Constance RourkeRezensionen

study of national character

I found this dreadfully dull and lifeless. I see that others enjoyed it, I can't say the same for myself. One would think that a book about American humor, even the older "weird" humor that was applicable to everyday life then but oh, so not now, would be at least a bit whimsical. This takes itself painfully seriously. Not my thing.½

I enjoyed this very much. Of course I was aware of who he was, but now I'm aware of the jaw-dropping significance of what he accomplished. It is a little difficult to read in our day of extinction of species. He lived in the days when humans did not recognize the possibility that animals could die out, there was such an abundance of them. He was an avid hunter, and killed most of the birds he drew from. So, there's that, but one must remember when we are reading about and understand the mentality of that time. This book was perhaps a bit cleaned up and positive as many biographies were in the 1950s, but it is still pretty thorough for all that. Reading about the scope of his plans for painting all of the birds of America, and getting them published at full size, is amazing. For the most part, he had no money, yet he traversed all over the land, to Europe and back, selling portraits and scratching up enough funds to accomplish his grand plan. I wish we knew more of Lucy, his wife, because she must have been an amazing woman as well; putting up with years of separation and working as a governess to support herself and her children when Audubon couldn't. Their devotion to one another is inspiring.

My favorite quote: (for when someone is talking smack about you)
"I care not a fig-all such stuff will soon evaporate, being mere smoke from a dunghill."½

My edition a 'junior deluxe' w/ illustrations by Walter Seaton.

Boring, long, filled with obscure references and dated vocabulary, and entirely too flattering of the rascal. Two wives put up with his almost near-constant absence - I wonder why he kept uprooting his family and making them start over in the wilderness if he wasn't going to be there to help them anyway. The issues of race were dealt with interestingly - non-whites were always 'lesser' but at least Crockett fought the feds to try to prevent the Trail of Tears and other removals.

Still, I guess it must have been a decent biography for its time, as it was a Newbery Honor selection. And there are over 20 pp of source notes, indicating that Rourke did her research and tried to be accurate and objective.

I'd really like to rate this one star, but as I didn't finish, I won't.

I struggled through to p. 50. Painfully boring. I should have known better, after reading the same author's bio of Davy Crockett.

What is even more ridiculous is the author's infatuation with Audubon's handsomeness, with his 'look of race' -- going so far as to hint that he's the Dauphin, who went into hiding during the French Revolution. Well, according to more recent sources, he's not a blue-blood, but a mulatto, Captain Audubon's bastard from Haiti.

As if any of this matters, except as an indication of the overall accuracy, perhaps.

By the time I abandoned the book he's already grown and married. So, the rest of the book is going to be even more boring? Not for me; I'm moving on.

First off: the style of this book is so lovely that it is a pleasure to read, almost regardless of the actual content. Rourke writes in a delicate and oblique fashion worthy of a good novelist. This is, of course, an old book, and the depictions of American territorial expansion and of racist caricature will likely cause the contemporary reader to cringe now and then. The subject matter of the book is more aptly summed up in the subtitle than in the primary title: "humor," narrowly defined, is only one among many topics covered here. What is really at issue is the search for unique characteristics of American literature and how they derive from a national collective consciousness. One complaint is that the author seemed to feel obligated to cover every major American author active in the 19th century: she gives the impression of having something to say about James and Dickinson but to hammer out a few uninspired pages about Melville. As some of the other reviews mention, this book is better at conveying insightful, pithy quotes than factual information. It will not serve as a general primer on American literature or as a hard scholarly resource, but it is a highly worthwhile read on aesthetic grounds alone.

Useful for including a number of otherwise obscure early humorists