My two cents from 1907: Wow. There's much good writing and profoundness in this book review. The squeaky wheel: in Twain's "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, grief and the after-life are treated with tenderness and logic. From the review, the following passage has puzzled me: >"Twain's strongest comment hinting at the possibility of an afterlife came > in 1889, the year Winny died, when he wrote to Livy "I don't know anything > about the hereafter, but I am not afraid of it" (130), but he steadily > moved away from any such belief thereafter." Twain wrote his story of heaven (Stormfield) before 1889; Twain allowed it to be published long after 1889, without revising it or adding cynical comments as far as I could detect. > Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2016 07:11:56 -0500 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: BOOK REVIEW: _Continuing Bonds with the Dead_, Harold K. Bush > To: [log in to unmask] > > The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin > Mac Donnell. > > ~~~~~ > > _Continuing Bonds with the Dead: Parental Grief and Nineteenth-Century > American Authors_. Harold K. Bush. The University of Alabama Press, 2016. > Pp. 237. Hardcover $49.95. Ebook $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8173-1902-1 > (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-8173-8954-3 (ebook). > > > Many books reviewed on the Mark Twain Forum are available at discounted > prices from the Twain Web Bookstore. Purchases from this site generate > commissions that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit < > http://www.twainweb.net> > > > Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by > Kevin Mac Donnell > > > Copyright (c) 2016 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or > redistributed in any medium without permission. > > > > Twenty-three year old Daniel Bush, were he to read this book, would not be > able to put it down, and would be grateful. He'd be proud of his father for > writing it. But the grim truth is that Daniel Bush will never read this > book. There is no twenty-three year old Daniel Bush; he died seventeen > years ago at the age of six. Like every other dead child he did not leave > this life by himself: He took with him the hopes and dreams of his parents, > leaving the reality of their lives topsy-turvy in his wake, in complete > astonishment that they did not immediately capsize and drown in the > bottomless depths of grief. Unlike adults, when children step from the > sunlight of this world, they cast long shadows, everlasting. Where is > redemption to be found in such a shadow? > > > If the reader does not believe in redemption at the beginning of this book > he will recognize it by the time he reaches the Epilogue and reads Hal > Bush's own summary of what he set out to do: "In this book, I've shown and > analyzed some of the horrors a handful of our most famous writers > experienced, horrors very familiar to me. But I've also documented the > constructive ways that these deaths affected the worldviews and the > writings of the surviving parents. I've considered how a child's death may > have influenced the direction and content of the writer's production > afterward, perhaps much more than has previously been thought" (193). > Redemption takes many forms, and as Bush readily admits, the writing of > this book was itself an act of redemption. > > > This is not a speculative work of scholarship. This is a story from the > front lines told by a combatant who has squarely faced death and survived > to tell the tale. Somebody who has not experienced such grief firsthand > could easily be misled by some of the myths clinical research has > identified about the grief that follows the loss of a child. Contrary to > the common myth, the wound does not scar over and completely heal. Closure > never comes. Bizarre and terrifying irrational thoughts that would be > considered pathological in other contexts are normal reactions to the death > of a child. The physical manifestations of this grief are painful and real. > All of the other elements of grief are present, as well as nightmares and > magical thinking. It is not unusual for the meaning of life to be > vanquished, or for the pain to increase with time instead of fading. > Spiritual faith will be challenged, and faith can evaporate altogether, but > it can also strengthen, as can marriages, contrary to conventional wisdom. > In fact, recent studies have shown that the number of divorces due to > bereavement have been wildly exaggerated. Finally, although parents > sometimes grieve in different ways, it is most common for a lost child to > be held in loving memory to the end of a parent's life, the parental bond > enduring unbroken, generating beneficial work and a positive life rich with > meaning and purpose, as most of the examples in this book illustrate. > > > Death will come to each of us sooner or later, but in the meantime it lurks > in our literature, inspiring a steady stream of books on the topic for more > than a century. The same year that Mark Twain died, his publisher issued > _In After Days_, a collection of fascinating essays on the afterlife (and > faith, and grief) by William Dean Howells, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, > Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others. Books on death in literature, or > death and writers, have continued ever since. Almost simultaneous with > Bush's book, Katie Riophe has published _The Violet Hour_, a look at how > various twentieth century authors--Susan Sontag, John Updike, Maurice > Sendak, Sigmund Freud, and Dylan Thomas among them--have faced death > themselves. But Bush's book is clearly focused on precisely what is said in > the subtitle: nineteenth century writers coping with the deaths of their > children. > > > The five authors who are the focus of this book are Harriet Beecher Stowe, > Abraham Lincoln, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and W. E. B. Du Bois. > This is a thoughtful representative cross-section of American authors who > lost children and found varying degrees of redemption in their work and > writings. Bush had plenty of grief-stricken nineteenth century parents to > choose from: Twain's friend John Hay, who had served as Lincoln's private > secretary, lost a son; and Twain's wealthy benefactor, Henry Rogers, lost a > daughter only a few years before Twain lost Susy. Twain's brother Orion > lost a daughter when living in Nevada. Twain didn't think James Fenimore > Cooper could write authentically about Indians, but he might have given > Cooper a pass on grief: Cooper lost his first son and one other child. > Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lost a daughter, and a few years later his > daughter's mother in a hideous accident caused by a carelessly dropped > match by another of his daughters. James Russell Lowell lost two daughters > and a son, followed by their mother, and when the Civil War came a few > years later, he lost three nephews who were like sons to him. Ralph Waldo > Emerson lost a son and years later had him exhumed to view the corpse, > perhaps an extreme example of trying to come to grips with the reality of > his loss. Ambrose Bierce lost two sons, one a suicide and the other an > alcoholic. Herman Melville lost his son, a suicide just down the hall in > the middle of the night. Fanny Fern and Bronson Alcott each lost a child, > and the list could go on. Child mortality rates may have been high in the > nineteenth century but that did not lessen the grief of parents. Bush > mentions most of these other authors, but the five he chose to study in > depth are well-chosen. Their lives intersect at some points, their > responses to grief are interestingly similar and at times seemingly > disparate, but all of them reflect the evolution of typically American > responses to grief when facing the loss of a child. > > > Bush's introduction reviews the history of grieving in America, changing > funeral rituals, evolving psychological theories on grieving, and explains > what distinguishes parental grief for a lost child from other forms of > grieving. The experience of death in the nineteenth century was raw and > real. Children died at home instead of hospitals, and families performed > their own funerals as often as did undertakers. Clergy offered spiritual > support more often than psychologists prescribed how to grieve. Nineteenth > century Americans confronted death and maintained positive continuing bonds > with the dead through memorials, social work, and writing. But with time > American responses to death became more and more clinical, > professionalized, and domesticated, and the continuing bonds practiced in > the nineteenth century were replaced with Freudian theory that encouraged > severing ties and moving on. Death became something to be tamed and even to > be made invisible. Bush points out that the culture of death is coming full > circle and the "continuing bonds" --a phrase coined by Dennis Klass in > _Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief_ (1996)--is being replaced > by the theory of "posttraumatic growth" which recognizes the presence of > the dead in the lives of the grieving and how that presence can yield > constructive results out of the trauma. > > > But before that can happen, a death must be "realized." This word crops up > repeatedly in nineteenth century accounts by those grieving a death, and > had a particular meaning that is overlooked by the modern reader. Twain > captured that meaning perfectly when recording his reaction to reading the > telegram that informed him of Susy's death: "It is one of the mysteries of > our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunderstroke like > that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect > is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. > The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting. The mind has > a dumb sense of vast loss--that is all. It will take mind and memory > months, and possibly years, to gather together the details and thus learn > and know the whole extent of the loss." In these words Bush recognizes > Twain as a fellow member of the club nobody wants to join. Twain's words > are as clear a description as were ever written of the initial trauma that > must be absorbed, confronted, processed, and eventually accepted before the > reality of the loss is truly comprehended. In this context, to _realize_ > something is not merely to understand it, but to confront something and > move it from a state of unreality all out of time, and make it real in the > present. The clinical term for this processing period is "latency" and the > process can take many forms and consume widely varying lengths of time, as > demonstrated by the authors whose stories are told in this volume. > > > The chapter on Howells immediately precedes the chapter on Mark Twain, and > their experiences are superficially parallel. Howells lost his daughter > Winny in 1889, seven years before Twain lost Susy. Winny, like Susy, was a > moody artistic intellectual young woman with a distinct talent for writing, > and like Susy she died in her 20s with neither of her parents present. But > Howells was far more nineteenth century in his response to the loss of > Winny. Like Mark Twain, he frankly recorded his grief and his lost daughter > haunts his writings, especially _A Hazard of New Fortunes_ (1890), as Bush > expertly delineates. But unlike Twain, Howells held out hope for a reunion > in some kind of afterlife, and was able to maintain a bond with his > daughter in this way through his faith. > > > Twain's strongest comment hinting at the possibility of an afterlife came > in 1889, the year Winny died, when he wrote to Livy "I don't know anything > about the hereafter, but I am not afraid of it" (130), but he steadily > moved away from any such belief thereafter. As Bush concludes "with the > passing on of the baton from Howells to Mark Twain, do we see the radical > shift from nineteenth century sentimentalism and its vague afterglow, into > a modern, hardened temperament for whom reunion with the dead was itself > almost certainly a dead hypothesis" (127-128). But even if they differed in > their beliefs in an afterlife, they shared what Bush calls an > "anti-imperial friendship" (157) and both expressed empathy for the parents > of children killed in war--Mark Twain in "A War Prayer," and Howells in > _Editha_. Also like Howells, Twain's writings, even more than a decade > after Susy's death, still reflected Twain's initial response to her death. > Among other works, Susy's presence may be detected in _Christian Science_ > (1907); Twain, Livy, and even Clara had blamed Susy's "unnecessary" death > on "fools" who practiced mental science and spiritualism (139). Bush also > makes a convincing case that even Mark Twain's late work on his > _Autobiography_ from 1906 to 1909 was prompted by a growing desire to > immerse himself in the past using what Twain called a "systemless system" > of autobiography that reflected his continuing struggle with a world filled > with good and evil, ruled not by a just God but by an absentee landlord, > with the result that Twain could not formulate a satisfactory theodicy, but > instead moved toward nihilism, all the while continuing his bond with Susy > by exercising his better angels, his powerful social conscience, which was > Susy's legacy (162). > > > Twentieth century critics have sometimes treated Twain's grief over the > death of Susy with some impatience, hinting that it was excessive or > unhealthy, even morbid. Although Bush does not berate these critics, this > book certainly provides much needed perspective, a corrective to such > dismissive attitudes that reflect mid-twentieth century cultural views on > grief rather than those in Twain's lifetime. Twainians will of course be > most interested in the chapter on Mark Twain, and most will convince > themselves to read the chapter on William Dean Howells. This review has > necessarily focused on Mark Twain, and the complexities of this subject > have been briefly described (and certainly over-simplified), so the reader > will do well to read this book from start to finish to gain a proper > context and the fullest insight. Twenty-three year old Daniel Bush > (1993-1999) would have loved this book, as would have fifteen year old > Colin Thomas Waters (2001-2001), the grandson of this reviewer, and so will > all readers.