Highlights Archives
Fresh Perspectives on a Legendary Lumberjack
Learn the true story of the legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Babe, as Michael Edmonds, author of Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan, discusses the logging camp stories that created the legend and how they became part of popular culture. Edmonds will hold court at two book events in December: at a book talk at North Shore Library in Glendale, Wisconsin, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, December 3, and at the Madison Senior Center at 1 p.m. Tuesday, December 8, as part of "Book Bites: A Series of Author Talks About Books and Writing."
Claiming Paul Bunyan for Wisconsin
In the early 20th century a lumberjack giant and his larger-than-life ox, Babe, seized the American popular imagination, and from that time on Paul Bunyan never really released his mighty grip. But what are the roots of this iconic figure? How did he move from the subject of stories told aloud by working-class men in northwoods logging camps to a children's book character and classic advertising standby? In Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan, author Michael Edmonds presents an authoritative account of the true tale behind the tall tale, uncovering for the first time evidence placing its origins in the logging communities of the Wisconsin northwoods.
By sifting through the unpublished manuscripts of early editors of the tales, Edmonds unearths dozens of authentic Bunyan stories told aloud by lumberjacks between 1885 and 1915. Edmonds recounts a saga of lies, hoaxes, thefts and greed that transformed the private jokes of working-class loggers into mass-market picture books for toddlers. The central characters include a genial northern Wisconsin con man who claimed he invented the lumberjack hero, a spunky University of Wisconsin coed who collected the tales in logging camps in 1915, and a mild-mannered curator of the Wisconsin Historical Museum who lifted federal documents to keep the truth alive.
An Excerpt from the Book
"[The earliest Paul Bunyan stories] describe a protagonist quite different from the familiar hero of later popular versions and children's books. They illuminate the values of the working-class men who, between 1880 and 1915, transformed ancient Great Lakes forest into lumber for the houses, churches, and storefronts that still surround us today. Those lumberjacks are all silent now, vanished like the virgin forest they entered more than a century ago, but their voices, their jokes, their fears, and their hopes can still be heard in the fantastic tales they made up around bunkhouse camp stoves on long winter evenings."
— Michael Edmonds
:: Posted November 19, 2009
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