150 Best Minnesota Books

Our list of the best 150 Minnesota books dipped into genre fiction a while back with the anointing of a couple of mystery novels. It is now time to take another courageous step and delve into the weird and wonderful world of speculative fiction, better known as science fiction and fantasy.

Bosworth, Francis, et al. Broken Mirrors. Minneapolis: Avon Press, 1928.

Clifford D. Simak. The City. New York: Gnome Press, 1952.

Clifford D. Simak was born in Millville, Wisconsin in 1904 and grew up reading H. G. Wells. He is perhaps best known to Minnesotans as a journalist. In 1939 he began a 37 year career writing for the Minneapolis newspapers. He was promoted to news editor of the Star in 1949 and coordinator of the Tribune’s Science Reading Series in 1961. Simak’s legacy, however, is entirely as one of the greatest American science fiction writers. “To read Simak is to read science fiction. To know Simak is to know the best in science fiction,” wrote Muriel Becker in the introduction to his bibliography. He won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. His highest honor was becoming only the third writer named a “Grand Master” by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Among his other numerous awards was the Minnesota Academy of Science Award for his nonfiction but my personal favorite might be his 1988 Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. Simak had a profound influence generally in the genre but more specifically on local writers by, for example, organizing the first meeting of the Minneapolis Fantasy Society in his home in 1940.

In 1953 Simak won the International Fantasy Award for his best know work, The City. His bibliographer points out that this book is “a work with which every devotee of science fiction is familiar.” The book is a series of related short stories depicting an Earth where mankind does not exist and highly evolved intelligent dogs and robots are left to debate whether humans ever existed or if stories about them were merely mythological. The sensitive new age dogs reflect on humanity and decry man’s worst instinct, war!

The MHS has several editions of City, because it is such a ground breaking work, including the very rare first edition in a dust jacket illustrated by famous Sci-Fi artist Frank Kelly Frease [ if you are collecting our list of 150 best Minnesota books you need this edition] and the 1981 edition with an added “Epilog.”

There is so much of – and too much in – Simak’s work to do justice to him here but let me mention just one thing that I found compelling: his sympathetic writings about robots in the 50’s and 60’s were seen as metaphors for the civil rights movement.

As for the book Broken Mirrors, I hardly know where to begin. This is a scarce book (limited to 82 copies) written by five students at the University of Minnesota who were interested in creative writing. They started what they called the Avon Society using that name as their imprint. The five were: Francis Bosworth, Karl Litzenberg, Gordon Louis Roth, Harrison Salisbury (about whom this list will have more to say later), and the reason we are rolling this book out here and now, Donald Wandrei. Wandrei was born in St. Paul in 1908 and was raised and died there in 1987. Before the U of M he attended St. Paul’s Central High School. The striking woodcut illustrations in Broken Mirrors are by Leo Henkora. The Avon Society’s belief was in “no particular school and no definite limitations… or pedantic theory.” Other than work done as editor of the Minnesota Daily, this book contains Wandrei’s first published writing. Along with eight of his poems, the book contains two short stories by Wandrei, “The Victor Loses” and “The Terrible Suicide.”

After school Wandrei hitchhiked to Maine to visit H. P. Lovecraft. He became both a friend and protégé of HPL. Wandrei partnered with August Derleth in starting the imprint Arkham House, the Sauk City, Wisconsin publisher of “weird fiction” mainly to keep the work of Lovecraft in print. In the 1930’s Wandrei was actively writing for “Astounding Stories” and “Weird Tales” magazines. In 1944 Arkham House published one of Wandrei’s better known works, The Eye and the Finger, imagery that Clem Haupers used in the portrait he painted of his friend, Wandrei. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984.

Do you know who came here to sit at the feet of Donald Wandrei and learn from the master? A young Stephen King! The tourist that gawk from buses that stop at all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Summit Avenue haunts should jog one block north to 1152 Portland Avenue to pay homage to one of our most creative writers.

Learn More:

• Donald Wandrei and family papers

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Since the end of the Civil War more than a book a day has been published about the war!

This is a staggering statistic but perhaps not a surprising one. Nothing has captured our imagination like the conflict that tore this country apart. It still incites strong passion and maybe it should. Civil War causalities exceeded all of America’s losses in all of our other wars combined, from the Revolutionary War through the Vietnam War. Even more significantly, many of the issues that provoked the Civil War continue to confound us today. Race is still a major issue in terms of inequality if not freedom. Are our current political differences irreconcilable? We have even had 2012 presidential candidates bring up the issue of secession! The War also excites history buffs to heights of craziness, reenacting battles on a weekend diet of hardtack. During the American Civil War Minnesota experienced a second Civil War between the original inhabitants, the Dakota Indians, and the area’s newest settlers. Arguably this makes the 1860’s this State’s most interesting and exciting decade. Our Best 150 best books blog acknowledges this with another entry on our growing list.

Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861-1865: Prepared and Published Under the Supervision of the Board of Commissioners Appointed by the Act of the Legislature of Minnesota of April16, 1889. St. Paul, Minnesota: Printed for the State by the Pioneer Press Company, 1890 -1893. 844 pgs; 654 pages.

Prominently displayed on the shelves of any serious collector of Minnesota history you will find this two volume description of the martial imbroglios that defined the early days of our state. This is a significant publishing effort on the part of the State. The idea was to have the participants themselves, men who led soldiers into battle, recount the tragic entanglements of both the Dakota Conflict and the long war between the States. Narratives of the various regiments are written by such prominent figures as Charles Flandrau, C. C. Andrews, J. W. Bishop, and William Lochren. Lochren’s description of the First Minnesota’s various campaigns including their bravery, and 83% causality rate, at Gettysburg, [about which General Handcock rightly said “There is no more Gallant dead recorded in history”] is in itself worth the price of the volumes.

The Board of Commissioners packed these books with details. MITCAIW is the first stop for information regarding the campaigns and those who fought. Whether you are interested in, finding out if Great Grandfather was a soldier, in reading a biography of one of the officers, finding the date of a particular battle, or seeing a roster of the “Scandinavian Guards” this is the “go to” book. The second volume consists of Minnesota’s “official reports and correspondence” of both wars chronically arraigned. Probably because of the important primary source material in volume two, it was reprinted in a second edition and thus is a more common and readily available book. In fact, unopened boxes of the second edition of the second volume were discovered in the basement of the Capital in the late 1970’s and distributed to anyone interested.

The book is still in print with the MHS Press [I just counted and there are actually 7 copies left!] and it is greatly enhanced by a 144 pages index that was not part of the original publication but a1936 WPA project under the direction of MHS reference assistant, Irene B. Warming. I prefer Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars in their beautiful, original, and [given the poignant subject matter] more appropriate, three quarter leather bindings.

C.C. Andrews, 1865, on the left and Charles Flandrau, 1862, on the right.

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Please forgive my lack of diligence and attention to the blog listing Minnesota’s 150 best books. It has been over four months since I have posted any new titles and my poor excuse is that small emergencies, such as lack of a functional government, occasionally intruded. I promise to get back on track with regular updates. If you stopped looking for new postings please give me another chance. Keep in mind that I love (and occasionally reward) feed back. I also appreciate the forwarding and circulation of my posts to any potentially interested parties. By my count, we have listed 60 books so far and have 90 fabulous books to go so lets get re-started…

William Hoffman. Those Were The Days. Minneapolis: T. S. Denison and Company,1957.

By the time the list of 150 best Minnesota Books is finished I am sure we will have mentioned many of the ethnic, immigrant, and religious communities that have made us the rich state that we are. One very important part of our heritage is the Jewish community which was occasionally concentrated into tightly knit communities such as the Mississippi River flats on the West Side of St. Paul across from downtown.

Documenting this neighborhood of Jewish immigrants with the attention to detail of the social worker that he was, and the humanism of the columnist which he also was, was William Hoffman. Whether Hoffman is giving you the history and successes of “Neighborhood House” (which opened initially through the work of Rabbi Isaac L. Rypins and quickly became non-sectarian), describing Texas Street which was the wrong side of the tracks of the wrong side of the tracks, or listing the family names like an incantation, he brings the early twentieth century community back into existence.

From Those Were the Days:

Contrary to some popular impressions, Adam and Eve were not from the West Side, but many of Abraham’s descendants did find their way there after a stormy trip across the ocean below deck in steerage. Your parents will assure you, if they have not already done so, that this was not their conception of a first class trip. But arrive here they finally did, even if the legendary pot at the end of the rainbow turned out to be a different kind of pot altogether.

Surely you must know by this time that they left their little dorfs (villages), their close friends, and even some of their family, not to see the “guldeneh” (golden) land of America for themselves, but for you, their children and grandchildren. They came that you might sleep soundly through the night and walk upright during the day with the dignity of free people.

My grandfather, Abraham Levenson, lived in this neighborhood and I am now terribly sorry I did not pay attention to his stories. Those were the Days is a good reminder that, unless you are Native American, we are all immigrants and had at core similar reasons for coming to America and settling in Minnesota. For more of his writings see Tales of Hoffman and More Tales of Hoffman.

Allow me a quick note and thank you to St. Paul’s Mayor. He purchased this book with its all important dust jacket [lacking on the MHS copy; click on the image above for a better view] for the Society at the Antiquarian Book fair in June. Forty other books were purchased at the Fair for the collections by MHS members who had a preview of the books.

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Minnesota has always had more than its fair share of great African American books and authors. From a very crucial time period in the history of the Civil Rights Movement came two such works that should be on our list of the 150 Best Minnesota Books. Although both are written by journalists, one is a work of fiction and another non-fiction.

Lloyd L. Brown Iron City. New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1951.

Carl T. Rowan South of Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952.

Lloyd Brown has one of the more interesting biographies on our list. He was born in St. Paul in 1913, raised in local orphanages, became a leftist labor leader for the CIO, went to Europe to cover the anti-fascist movement, served in World War II, and afterward became managing editor of the literary journal “New Masses.” His novel Iron City was based on a true story and his own experience as a labor organizer (Iron City being the prison where the novel is set). Brown is perhaps best known for his biography of Paul Robeson, who said of Iron City: “Here are people, richly characterized, warm, honest, tender, angry human beings, struggling, fighting, suffering, and triumphantly living the problems and answers.” We can’t say that better so we will simply encourage you to read and discuss this book which is still in print by Northeastern University Press.

We claim Tennessee born and raised Carl T. Rowan as a Minnesotan. Remember our criteria for a Minnesota author: one has to have lived in Minnesota long enough to have been affected by the culture or to have affected the culture. Rowan received a M. A. in journalism from the U of M, wrote for the Minneapolis Spokesman and St. Paul Recorder and then worked at the Minneapolis Morning Tribune covering Civil Rights issues until 1961. Rowan’s provocatively titled first book South of Freedom began as a series of articles for the Trib which were his observations based on his visits to the south and for which he received a “Service to Humanity” award. Rowan also served as president of the Minneapolis Urban League before moving on to become a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Rowan saw himself “simply as a newspaperman.” I like the wording on the dust jacket of this book – “an ace Negro Journalist”!

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Minnesota was doubly blessed having two smart, simple, honest writers like Robert and Carol Bly who could poetically describe Mother Nature and prosaically [although not in the sense of “ordinary”] describe human nature better than all but a handful of writers. Let’s add two of their books to our growing list of 150 Best Minnesota Books.

Carol Bly. Letters From the Country. NY: Harper and Row, 1981.

Robert Bly. Silence in the Snowy Fields. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1962.

Robert Bly is not a difficult choice for this list. He is a giant in American letters; destined for great things, if not by his birth in Lac qui Parle County, then by his famous graduating class of writers at Harvard in 1950. For a long while in the middle of the last century Carol and Robert turned their Madison, Minnesota farmstead into an epicenter for American writers. Many famous poets spent nights freezing in the converted chicken coop guesthouse. I chose his first book of poems not for the uncountable mentions of snow or poems titled “Poem Against the Rich” and “Poem Against the British” but because of the beautiful simplicity of their descriptions of Minnesota. Bill Holm [another of our “Best” Minnesota authors] called this book “one of the great formative books of American literature” and goes on to say: “It brings into consciousness parts of our lives and places we had never seen clearly before. My own western Minnesota that I simultaneously hated and loved proved more full of metaphor and mystery than I (or anyone else) imagined.” Bly himself must have recognized the significance of these poems to the state as he presented the former head of the Minnesota Historical Society, Russell Fridley, with a copy for the MHS library.

Driving To Town Late To Mail A Letter

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, it feels cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.

No less a force in Minnesota culture was Robert’s first wife, Carol.

Born in Duluth, Carol McLean married Robert Bly in 1955. She was an equal partner in the anti-war movement that brought Robert to national attention and she never wavered in her fight for social justice. To quote Bill Holm again: “She never backed down from tackling large issues and large ideas in culture.” Perhaps I should have chosen her collection of fiction, Backbone, for two reasons: backbone is a word that defined her, and her characters covered the entire spectrum of Minnesotans – the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, it was Letters that first brought Carol to my attention and I have used her ever since to describe the peoples and places of Minnesota to my coast locked friends. Another reason Carol belongs on this list is that she had an unusual influence on Minnesota writers, especially on women writers, by teaching, mentoring, and befriending so many.

From “Great Snows” in Letters From The Country

It is sometimes mistakenly thought by city people that grownups don’t love snow…The fact is that most country or small-town Minnesotans love snow…

Before a storm, Madison is full of people excitedly laying in food stocks for the three-day blow. People lay in rather celebratory food, too. Organic-food parents get chocolate for the children; weight watchers lay in macaroni and Sara Lee cakes; recently converted vegetarians backslide to T-bones.

So on our list so far we have had a father and son combination [the Lindbergh’s] and now the Bly’s who, I believe, will be our only authors that were husband and wife. Don’t go looking, however, for other relatives to round out our list of the 150 Best Minnesota books. As always I’m looking forward to your comments.

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I’ll just sit here and watch the river flow and lick my wounds…

On December 10^th Sotheby’s [London] is auctioning off what is arguably the most significant piece of 20^th Century Western culture to come on the market, Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” Critics have run out of superlatives to describe Dylan’s genius and even a phrase like “the voice of a generation” seems laughably inadequate. The auction estimate of $ 200 -300 thousand dollars will, I predict, be shattered. I would want to go to the auction with a half a million to feel competitive. While we sit here, all tangled up in blue,    hoping for an angel to bring this home to Minnesota, let’s nominate Dylan to our 150 Best Minnesota Books list.

Bob Dylan. Tarantula. Hibbing, Minnesota: Wimp Press, [1970].

Like an inordinately large number of books on our list Tarantula has an interesting publishing history. Dylan’s first book – consisting of largely enigmatic poetry – was scheduled to be published in 1966. He was 23, a “famous shy boy,” and a “magic name,” as the publisher said. His motorcycle accident delayed the publication because Dylan was in the process of making a few changes when he was sidelined. Since the publisher, Macmillan, had galleys already made up the inevitable happened. Like everything “Dylan” it was bootlegged. The first bootleg copy was allegedly printed in Hibbing under the imprint of the Wimp Press. It was a low quality mimeographed printing which promised that any profits would “contribute to the furtherance of Woodstock Nation.”  Because this edition is virtually impossible to find nowadays we will allow collectors of all 150 best books to substitute the first legal printing of the book published by the Macmillan Company in 1971. In fact if you don’t have the money to buy the above mentioned holy grail of Dylan manuscripts, there is an autographed copy of Tarantula available for just $15,000. The MHS library has Professor Dennis Anderson’s copy of the book along with boxes of his research material gathered in Europe where he taught a class on Dylan.  From the book…

look, you know i don’t wanna

come on ungrateful, but that

warren report, you know as well

as me, just didn’t make it. you know.

like they might as well have

asked some banana salesman from

des moines, who was up in Toronto

on the big day, if he saw anyone

around looking suspicious/…

Allow me one more pontification: Dylan’s Chronicles is a “Minnesota Must Read” [not that that is the list we are making here]. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised by how fun and informative the book is.

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As I was walking down the tiny streets of the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome… What’s that? You didn’t hear me? I said I was walking in the Trastevere a few days ago on a street so narrow Vespas could hardly pass each other. I passed an appropriately little used book store and there on the bargain book shelf outside the store was a copy of a book that stopped me in my tracks. It was facing cover out so I recognized the author’s name but I had never seen the title. It turned out to be the Italian translation of Max Shulman’s “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” This beautiful copy is the “seconda edizione” and was printed in Italy a year after the first English language edition. I picked it up for 2 Euros for the MHS library although I’ll tell the IRS it is worth much more. 8 Euros at least.

The next day in the older part of Rome I saw several stores selling “Peanuts” related tee shirts, in Italian of course, and thought Romans must be reading our list of 150 best Minnesota books. Blame the thought on jet lag.

Chow, grazie!

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I know you know that I have been avoiding discussing genre fiction but …

…down these mean streets a man must go.

First of all I am not the biggest fan of mysteries and secondly we seem to be drowning in a sea of these forgettable novels. Does every Minnesota writer take a class at The Loft on mystery writing? I am not ready or willing to declare any recent book in this category a “best Minnesota book” but I look forward to being educated by readers of this blog on the joy and significance of Minnesota “whodunits.” I can say with some confidence that there are two older outstanding mysteries that are worthy of our list. They are …

Mabel Seeley. The Chuckling Fingers. Garden City N.Y.: Published for the Crime Club by Doubleday, Doran, 1941.

Thomas Gifford. The Wind Chill Factor. New York: Putnam, 1975.

Mabel Seeley, from Herman, Minnesota, was a major figure in the development of the female detective story according to Howard Haycraft, reviewer for The New York Herald. There is a sub-genre of mystery writing called the “had-I-but-known” school and Seeley mastered this. The Chuckling Fingers is introduced by the heroine with this great opening line: “Other people may think they’d like to live their lives over, but not me – not if this last week is going to be in it.” It takes place at a private estate on the North Shore of Lake Superior and Seeley nails the local color of the Arrowhead region in the mid-twentieth century. The book has been reprinted by Afton Historical Society Press with a beautiful dust jacket image by Paul Kramer, but disappointingly without any new introductory or biographical material.

There is a story I love of Mabel’s epiphany. She was almost hit by a car as she crossed the street in front of the Capitol one day. Her one thought in that millisecond was: “My, God, I’m going to die and I have not written any books.”

Gifford’s novel is set in a fictional Taylors Falls, Minnesota and although there are dead librarians and Nazis [is there a “Fourth Reich” sub-genre of mysteries?] the most memorable character may be the cold weather. Cars don’t start, ball point pens don’t write, ears are “whipped cherry red”, wind chews away at bare branches, and snow squeaks underneath your feet. WCF, Gifford’s first book, is a very well told tale and was very well reviewed and received, selling 40,000 hard cover and 750,000 paperback copies. It brought some popular literary recognition to Minnesota. Tell me if I’m wrong but I believe this book jump-started the writing of so many local mysteries like John Camp’s “Prey” series.

Gifford’s book, The Assassini, [a decades pre-Dan Brown look at a secret society of Vatican killers] brought him the most recognition but my personal favorite is Gifford’s second book, The Cavanaugh Quest, which was nominated for the Edgar Award in 1977. WCF is clearly his most locally iconic work and thus makes our list of best books.

Thomas Gifford died too young at the age of 62.

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C. C. Andrews. Minnesota and Dacotah: in Letters Descriptive of a Tour Through the North-West, in…1856… Washington: R. Farnham, 1857.

Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention for the Territory of Minnesota, to Form a State Constitution Preparatory to its Admission…T. F. Andrews, official Reporter to the Convention. St. Paul: G. W. Moore, 1858.

Let me suggest two very different – but fun and interesting – additions to our 150 best Minnesota books list. The only connection between the works is the author’s last name and the time period, which is around the time Minnesota was entering the Union as a state.

Since we have already listed travel narratives from the earliest explorers it is appropriate to list a travel account from the settlement period. Minnesota and Dacotah is an easy call. The author, Christopher Columbus Andrews, was an extraordinary Minnesotan. He may be best known as the state’s first Fire Warden but he was also a lawyer, Civil War soldier, Minister to Sweden and Norway, and the author of about 50 works covering a wide enough range of topics to gain the sobriquet “renaissance man.” He presents a clear and detailed picture of getting to this part of the word in the mid-nineteenth century. He is also clearly and without exaggeration promoting settlement, favorably comparing territorial Minnesota to Greece and Italy. One interesting section that I wish he would have said much more about was a visit to Hole-in-the-day’s home: “… a walk on Boston Common on a summer morning could not seem more quiet and safe than a ramble on horseback among the homes of these Indians.”

Think Minnesota politics is wacky now? It is, one could argue, constitutionally mandated. The United States was coming apart when Minnesota petitioned for statehood and much, including control of Congress, depended on the outcome of our state’s constitutional convention. Without going into excruciating detail, suffice it to say that Democrats and Republicans could not get along well enough to be in the same room and two separate constitutional conventions were held simultaneously. In the end two manuscript copies of the constitution exist and two differing accounts of the convention were printed along with the agreed upon constitution.

T. F. Andrews was a reporter at the convention and recorded the debates as the Republicans heard them. It is mostly dry reading with “I move to strike…” kinda language but it is important and no complete Minnesota bookshelf should be without it. Occasionally the transcription is more interesting and evocative of the mood, as  this excerpt of delegate Thomas Galbraith Diogenesionly demonstrates:

“We do not intend to be brow beaten by St. Paul. We are the last men who    should cry out: “afraid of St. Paul!” We need no protection from those who       rushed in here today, [Democrats] cried out “I move to adjourn,” and then ran out again. – Did they scare us? Let them come on, we are ready to die in our tracks rather than yield. (Applause) We, afraid of St. Paul! Who is St. Paul? (Laughter) Let them come. We have no guns, no pistols, no slung [sic] shots, but we are ready to meet them, and will not be driven from this hall.”

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War! Huh Good God y’all

What is it good for?

Finally an answer to Edwin Starr’s sixties anthem- LITERATURE.

It is hard to imagine a more poignant setting or easier access to raw human emotion than a war. Writers are aware of this and have exploited the theme from Homer on. There are already more than 3,500 novels written about the Viet Nam war and I can say with some confidence there is another one being printed as you read this. Minnesota writers are no exception and three books on our list of Minnesota’s 150 greatest cover three different 20th Century conflicts.

Thomas Boyd. Through the Wheat. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923.

Thomas Heggen. Mister Roberts. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.

Tim O’Brien. Going After Cacciato: A Novel. New York: Delacorte Press. 1978.

Thomas Boyd, a World War I doughboy, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery. His first book was a largely autobiographical novel about his experiences in the French trenches. Scott Fitzgerald helped Boyd edit the manuscript, gave it a critical reading, and pronounced it “the best war book since The Red Badge of Courage.” Boyd’s novel was universally praised for its honest depiction of a soldier’s life and after 87 years it is still a good read. It is also still in print and a 1978 edition, published with an afterward by James Dickey, is readily findable. There is also a new audio version of the title.

After the war Boyd and his wife, Peggy (who wrote under the name Woodward Boyd), became an integral part of the literary scene in St. Paul. He managed the Kilmarnock bookstore, lived in the Summit Hill neighborhood, and made a living writing a few more books and dozens of short stories. With his second book Boyd suffered a sophomore slump, familiar to many writers, but his extended into his junior and senior years. He never had another success like Through the Wheat and became what his biographer dubbed, “the lost author of the lost generation.”

An entirely different kind of book came out of the Second World War. Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts focused on the daily life and experiences of the more typical enlisted man. The novel follows a cargo ship “from Tedium to Apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to Monotony”.

After getting his journalism degree from the U of M (where he had written humorous stories alongside fellow 150 Best Minnesota Books author, Max Shulman, at the “Minnesota Daily”) Heggen enlisted in the navy and served on a ship much like his fictional U.S.S. Reluctant. The book was an immediate success and the characters were so extraordinarily well drawn that Heggen was encouraged, possibly by his cousin Wallace Stegner, to adapt the novel into a play. With the help of Joshua Logan the play was awarded “best play” and “best author” Tonys and was made into a 1955 movie staring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, and Jack Lemmon, who won the Oscar for best supporting actor.

While the movie is far better known, the book is simply far better.

Tragically Heggen was found dead in a bathtub in his New York apartment. He had committed suicide at the age of 29! With the play Heggen had achieved monetary fortune and literary fame (“Attractive women formed an orderly queue outside his bedroom door” according to the Grumpy Old Bookman), but he was expected by everyone to write a sequel. He was haunted – no crippled – by writers block. Heggen couldn’t cope with the prospect of failure and like the hero of his novel died a meaningless death.

A stunningly different kind of war novel, and perhaps the best of the three, is Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato. It won the National Book Award for fiction and if that isn’t criteria enough to automatically get a Minnesota book on our list I don’t know what is.

The story is surreal and likely the product of psychological trauma inflicted by the horror that was the war in Viet Nam. Seemingly happy and stable, Private Cacciato decides he has had enough of the war and that he can just walk away from it. He starts walking west and his squad, including the narrator Paul Berlin, sets out to bring him back but they too are walking away from the war by following him across the world until they take up residence in Paris. Along the way, jumping back in forth in time, some of the horrors of the war are described in disturbing detail like picking up a helmet with the soldiers face still in it. Cacciato just may be the great American novel for the 60’s generation with its underlying theme of responsibility and duty verses freedom and individuality.

While we are on the subject of Tim O’Brien, several of his books are must reads but for his best description of Minnesota I recommend Northern Lights. I have been in mortal danger from hypothermia a couple of times in my life and one of them was from just reading this book.

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