Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by thelizabeth
Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy
5.0
Firstly I would like to thank this book for not putting some kind of weird hex on me when I brought it along as a gift on an actual trip to Wisconsin!
I debated this rating a little bit, so firstly we need to get through a disclaimer: these five stars are not for Michael Lesy, they are for Wisconsin. Before I bought and read this, I saw some Goodreads reviews that advised skipping all the sections that he wrote and just reading the primary source material, which I thought was harsh. But it's not. Do that, because Michael Lesy's contributions are weird. They are almost as weird a period snapshot of 1970s academia as the contents of the book are for 1890s frontier life.
This book is a collection (selected, arranged, and introduced/concluded by the author for his PhD thesis) of newspaper snippets and photographs from Black River Falls, WI during the years 1885-1900. It kind of reads as a "top stories" scrapbook of the decade in the state, in short 50-word bits. I love reading old newspaper stories, and I love learning the striking details of the way that individual people did and did not deal with things in history. There is an everyday dark side of reading history. So, I really loved this.
However: it's not kidding. A huge majority of these clippings are about people's death, and/or their being declared insane. It's so morbid it often loops back around into near-funny, the kind of laughter you use to protect yourself from how awful things can be, and have been. This was not a good 15-year period in the area it covers. There was a terrible rural economic depression (1873, 1893), leading to lots of impoverished farmers and workers, lots of starvation, lots of diphtheria (families could lose 6 children in a day), lots of arson, lots of insanity, and lots, lots, LOTS and LOTS of suicide. So, what you are reading is the story of so many people's lives, in the tiniest snapshots available.
My favorite themes that emerged: People going insane "deranged on the subject of religion," or sometimes "finances." Men going mad trying to "solve the mystery of perpetual motion." Several women with a penchant for "sending obscene matters through the mail." And of course Mary Sweeny, who traveled relentlessly around the midwest and smashed every pane of glass she could get to until she was arrested — then she'd sit in prison a little while, return home, and then go out and do it again somewhere else. She was arrested this way over 100 times, and I am sort of enchanted with her. (Unsurprisingly, this book connects directly to the part of my heart that loves Rennie Sparks, who wrote a song about her.)
There is a smaller portion of the content of this book that isn't as successful, and unfortunately they are all the places where you sense the author's hand. There is a good bit of paraphrased rural legend (as it were), credited only to "Town gossip" or "Local history" and clearly not excerpted from any source. There are also, weirdly, some excerpts from later literature, like Spoon River Anthology, the Sinclair Lewis novel Main Street, and a book by Glenway Wescott called The Grandmothers. These were used as attempts to insert first-person accounts, or maybe as a way to make it seem more PhD-friendly, but they didn't belong here. (I might want to read those novels myself, though.) Also, I really did find the Introduction and Conclusion truly nigh unreadable. Lesy loves a metaphor to the point of obfuscating whatever he is trying to say, and I could do without ever reading anyone's pseudo-Freudianism about the anal stage ever again, though I won't be so lucky.
As a book to read straight through it's very strange, and so overwhelming it's not entirely useful. It is brilliant, though, as a collection, and as something that I could imagine using when you need… something (is inspiration the right word?) — opening it up to a random page, reading for ten minutes, then putting it back. I gave this book away as a gift, but I intend to buy another someday, for this.
I transcribed several of the pieces that most swayed me, and I'll include them here in a spoiler tag (for space rather than spoilers), for my own reference and for anybody who is curious.
Mrs. Hiram McDonald of Eau Claire, rendered insane by religious excitement, attacked her children recently and wrecked the furniture and windows in her house.
Mrs. John Leiniger … was recently … charged with poisoning her husband. Leiniger found her in the poorhouse from which he took her to be his bride.
Etta Walker, the girl who disappeared the other day from Boscobel on the eve of her marriage, was found at 2 o'clock the next morning but could give no account of herself … being in a completely dazed condition. Fred Stahel, who was to have married her, would not fulfill his engagement.
Marie Sweeny, who ran away from her husband at St. Paul and has been creating trouble at Ashland with her wild mania for breaking windows, has finally been captured. Reports from St. Paul say that she was a model wife and mother, but some injury to her brain entirely changed her character. She ran away from home 2 years ago, and since then … has been in more than 100 different jails, serving short sentences for indulging in her wild sport.
Maria Sweeny [alias Mary Ricks], the window smasher … reached Eau Claire from St. Paul [and] sat up all night in the waiting room of one of the depots. In the morning she demanded a ticket to Hayward from the Chief of Police. He refused but offered to send her to Chippewa Falls. She gave the chief til 3 o'clock in the afternoon to accede to her demand then moved on the depot windows. Before she could break any glass, she was arrested.
The society people of Kenosha are worked up over the discovery that a person known as 'Mrs. Howe' is not a woman but a man. He went there some time ago to get up a 'Kirmess' for a church, and several ladies joined in the performance. The peculiarity of her manners was commented on at the time, but none suspected the real truth. Now there is regret on the part of the participants that they joined 'Mrs. Howe's troupe of dancers.'
A woman who gave her name as Wilson died at Chippewa Falls from a criminal operation performed upon herself. … The woman was young and pretty and visited every physician in Chippewa Falls to accomplish her object, but without success. (Headlined as "Fatal abortion")
There is an army of about 50 tramps making Racine their headquarters … The other evening, the vagabonds took possession of Racine Junction and ran things to suit themselves. A number of them entered farmer Sheldon's barn and proceeded to behead 18 chickens. Others … entered stores and carted off meat wholesale … The tramps took to the woods and had a feast.
While Mrs. John Manning was picking berries a short distance from Arcadia, she came face to face with a large she-wolf with a number of whelps. The woman was terribly frightened, her screams attracting the attention of some workmen nearby who carried her home. She is in critical condition and it is feared she will lose her reason.
At Sheboygan, a mysterious woman dressed in black and wearing a heavy dark veil enticed from school George Alfred Preston and Hattie May Preston, aged respectively 11 and 9 years, children of George Preston. The children were hurried away in a closed carriage which started in a northerly direction, supposedly for Plymouth where a train could be taken.
Lyda Berger, a 15 year old girl is in jail having confessed to the crime of arson. Several days ago she left her home on a farm north of Milwaukee and went to town to go to … the carnival … She was out late that night and the next day her father whipped her for staying away without his permission. She sought revenge by setting fire to the little cottage in which they lived. It was burned to the ground. A neighbor gave the family shelter and the next day the girl set fire to the house of their benefactor. Her mother ordered her to harness a team of horses which was temporarily quartered in a barn belonging to the Wisconsin Lake Ice Company. The girl went to the loft and set fire to the barn, which, with 64 tons of hay, was burned to the ground. The girl says she set fire to the places simply to have revenge on her father for whipping her.
At Cameron a child was born in a family named Dunn. The father, in celebration of the event, is reported to have become intoxicated, and returning home seized the babe and dashed out its brains. He was on the point of strangling his wife when neighbors intervened.
George Kanuck, a laborer, is alleged to have sold his 7 year old boy to Italian peddlers who have been working at Manitowoc. The sale is said to have taken place at Kanuck's house during a drunken orgy in which all participated. The Italians, 2 women and a man, left town next day with the boy.
Ferdinand Thieman, 10 years old, jumped into a cistern and drowned himself because his sister wanted him to go on an errand. The mother conducts a home for aged Germans at Wauwatosa, and was away at the time.
The police at Kenosha are of the opinion that a young girl took her own life by throwing herself into the lake near that city. The belief of the police is based on a bundle which … 2 boys … found on the beach. The bundle contained a dress evidently belonging to a girl about 15 years of age. It was carefully folded and on the inside was found a note as follows: 'My father and mother abused me and kept me working hard, so I thought it best to end my life now. Here is my dress. Good-bye, all.'
Mary Karban, wife of Wenzel Karban, a farmer of the town of Neva, committed suicide by eating the heads of 4 boxes of matches. She was only 16 years of age and had been married last fall.
I debated this rating a little bit, so firstly we need to get through a disclaimer: these five stars are not for Michael Lesy, they are for Wisconsin. Before I bought and read this, I saw some Goodreads reviews that advised skipping all the sections that he wrote and just reading the primary source material, which I thought was harsh. But it's not. Do that, because Michael Lesy's contributions are weird. They are almost as weird a period snapshot of 1970s academia as the contents of the book are for 1890s frontier life.
This book is a collection (selected, arranged, and introduced/concluded by the author for his PhD thesis) of newspaper snippets and photographs from Black River Falls, WI during the years 1885-1900. It kind of reads as a "top stories" scrapbook of the decade in the state, in short 50-word bits. I love reading old newspaper stories, and I love learning the striking details of the way that individual people did and did not deal with things in history. There is an everyday dark side of reading history. So, I really loved this.
However: it's not kidding. A huge majority of these clippings are about people's death, and/or their being declared insane. It's so morbid it often loops back around into near-funny, the kind of laughter you use to protect yourself from how awful things can be, and have been. This was not a good 15-year period in the area it covers. There was a terrible rural economic depression (1873, 1893), leading to lots of impoverished farmers and workers, lots of starvation, lots of diphtheria (families could lose 6 children in a day), lots of arson, lots of insanity, and lots, lots, LOTS and LOTS of suicide. So, what you are reading is the story of so many people's lives, in the tiniest snapshots available.
My favorite themes that emerged: People going insane "deranged on the subject of religion," or sometimes "finances." Men going mad trying to "solve the mystery of perpetual motion." Several women with a penchant for "sending obscene matters through the mail." And of course Mary Sweeny, who traveled relentlessly around the midwest and smashed every pane of glass she could get to until she was arrested — then she'd sit in prison a little while, return home, and then go out and do it again somewhere else. She was arrested this way over 100 times, and I am sort of enchanted with her. (Unsurprisingly, this book connects directly to the part of my heart that loves Rennie Sparks, who wrote a song about her.)
There is a smaller portion of the content of this book that isn't as successful, and unfortunately they are all the places where you sense the author's hand. There is a good bit of paraphrased rural legend (as it were), credited only to "Town gossip" or "Local history" and clearly not excerpted from any source. There are also, weirdly, some excerpts from later literature, like Spoon River Anthology, the Sinclair Lewis novel Main Street, and a book by Glenway Wescott called The Grandmothers. These were used as attempts to insert first-person accounts, or maybe as a way to make it seem more PhD-friendly, but they didn't belong here. (I might want to read those novels myself, though.) Also, I really did find the Introduction and Conclusion truly nigh unreadable. Lesy loves a metaphor to the point of obfuscating whatever he is trying to say, and I could do without ever reading anyone's pseudo-Freudianism about the anal stage ever again, though I won't be so lucky.
As a book to read straight through it's very strange, and so overwhelming it's not entirely useful. It is brilliant, though, as a collection, and as something that I could imagine using when you need… something (is inspiration the right word?) — opening it up to a random page, reading for ten minutes, then putting it back. I gave this book away as a gift, but I intend to buy another someday, for this.
I transcribed several of the pieces that most swayed me, and I'll include them here in a spoiler tag (for space rather than spoilers), for my own reference and for anybody who is curious.
Spoiler
La Crosse was somewhat agitated last week by an alleged ghost, manifesting itself by the usual symptoms.Mrs. Hiram McDonald of Eau Claire, rendered insane by religious excitement, attacked her children recently and wrecked the furniture and windows in her house.
Mrs. John Leiniger … was recently … charged with poisoning her husband. Leiniger found her in the poorhouse from which he took her to be his bride.
Etta Walker, the girl who disappeared the other day from Boscobel on the eve of her marriage, was found at 2 o'clock the next morning but could give no account of herself … being in a completely dazed condition. Fred Stahel, who was to have married her, would not fulfill his engagement.
Marie Sweeny, who ran away from her husband at St. Paul and has been creating trouble at Ashland with her wild mania for breaking windows, has finally been captured. Reports from St. Paul say that she was a model wife and mother, but some injury to her brain entirely changed her character. She ran away from home 2 years ago, and since then … has been in more than 100 different jails, serving short sentences for indulging in her wild sport.
Maria Sweeny [alias Mary Ricks], the window smasher … reached Eau Claire from St. Paul [and] sat up all night in the waiting room of one of the depots. In the morning she demanded a ticket to Hayward from the Chief of Police. He refused but offered to send her to Chippewa Falls. She gave the chief til 3 o'clock in the afternoon to accede to her demand then moved on the depot windows. Before she could break any glass, she was arrested.
The society people of Kenosha are worked up over the discovery that a person known as 'Mrs. Howe' is not a woman but a man. He went there some time ago to get up a 'Kirmess' for a church, and several ladies joined in the performance. The peculiarity of her manners was commented on at the time, but none suspected the real truth. Now there is regret on the part of the participants that they joined 'Mrs. Howe's troupe of dancers.'
A woman who gave her name as Wilson died at Chippewa Falls from a criminal operation performed upon herself. … The woman was young and pretty and visited every physician in Chippewa Falls to accomplish her object, but without success. (Headlined as "Fatal abortion")
There is an army of about 50 tramps making Racine their headquarters … The other evening, the vagabonds took possession of Racine Junction and ran things to suit themselves. A number of them entered farmer Sheldon's barn and proceeded to behead 18 chickens. Others … entered stores and carted off meat wholesale … The tramps took to the woods and had a feast.
While Mrs. John Manning was picking berries a short distance from Arcadia, she came face to face with a large she-wolf with a number of whelps. The woman was terribly frightened, her screams attracting the attention of some workmen nearby who carried her home. She is in critical condition and it is feared she will lose her reason.
At Sheboygan, a mysterious woman dressed in black and wearing a heavy dark veil enticed from school George Alfred Preston and Hattie May Preston, aged respectively 11 and 9 years, children of George Preston. The children were hurried away in a closed carriage which started in a northerly direction, supposedly for Plymouth where a train could be taken.
Lyda Berger, a 15 year old girl is in jail having confessed to the crime of arson. Several days ago she left her home on a farm north of Milwaukee and went to town to go to … the carnival … She was out late that night and the next day her father whipped her for staying away without his permission. She sought revenge by setting fire to the little cottage in which they lived. It was burned to the ground. A neighbor gave the family shelter and the next day the girl set fire to the house of their benefactor. Her mother ordered her to harness a team of horses which was temporarily quartered in a barn belonging to the Wisconsin Lake Ice Company. The girl went to the loft and set fire to the barn, which, with 64 tons of hay, was burned to the ground. The girl says she set fire to the places simply to have revenge on her father for whipping her.
At Cameron a child was born in a family named Dunn. The father, in celebration of the event, is reported to have become intoxicated, and returning home seized the babe and dashed out its brains. He was on the point of strangling his wife when neighbors intervened.
George Kanuck, a laborer, is alleged to have sold his 7 year old boy to Italian peddlers who have been working at Manitowoc. The sale is said to have taken place at Kanuck's house during a drunken orgy in which all participated. The Italians, 2 women and a man, left town next day with the boy.
Ferdinand Thieman, 10 years old, jumped into a cistern and drowned himself because his sister wanted him to go on an errand. The mother conducts a home for aged Germans at Wauwatosa, and was away at the time.
The police at Kenosha are of the opinion that a young girl took her own life by throwing herself into the lake near that city. The belief of the police is based on a bundle which … 2 boys … found on the beach. The bundle contained a dress evidently belonging to a girl about 15 years of age. It was carefully folded and on the inside was found a note as follows: 'My father and mother abused me and kept me working hard, so I thought it best to end my life now. Here is my dress. Good-bye, all.'
Mary Karban, wife of Wenzel Karban, a farmer of the town of Neva, committed suicide by eating the heads of 4 boxes of matches. She was only 16 years of age and had been married last fall.