Reviews etc

David Selby's novel Lincoln's Better Angel is a well-articulated and engaging work that addresses the issue of racism as it exists not only in today's ethos, but in those of the past as well. So what is it that qualifies this veteran stage, TV, and screen actor to shed light on this sensitive subject? When it comes to credentials, Selby-perhaps better known for his portrayal of Quentin Collins in the 1960's show Dark Shadows, or later as Richard Channing on Falcon Crest-is exceedingly qualified to write such a book. He holds both a B.S. and an M.A. from West Virginia University as well as a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University; and most important, he has portrayed Lincoln countless time throughout the years. Qualified indeed.

Largent: In the book's introduction, you share with us that it was an article you read in the Washington Post about the death of Vietnam vet James Hudson that planted the seed for the writing of this novel. What thoughts led you to believe there was the potential for a novel and that this novel could “carry” the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraqi War?

Selby: Never thought about a book then. At first, it was a play that I wanted to do. I was moved by James Hudson's story. He was a Vietnam vet and worked for the National Park Service [in Washington, D.C.]. He was kept a part-timer because no benefits were required. When he died, there was no money for his funeral. The laws were changed, I think, because of his death. Anyway, I wrote the play, then called “Lincoln and James.” We did a first production in Martinsburg, WV. Later we took it to D.C., to the Lincoln Theater in the Shaw District. It was a fund-raiser for the African-American Civil War Memorial. After several years, I decided to write the book because it allowed me to open up the story. Since it was going to center on Charles_who was inspired by James Hudson but had nothing to do with his life for I knew nothing of his life other than [what I read in] a couple of Washington Post articles_it became imperative to create a life for Charles. It had been my intent to focus on scenes between Lincoln and Charles, scenes that would pull the reader into the story. Charles finds the will to go on with his life and Lincoln learns from Charles that his life was not lived in vain. Both men made this a better country. The three wars were and are, basically, civil wars. The Civil War defined what this country would stand for as a nation_rather than a lot of individual states or countries_what it is about, and that definition is movingly laid out in The Gettysburg Address. The Vietnam and Iraqi wars are heart and gut wrenchingly similar. The Iraqi War is now longer than WWII. Lincoln would agree with Obama: We should not be in Iraq.

Largent: You stated that the book is about “race and our need to be open and honest about it.” What led you to choose a novel to address the topic instead of writing nonfiction and citing our founding fathers and dissecting the key documents that are the supposed foundation of our country?

Selby: There are several references to Lincoln's words on the subject. My intent was to write about Charles and what he was going through; fighting to raise his son in an affirmative action country where young people were made to feel guilty about accepting what some said were handouts. Does that mean that Harvard and Yale legacy admissions are handouts? When Charles loses his son to what he feels is a senseless war, it causes him to question his life. What better person to have a dialogue with than Lincoln. You can question a friend, challenge a friend, confront a friend, and hopefully come away with a renewed friendship that is fresh and enlightened, a friendship that is not overly reverent but is respectful and loving. You can pass all the laws you want, you can write document upon document, you can cite references till the cows come home, you can talk endlessly about equality and race, but if people don't open their hearts_it is all for naught. That is what Obama spoke about in his speech on race. (My book was long done when he came on the scene. Is it serendipity that Obama is from Illinois? That he started his campaign in Springfield, Illinois, and that he was a 46-year-old man from Illinois who went to Washington about the same age as Lincoln?) If we don't open our hearts and forthrightly discuss the issues of race, then where are we at the end of the day? We are back where we started from. I trust that Lincoln and Charles learned from each other and thus moved beyond_making things better in all our lives.

Largent: Where, inside of you, did you find the passion for Charles' character-his moods, his desperation, his apathy? What, inside of you, allowed him such depth…made him so believable, so dimensional, so angry?

Selby: Where do we all find our passions? Our parents? Our children, who give us courage as did the children of both Lincoln and Charles? Friends, literature, heroes; trusting those feelings we have when seeing something that stirs our emotions? A gentleman said after seeing a production of the play in D.C. that the character of James (Charles in the book version) was too angry. On the contrary, look at the turmoil this country has faced, the injustice, which seems to bite me every morning when I read the paper. One man said the character was too intelligent. If I was angry and sad at the man's take, can you imagine James/Charles' reaction? Most of us learn right from wrong at a very young age. We all have to decide how far we will go for personal success. What lines will we be willing to cross? My moods are mercurial; sometimes I am too depressed, angry. It is not helpful. Write the angry letter, but do as Lincoln did, don't send it. Reason, cold hard reason, is our friend. I have had a long admiration for Lincoln.

My friend in junior high and high school in Morgantown, WV, Charles Blue, an African-American, was also an inspiration for Charles. “Chuck” and I have talked about those early days when despite his being a four-sport [varsity athlete] and all-state, he received no scholarship offers. His uncle had a shoeshine shop; his father's friend had a hamburger place. The other jobs were on the town's garbage detail, some janitorial jobs, and doorman for the Hotel Morgan. That was about it. Society is fragile. Someone runs a red light, and society breaks down. Our country is fragile; we need to mend and tend it.

Largent: Charles' character didn't give much thought to possibly offending anyone_especially Lincoln_with his doubting humanity; and doubting what Lincoln stood for, fought for, and believed in preserving. Did you worry that some readers might find Charles offensive?

Selby: No. If you can't question the person you care deeply about, then where do you turn? Charles, like many of us, grew up with Lincoln yore, the myth. We all need, more than ever, the real man. He has so much to teach us. That is what Charles, deep down in his pain, knows. But he has to be sure. His son's life was taken. Look at Lincoln's glorious face, how much he aged in those war years. Charles' face is a mirror image of Lincoln. No one loved Lincoln more.

Largent: Were there sections of the book, or specific dialogues you found difficult or uncomfortable to write? Why?

Selby: Perhaps at the very start deciding how to set up the situation that Charles was confronted with. Knowing that he was a Vietnam vet helped because of the price those soldiers paid. It was a small leap to his son going to Iraq. This decision is heartrending for a parent, especially one with Charles' history. I wanted him married to a white woman because it allowed me to go into that area of race.

Largent: Who was easier to dialogue: Lincoln or Charles?

Selby: Probably Lincoln because I knew something about him. I went to graduate school in Illinois. I played Lincoln in plays. I traveled the Lincoln trail. I lived in Petersburg, the town he surveyed as a young man. I worked at New Salem where there is reconstructed the village where Lincoln grew up.

Largent: In what ways did you prepare for writing the novel, and more specifically for writing Lincoln?

Selby: My educational background in West Virginia (where Lincoln signed the state into statehood; where far more soldiers fought for the Union). [The fact that] I was tall qualified me to portray Lincoln. A few years after Grad school, I went back to play him in yet another play. The many, many books that I have read gave me insights, as did the many on Vietnam. The '60s played a part because of the Civil Rights fight-the issue of race by which Charles lived. Among a library of Lincoln books, I have the first edition of the books written by Lincoln's secretaries.

Largent: You use Charles's internal conflict, and his conflict with Lincoln to convey your book's message; however, you have several secondary themes: the power of unexpressed grief; and the fact that although life is full of surprises, there really are no surprises when enlightenment sets in. Was that intentional or an unexpected benefit?

Selby: Unexpressed grief was something I did think about. That is what Charles is doing using Lincoln as a sounding board. Lincoln revisits grief through Charles. I like very much your notion of enlightenment setting in a benefit that you have given me.

Largent: The book visits three significant wars. In your own opinion, has war changed where man is concerned?

Selby: Good question. People are killed, children, women, men, animals. So much potential is lost. It seems clear that we did not learn from Vietnam. The Greek play had it right when the women refused sex until the fighting stopped.

Largent: It's obvious through Lincoln's dialogue that you have researched him extensively. When you stepped into his shoes to dialogue, could you feel where the shoe “pinched?”

Selby: Funny. That line was a line from one of Lincoln's letters, if I recall correctly. I loved the phrase. The thing is, Lincoln had no idea that historians would be digging into his every word. His shoes would pinch to know that. To know that he was sending men into harm's way, his shoes pinched. He spent hours at the telegraph waiting to hear from his generals. His shoes pinched with every soldier's death. That is why he pardoned so many deserters. His shoes would pinch to see the struggle of race still going on. Our shoes pinch when we know we have told a little lie, when we have not done our best to avoid war. Our shoes pinch when we think about the problems people are having today, problems that the candidates have talked of. Lincoln's shoes pinched when his boy's goat went missing on his watch.

Largent: For those of us who are consumed by our passion for history, we can recall the exact point in our lives when the passion was ignited and what event sparked it. Is there a story behind your passion for this topic?

Selby: I was embarrassed when another of my school classmates (African-American) was on the garbage truck that would pick up my family's garbage. As a young boy, I would run and hide not wanting Bill to see me watching him loading our garbage. There is dignity in work. Today the sanitation truck comes by and the man (white) waves to my granddaughter. He brings her little gifts. She loves to watch the truck lift the cart up into the air, dumping the trash. In my youthful days, the men (“colored” in those days) stood knee-deep in garbage. It must have seemed then to be a demeaning job. The civil rights battles, Kennedy's assassination, King's assassination, W.V. history class in the fifth grade [all contributed].

Largent: What projects are you currently working on?

Selby: I have just finished (more rewrites to follow) a new novel called A Promise of Love and I am writing another novel about a woman trying to save her mountain. I'm still acting…A series I did is reportedly returning, though I am pretty much out of the loop on information…and doing some guest shots.

You can order a copy of Lincoln's Better Angel through Amazon.com, Borders.com or directly from the publisher, Mayhaven Publishing Inc., located on the Web at mayhavenpublishing.com. To learn more about David Selby, visit his Web site at davidselby.com

Kimberly J. Largent, a native of Pennsylvania, currently resides in Martinsburg, WV, where she is the CEO of Charge the Cannons Publishing. She is also a history freelance writer, editor, and novelist; a contributing writer for Battlefield Journal; a past writer/editor for ehistory.com; and a former VIP (Volunteers in Parks) for Gettysburg National Military Park. You can e-mail Kimberly at KJLwrite@aol.com.

Book Review

Lincoln's Better Angel

A novel by David L. Selby

David Selby's novel Lincoln's Better Angel is a well-articulated and engaging work that addresses the issue of racism. Can Selby-perhaps better known for his portrayal of Quentin Collins in Dark Shadows (TV) during the '60s, or Richard Channing of Falcon Crest (TV)-pull off such a feat? If we look to Selby's past, we note he is exceedingly qualified to write such a book-holding both a B.S. and an M.A. from West Virginia University as well as a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University; and most important, he has portrayed Abraham Lincoln countless times throughout his career.

Selby's book opens on the Fourth of July as African-American park service ranger Charles Huggins, still numb from the death of his beloved son who was serving in the Iraqi War, arrives at the Lincoln Monument-his work-where he has been the “watch” for 15 of his 25 years with the park service. A proud black man, Charles used to take his job at the Lincoln Monument seriously, taking great care of the monument dedicated to the man he'd admired his entire life. But now, his life was changed-and with that change came a distrust of everything he'd ever believed in. It changed dramatically when his son, his only child, was killed in Iraq. Nothing seemed to matter. Not his job, his marriage-in which his wife distanced herself from him during his grief, hoping that the space and time she selflessly gave would allow him to deal with their son's death,-not even his own life mattered anymore. Everything that he believed in his entire life now felt like a parody. What kind of God would spare him his life during the Vietnam War, only to take his son's during the Iraqi War? Charles Huggins' entire world fragmented.

The Fourth of July festivities pick up throughout the day and Charles finds himself surrounded by a somber musician-whose music only deepens his woes-and too many living historians portraying Abraham Lincolns. But one Lincoln, who engages Charles in gentle conversation filled with witticisms and wisdoms, seems to be the real deal. Charles, deciding that Lincoln had a lot of explaining to do, doesn't sensor his words or soften his emotion as he relentlessly seeks the truth from Lincoln.

An angry Charles and a solemn Lincoln converse throughout the night. They share their stories, their sorrows, their grief. No topic is off limits as the two banter incessantly between moments of deep reflective silence. As the two men struggle to find enlightenment, decades of feelings of hatred, distrust and misunderstanding are put into words-sometimes harsh words, offensive words. But the fact that Selby has allowed Charles to be filled with rage and anger, and that Lincoln's strength is exemplified by his gentleness, only lends depth to each character and brings us, the reader, to fully grasp the book's message.

Through their chance meeting, two worlds are briefly merged into one and there is enlightenment, allowing each man to find the peace he needs in order to move on.

Selby does an excellent job at capturing Lincoln's persona. The conversations between the two are lively, candid, emotional, and intimate. You'll come away with a better feeling for knowing-to quote a line from the book-“where the shoe pinches”…

The following Book Review of Lincoln's Better Angel, A novel by David L. Selby, by Kimberly J. Largent, a native of Pennsylvania, currently resides in Martinsburg, WV, where she is the CEO of Charge the Cannons Publishing. She is also a history freelance writer, editor, and novelist; a contributing writer for Battlefield Journal; a past writer/editor for ehistory.com; and a former VIP (Volunteers in Parks) for Gettysburg National Military Park. You can e-mail Kimberly at KJLwrite@aol.com.

David Selby's novel Lincoln's Better Angel is a well-articulated and engaging work that addresses the issue of racism. Can Selby-perhaps better known for his portrayal of Quentin Collins in Dark Shadows (TV) during the '60s, or Richard Channing of Falcon Crest (TV)-pull off such a feat? If we look to Selby's past, we note he is exceedingly qualified to write such a book-holding both a B.S. and an M.A. from West Virginia University as well as a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University; and most important, he has portrayed Abraham Lincoln countless times throughout his career.

Through their chance meeting, two worlds are briefly merged into one and there is enlightenment, allowing each man to find the peace he needs in order to move on.

The following review of Dan Guillory's The Lincoln Poems was written by Jacqueline Jackson, books and poetry editor, Illinois Times, and professor emerita of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield

I've been reading, over the past week, the 61 poems and their commentaries that make up Dan Guillory's The Lincoln Poems. It's been a more moving experience than I thought possible—not that I doubted the poems, but I've never been a “sustained” poetry reader, and I have also been so surrounded with Lincoln during the many years I've lived in Springfield that in a sense I've been vaccinated. I've known the stories everyone knows but few of the details.

These poems follow Lincoln's life from his boyhood, when seeds he'd cleared the land to plant were washed away in a downpour, to his death and aftermath (No, it wasn't supposed to end this way). Though the poems are brief and economical, the commentary on each, though also brief, is often longer. And they are spoken not from outside looking on, but from inside Lincoln's head. Sometimes his actual words are used, but more often they are his imagined works and thoughts, which come off as not only possible but probable. Like the man, they are a mixture of the simple and complex. With some exceptions, they are about small moments in Lincoln's life. In his preface, Guillory says, “These poems are not intended to chart or identify 'peak moments' in Lincoln's life. The goal, rather, is to dramatize small, transcendent moments when the all-too-rational Lincoln was carried beyond himself, if only for and instant.”

One poem, “Deism in Little Things,” could stand for this aim; some of the moments are the moving of a piano, the pulling of a tooth, blackberrying with a son. In the process, we learn the climate and the flora of the prairie; we see a primitive Springfield growing into a city, a young man growing into presidential stature. The small, even homely things sometimes gain a larger perspective, such as when Lincoln compares his own problems on the privy with the constipation of the Army of the Potomac, mired in the mud. They can be humorous; he describes the annoying pigs under the Taylorville courthouse yet adds a sting, paring them with himself and fellow lawyers who stick their snouts into “every unspeakable place.” Some humor is soft, some simply fun and vulgar (Lincoln did tell vulgar jokes)-he recalls a night spent on the circuit with a behemoth colleague with whom he must sleep, after a supper of beans and cornpone, thusly: “Bedding down with the Lawyer for the Defense/Who farts all night, punctuating his brief.”

It may seem presumptuous of anyone to give Lincoln feelings when the man was so good at concealing them, but these are usually on such homely subjects, and ring so true, that the reader, instead of feeling suspicious, says, if questioning at all, yes-he might well have felt that way. This is also true of the bitter poems and at least one veiled yet sexually explicit one.

There are too many fine lines to quote: On New Salem Village; “Smoke licks the clouds, and every cedared roof/Finds its pointed place in the blueness,” and on Lincoln's voracious reading, “But the Prairie was my true Grammarian,/The unforgiving syntax of Winter…”

The commentaries accompanying each poem are necessary for understanding the poems' points of reference, such as the historical context, and are good, though strange reading in themselves, for as explication they are not crafted essays. They begin as such, then often end abruptly with a few pieces of apparently unrelated information. Sometimes they let us know where Guillory found the small fact the poem is built upon and so we learn Lincoln scholarship, much of it obscure. There is repetition; we need to know more than once the cookbook Mary Todd used, or about Blackstone, for some will not read the collection as a novel, retaining the past commentaries. There is little temptation to read the commentaries and skip the poems, for everything in the former points to the following poem.

I find that these coupled vignettes are leading me on to more reading about Lincoln; they are teasers to force us to do so. This is a fine book, well crafter, well produced, and complete in itself, but it also has a value to drive one further into investigating this man who, in my travels abroad, I have found is better known than any other American.

A final work on the last three poems, “Contents of My Pockets, April 14, 1865”; “Bullet in My Brain, April 15, 1865”; and “Alternate Ending”: These are a tour de force. I have never felt Lincoln's death more keenly than in reading this trio, after the cumulative effect of the whole book. They are unforgettable.

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The following review of Dan Guillory's The Lincoln Poems was written by David Wright: Dan Guillory. The Lincoln Poems. Mahomet: Mayhaven Publishing, 2008. 149 pp with index. $14.95.

In his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman asks, “O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? / And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, / To adorn the burial-house of him I love?” Which image of Lincoln might best adorn our history has indeed been a perpetual source of conflict for generations of Americans. In Illinois, where Lincoln's actual “burial-house” is located, poets Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, and, of course, Carl Sandburg followed right after Whitman, exploring, in Lindsay's words “The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.” So it is with a certain precedent and courage that Illinois poet Dan Guillory has waded boldly into this tradition with his publication of The Lincoln Poems.

Author of several local histories and two essay collections Living with Lincoln (Stormline, 1989) and When the Waters Recede (Stormline, 1993), this is Guillory's second collection of poems. His first, The Alligator Inventions (Stormline, 1991), explored the physical and imaginative regions of Guillory's home place in the bayous of Louisiana. The 61 poems in this new volume are presented in the voice of the 16th president. Arranged in chronological order, each poem is prefaced with a contextual head note, grounding the work in solid Lincoln scholarship and lore. And it is not hard to hear the voice of Guillory the professor in these anecdotes and references (he was my writing professor at Millikin University in the 1980s, introducing me to Illinois poetry in particular). The introduction is especially welcome, giving a flavor of Lincoln himself as poet and lover of poetry and establishing Guillory's hope not to revisit the biographical highlights of Lincoln's life but instead to “dramatize small, transcendent moments” and to collect Lincoln's “encyclopedia of feelings.”

The poems swirl around three sorts of material-narratives of domestic, and historical moments; powerful nature images that give way to lyric epiphanies; and inner riffs on Lincoln's more public language. In each case, Guillory's skill with line, image, alliteration and evocative diction demonstrates his considerable craft, as in “Surveying, 1834” where Lincoln lays out a vision of the prairie in summer.

My sweet-ribbed prairie is breaking its back

In this August heat, bellowed into tunnels of air,

Cracked open into tents of light, apertures

And spaces neatly receiving

Carpentered cedar-shakes, ridgepoles,

Corn cribs and the waggling Bluestem,

Everything given a proper place in the Ether.

This voice is the strength of Guillory's collection, especially when it becomes difficult to tell what Guillory gives to Lincoln and what he receives from him. In poems about Anne Rutledge, Guillory evocatively combines the historical and lyrical as Lincoln compares the lovers to “Paired hummingbirds / hanging in the air.” The poem embodies their affection in a musical, sensuous litany of “the sweet cider of Memory”:

Dream-girl, Flower-girl

Annie in the Mayapples

Annie picking Trout-Lilies

Annie with her nose to a Coneflower.

Her hair smelled like rain.

She wore her skin

Like a store-bought suit of clothes.

Guillory weaves this catalogue of particular prairie plants with a vernacular simile that could easily have fallen from Lincoln's memory, leaving us to consider how even the most melancholy presidential imagination could be always haunted and formed by its earliest encounters of place and lost love.

As Guillory picks his way through Lincoln's life, we also encounter the conflicted, passionate relationship between Abe and Mary Todd: “O, terrible She / Angel-fat goddess / My tormenting Daemon / in black-toed slippers” who is also able to turn Lincoln into a “drunken nocturnal fool / Voracious and never satisfied.” Guillory does not shy away from Lincoln's bald political ambition (see “Vandalia” and “Sleeping with Speed”) or his deep losses, summed up in “Reading Hamlet” where Lincoln laments: “There was a war, there is a war, and the King / Putrescent and culpable, Is the prime mover / In a world turned into the simulacrum of Hell."

Lincoln's broader public legacy and language find their way less explicitly into the poems. Certainly the Douglas debates appear, as do meditations on being a Whig, on seeing slavery first hand, and on the casualties of war. In “Cutting and Pasting,” Lincoln's reflects on his own public voice: “The speech is always a work in progress. / Only the dead receive a tombstone text, / Words chiseled into marble.” To manage these more public instances, Guillory turns often to more regional history (see “Jane's Piano”) and to conceits (Illinois as a store, milking and carpentry as analogies for statecraft). While these extended figures occasionally seem forced, and the diction sometimes anachronistic, one could argue that such moments reflect accurately Lincoln's own poetic imagination, populated by 18th and 19th century verse.

In our own fraught, war-weary time, some readers will want a more critical voice towards the only president to suspend habeas corpus. I would contend, however, that we already have an enormous public gallery of both sanctifying and critical images of this president. Guillory adds to the gallery a unique psychological and sensuous encounter of a more intimate (and perhaps more necessary) landscape. In place of stock photographs of Lincoln, we receive his meditations on being photographed. Instead of a martyr lying in state, we examine the contents of his pockets on the night he was shot. Instead of Lincoln's inevitable sacrifice, we get to imagine, poetically, an “Alternate Ending.”