A Letter to Heather: Why Longfellow?

Dear Heather,
     The book on Longfellow is not yet in print, but McFarland & Co. Publishers plan to include it in their fall catalog.  As you know, I've been working on the book on and off since '03 I think, with a long time off (five years) while I wrote my own life story, so let's say I've worked on the Longfellow book for about a decade, which is not unusual for biographies by the way.
     Perhaps because of all that time and work, you were surprised when I mentioned last week that I wasn't a huge fan of Longfellow's poetry.  I told you that for me there are long stretches that I find unbearable, but that these are at least partly balanced by other stretches that I like very much.  But I smiled because liking the subject of a biography and admiring his work aren't necessary at all.
     When I wrote my doctoral dissertation on an obscure American poet from the 18th century, David Humphreys, I made the discovery that liking the work was much less important than seeing a book into print on a writer who, in this case, needed to be written about.  All the other "major" Connecticut Wits, as they are known, had a book about them already published.  Only Humphreys remained bookless, so to speak.  My Ph.D. advisor explained all that to me, and finally I saw the wisdom of making him happy, writing a book that had a very good chance of being published, and learning how to go about the daunting process of writing biography. Liking the man and his work didn't factor in at all--but of course, by the time I had finished, I had come to admire Humphreys and even to like some of his mostly wooden poems.
     The decade I spent working on John Ciardi's biography was more a labor of love.  Again, there were huge patches of poetry that I didn't like, but there were so many that I loved and valued that I wanted to write about him.  There were other attractions, like the fact that he was an Italian American of my father's generation--and that so much of the information I had to gather would come from interviews with scores of mid-century cultural icons.  I had spent a decade on Humphreys from the 18th century and never spoken to a soul about the work or the man.  This time I hardly stopped talking (listening actually) for ten years.  I was a man on a mission in that book, wanting to frame all future dialogue about Ciardi with my biography--that plus all the other books I edited and compiled, his collected letters, poems, and essays.
     By then I had begun to see what was obvious, that my talents in the academy were as a literary historian, not a critic.  I never liked reading literary criticism, and instead felt comfortable reconstructing literary history, but this was a realization that surprised me.  My career had taken a turn that I hadn't anticipated.  It wasn't what I had had in mind for myself, but I could see that I was making a small impact on American literary studies--and that I should be pleased to be making any impact at all.  So I went with it.
     I chose to work on Longfellow for several reasons.  One was that he was a 19th-century figure.  My first book was on an 18th-century writer; Ciardi was a 20th-century figure, so Longfellow filled out the timeline.  Considering that the Humphreys book had earned me a Ph.D., in my mind the work that followed was like earning new Ph.D'.s in centuries that needed completely new research before the writing could begin.  It was an exciting challenge.  So that was one factor that led me to Longfellow, who was also centrally important in American 19th-century poetry.
     Another factor was that Longfellow had left what biographers long for:  published letters and journals.  That's a huge advantage.  I was also attracted to him because he was popular, even revered, by readers on both sides of the Atlantic.  He was a major figure in his own time, unlike either Humphreys or Ciardi.  He'd been so popular that there were a dozen biographies of him already.  I was going to have to produce a book that was different and valuable on a subject who had been worked over pretty thoroughly.  Another challenge.
     And one other factor argued for Longfellow:  none of the figures in his life story was still alive--which I thought would be a welcome change after I had spent ten years on non-stop interviewing for the Ciardi book.  All that talk had grown tiresome after the first year or two.
     But most of all, there was a wonderful story in Longfellow's life that I wanted to tell--not a new story, but one that had such human warmth that I thought I could write it for the larger audience I had never written for in my books.  That's what led me to the form known as "narrative nonfiction," which doesn't give the main point up in the first paragraph but keeps the reader reading to find out what happens.  The form borrows from narrative fiction, so I would aim in my book for characters, dialogue, conflicts, resolutions, and in this case two distinct climaxes.  I had material to draw from, a natural story about the women in his life, and an inclination to tell the story in a format that academics rarely use.  It was irresistible.  What did it matter that Hiawatha had long stretches that were virtually unreadable?
     Longfellow in Love was a book that needed to be written, and I felt lucky to be the one writing it.
     Hope that helps a little.  For me, choosing Longfellow made perfect sense.

     Love, DE