By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | There is nothing more satisfying to me, on lazy days, than to return to a book you have enjoyed previously. One I pulled down from the bookshelf the other day was The Wines of Pentagoet by John Gould.
Now understand, the late John Gould was my favorite author, having read him for more than 40 years through his weekly wry and colorful columns in The Christian Science Monitor. John was a thorough down-easter Mainer, that is, from the State of Maine.
He was born in (1908), the son of a Maine farm boy, slept 85 years of his life in Maine (with the window cracked even during winter), went to college in Maine (Bowdoin), published his weekly newspapers in Maine (Lisbon Falls), and collected and told Maine stories better than anybody. His terse and beautifully constructed dispatches (as he called ‘em) have been collected in 30 books. (Got 18, wish I had them all.) The yarns came mostly from his weekly columns, all delightful.
His writing made me want to see Maine, and we did on several occasions. We corresponded with Mr. Gould for years, and eventually went to Maine in 2002 especially to meet him. Back then, when WTBS was first broadcasting nationally, John quickly became an Atlanta Braves fan. We have a photo of him wearing a Braves’ hat, which I hauled up to him. He later wrote back: “”The cap didn’t work. The Braves lost the next two.”
Maine, of course, remains the same as it always has been, that is, sparsely inhabited, with Gould suggesting that it was perhaps settled even before St. Augustine in Florida. After all, Gould relates people wearing European clothes were found on Monhegan Island (off Maine) when in 1534 when Sailor Andre Thevet visited. (St. Augustine was settled in 1565.)
Maine remains the same: cold as the dickens in the winter, cool there in the short summer growing season, and full of “summercaters” from New York and Boston during the warmer months. The summer people apparently mostly leave Labor Day, and Maine returns to normal.
Johns wrote three novels after his wife became concerned about the lack of “decent books” of American fiction and suggested he try his hand. In one dispatch, he wrote: “I thought about it long and well. I am not a novelist and my short essays are no aid in trying to be. But I have read The Moonstone, Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, and the like, and I consider Aristotle important. I think a novel should have substance and dignity. It should have an acceptable theme and carry a message. Its content should be important and the revelation lofty. Most of all, it should have pleasing language and be reasonable amusing. I set to work.”
His one novel became a trilogy, centered on a strong woman named Elzada, a name we’d not seen before. The first of the trilogy is entitled No Place Like Home. If you get hooked on that one, you’ll find the other two.
Now here, all these years later, John Gould has returned front and center to me. What a wonderful memory he is, all because of my initial reading in The Christian Science Monitor.
Oh! How the work of reading opens up new wonders to us all!
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