Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
"Nobody values anything for its endurance nowadays," T. C. Hulme, headmaster of the Clifford, Vermont Academy muses. Long devoted to the school and to his eccentric aunt, T. C. is increasingly aware that life is passing him by. His hopes are renewed when he falls in love with a new teacher 20 years his junior. But as Dorothy Canfield Fisher shows, neither love nor Academy life runs smooth. A younger suitor steps in, and a rich, out-of-state trustee dies and leaves the Academy a million-dollar "gift" in his will. The codicils are troubling, however: Jews must be excluded, girls ousted, and local students squeezed out by a tuition hike. The affront to a Yankee sense of fair play is clear, but the school desperately needs funds. Thus T. C. and the town confront a struggle between the "old" virtues of tolerance, integrity, and civic responsibility and "modern" attitudes of expediency, exclusionism, and outside control. Originally published in 1939, Fisher's last novel is remarkably prescient in its defense of human rights and the ramifications of their denial.… (more)
User reviews
I want to compliment the author,
Also worth noting are the lovely poetic flights our hero's imagination takes - these are the most effective and affecting "deep in love" passages in memory. They occur and recur throughout the book, and they are one of the chief delights.
"Seasoned Timber" flies generally under the radar, and that's a shame. If you want to take a flight among the human heart's desires, poetically and compassionately drawn, pick up this book. I think the author deserves not to be so obscure.
However, having now flamed her adult fiction, I want to add that her letters are wonderful, and Dorothy is fortunate that a Cather scholar has created an excellent edition of the letters: Keeping Fires Night and Day, edited by Mark Madigan (1993)--and note that this Harscrabble edition was also edited by Madigan. I so love that title, taken from a line in one of Dorothy's letters--something like, Oh, we're doing just fine here, keeping fires night and day. Madigan's biographical notes throughout the volume of letters are better than either of the biographies written about DCF. Sadly, her biographies are not worthy of her, and I hope someday someone will write a biography that captures the spirit of this lively, lovely, hardworking Vermonter.