pardon me. Born in Gordon.
we read Sandoz in elementary school.
ol' Jules is a staple in his home town.
I wondered when you were going to show up.
Of course. Your fellow townsman was so skilled, so talented, in writing that even we in the Sandhills but hundreds of miles away, read her in
elementary school.
Any idiot can write something turgid and complicated--I give you the Bostonian Drunkard--but it takes someone with real talent to write something good enough that it ranks as wisdom for all the ages (bad pun here, sorry).
Mari Sandoz was actually in an enviable position, when it comes to writing. Most of the time, critics are hollering, "make it shorter, cut it down, there's too many words, it's too long, &c., &c., &c."
In her case, they were usually hollering, "make it longer, make it longer."
Interestingly, English was her
fifth language, not her first. She first used the Swiss French of her father and the Swiss German of her mother. Given the isolation of the Sandhills of Nebraska, and no radio or television or telephones, there wasn't much opportunity to talk with others.
And then by the time she was five years old, she had learned Sioux and Cheyenne, from all the Native Americans who came to visit her father, the old curmudgeon Jules Sandoz. She was either seven or nine years old--I forget which--before she learned this "Nebraska Sandhills English."
Many linguists, who find no fault at all with her "Nebraska Sandhills English," have remarked that the rhythm, the pattern, of that English is based upon Cheyenne.
But to me, her English has always seemed standard English, nothing fancy or different about it than English used by other writers.
The evaluations of her writing, as done by the snobbish eastern elites, is glaring proof that being congested in dirty, stinking, crowded big blue cities smothers the cerebral cells.
