Tall Tale America: A Legendary History of our Humorous Heroes

by Walter Blair

"Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan and John Henry have all become heroes of American folklore. Some of them, like Crokett, were real, but all have become the subject of tall tales. This is a folksy history of the United States, told as if the characters were all real. This panoramic (if completely untrue) history begins with Columbus. . . . En route to its end in the 1940s (where traditional American heroes are enlisted to fight in World War II), it covers the great and small events of our national history, including the overlooked, but important ones, such as the invention of the prairie dog."— Washington Post Book World

Genres: Folklore

279 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

Reviews

[Kayla Zabcia]

DNF; page 49

I actually really enjoy this book - it's hysterical. Unfortunately, I have a gazillion books on my TBR list, and as fun as this one is, it just isn't at the top of my list for finishing. If I ever need a good laugh, I'll come back to it though!

This book begs to be read in a deeply Southern accent, as hick as you can manage. There are a ton of fantastic one-liners that had me genuinely laughing out-loud, garnering some severe side-eye from my partner. Fair warning: it was written in the 40's about early American life, so it's not exactly, you know, 100% kosher in terms of political correctness.

"What you had to do to work an old-style quadrant was harder than peeling a potato with a feather."

"For one thing the discoverers helped. After they'd come home from their trips, of course they wrote books, the way discoverers do. And since nobody else knew enough about America to check up on them, these discoverers had plenty of room to use their fancy. What they wrote was a caution. More than two-thirds of the lies they told weren't true at all."

"John could hardly go for a walk without saving the life of a beautiful damsel, or having one fall heels over head in love with him. (He told all this himself, so it's known to be true.)"

"Where Alfred was born nobody knows for sure - some say Kittery, some say Kennebunkport, some say Nantucket. It seems fairly safe to guess that maybe he was born in one of those places or someplace else."

"As a rule, it took thirty-three seamen to manage the wheel, but old Stormy, having got his full growth now, could whirl the wheel with one hand and fan off a school of flying fish - and their schoolteacher, too - with the other."

"he'd finished growing up and could do some branching out. At any rate, there are plenty of signs that he really began to use his thinkpiece."

"the land was so hard that you could sow seeds in it only by shooting them into the soil with a gun."

[Gary Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful mid-century collection of early American folklore, best read after taking off your modern glasses and understanding its prejudices in light of the times in which it was written. If read in that light, this book is a delightful window into an earlier time. There are definitely parts of this book, however, that would rightly be offensive to most modern audiences.

[Josephine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fictitious "history" of America is told from the perspective of characters from folklore--hence the title of the book; none of these people is real, though we wish they were at times. Here's where well known "people" such as Paul Bunyan and Davy Crockett live, as well as lesser known people such as Joe Magarach (spelling?) and Mike Fink.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, what's the deal with Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill? this book will tell you about them and about all the other characters that make up the American Folklore Tradition

[Raymond Bial · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a little over the top—exaggerated even as a retelling of tall tales. I was hoping for a more scholarly look at American folk stories, as in Walter Blair's account of Mike Fink.