E S S A Y
WHY BERNARD DEVOTO COULDN’T GO HOME AGAIN VAL HOLLEY
The creative processes behind memorable characters in novels have always intrigued fiction fans. Literary detectives avidly hunt the inspirations for such enigmatic figures as Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Lady Ina Coolbirth in Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers, or the Baron de Charlus in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. The flip side to such amusement is the unwelcome recognition of oneself or one’s friends as counterparts to characters portrayed cavalierly or even maliciously. After Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel circulated in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, local outrage—“You have crucified your family and devastated mine,” wrote his high school English teacher—kept Wolfe away from Asheville for eight years. The consequence to Capote of Esquire’s publication of his tale of Park Avenue ladies who lunched at La Côte Basque was “nothing short of social suicide.” Lincoln Kirstein’s first (and only) novel, Flesh Is Heir, moved his Boston Brahmin friends—so painstakingly cultivated while he attended Harvard—to revoke his standing invitations to posh summer retreats. Even Kirstein’s family vehemently denounced him, particularly for Flesh Is Heir’s “reprehensible” caricature of his sister.1
For aspiring wordsmiths at Weber State University’s English department or its National Undergraduate Literature Conference, a quintessential case study of the “thinly-disguised” hometown novel hides in plain sight. Bernard DeVoto shamelessly incorporated facets of his fellow Ogdenites’ foibles into The Crooked Mile, published in 1924 by Minton, Balch.2 According to Wallace Stegner, DeVoto’s biographer, two principal characters resembled Ogden women DeVoto had dated. Many secondary characters were persons “whom Ogdenites recognized, or thought they recognized.” DeVoto received fan mail but was also “denounced by Ogden readers who recognized their town.”3 One would have to search item by item through the voluminous Bernard DeVoto Papers at Stanford—a feat that only Stegner, apparently, has achieved—to discover which Ogdenites felt strongly enough about The Crooked Mile to applaud or complain.4 Short of making that full-blown slog through DeVoto’s correspondence, this essay attempts to crack The Crooked Mile’s code. The Crooked Mile’s hero—and standin for DeVoto—is Gordon Abbey, a red-blooded but aimless young buck recently graduated from Harvard. As DeVoto was third generation in Ogden, so is Gordon in “Windsor.” Gordon’s
