Reconciling why something wins a prestigious literary award is one thing, figuring out why some books, in the years that pass, get chucked to the wayside and others get put on high school/college level reading lists for eternity, is an entirely different ball of wax.:) We've all read tons of books for classes that some higher authority, whether it be a high school curriculum or a university English Department, has deemed noteworthy that winds up being a boring piece of shit, or not nearly as interesting as The Da Vinci Code(and with this statement I'm not offering up The Da Vinci Code as the prime example of great American literature, it's just fuel for my fire), or irrelevant to our generation or any other generation's lives.
When I got ready to do this project I was prepared to read several books like the ones I've just described, boring pieces of irrelevant crap. I must say I've been pleasantly surprised. Sure, there have been some duds, books that definitely weren't my favorites, but there's been something of merit almost every novel I've read so far for these lists(and I'm more than halfway now), and an overwhelming majority of them I never would have read unless it was on these lists, books that I had never heard of otherwise or didn't really hold any outward interest for me. In the midst of not really being disappointed by anything I've read so far, I've found some amazing gems, books that are hidden from the general public due to their out-of-date/out-of-print status. I know I've gone crazy over the Gwethalyn Graham novels that won the GG in the late 30's and mid 40's and others from that era that have been sitting in some library's storage facility for the past 30-40 years, but I've got another one that was quite, quite good. This one is G. Herbert Sallans' Little Man. It won the Governor General in 1942. I could find nothing on this book before I began to read it, except, after I scrolled through Google Search Results page after page, I finally found two sentences about the plot, and now that I go look for it again, I'm sure it won't be there...:) The two sentence description said something about the fact that it was about a father and son's experience with war...but it is so much more than that. It is a 420 page tome about a man's life and experience as he lives through one of the most tumultous periods in history. George Battle, the protagonist, starts off in Chapter 1 as a gunner in the trenches in France in WWI, a young guy who has idolized war all his life but has no real clue about what to do once he gets there. Then Chapter 2 shows his son visiting George's brother's grave, his namesake, Hal, who died in France during the first war. Then the book goes back to the very beginning as it were, to George when he is a little kid growing up at the turn of the 20th century. His mother has died and his father leaves him and his older brother and sister with relatives to make money and then returns to claim them and start a new life out West with their Uncle Jim and Aunt Sadie in Saskatchewan. We watch George all through his growing up, and his interactions with Jim and Sadie's daughter Pitch, who will dog George until the end of the novel, she who wants him but pursues him utterly wrong, then when she loses him, she sets herself on trying to destroy his marriage however she can, but it only serves to make her look bitter and pathetic. George goes to Winnipeg to attend university and follow his dreams of becoming a writer, meets his soon-to-become lifelong friend Bo, and then eventually goes off to WWI, following in the footsteps of his brother Hal. George does this while there is a boom in farming and speculation that then comes crashing down like a house of cards in the early part of the 20th century, and the book's background always sets up the other worldly events that came to shape up the first half of last century...George goes to war only to find out that his brother is already dead, ends up running into Bo, and through him meets the woman of his dreams, Josephine Olive Yorke(Joy), an Englishwoman, living in London, who he will briefly court and then marry and who is his lifelong rock and partner. She is amazing, almost like a Melanie from Gone With the Wind...George comes back to Canada after the war, moves to Vancouver and works for a newspaper, writing about the little man and his struggles, for freedom, for equality, for financial security, for the little man to be heard. For, George is the epitome of the little man, one realizes as the book progresses. He can write, surely, but he is not loaded with old family money, he is not rich due to his own career path, he is pretty much an average guy who gets lucky by the situations he falls into. But, he too is not unfamiliar with tragedy, and he too saves his best friend from a shell attack in France, and he too has to watch his family members fall either to old age, illness or accidents. Sallans creates in George Battle not only the Little Man, but the Everyman...which is why I found this book engaging possibly, as well as the style is pretty easy to read and the characters are interesting...:) The other thing that I like about this book is it was written about a time that is so proximate to the publication date. The book ends with the start of World War II, and the book was published in 1942. There is not this long distance hindsight that comes from novels written even after the war and to the present day. When Sallans wrote about the Depression, it was only a few short years behind him. The first World War had ended less than three decades prior. Sallans, like my favorite, Gwethalyn Graham, is writing about the time in which he was living, a tumultous time, a scary and strange time, but with the wisdom of someone who has lived beyond it and since. To me, this book seems timeless and true, and yet the only way I got a copy of it was through interlibrary loan from the Tulsa City-County Library in Tulsa, OK, a far cry from Seattle, WA. It was another book that was sitting in storage before I requested it. And now it is almost two weeks overdue...Yikes! Wanna read a cool, all encompassing book about the first half of the 20th C. spanning all kinds of provinces and countries? This would be a great choice.
There are two quotes I particularly like...One is almost an entire page, 248, in the first edition copy I have from the library:
'"But who would ever write a book about us? And why?' 'Because we're commonplace, George. If you were prominent, you wouldn't be worth mentioning. Neither would I. But we're typical of the herd, so we're good book material.' 'But you've got to give people inspiration. That's all most of them have to live for. What's the use of telling them about themselves?' 'Because you can never lift your little man into the stars by making him feel like a palooka. He may be the poorest heel on earth, but there comes a time when he parts his hair and wants to stand before the crowd as a peer. Do I make myself clear?' 'As clear as mud,' George confessed. 'What I mean is this. We have no national literature worth reading for the same reason that we have no national culture of any value, and no national traditions. We try to ape other people. Outside a few things on forests and streams, and bits about Indians who were here before us, the rest of our stuff is the same old slavish worship of the aristocracy, of which we have none, and of success, which we measure by the length of time it takes the hero to get rich.' 'If you're right, Bo, Shakespeare was wrong.' 'With just this difference, my old one. Shakespeare was the Gilbert and Sullivan of his times. He dragged out his tinhorn dukes and fake top-hats and exposed them for the cheap farces they were. We haven't conceded that yet. That's why any literature we have on this soil can't tolerate the little man, and anyone with perspicacity, like yourself, knows that no worthwhile literature can get along without him. We're too self-conscious. We're so afraid we'll be recognized for what we really are, that we either dress up our little fellow like a god or we clown him and make him a boor.'"

The other quote I liked was much shorter, though also interesting. "'Here is my life,' he whispered to himself, 'reaching another chapter, another clean break-away from the past. Always breaking. Is there anyone whose life has been connected all of a piece, who can look back down the little lane of his years and say, 'This is my life.'--No, that is not so. Our lives are fashioned out of separate links, all foreign to one another, and only memory and sentiment can weld them together. There is no other welding.'" (266)

These kinds of books make me excited, like I'm on this archeological dig of literature and that I now found this super-valuable rare work that no one else knows about...But like I said, it also makes me sad, because if that's true and I AM the only one to know about it, then everyone else is missing out! and what else am I missing out on by having been a student of structured English programs? Well, I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to delve into this idea as I keep on trucking...GG's-38, PP's-42.