If you cruise the bargain sections in an old used book store like Half-Price Books, eventually you are going to find something priceless. This book I am showing you is that very thing for me.
It was copyrighted in 1978. The inscription inside the front cover says this was a Father’s Day gift on June 19th, 1988. Someone named Gary gifted it to someone named Claude in Burleson, Texas. It was probably a cherished book until someone passed away and the book changed hands in an estate sale.
Howard Pyle
The book chronicles the height of the publishing era when being able to print books and reproduce artworks began entertaining the masses. Always before painters and great artists worked for a patron for the purpose of decorating their home in a way that displayed their great wealth. But from the 1880’s to the rise of cinema, magazines and books kept the masses entertained, helped more people to become literate than ever before, and created the stories that made our shared culture and life experiences grow stronger and ever more inventive. The book focuses on the best of the best among a new breed of artist… the illustrators.
These are the ones the book details;
Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Frederick Remington, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, and John Held Jr.
N.C. Wyeth
Wyeth was most famous as a book illustrator for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, other books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, and a famous volume of tales about Robin Hood.
Frederick Remington
Remington is a name you probably know as a maker of Western art. He was a famous painter of cowboys and Indians and the American frontier.
Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish is my all-time favorite painter. His work is something I gushed about in previous posts because I own other books about his fanciful works painted in Maxfield Parrish blue.
Also Maxfield Parrish
J.C. Leyendecker
You will probably recognize Leyendecker’s work in magazine and advertising illustration as the standard of the Roaring 20’s. His paintings set a style that swept American culture for more than a decade, and still affects how we dress to this very day.
More Leyendecker
Even more from Leyendecker
Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell and his work for The Saturday Evening Post is still familiar to practically everyone who reads and looks at the illustrations. As you can see he was a master of folksy realism and could do a portrait better than practically anyone.
Also Rockwell
I have also written about Norman Rockwell before too. I have half a dozen books that include his works. My wife is from the Philippines and she knew about him before I ever said a word to her about him.
Charles Dana Gibson
As you can plainly see, Gibson was a master of pen and ink. His work for Collier’s and other magazines thrills in simple black and white. More cartoonists than just little ol’ me obsess about how he did what he did.
Also Gibson
James Montgomery Flagg… with a name like that, who else could it be?
John Held Jr.
The work of Held is stylistically different than all the rest in easily noticeable ways. He’s the guy that made all the big-headed Pinocchio-looking people in the 1920’s. You may have seen his work before, though you probably never knew his name.
This bit of someone else’s treasure hoard will now become a part of my own dragon’s treasure, staying by my bedside for quite a while, while I continue to suck the marrow from each of its bones. I love this book. It is mine, and you can’t have it… unless you find your own copy in a used bookstore somewhere.
Lynn Johnston’s For Better or Worse is also an old friend. I used to read it in the newspaper practically every day. I watched those kids grow up and have adventures almost as if they were members of my own family. So the mashed potatoes part of the meal is easy to digest too.
Catch a Falling Star 
Love Stories With Clowns and Elephants
Yes, this essay is supposed to be a book review of Sara Gruen’s lovely, enthralling circus story Water for Elephants. But you know me. My writing gets overwhelmed and filigreed by my obsessive urge to dive into the ocean of things that excite me to purple paisley prose.
It is a fascinating love story involving a depression-era travelling train circus, a young man who suddenly finds himself a penniless orphan days before he can complete his degree in veterinary medicine, an elephant, a beautiful horse-riding show girl and circus star, and her cruel but charming ring master husband.
I don’t think I am spoiling anything by telling you that Jacob Jankowski, the main character of the tale falls in love with both the beautiful Marlena and an apparently untrainable elephant named Rosie. And I also shouldn’t actually be ruining the ending by telling you that the murderer who ends the story is revealed in the opening pages, but is still a surprise when masterful story-teller Sara Gruen re-reveals the murder at the end. This is a plot-driven novel that completely catches you up in a doomed relationship, a complicated romance, and an artfully re-created world of depression-era train circuses that ranks right up there with Cecil B. DeMille’s movie spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth.
Yes, I had to equate this book with an old 1950’s movie that I love because of the similarities of plot and spectacle. Both the movie and the book have a faithful clown friend who lives a tragic life. Both Buttons the clown, played by Jimmy Stewart in the movie, and Kinko the clown, the dwarf Walter in the book whose only friend is Queenie the dog before he gets involved in the main character’s problems, play a crucial role as a supporting character. There is a romantic triangle in each. Jacob, Marlena, and Marlena’s husband August in the book mirror the complex relationship between the circus runner Brad Braden, his girlfriend the trapeze star, Holly, and the circus’s newest trapeze star, the Great Sebastian in the movie. And in each story there is a huge disaster that threatens the existence of the circus. But I am in no way suggesting that one is merely a copy of the other. Each story is unique and enthralling in a thousand different ways. They are two entirely different stories told by two different master story-tellers that happen to be built on the same basic framework. And both of those things teach you a great wealth of carefully researched details about the magical world of real travelling circuses.
Oh, yes… And I forgot to mention, the book Water for Elephants was made into a movie in 2011.
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Filed under book review, clowns, commentary, finding love, humor, movie review
Tagged as book review, Cecil B DeMille, circus, Greatest Show on Earth, movies, Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants