“The charm consists in delightful and continuous humor, often sharp and never overkind, which isn’t at all what people mean by ‘charming’ in the new and popular sense. But here is the real substance of things more to be desired than the fine gold of sunshine. Miss Gale is incurably funny and we love her for it—witness the delivery horse, ‘hanging out its tongue, not at all because of fast driving but from preference,’ and Mis’ Henry Bates, whose stomach wouldn’t allow her to drink coffee. ‘She always spoke’ (to quote directly) ‘as if her stomach stood back of her chair.’ ... Birth achieves the rare result of being both mystical and colloquial.” How?
You may well ask. The setting is a tiny Wisconsin town, except for some scenes in Chicago. The “hero” is a traveling salesman handling pickle and fruit products; insignificant; with long, thin, freckled wrists and a coat that gave the effect of blowing when there was no wind; with no graces. You sicken over the little man’s humiliations in such social life as Burage, Wisconsin, boasted. He marries a girl of the village, a girl of some social gifts and quite ordinary and silly feminine ambitions—and becomes a paperhanger, though knowing nothing of the business. Barbara Pitt, Marshall Pitt’s wife, is dropped abruptly from the story—daring technique but justified in the result—and the novel develops as a narrative of the life-relation of father and son. This little man, this Marshall Pitt, being human, had his immortal moments. Zona Gale can put them on paper:
“It was in this manner that their child was born. There he was, sentient. A rift in experience, the crossing of the street by Barbara at one moment rather than the next; the opening of a gate by Pitt in the afternoon instead of the morning. Then joy, ill, the depths, madness, flowing about the two. These passed but there remained the child—living, exquisite, sturdy, sensitive, a new microcosm, experiencing within himself the act of God.”
Prose? Poetry! Deep and vibrant music. It has the austere beauty and the imaginative content of Johann Sebastian Bach—say the Chaconne in D minor.
“Love is a creative force,” says Mrs. Greene in the article we have already quoted, “and though Marshall Pitt had been unable through the inarticulate material in which his soul was embodied to fashion himself in any accordance with his blurred hopes, he could by virtue of his great love for Barbara and their child offer to Jeffrey [his son] the inspiration lacking which his life, even to his last heroic act, had seemed a futile thing. In dying because he lacked cleverness to see the means of escape, to save the only living thing that had loved him in return, he made his last awkward gesture that of rescuing a dog!” We may quote the passage, condensed slightly:
“They carried Pitt, and in his arms was a white Marseilles spread in which he had swathed the little dog. The spread was burning, Pitt’s hair was burning and the thin cotton of his shirt was all burned away about his throat and breast and blazed upon his shoulders.
“They laid him on the ground and the people beat out the flames. As the fire was quenched there was a terrific commotion in the white Marseilles spread. Out leaped Jep, not a silken hair on him singed, and he snapped indignantly at having been caused intolerable inconvenience....
“‘Well, but of all the fool things. For a dog.’...”
Books by Zona Gale
Romance Island, 1906.
The Loves of Pelleas and Ettarre, 1907.
Friendship Village, 1908.
Friendship Village Love Stories, 1909.
Mothers to Men, 1911.
Christmas, 1912.
When I Was a Little Girl, 1913.
Neighborhood Stories, 1914.
Heart’s Kindred, 1915.
A Daughter of Tomorrow, 1917.
Birth, 1918.
Peace in Friendship Village, 1919.
Miss Lulu Bett, 1920.
Neighbors (play), 1920.
Miss Lulu Bett (play), 1921.