I loved this piece, thank you! Both the True Grit films rank high on my list of all time favourites, and I never knew they came from a book, and such an antique text! Coincidentally, I've just written a double Substack piece about Tom Hughes, a great friend of Lowell, a fan of The Bigelow Papers, and an abolitionist who set up a commune in Tennessee. He was famous in the UK as the author of Tom Brown's School Days. You might enjoy the stack?
I'm so sorry to be slow spotting this! Yes, please share, thank you so much for this reference. One of the things I so appreciated about this post was that it restored to the book some of the milieu of its time!
Read it for first time about 10 years ago with my son, who was around 10 at the time. A great book for reading out loud.
"The book takes a hard look at Election and seems to conclude that if you're not one of the Elect having "true grit" might be almost as good." Amen to that : )
Trust Sandy Frazier to write a piece of criticism that locates the secret of a book’s magic, and recreated some of that magic in miniature.
So much with such simple means…
I loved this piece, thank you! Both the True Grit films rank high on my list of all time favourites, and I never knew they came from a book, and such an antique text! Coincidentally, I've just written a double Substack piece about Tom Hughes, a great friend of Lowell, a fan of The Bigelow Papers, and an abolitionist who set up a commune in Tennessee. He was famous in the UK as the author of Tom Brown's School Days. You might enjoy the stack?
I'm so sorry to be slow spotting this! Yes, please share, thank you so much for this reference. One of the things I so appreciated about this post was that it restored to the book some of the milieu of its time!
https://open.substack.com/pub/harkness/p/tom-hughes-school-days?r=gqpmg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/harkness/p/tom-hughes-and-the-other-rugby-in?r=gqpmg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Read it for first time about 10 years ago with my son, who was around 10 at the time. A great book for reading out loud.
"The book takes a hard look at Election and seems to conclude that if you're not one of the Elect having "true grit" might be almost as good." Amen to that : )
I will have to read it again now!
What a good book to read to a kid. Wish I'd thought of that.
A teacher recommended it, during a time when I was of all things homeschooling, so thank you, teacher : )
Our homeschooling I can now admit mostly consisted of reading and going for walks on the beach.
So True Grit is one of the books that reminds me of that idyllic if slightly guilt-inducing time!
Sounds like perfect school to me!