CONCEPT
I’ve kind of worked myself into a conversational corner, in part, with this thesis project. There’s no incentive to share my research with people who aren’t fixated on serial killers (only a few of you) or lumberjacks (only very few of you). That said, for anyone who doesn’t have a reading list murderously sorted by relevance to your LIFE, I really would recommend The Shanty Boy by Fitzmaurice. Of all the background I’ve explored on lumbering, which includes not only contemporary accounts but collected stories, newspaper articles, and even museums such as that at Hartwick Pines State Park, nothing was as enjoyable as The Shanty Boy.
Which is probably what it would be: enjoyable. There is something to learn there, certainly. The specialization that developed in 1800s lumbering led to skills such as swamping, cutting, and river driving, accommodated by a specialized vocabulary: “toot” “bagnio” “stake” “chummy.” Fitzmaurice was a journalist who became an insurance salesman traveling from one lumber camp to another. He was at the center of this world for long enough to familiarize himself with the language, and then he evokes his experiences quite vividly. As such, there is a lot to learn here about lumbering at a time when it was integral to national growth and expansion, and two, was antecedent to the sometimes quite different practices used today.
At least as significant are what a 21st century reader can glean from Fitzmaurice himself. He was relatively well-traveled for the time, having spent time in Chicago, and New England, as well as Michigan. But he was also involved politically with the temperance movement. His prose is a verile example of the ornate and sparkling prose favored during the gilded age and his politics has a practical, pragmatic edge which seems to visibly germinate the midwestern work ethic many of us still identify with today.
But again, mostly the book is just enjoyable. It’s fascinating to pick up a book published in 1892 and read stories as collected and chronicled from the woods themselves. Even poetically rendered, I cannot imagine a river drive depicted with more force and investment than Fitzmaurice’s account. His stories, which tend toward the sentimental, are placed directly alongside fanciful accounts of time travel (in one instance, a lumberjack falls asleep in a brandy barrel and wakes in the year 1988, where all travel is conducted in Velocipedes, and Chicago has a population of some 130 million). His lurid accounts of the Catacombs in Bay City (think of a wilder version of the barn you saw in the opening credits to The Gangs of New York) segue into an eloquent speech on the evils of alcohol.
In short, Fitzmaurice was both educational and enjoyable to read. It was impossible to not read him un-selfconsciously, because the differences between his perspective and my own were so conspicuous. It was difficult to read him ironically, because of his skill and imagination. I would probably recommend above any other book I’ve read on Michigan lumbering.
END OF POST.