The Dollmaker discussion

I happened to meet Ms. Arnow in person in about 1968 when I was teaching at a little college in Michigan. Our provost was a personal friend of hers and had invited about 30 faculty members to meet her. She talked mostly about The Dollmaker.

To me the Dollmaker is a true American classic. I read it a few years after it came out. It is
slice-of-life, absolutely real, extremely powerful. The grittiness of Detroit (where I grew up) is there
and the people in the story are based on people or
composites of people that Ms. Arnow actually knew if I remember correctly from the talk she gave.

It was a privilege to meet her.

Interestingly enough, only a few of the other faculty members had read the book.

The movie paled in comparison to the book.
This novel transports the reader to a place other than the here and now. You don't have to be from Appalachia or from a Detroit factory to relate to the
characters or their situations. This is a human story.