Reading this blog revew of an Ayn Rand biography I was stunned in a "worlds colliding" sort of way to discover that she was friends with Rose Wilder Lane.

Reading this blog revew of an Ayn Rand biography I was stunned in a "worlds colliding" sort of way to discover that she was friends with Rose Wilder Lane.

Yeah, I love that stuff.

Like, Flannery O'Connor was at Yaddo the same summer as Patricia Highsmith and Chester Himes.

Or that Ursula K. Leguin was a classmate with Philip K. Dick at Berkeley High, and that Billy Martin was on the high school baseball team there at the same time.

Rose Wilder Lane was one of the preeminent libertarians of the mid-20th century, so that totally makes sense.

That's one of the main tenets of Ghost in the Little House, which posits that Rose was more of a ghost writer than simply an editor of her mother's work. (I have issues with that theory, considering the quality of her mother's earlier published work.)

Anyway, if you read the Little House books, they have a strong streak of "government sucks, pioneers did everything on their own, leave us alone." But if you look at what they actually did in real life, unfiltered from the writer's POV, the government assisted the Ingalls family tremendously, from the Homestead Act giving them every farm they owned, to Mary's college being completely paid for by the gov't (the money they scraped together was for her spending expenses), and the railroad that Pa worked on and that they relied upon for supplies and transportation was government-funded construction.

Well, and they lived in the surveyer's cabin at one point too.

Rose does fascinate me, apart from the libertarian stuff. She was a telegraph girl at age 18 (lived her with Aunt Eliza Jane in Louisiana from age 16-18 to finish high school since her school in MO didn't extend that far), one of the earliest real estate agents (or at least, one of the earliest female agents) in California, divorced her husband in 1916 when that Just Wasn't Done, and ended up reporting from Vietnam when she was in her 80s.

Oh my goodness I haven't thought about the Little House books in so long. I absolutely adored them as a kid. I left one in my uncle's car once and I never ever got it back; that always made me sad. My set is still incomplete.

zuisa, they really hold up! Just a few years ago, I went and bought Farmer Boy (Almanzo's childhood) and all of the DeSmet books (from On the Shores of Silver Creek to These Happy Golden Years, but I did skip The First Four Years just because it's so godawfully depressing). I reread them regularly because they're so good!

Actually, I'm going to use these books for my final project for my library class this semester. I'm taking Reference in the Humanities, and we have to do a paper combining multiple disciplines (literature, architecture, dance, music, movies, tv, etc.) on one topic. (Previous examples from earlier semesters include Agatha Christie, James Bond, the Arts and Crafts movement.) I know I can address the books and the tv shows (did you know they did a miniseries on the book Little House on the Prairie a few years ago? It was quite good!), and I've got a few CDs of music that she mentions in the books, and can also cover the houses/museums that exist, and the clothing she describes in such detail in the books as well.

Farmer Boy is the one I lost. I know I've read them all once, but I am pretty sure I've read Little House in the Big Woods 18467351 times. When I was a little kid that just seemed SO appealing to me.

(did you know they did a miniseries on the book Little House on the Prairie a few years ago? It was quite good!)

No! I'm horrified that I missed it!

There's also a relatively new musical adaptation! It was playing at the Guthrie in Minneapolis last time I was there, but I unfortunately wasn't able to see it.

You guys should also check out Wendy McClure's newish book. [link]

A live stage show? I must include that in my paper--thanks!!

I am pretty sure I've read Little House in the Big Woods 18467351 times

My community just had their annual pig roast this past weekend; every time I drove by the sign for it, I got flashbacks to the pig butchering chapter in LHitBW. Remember when they blew up the bladder like a balloon for the kids to play with?

Since I'm a Midwesterner, I keep planning on someday taking a long LIW-themed summer vacation and drive from Lake Pepin (WI) to DeSmet (SD) and then past the Little House in Kansas (which is on land owned by Bill Kurtis, BTW!) down to their farm in southern Missouri to see all of the houses. All but the farmhouse in MO and the old Surveyors House in DeSmet are reconstructions, not originals (the sod house in Minnesota finally collapsed into the banks of Plum Creek sometime in the 1950s, after Garth Williams was able to see it for his illustrations). The cottonwood trees around their homestead near DeSmet are still there, though.