Today drops the last of the first 25k words of Harry Leslie Smith’s 80k word unpublished Green & Pleasant Land manuscript which I have been preparing for publication.
Beautifully written, but more importantly, everything speaks of the human condition with the very real experience of your father.
Every passage I read of your fathers youth sends me back to my grandmother telling me of her time in poverty stricken Denmark and the reason she left. Taking every penny she could get, packing up at 16 years old, lying about her age to get on a boat for America at the child’s rate, emigrating to New York and traveling alone to the middle of Nebraska to find her parents. Then the different kind of poverty she lived in here during the Dirty 30’s.
Sadly, the ruling class’s money, agendas and political spin is Hellbent to return to those days.
John, the ending paragraph highlights the real reason for the resurgence in book banning and book burning, as well as the anti-woke movement in general.
“The books I read in 1935 and afterwards were doing something else for me; they were politicising me. I began to formulate in my childish mind that the circumstances of my poverty weren't the fault of my shortcomings or my parents but because society was rigged to favour an entrenched entitled class. Books- made me aware that poverty wasn't the natural order of things but a perverse and cruel means to control and subjugate ordinary humanity.”
Beautifully written, but more importantly, everything speaks of the human condition with the very real experience of your father.
Every passage I read of your fathers youth sends me back to my grandmother telling me of her time in poverty stricken Denmark and the reason she left. Taking every penny she could get, packing up at 16 years old, lying about her age to get on a boat for America at the child’s rate, emigrating to New York and traveling alone to the middle of Nebraska to find her parents. Then the different kind of poverty she lived in here during the Dirty 30’s.
Sadly, the ruling class’s money, agendas and political spin is Hellbent to return to those days.
John, the ending paragraph highlights the real reason for the resurgence in book banning and book burning, as well as the anti-woke movement in general.
“The books I read in 1935 and afterwards were doing something else for me; they were politicising me. I began to formulate in my childish mind that the circumstances of my poverty weren't the fault of my shortcomings or my parents but because society was rigged to favour an entrenched entitled class. Books- made me aware that poverty wasn't the natural order of things but a perverse and cruel means to control and subjugate ordinary humanity.”
Love it. Take care.
Depressing but excellent