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Capital City

av Mari Sandoz

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MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
471536,670 (3.5)1
First published in the dark days immediately before World War II, Capital City is Mari Sandoz's angriest and most political novel. Like many important American novels of the 1930s--John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, John Conroy's The Disinherited, Robert Cantwell's Land of Plenty--Capital City depicts the troubles and responses of working people trapped in the Great Depression. It is a unique portrayal of the depression in the Great Plains, and a study of the forces that bitterly contended for wealth and power. Sandoz researched the daily life and behind-the-scenes operations of several state capitals in the thirties before drawing them together in this novel, part allegory, part indictment, part warning. Famous for her passionate writing, Sandoz gave Capital City the fuwll measure of ferocity and rage.… (mer)
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» Se även 1 omnämnande

Franklin, the capital of Kanewa (as in Kansas-Nebraska-Iowa), is smaller and more provincial that its larger neighbor Grandapolis, from which it somehow wrested capital status in the past. The Grandapolis paper loves to publish any news showing Franklin’s provincialism, gaucherie, and brutality.
The Franklin establishment—the old money, the elite banking and high-end-merchant class, the police, the legislature, and the local paper—are anti-labor, anti-poor (they call them “the reliefers”), anti-Semitic, and pretty much anti-anything-that-ain’t-us.
The Capital City is the main character of the book, according to Helen Stauffer (Mari Sandoz, Boise State University Western Writers Series 63). But if so, the main character is an antagonist, and the protagonists are the people who try to hold back the corruption and the worst of the damage. These include most importantly Hamm Rufe, who, although living in obscurity in a squatter’s camp on a hill above the city, belongs to one of the city’s most prominent families. His real name is Rufer Hammond, and he is named after his progressive grandfather, George Rufer, who started the university and published a liberal newspaper. The family has since become as reactionary as the other elite families, though Hamm’s mother, Hallie Rufer Hammond, shows some awakening of conscience at the end of the book, rebuilding some of the squatter’s shacks in “Herb’s Addition” that have been torched by an arsonist. Another of the protagonists is Hamm’s friend Dr. Abigail Allerton, author of an exposé of the city titled Anteroom for Kingmakers (ostensibly about the history of the Frontier Hotel) and a history professor at the Franklin university until her fellow townspeople find out what’s really in her book and put pressure on the university. Lew Lewis is another, a labor leader who takes a bullet for his efforts to organize his strikers, but recovers. There is also Carl Halzer, a farmer who watches with dismay the increasingly corrupted farmers’ association and becomes a candidate for senator of the state. Entering the action of the book late is the woman who nursed Hamm back to health after a severe beating in Boston and whom he married and lived with for some years, Stephani Kolhoff.
Reactionary Franklin is brutal and violent, most notably in strikebreakers hired by the transport company with the connivance of the politicians, and in the activities of the fascist group, the Gold Shirts, who include prominent young men of the town such as Harold Welles, the son of Hamm’s oldest friend, Colmar (Cobby) Welles, whose suicide really starts the action of the book. Cobby’s is one of two suicides among Franklin’s elite, the other being Penny Hammond, wife of Hamm’s brother Cecil (Cees) Hammond, who takes sleeping pills when she finds herself pregnant with someone else’s child. There are a number of murders: the orphan Spaniard and Jewish kids taken in by a town doctor and a university professor are killed by a hit and run driver; an Italian immigrant is nearly wrongfully convicted of the murder of his hunting buddy, who was killed over sexual jealousy, and the murder of two small twin boys by the strikebreakers, who shoot up their car by mistake, precipitates some of the book’s concluding action, which results in the state supreme court striking down the anti-picketing law that has been the cover for much strikebreaking violence. That decision is a bit of irony, however, as it comes on the eve of the election of a governor who promises not to be restrained by any law in his strikebreaking activities.
On the eve of the election Halzer makes a barn-burning speech against the reactionaries that gets him arrested, though he ultimately wins the senate race, and Abigail sells the film rights for Anteroom. But the governor’s election goes to the demagogue Stetbettor, the negotiations with the strikers break down, and the new governor calls in the national guard. Curiously, Sandoz chooses to give this bleak apocalypse happy endings for her couples: Carl Halzer and Stephani Kolhoff get together, with Hamm’s blessing, and the young couple whose troubles we’ve been watching since the first pages, Mollie Tyndale and Burt Parr, get the blessing of her father, along with a wad of cash and orders to get out of town and make a life for themselves somewhere far away from the benighted streets of the Capital City. ( )
  michaelm42071 | Apr 18, 2021 |
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Mari Sandozprimär författarealla utgåvorberäknat
Svoboda, TereseInledningmedförfattarevissa utgåvorbekräftat
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First published in the dark days immediately before World War II, Capital City is Mari Sandoz's angriest and most political novel. Like many important American novels of the 1930s--John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, John Conroy's The Disinherited, Robert Cantwell's Land of Plenty--Capital City depicts the troubles and responses of working people trapped in the Great Depression. It is a unique portrayal of the depression in the Great Plains, and a study of the forces that bitterly contended for wealth and power. Sandoz researched the daily life and behind-the-scenes operations of several state capitals in the thirties before drawing them together in this novel, part allegory, part indictment, part warning. Famous for her passionate writing, Sandoz gave Capital City the fuwll measure of ferocity and rage.

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