Joe Hill A Biographical Novel edition by Wallace Stegner Literature Fiction eBooks
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Blending fact with fiction in this masterful historical novel, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner retells the story of Joe Hill—the Wobbly bard and labor activist who became the stuff of legend when, in 1915, he was executed for the alleged murder of a Salt Lake City businessman. Organizer, agitator, "Labor's Songster"—a rebel from the skin inwards, with an absolute faith in the One Big Union—Joe Hill fought tirelessly in the frequently violent battles between organized labor and industry. But though songs and stories still vaunt him, and his legend continues to inspire those who feel the injustices he fought against, Joe Hill may not have been a perfectly saintly crusader—and may have been motivated by impulses darker than the search for justice.
Joe Hill is a full-bodied portrait of both the man and the myth from his entrance into the short-lived Industrial Workers of the World union, the most militant organization in the history of American labor, to his trial, imprisonment, and final martyrdom. His famous last words "Don't waste time mourning. Organize."
Joe Hill A Biographical Novel edition by Wallace Stegner Literature Fiction eBooks
Fiction can transmit to new eyes a time and culture--a century ago--better than any historical writing. Wallace Stegner conveys the alienation between working people and their economic system better than any political tome.Product details
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Joe Hill A Biographical Novel edition by Wallace Stegner Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
I first learned about Joe Hill in a graduate level seminar on labor history. Hill was a labor organizer for the IWW, famous for writing songs for the organization, and for being executed by Utah for killing men during a robbery. Since his execution, Hill has become a martyr for the radical end of the labor movement, seen as a saint crucified by big business and the state. The truth is much more complicated, and Wallace Stegner (best known for his nonfiction work today) tried to understand Hill by writing a historical novel. It is not his best writing, but I have now read the book about three times over the years and find I like it more and more. Stegner's Hill is probably very much like the real man--passionate, violent, and mostly not very likable. His talent for writing songs for his cause was immense, though many of them were adaptations of popular and religious songs. As to his guilt or not, Stegner leaves that question open, which is probably as close to the truth as we will ever get. Personally, I think he was guilty and used his conviction to try and further the IWW's cause. Stegner gives us a strong portrait of real man, complicated, and not very likable. Labor readers might want a more clear cut, hero figure, but I think this complicated version of Joe Hill is near the truth. Not an easy read, but an essential one for those interested in the history of American labor and the technique of historical/biographical fiction.
Let's get one thing clear this work on labor organizer and convicted murderer Joe Hill (1879-1915), is historical fiction, and it was copyrighted and published in 1950 (as The Preacher and the Slave, for a Joe Hill song), when Wallace Stegner lacked the benefit of recently discovered information that could perhaps have exonerated Hill of the November 1914 murder charge for which he was convicted and executed in Utah in 1915.
That information first came to light in a 2011 biography by William M. Adler, and chiefly concerns a letter from 20-year-old Hilda Erickson, which states that she discovered the injured Hill, who told her he had been shot by one Otto Appelquist, with whom Hill then vied for her affections.
Both men boarded with Erickson's family, and in her letter, she also admits that she had relationships with both of them. But simply because Hill told her that Applequist had shot him does not necessarily make it true. And so the matter may remain open for speculation.
But obviously neither this Erickson letter, nor Adler's Hill biography, were available in 1950. And the fact that Hill never introduced any alibi at his trial certainly helps to explain why Stegner apparently thought Hill was involved in the murder of Salt Lake City grocer and former policeman John G. Morrison and his son.
In any case, Stegner shows much sympathy for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka Wobblies, a union founded in Chicago in 1905 and active through the early 1920s.
As noted in the forward of this excellent work, the Wobblies “were militant in a period when militancy meant floggings, jail, bloodshed,” and they “fought fire with fire, dynamite with dynamite.” Generally speaking, police, news media and middle class Americans opposed them and their violence, no matter how well-justified the Wobblies considered it.
At this time “Organizers disappeared, were run out of town, flogged through gauntlets, threatened with death,” and a goodly number were themselves murdered, not least by special deputies who literally mowed them down.
The methods of the Wobblies were those of thugs.
But Hill easily justified and identified with their reasoning. Born in Gavle, Sweden as Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, he had by age 23, lost his father, Olof at age 41, after a severe work accident, as well as his mother Margareta Catharina. That year, in 1902 (116 years ago), Joe Hill immigrated with his brother to America, leaving behind four surviving siblings.
Like his parents, Hill was a much maligned, abused and even hated worker from New York and then Cleveland, Hill eventually landed in San Francisco and joined the Wobblies in 1910 or so. He wrote songs, and organized and agitated. And in November 1914 in Salt Lake City, on the day of Morrison's murder, he was somehow shot, along with at least four other men.
And this novel explores those events and ruminates over what was in Hill's mind, both before, during and after his trial, while he sat in prison awaiting execution.
Much is based on actual records, but of course the conversations are presumably the figment of Wallace Stegner's inventive mind. And the writing is fine indeed, as one would expect of a novelist who won a Pulitzer for another fictional work published 21 years after this one first appeared.
Read this fictional account with all that in mind.
The book was in good condition. Couldn't say as much for the story. His writing is a joy to read but he succumbed to misinformation.
5*What else to say?
THIS IS, CONTRARY TO SOME OF THE REVIEWS (ONE WONDERS IF THEY ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK) A SUPERB HISTORICAL NOVEL AND QUITE CLOSE TO THE REALITY OF WHO JOE HILL WAS. AT BEST HE WAS A TERRIBLY CONFUSED MALCONTENT, AT WORST A PREDITORY PSYCHOPATH USING THE LABOR MOVEMENT THE WAY CRIMINALS OFTEN USED THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND OTHER GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENTS FOR THEIR OWN DESIRES. THE AUTHOR ACTUALLY IS MUCH EASIER ON HILL THAN GIBBS IN HIS BOOK AND ONE IS NEVER QUITE SURE IF JOE WAS GUILTY (HE WAS, WITHOUT A DOUBT). THE BOOK IS WELL WORTH READING.
Fiction can transmit to new eyes a time and culture--a century ago--better than any historical writing. Wallace Stegner conveys the alienation between working people and their economic system better than any political tome.
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