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Loading... Whose names are unknown : a novel (original 2004; edition 2004)by Sanora Babb
Work InformationWhose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb (2004)
   Books We Love to Reread (377) Books Read in 2021 (2,961) No current Talk conversations about this book.  JulieStielstra | Nov 2, 2024 |   john257hopper | May 31, 2024 | This book has an unusual backstory. It was scheduled for publication in 1939. However, it was shelved after John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published to wide acclaim earlier that year, since they are similar in plot. It was eventually published in 2004 when the author was ninety-seven. It takes its title from eviction notices in the Depression era. I have now read both books. This one is more closely focused on the family’s travails and their daily interactions, whereas Steinbeck’s novel is a sweeping epic with dramatic set pieces. I see them as complementary. As a side note, this book would make excellent reading for authors writing historical fiction set in the Great Depression era. This author lived through it and wrote this book contemporaneously. (  )1  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 | So, you may be thinking “Wait, I know this book—The Grapes of Wrath, right?” Well, no, but it almost was. Rather, this is the basic outline of Sanora Babb’s Whose Names Are Unknown, which was written at virtually the same instant as John Steinbeck’s classic work. However, because Babb was an unproven novelist who lacked Steinbeck's star power, her novel was not published at the time; in fact, her original publisher reneged on a contract to produce the book, fearing competition with such a notable rival. To make matters worse, it languished in manuscript form for another 65 years before finally being brought to a wider audience! That is a real shame because while the two novels are very similar in the subject matter they cover, they do tell somewhat different versions of the story. I actually preferred Steinbeck’s detailed, well-paced, and sweeping approach, but I did appreciate Babb’s concise tale that focuses far more on personal relationships, particularly those involving the younger and female characters. It is also less heavy-handed in terms of its political motivation, which can feel a little dated to the modern reader. Still, if you have read The Grapes of Wrath, you will probably feel like you already know what Whose Names Are Unknown is all about, which makes it difficult to recommend without some reservation. (  ) browner56 | Mar 16, 2019 | This book is a serious look at the hardships of the dust bowl, and as such it is not an easy read. Yet is is a powerful portrayal of those times and the issues faced, and our book group found a lot to talk about after we read it, even though most of us struggled to get through it. (  ) debs4jc | Apr 4, 2017 | no reviews | add a review
Fiction.
Literature.
Sanora Babb' s long-hidden novel Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers' plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author' s firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt' s father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Duanne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless " Okies" and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can' t possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest. Babb wrote Whose Names are Unknown in the 1930s while working with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps of California. Originally from the Oklahoma Panhandle are herself, Babb, who had first come to Los Angeles in 1929 as a journalist, joined FSA camp administrator Tom Collins in 1938 to help the uprooted farmers. As Lawrence R. Rodgers notes in his foreword, Babb submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration in 1939. Editor Bennett Cerf planned to publish this " exceptionally fine" novel but when John Steinbeck' s The Grapes of Wrath swept the nation, Cerf explained that the market could not support two books on the subject. Babb has since shared her manuscript with interested scholars who have deemed it a classic in its own right. In an era when the country was deeply divided on social legislation issues and millions drifted unemployed and homeless, Babb recorded the stories of the people she greatly respected, those " whose names are unknown." In doing so, she returned to them their identities and dignity, and put a human face on economic disaster and social distress. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.09)
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Wikipedia in English
1
It’s not bad. Moving among several dry land farm families on the plains, beset by drought and dust storms, predatory banks, impoverishment, hunger, and helplessness, it touches on pretty much all the same themes as Grapes. It’s Willa-Cather-ish in some lyrical descriptions of the landscape, and the sheer loneliness and menace of the life these homesteaders live, as well as their care and help for each other. The treatment of these laboring people by the bosses and growers is an atrocity, producing despair, suicide, and early deaths.
But Babb is not Steinbeck. The families are almost indistinguishable, characters wooden. And her language never soars to the level of myth or Biblical tragedy as his does…though the suicide of a shopkeeper comes close. Two awful childbirth scenes, both producing dead infants, is overkill. Two sexual encounters are maudlin and coy. Conversations among the characters become infodumps or lectures delivered as set pieces. I found myself skimming the last pages, just to finish.
Interesting but not captivating. Competent but rarely impressive. Even as Steinbeck used Babb’s in-the-trenches work to build his own novel and beat her to the punch, his is still the great one. Cerf was probably right. (