in Kentucky, Illinois, or Missouri. The book then jumps back almost twenty years to tell the story of Kim’s mother Magnolia Hawks, and how she grew up on the rivers.
The author takes us up and down all the tributaries of the Mississippi, then off the boat for several years in Chicago; but never do we lose sight of the Cotton Blossom pulling up at the next town to put on the next show. And the author has a notable gift for character description, which made reading the book a joy.
I should have read this book sooner in my life: but better late than not at all. And perhaps it’s best that I read it now, for by now in my life I have been to most of the towns that the Show Boat visited; and I think that a good thing, for some reason.
who was in the 1951 film of Show Boat. And as a child living along the Ohio River, I remember the Delta Queen stopping and giving open-air concerts from the boat. But I never saw the Kathryn Grayson movie, nor read the book, until now; and it’s a wonderful book, especially for a former river town girl to read (and review).
The book starts in the 1890′s, with the birth of Kim Ravenel on a show boat; she was given her unusual name (unusual for that time), because the Mississippi was in high flood, so she was born either in Kentucky, Illinois, or Missouri. The book then jumps back almost twenty years to tell the story of Kim’s mother Magnolia Hawks, and how she grew up on the rivers.
The author takes us up and down all the tributaries of the Mississippi, then off the boat for several years in Chicago; but never do we lose sight of the Cotton Blossom pulling up at the next town to put on the next show. And the author has a notable gift for character description, which made reading the book a joy.
I should have read this book sooner in my life: but better late than not at all. And perhaps it’s best that I read it now, for by now in my life I have been to most of the towns that the Show Boat visited; and I think that a good thing, for some reason.
December 2, 2009
This is the book on which the perpetually-revived musical is based. The plotlines aren't really all that similar. I can easily understand why this was such a popular book in 1926. It's a sweeping story of three generations of theater folk. There's plenty of drama to go around; in a lot of ways it felt like any number of best-selling novels I've read.
The main issue for the modern reader is the racial aspects of this book. It was really ahead of it's time in its portrayal of blacks (by a white author, anyway) and that must be acknowledged. The illegal love between the passing Julie and her white husband was portrayed sympathetically in a time when this would not have been a typical reaction. On the other hand, most of the black people are presented in a casually insulting, stereotypical way that I found grating and offensive. I kept having to remind myself that this was a normal attitude for white people at the time, that Ferber didn't notice what she was doing and meant no harm by it, but it was hard to plow through.
Also, apparently "Kim" was a very strange name in the '20s. Much was made of how odd her name was. This was first confusing, then amusing.
The main issue for the modern reader is the racial aspects of this book. It was really ahead of it's time in its portrayal of blacks (by a white author, anyway) and that must be acknowledged. The illegal love between the passing Julie and her white husband was portrayed sympathetically in a time when this would not have been a typical reaction. On the other hand, most of the black people are presented in a casually insulting, stereotypical way that I found grating and offensive. I kept having to remind myself that this was a normal attitude for white people at the time, that Ferber didn't notice what she was doing and meant no harm by it, but it was hard to plow through.
Also, apparently "Kim" was a very strange name in the '20s. Much was made of how odd her name was. This was first confusing, then amusing.
June 5, 2016
For a self-professed Broadway junkie, I must confess that I knew absolutely nothing about Showboat beyond that it was a musical. Turns out it was a book first, and one with a very verbose turn of phrase. Coming off of some rather poorly written books, the SAT vocabulary of Showboat was a welcome change indeed. This is the first book in a long time where I had to actually look up word meanings. Cicerone, propinquity, aldermanic... even autocorrect is changing the words as I type. Kudos to Ferber for her language skills.
As for the story itself, it neither bored me to tears nor kept me riveted to my seat. It simply was, and I have a hard time picturing how they made a musical around it. Magnolia's life on the river should have been rich in character development. Alas, more attention was spent on the visual details (so many descriptives!) than character, so that while I could beautifully envision the surroundings, I never felt invested in the people.
I am, however, totally curious now to see how they translated Magnolia's life into a musical. Time to watch a movie!
As for the story itself, it neither bored me to tears nor kept me riveted to my seat. It simply was, and I have a hard time picturing how they made a musical around it. Magnolia's life on the river should have been rich in character development. Alas, more attention was spent on the visual details (so many descriptives!) than character, so that while I could beautifully envision the surroundings, I never felt invested in the people.
I am, however, totally curious now to see how they translated Magnolia's life into a musical. Time to watch a movie!
January 4, 2015
Quite a different story to the one that MGM made of it with Howard Keel. Apart from the musical happy-ending, Ferber's story is more than a little disjointed going back and forth in time, not just from one chapter to another, but even on the same page. The worst example of it was the passage about Andy Hawks drowning. Plus I think she skipped over the most interesting parts had she but developed it, when Ravenal leaves and Nola goes back into show business to support herself and keep Kim in the convent school. Also the fact that she never saw Ravenal again is fine, I didn't expect them to reunite as in the musical but it was very disappointing to not learn more of what became of him other than he died in San Francisco. What Ferber did write was quite enjoyable, she's descriptive without being overly so, like Michener, but what she leaves out of the story is such a disappointment, and of course, no Mr. Keel.
August 3, 2024
Ed. Na. Fer. Ber. Where you been my whole life?
January 26, 2023
Extremely entertaining.
September 16, 2020
This book is nearly 100 years old. In many ways that is very evident, but I found it still very readable and I guess I'd have to say relevant. The story, especially the first half, moves forward as a description of life along the Mississippi and the boats and people who live on and near it. The plot, such as it is, consists of impressions, mostly Magnolia Hawks, of life floating through the Midwest and South during the 1870s onward. Enter Gaylord Ravenal, mysterious riverboat gambler. Is he really one of those Tennessee Ravenals, or is this just part of a fantasized backstory he has invented? He certainly acts as though he is used to money. Nothing is too good for him. Through a number of set pieces we can see how Magnolia fell for the fellow. After a few years on the show boat, Gay moves Magnolia and their young daughter Kim to Chicago where it is feast and famine as Gaylord refuses to consider any career but gambler. Gay had actually shown a talent for the theater in staging and set design but does not have the discipline to stick to a regular job and too big an ego to see any sort of regular job as anything but too plebeian for his exalted status. The final section of the book, shows Magnolia, now widowed, living in the circle of her renowned Broadway actress daughter, Kim.
Magnolia is only really herself on the river. Although she shows spunk and character, she allows her life to be circumscribed by first her mother, then Gay, then Kim. In each case, though, she finds a way to make her own escape. Most of the people she meets along the way such as Julie, Steve, Gaylord and many others disappear from the narrative into the vast American landscape, sometimes to make a brief appearance later. Rather like flotsam bobbing on the great river. At the heart of the story is one of Ferber's regular themes: strong women who must overcome the weaknesses of their men.
Now, race. If you are only familiar with the Kern and Hammerstein musical, you would be surprised at the role Blacks play in the narrative. Almost exclusively they are used as background color. They are often described as indolent and childlike and many uncomfortable terms, including the n-word are used. Ferber mimics a thick dialect for these characters, but seldom does so for any of the other characters, including Whites with thick Southern accents. The only two distinct Black characters, Jo and Queenie, familiar to those familiar with the musical, are best known for a recipe for cooking a ham and coming back drunk to the show boat every spring. All that being said, I think Ferber believes herself sympathetic to them. She is so enmeshed in the views and vernacular of the time she can't see she is belittling and marginalizing them. Twenty-five years later in Giant she does much better with Mexican American characters.
Magnolia is only really herself on the river. Although she shows spunk and character, she allows her life to be circumscribed by first her mother, then Gay, then Kim. In each case, though, she finds a way to make her own escape. Most of the people she meets along the way such as Julie, Steve, Gaylord and many others disappear from the narrative into the vast American landscape, sometimes to make a brief appearance later. Rather like flotsam bobbing on the great river. At the heart of the story is one of Ferber's regular themes: strong women who must overcome the weaknesses of their men.
Now, race. If you are only familiar with the Kern and Hammerstein musical, you would be surprised at the role Blacks play in the narrative. Almost exclusively they are used as background color. They are often described as indolent and childlike and many uncomfortable terms, including the n-word are used. Ferber mimics a thick dialect for these characters, but seldom does so for any of the other characters, including Whites with thick Southern accents. The only two distinct Black characters, Jo and Queenie, familiar to those familiar with the musical, are best known for a recipe for cooking a ham and coming back drunk to the show boat every spring. All that being said, I think Ferber believes herself sympathetic to them. She is so enmeshed in the views and vernacular of the time she can't see she is belittling and marginalizing them. Twenty-five years later in Giant she does much better with Mexican American characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 30, 2019
Stumbled across this 1926 first edition at a book sale's bag day. Grabbed it. I've heard of Edna Ferber, I've (of course) heard of the musical "Show Boat," with its famous 'Ol Man River' song. Before I started, I read up a bit on Edna Ferber. She was Jewish, and had suffered racist slurs and prejudice while growing up. This, supposedly, made her oppose racism in all forms. The general consensus is that she was more progressive and less racist than other authors of her time. That is probably true -- but this book is still chock full of racism and racial stereotypes. Ferber did generally use the word negro in stead of the 'N' word, but there were numerous low class Southerners (ie the evil Sheriff) who used the 'N' word repeatedly. The evil Sheriff comes to arrest a couple working on the show boat for miscegenation. He essentially ruins their lives. To Ferber's credit this scene and story line is written to show how awful those laws are, and how they ruined perfectly happy lives for absolutely no reason. The other characters on the show boat, however, do virtually nothing to help the threatened couple - and silently let the law take its course. (Cap'n Andy does give them cash to make an escape with.) Ferber may have been sympathetic but she certainly was not advanced in her thinking. There is no developed black character, the black characters are portrayed as lazy and child like. The white heroine of the tale makes her living singing 'coon' songs, if that tells you anything.
This book was published nearly a decade after WW1; it was the basis for one of the early talkie movies in 1929, and the basis for a hugely successful musical in 1936. I think that means that this tale made a significant impact on American culture. But it certainly doesn't deserve the credit it gets for its exposure of racism; its in no way anti racist.
It does however, give us a whole bunch of strong independent women. So I'll give Ferber that much.
This book was published nearly a decade after WW1; it was the basis for one of the early talkie movies in 1929, and the basis for a hugely successful musical in 1936. I think that means that this tale made a significant impact on American culture. But it certainly doesn't deserve the credit it gets for its exposure of racism; its in no way anti racist.
It does however, give us a whole bunch of strong independent women. So I'll give Ferber that much.
April 15, 2020
I was beginning to worry that I would never find another Edna Ferber book that could hold a candle to So Big. Thankfully, I finally decided to read Show Boat. If you have seen the movie musical version of this story and found it uninteresting or predictable, don't let it deter you from trying out the book. The characters in the novel are much more interesting, and Edna Ferber's writing is simply gorgeous, especially in the way she creates imagery and embraces the riverboat setting. She did use the words "indolent" and "celerity" more than was probably necessary, but otherwise the writing can be wonderfully immersive.
The characters may not be the greatest in classic literature, but something about the protagonists and their relationships made me want to keep reading. Unexpectedly, one of the most intriguing characters for me was Magnolia's domineering mother, Parthenia. Even though she seems to be written as just another overly strict parent at first, there are bits of insight throughout that subtly add to her character and eventually make you see her as much more. Unfortunately I thought the character of Julie was a bit of a missed opportunity because it is never shown how she ended up where she was towards the end.
Like So Big, I can't fully explain why I liked this book so much, so suffice it to say that it deserves to be read and remembered as much as any of the more ubiquitous classics. And that I can never again think of the word "magnolia" without a Southern accent.
The characters may not be the greatest in classic literature, but something about the protagonists and their relationships made me want to keep reading. Unexpectedly, one of the most intriguing characters for me was Magnolia's domineering mother, Parthenia. Even though she seems to be written as just another overly strict parent at first, there are bits of insight throughout that subtly add to her character and eventually make you see her as much more. Unfortunately I thought the character of Julie was a bit of a missed opportunity because it is never shown how she ended up where she was towards the end.
Like So Big, I can't fully explain why I liked this book so much, so suffice it to say that it deserves to be read and remembered as much as any of the more ubiquitous classics. And that I can never again think of the word "magnolia" without a Southern accent.
January 31, 2024
I finished SHOW BOAT about five minutes ago. I'll add more to my review another time, but I'll say this novel, first published in 1926, is essentially the story of three generations, mostly as seen through the eyes of a representative of the middle generation. It takes place from the 1880's through the mid-1920s.
The main scenes of action take place along the Mississippi River and Chicago, with slight detours to Massachusetts and New York City. SHOW BOAT is the story of the owners of the boat and the troupe of actors on it. Edna Ferber began her career of sprawling narrative fiction with this book. [Fred’s note: I’m wrong. This is her fifth of twelve novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for SO BIG.] She researched what she wrote about but also had a firm grasp of the psychology of her characters. If she never quite shakes the effect of journalism, she never loses her sense of irony.
The main scenes of action take place along the Mississippi River and Chicago, with slight detours to Massachusetts and New York City. SHOW BOAT is the story of the owners of the boat and the troupe of actors on it. Edna Ferber began her career of sprawling narrative fiction with this book. [Fred’s note: I’m wrong. This is her fifth of twelve novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for SO BIG.] She researched what she wrote about but also had a firm grasp of the psychology of her characters. If she never quite shakes the effect of journalism, she never loses her sense of irony.
dnf
March 28, 2020Abandoned. 120-some pages in and there’s still not really any plot. I’m just incredibly bored. I loved Ferber’s So Big and the musical that was made of this book but every time I pick this up I get sleepy.
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November 11, 2023This felt a bit meandering and overly expository in the first half, but I became more engaged as the story developed, particularly as we got to Magnolia's marriage and life in Chicago. Not sure I would recommend this as a fun read, as it does reflect the casual racism of its time.
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August 14, 2013I think most people are familiar with the musical. I'd seen the movie but I hadn't realized until I had gone to a live performance that the musical was based on an actual novel. I thought it was a story especially written for a musical. I'm not sure about the musical, but the story is a great story. It is really about the way women have found themselves trapped with men. In the previous age of Western civilization, men had all the power. They were expected to run their own lives and the members of their families. The women had to become subservient and were expected to sing the praises of these men who ruled over them. In the last century, when women were beginning to cast off this yoke of oppression, the literature is full of stories where women are incapable of surviving without their men. But in Showboat the women are strong and although they allow their men to rule them, they, in the end, take responsibility for their own lives when these men fail them with their weakness.
May 24, 2021
A rather remarkable book, giving, as it does, what seems to be a genuine glimpse of what life was like on a show boat in the 19th Century. It is very episodic, but it has a definite sweep to it as it takes one across the decades. The musical comedy on which it is based differs dramatically, of course, yet much of the dialogue of the show comes directly from the book, as does the miscegenation scene, which is essentially the heart of the stage version. The book's stance against racism is just one of the many issues covered, and, unlike the musical, does not appear to be what the author considered one of the most important.
December 30, 2014
I am fascinated by Edna Ferber's work and the impact they have had on our culture. Here is the book that was the basis for the musical that changed American Theater. The central character, Magnolia, is a well crafted picture of what it meant for a woman to come into full possession of her own life.
February 7, 2015
As long as the story stays on the river and relates Magnolia's childhood, it's plenty good. Chapter 7, wherein Julie's racial background is revealed and causes her to be dismissed from the showboat's company, is superb. When the novel settles in Chicago, it becomes more like the outline of a 1000 page novel than an actual novel.
December 4, 2008
Unusual and very American. The characters are characters. What can I say? There is nothing predictable about this story. Somehow it captures the feeling of frontier America and the coming modern age. I'm a fan.
November 29, 2012
The musical was popular when I was a kid and I probably saw the movie, but don't remember for sure. However, the book is quite different from the movie/musical. Edna Ferber was popular when I was growing up and I like reading her in the same way I like reading Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
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