The selection we are given from William Owens’ memoir, This Stubborn Soil, comes off as a slow
journey through Owens’ life to find his friend Pat Swindle, a man that Owens
believes will help him find a job, all the way in Texarkana. The piece seems to not be full of much
action; however the attention to detail is extreme and makes up for the
seemingly little plot it entails.
The beginning line of, “Looking for a job in January was
worse than I thought it could be, going from building to building, walking in
cold or rain…” (269), brings the reader into Owens’ despair; a despair that I’m
sure all of us had to deal with at some point in our lives—if not later. Maggie, Owens’ sister, does not allow Owens
to feel sorry for himself by being harsh by saying, “You’ve got to make out
like you’re a man” (269). With this
setting of the scene, the situation, the issue, and the personalities that we
will see throughout, we have a feel for what is to come.
Throughout the piece, we are given a play by play of what William
Owens is accomplishing, which brings about a sort of reflection that isn’t the
quintessential way we may be used to. In
the piece, we are allowed in his head.
This can be seen in lines such as, “I saw people I knew but they did not
know me” (270) and “There was nothing left for me but to keep on walking”
(271). Personally, I feel like a great
chunk of this memoir can most certainly be relatable. Throughout the piece, I felt a connection
with the character, because I’m sure at some point we’ve all felt these
feelings. Through this form of “inside
the head” reflection and writing, one can sense the author well—we can
understand his frustrations and personality.
Another aspect of the novel that I enjoyed, was how the
author related a lot of the beginning parts to the ending. On page 271, Owens brings up the quote “Don’t
steal, don’t beg” which we see repeated in various forms: page 273 “…that would
have been begging”, 275: “Don’t steal. Don’t beg” again, 277: “The way he said
it, I was not begging. It was not like
being a tramp coming in begging for a place to stay.” In such a sort selection of the piece, we can
see full circle the growth of the character, and how important certain aspects
are. Personally, I would find this
memoir interesting to read, just so I can see how the ending essentially pans
out—along with the constant worry of begging.
Perhaps though, the proof is in the story. Aforementioned, the strong and perhaps brutal
line from his sister Maggie about being a man, most likely hit him right in the
gut. However, do we see some irony? He is told to be a man, he tells himself not
to beg—however, he spends the majority of the piece searching for his friend
Pat because Owens finds Pat as a shoe-in for a job. Is he being a man by taking the easy way out?
Is he essentially begging by going on a journey to get a job?
The turn of events happened for Owens near the tail end of
the memoir by coming into contact with a man and a woman. These characters pose as a “savior” to Owens
by giving him literally a sense of direction—a train ticket to get Owens from
Celeste to Dallas. The woman says to
Owens, “You c’n work your way through school…Anybody can if he wants to bad
enough” (277) and the man says, “I’m glad you saw our light” (278) which poses
as a definite change of events from the supposedly bad and dark road Owens
would have taken if he ended up paling around with Pat.
Through three subtle scene changes of William Owens’
journey, we see a progression of a character, along with a distinct attention to
detail. This personal memoir, radiates
to its readers, also allowing the reader to reach into our minds and find
ourselves within the author’s difficult times.
Portrayed using the slur of the South and -boin' it around Texas, the Owens of "This Stubborn Soil" seems an impossible starting point for the decorated veteran and university professor portrayed by the bio. This appeared to be an exercise in turning your life into one of the more boring Elmore Leonard stories, but I guess Texas'll do that to you. The reflection practiced here isn't coming from the future William Owens, it is coming from eighteen year old Owens; nothing we are given contains hints of premonitory events, nor does it tell after a hard-knock that this affected his demeanor later. It is *almost* the Origin Story memoir; it tells a skinny rendition of where someone came from, but without the rather important detail of where they are now. I half expected him to get bit by a rabid homeless and develop mutagenic, impossible powers. Owens literally tying the railroad ties into girding, cutesy bows while lambing from the law and Pat Swindle, the one-eyed marshal with the seven-shot sixshooter and the pigman sidekick, would've been slightly more exciting. As it is, we do have a psychological morsel to sample; Owens' inculcated idea that he isn't a beggar unless he begs is interesting. He knocks on a door and puppy-eyes the occupants and accepts their charity and still doesn't consider himself a beggar at the end. (Or does he, 'cause he didn't tell?). William Owens was well on his way to dying in a ditch had it not been for the light in the distance. The biggest thing this memoir does is categorize begging. There is begging because one is lazy or malaise-y and there is begging because one is truly in dire need of help. Of course there are other midpoints on the scale, but the stigma assigned to asking for help even when your life is at stake that is a doctrine of many of our country's prideful states, prevents him from being able to acknowledge or analyze his straits. ...Or that could've been gnawing hunger.
ReplyDeleteThis story came off as a little slow for me.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I found it interesting that this piece was called “This Stubborn Soil” and Owens himself seems pretty stubborn throughout the entire piece. Owens holds onto his mother’s words “Don’t steal. Don’t beg.” very tightly throughout the piece. I’m not sure what Owens’ relationship with his mother was like but it would be interesting to learn more about it, since she seems to be important to him.
I like the way Owens sets up the story. By giving us this problem, that he doesn’t have a job and lives with his sister, and then explains how he is going to fix it (by leaving to go meet Pat). Ironically, his so-called solution to the problem ends up causing him a whole new set of problems: being homeless, sick, and hungry.
What I enjoyed the most about this piece was the family that Owens meets at the end. After Owens shows his readers just how tough life can be, he then uses this family to show his reader the endless compassion that humans are capable of. I’m sure that this family has their own set of problems, especially given that the mother is a window, but yet they take Owens in without question and selflessly give him food, a place to sleep, and not only a ride to the train station but they buy his ticket home. I find this to be a nice contrast and something that I think Owens uses well.
In This Stubborn Soil, William Owens starts the excerpt with the problem that he is facing: though he's been looking for a job, he's having trouble finding one that will hire him. At the request of his friend, Pat Swindle, he hitchhikes to Texarkana to meet up with him and start working for a timber crew. However, Pat isn't there, and Owens has to hitchhike all the way back to Dallas, sick, sore, and starving. A thing that I liked in the excerpt was how well Owens captured the dialect and accents of his family and the locals. Another thing that I noticed was Owens' simple prose style; it's less flowery than the other memoirs we've read. He tells his story straight, without a lot of wordy descriptions. However, I couldn't find very much reflection in the piece. Owens basically just tells the events as they happened. The only thing he reflects on is his mother's advice not to beg or steal and how he has to keep her words in mind as he is hitchhiking along. He remembers her advise later when the family near the end of the piece takes him in and helps him safely get back to his sister in Dallas; He doesn't beg to be taken in, he just asks the family if he can warm up for a second.
ReplyDeleteI like this selection from William Owens' memoir because I felt as though it fit well inside of his memoir and that it gave a brief, yet clear picture of how he went from dirt poor to actually being successful. From the introduction, we know that Owens at some point in his life became an English professor at Columbia University. However, from this selection of his memoir, we have a very different picture of Owens: he's an eighteen year-old who does not have a set goal in life and is merely trying to get by. He lives with his older sister and is desperate for a job. He is also--arguably--immature and impulsive. Not necessarily what one would expect out of a professor. I read his memoir in light of the fact that he will one day be a professor, and this is where I found a certain type of reflection. The phrase that he repeats throughout the piece, "Don't steal, don't beg," that his mother had told him is a type of reflection. He is implicitly stating that he did not gain his education through begging or stealing but through his own hard work. I also see this when he is staying with the family who gave him respite from the cold. The old woman tells him, "You c'n work your way through school...Anybody can if he wants to bad enough" (277). There is also this reflection in his statement toward the end: "I won't. Not any more. I'll get me a job and pay you every cent I owe you" (278). After his escapade through Texas, he realizes that it was stupid and he won't ever bum off of anyone again. He sees the honor and worth in working and working hard. I like how anyone can resonate with his experience. Though not everyone has left home and become a beggar for several days, we've all been stubborn enough not to take the advice of well-meaning people in our lives and then found out the hard way what they meant by their advice. This goes back to our discussion the other day about making what matters to us also matter to the reader. Being able to resonate with the situation or lesson learned can be a way to make it matter.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things about William Owens writing that stood out to me was the way he would begin his paragraphs. A lot of the time he starts out with something to set us to the exact day. For example, on pages 270-271 there are many paragraphs that begin similar to eachother. "THe next morning..." "It was a bright winter afternoon..." "The next day..." "The next morning..." (270-271). It is a pretty repetitive style that I thought Owens could have worked at.
ReplyDeleteAnother part of the memoir I found to be interesting is that the advice that his mother tells him not to do, is the typical life a hobo would lead. She tells him, "Don't steal, don't beg," (271). Then we see him begging for rides, but he seemed like he was passionate about finding work in Texarcana. My only thought was why not just find a job in one of these other towns.
One of the best descripted scenes of the memoir was when Owens is broke and sick and trying to continue on his journey. He says of this, "...stopping only to buy a piece of cheese to go with the bread I had left. It took the last of my money, so I put half of each in my pockets for the next day. To keep down hunger and thirst, and to ease my burning throat, I broke pieces of ice from the ditches to suck on as I walked," (274-275). That puts a good picture in our heads of the everyday struggles that Owens was facing.
This selection from William Owens’ memoir, This Stubborn Soil, did not seem like a memoir at all to me. I am aware that this is only a brief part of his personal story, and there may be some other elements in later sections where one can recognize some sort of reflection or even full character development but this did not strike me as one of those sections. If anything, Owens’ “memoir” could be considered a short story or even an autobiography (it he had that great of a memory). He starts with a job search and ends with a job search with, what seems like, no specific message or questioning of what he wants or will want (besides food and a place to sleep). The only element of the selection that seems to hold the piece together and make it cohesive are the words from his mother that he keeps bringing up: “’Don’t steal. Don’t beg.’” So in a way, one can infer from these words that he wanted to be a good person and wanted to further his education, but besides that Owens just writes it like it was something that did not happen to him; there is not much character development beyond the few cryptic words that Maggie and Owens say, and the whole thing consists of summary of what he did with little scene setting besides the name of the town or what the weather was like. All in all, it was not my favorite piece and it did not provoke me to want to read more.
ReplyDeleteThe tone of this piece felt almost like the story of a man discovering religion, but in this case Owns is discovering not faith, but education.
ReplyDeleteTold in a Southern style, (which seems to be a favorite of the editors of this piece to the point it seems like they have some fascination with the South, so I bet they're some city slickers from up North), we follow the author on his journey alongside the rails, trying to find some work. While the memoir starts off frustrating, as Owens refuses to paint his picture with anything but the broadest of brushes. We know almost nothing about him, his life up to this point, why he's living with sister, or any other basic background information. How long had he been looking for a job? Why did he drop out of school for work? Is this life-plan what his Father had recommended for him, or what he had done? But we are still stuck following him on this journey until he reaches an unknown family that we are not veen given the name of.
Despite having no name, this family becomes the best drawn people in the memoir, and the only ones we get any true detail of. Rather than leaving him with some story of faith, they instead fill him with a sense that education is important. We are given the idea that his education became very important, but if this memoir is anything to by, it wasn't enough.
William Owens' Stubborn Soil is a great example of how to set up the problem that the author is going to face and how he plans and goes about solving the problem. It is told using very well written Southern style of dialect, especially with the dialogue, which helps to develop the other characters in the story that are primarily only developed on the surface. The story itself is very simple to follow because it is told chronologically and does not have any real drastic gaps in time. However, I felt that this aspect of the writing felt like it really dragged on and on for me. However, upon completing my first reading I felt that everything fit together and every part of his journey had a very significant meaning to it that wasn't completely on the surface. The way that Owens accomplishes this is primarily through his scene description and the way he develops his own character through his journey. Through out the entire piece he is faced with a great deal of bad weather, the darkness, and being sick, cold, and hungry. All of these negative aspects of the story illustrate how much hardship he is going through.
ReplyDeleteThis is contrasted through his search of light and warmth. Whether it's the thought of his new job being in a warm place, the high hopes he has for his new job as he begins his journey which starts on a bright day, the inn, the fire he makes, and especially with the family that he meets after seeing the light in their house. Each day of his journey he tells you exactly how he is feeling and exactly what he is traveling through. He starts off with a confident and strong person and then begins to unravel him physically to show how much he wants to solve his issue of finding a job, or more importantly a purpose in life.
All of the meanings, symbolism, and imagery comes to a head when he is convinced by the teacher that he wants to go back to Commerce and especially after when he states, “I'm glad you saw our light”(287). This even comes back to how he used his savings for Commerce to go on his journey just to realize that in the end that is what he truly wanted. Talk about irony. All of the hard times that he had to endure was a sign that simply going to work and not getting an education was not the path he should follow, but instead there is light and warmth in getting an education. While the piece itself initially dragged on for me for a great deal of time, it all connected in the end to tell a story of growing up and becoming more of a man, like his sister wanted him to.
-Todd Breitenbach
Because we are reading a compilation book of selections of memoirs, there are bound to be stories where we are missing some of the details,coming in halfway through the author's story. This is the way I felt about the William Owens piece; there was just a lot of details and information that the reader seems to be missing about him. I thought alot of Owen' story was made up of mostly just summarizing everything. He doesn't stop to describe where he is or the people he meets, and I found that to be a little frustrating as it fails to put the reader in a place. It made the whole piece seem like a short story instead of a memoir. There is a little reflection here and there, like when he builds a fire in the woods or he thinks of Maggie's words not to beg, but it never felt like enough to fully gauge his emotions throughout the story. What I did like about the section was that there was actually some character development that could be evident to the reader, that this long journey he has gone on has given him some renewed sense of faith in the end. I do wish he had given more reflection so that this development had more depth it.
ReplyDelete