Words on a Page

  So far in this series of interviews with writers from the Portsmouth Authors Collective , I've focussed on novelists. But we also have many non-fiction writers in the Collective, and in this interview I speak with Paul Newell who has published numerous books on Portsmouth History, as well as books on a number of other historical subjects. Author Bio:  Paul was born in Portsmouth and returned after studying in London. He now works as an HR Manager. A keen genealogist, Paul has a passion for local history and in recent years has been researching the history of Portsmouth during Victorian and Edwardian times. Paul’s first publication, Shocking Tales from Victorian Portsmouth , was a huge success, and several books around these topics have followed. ~ Loree: Welcome to my blog, Paul. It’s great to have you hear. Let’s jump right in. You write historical non-fiction. How did it all start?   Paul: I was researching some family info after I found out a great grandfathe...

I’ve recently been re-reading Chief Joseph’s account of the Nez Perce War and subsequent internment in Indian Territory, and like many before me have been struck by the eloquence and power of his words. Whether this eloquence comes directly from Joseph himself or from the transcriber hardly seems to matter. The power behind the words is Joseph’s. I am also struck by the continuing relevance of his words and how they mirror so much of what we tend to think of as ‘modern democratic values’ and Christian teaching.  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chief Joseph: Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt / In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat  (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain) Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; tha...

The Broad Expanse: charting the landscape Western literature is tied to place more than any other regional form.  As we read the pages of a Cormac McCarthy novel or an Annie Proulx short story, we traverse a world of staggering imagery: jagged peaks of distant blue mountains, arid expanses of red desert and sagebrush, and hip-high seas of winter wheat rippling and cresting in a prairie breeze.  It is a world of wide-open spaces and unpopulated places, where characters come and go, but the land is constant and forever.  In her essay ‘Dangerous Ground’, Annie Proulx argues that landscape is much more than what the landscape historian John Brinckerhoff Jackson describes as being ‘a portion of the earth’s surface that can be comprehended at a single glance’ (2008, p. 12).  Rather, she offers her own broader definition: Landscape is geography, archaeology, astrophysics, agronomy, agriculture, the violent character of the atmosphere, climate, black squirrels and wild oa...

Western American Literature: an expansive canon   Western American Literature: an expansive canon   The canon of western American literature encompasses many forms: popular and literary fiction; nature writing; personal essays and memoirs; and historical studies.  It is an area of literature which is nearly as vast as the land from which it emanates.  A brief survey of the novels which fall beneath its banner confirms the diverse range of work it includes: Zane Grey’s classic of the western genre Riders of the Purple Sage (1912); Willa Cather’s depiction of the female agrarian struggle in O Pioneers! ; A.B. Guthrie’s mountain man adventure Big Sky (1947); Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952); and Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose (1972) are all novels which are widely studied in connection with the American West.  Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985); Annie Proulx’s Wyoming stories; Barbara Kingsolver’s BeanTrees (1988); Larry McMurt...

- William Faulkner, Requiem For a Nun from an epigraph to The Fifth Generation: A Nez Perce Tale by Linwood Laughy