Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

Dust Tracks on a Road

By Zora Neale Hurston

I first fell in love with the writing of Zora Neale Hurston when Their Eyes Were Watching God was chosen for a community read. I put off reading it for a while but when I did, I was deeply engrossed by her story-telling, her beautifully descriptive settings, and her philosophical musings. It was one of the best books I had ever read.

Then our book club decided to read books with “beautiful covers” for the month of March. I was sitting on my bed, doing my Morning Pages journaling and saw this book peeking out at me from my bookshelf. What a beautiful cover, I thought. It’s a shame I never gotten around to reading it. Then I knew my book for the month had found me - Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston.

The only problem was that it was a hard copy. I don’t have much time for reading that isn’t on my Kindle while I’m putting my child to bed. But, I looked at the length of the book and the number of chapters. I had three weeks and there were only 16 chapters. Surely I could do this if I just read one chapter a night, right?

Yes, it’s okay to laugh now. No, I haven’t finished the book. In fact, I’m only a few chapters in but it is every bit of the incredible characterization, thoughtful musings, and amazing story-telling that I saw in Their Eyes Were Watching God. I have long had a weakness for autobiographies by writers and this one does not disappoint.

In the first chapter of the book, Hurston talks about Eatonville, Florida, and describes it “at the time of my birth.” However, she was born in Alabama and didn’t move to Eatonville until she was three. That confused me a little. However, since most of us remember little of our lives before the age of 3, I can understand it.

As simple a description as how and why a road was improved between towns is beautifully laid out, the courtship of her parents is a tale indeed, and how she started walking because a sow was after her cornbread is delightful.

Her tales are filled with vivid characters, clearly realized settings, and the philosophical observations shine through.

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.”

I am going to finish the book, I just bought it for my Kindle for all of $2.15. I’ll update this review when I finish it.

Melville in Love: The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick by Michael Sheldon

Melville in Love: The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick

By Michael Shelden

Sheldon opens the book with a scene of Sarah Morewood crowning Melville with a laurel wreath at Christmas dinner, in honor of his completing Moby-Dick.

“The obvious, but unspoken, truth here is that Mrs. Morewood is in love with Mr. Melville, who is also married. Indeed, Sarah will prove the most enduring influence on Melville’s life, a muse as well as a lover.”

Sheldon paints a vivid portrait of the times and the inner motivations of both Herman Melville and Sarah Morewood. It reads like a terrifically romantic story, not a dry look at the facts and history.

“Melville fell completely under his lover’s spell from the moment they met in the summer of 1850. Mrs. Morewood was a singular character in the Berkshires of her day, a woman both bookish and beautiful, intelligent and inquisitive, creative and compassionate. Melville regarded her seriously as a kindred spirit, though his biographers have not. She is one of the great unsung figures in literary history.”

Some of the information given is fact but much is also conjecture.

“. . . a wild lament for forbidden love in the novel he called Pierre, didn’t soar to such heights or plunge to such depths in an emotional vacuum. The tempests in those books had their parallels in his life, and at the center of the storm was a relationship for which he was willing to risk everything.”

Sarah was clearly a passionate person. But the author assumes some things based on modern sensibilities in certain places while pointing out how different it was at that time in others. For example, he says she initiated a summer fling with Alexander Gardiner. There was some gossip in certain circles about the two of them being caught in a compromising position which must have been “more revealing than a kiss or an embrace.” But at another point he says that a large group of friends going on an overnight camping trip was scandalous. So which is it?

Neighbors gossiped about a clergyman who was spending too much time as a guest at her home. Really? With others in residence, just spending too much time there was cause for gossip.

It is a thoroughly interesting and entertaining book that delves into the lives and love of Herman Melville and Sarah Morewood but I don’t think the author fully makes his case that two of her children were by Melville. There’s no doubt they were great friends who may have loved each other passionately but that does not prove a physical relationship. Unconsummated relationships can endure all the longer for never being able to reach that stage.

Sadly, Sarah died before she turned 40, most likely of consumption. If the author is correct in only a percentage of his assertions though, some of her spirit lives on in Melville’s writing.

“The key for Sarah was always to be understood, not judged. But, of course, the world prefers to judge . . .”