The Books of the States: Delaware (3 electoral votes)
We start our project small, but with a high degree of difficulty. Some of the upcoming states daunt me a little (California--55 books? Massachusetts--only 12?), but none more than the first one, Delaware, known best for being, well, first. What comes to mind when you think of when you think of Delaware writers, or Delaware books? Yes, I'm still waiting. I've asked a lot of people, and gotten the same (that is, no) answer. I asked Google, and it tells me about Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series. I asked Craig Taylor, the Canadian Londoner who wrote the Delaware piece for State by State (and who edits Hamish Hamilton's new online magazine, Five Dials), and he came up nearly empty too, although he did mention a "salacious history of the DuPont family" and offered, "Do let me know if you decide to do a feature on how to tend chickens on the books blog. I know a few Delawareans who could help out with that."
There is one very Delawarean book that has spent some time in our Top 100 this summer, but one of my goals for this project is not to have Joe Biden's memoir end up on our Delaware list. But thanks to some research, some luck, and the help of an online librarian I found via the Delaware library system but who turned out to live in Indiana, we have some possibilities to start with:
- W.D. Snodgrass (pictured above), Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems. Snodgrass won the Pulitzer in 1960 for his first collection, Heart's Needle, which was later credited for inaugurating the confessional school of poetry. He was born near Pittsburgh but taught at the University of Delaware from 1980 to 1994.
- Robert Montgomery Bird, Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Bird was born and raised in New Castle, and then moved to Pennsylvania and is remembered (that all happened in the early 19th century) as a novelist of dark satires and a playwright. All the recommendation I need on this one is that New York Review Books brought it back into print this January and says it's a precursor to Naked Lunch! But if you want more, Poe apparently called it "very clever" way back then.
- Tom Douglas, I Love Crab Cakes!. Douglas is the best-known chef in Seattle, but he's a Delaware native and his specialty is that Eastern Shore favorite, the crab cake.
- Marisa de los Santos, Love Walked In. De los Santos teaches at the University of Delaware too, and she wrote this bestseller (and future Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle) there, although it's set in nearby Philly.
- Dudley Cammett Lunt, Taylors Gut: In the Delaware State. While wandering through a giant used book store recently with the Delaware problem on my mind, I found they actually had a single book in the Ds in their state section, this naturalist's account of a year at a local pond from 1968, which, miraculously, appears to be in print. A sample quote: "On a freshwater marsh such as Thousand Acre, a man must call softly and seductively and when he has the flight turned, he stops save for a low chuckle or two as the birds near the decoys. But not so on a salt marsh like the Woodland Beach flats. There the calls must be loud, sharp, harsh and incessant. If he even hesitates when they are coming in, they will veer off and be gone, leaving him out of breath and utterly frustrated."
- Gerard Colby Zilg, Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Is this Taylor's "salacious history"? According to a customer review, Delaware's first family did their best to suppress this 1974 expose.
What do you think? I'm not so sure we've knocked Joe Biden out of the running yet (he certainly gets Delawarey points). Please help us discover some more. Tomorrow: Pennsylvania. --Tom
- See all of our state posts
- Read our introduction to The Books of the States: 50 States, 538 Books
- Read our interview with State by State editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey
Scott on September 17, 2008 at 12:55 AM
"but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Author."
Perhaps it's best to rule out living politicians. So Abraham Lincoln, for example, is fair game (now, figuring out the state might be interesting). But living politicians, whether in office or retired, should be off-limits.
For Delaware, the DuPont family is a good topic... also, there might be something written about Delaware's favored status for locating corporate headquarters?
Melissa on September 17, 2008 at 05:51 AM
I was so tickled to see this, since I lived in Delaware most of my life and have only recently left it for Maryland. And you've discovered some authors I didn't know about!
But I have one for you: she's a young adult author, but Lara Zeises is a Delaware native and sets all of her books in Delaware.
I also took a look at Wikipedia's page of people from Delaware, and discovered that:
--R. Crumb was born in Philadelphia but lived in Milford, Delaware.
--Howard Pyle, the well-known illustrator and author, was a native of Wilmington and lived much of his life in the Brandywine River Valley, which runs from Pennsylvania into Delaware.
Kathy Snodgrass on September 18, 2008 at 04:43 AM
Tom,
That's the first (and probably last) time my husband's face is coined. As for other Delaware writers, there's a new anthology, On the Mason-Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers, published by the Univ. of Delaware Press. There are many more Delaware writers, including Fleda Brown, one of the book's editors, and Gibbons Ruark, a wonderful poet who taught at the U of D for many years.
Thanks again for the coin!
Kathy Snodgrass
Tom on September 18, 2008 at 09:56 AM
Ha--what a treat that you noticed our numismatic tribute, Kathy. If I could mint some actual coins of my own, and the Secret Service would let me, I'd do it in a second. And thanks for the Delaware pointers--I'd heard about the new anthology but I hadn't had a chance to see it yet.
Tom