Yleistieto

Kanoninen nimi: Wolff, Maritta
Syntymäaika: 1918-12-25
Kuolinaika: 2002-07-01
Sukupuoli: female
Kansalaisuus: USA
Syntymäpaikka: Grass Lake, Michigan, USA
Kuolinpaikka: Los Angeles, California, USA
Asuinpaikat: Grass Lake, Michigan, USA
Koulutus: University of Michigan
Ammatit: novelist
Suhteet: Skidmore, Hubert (husband)
Skidmore, Hobert D. (brother in law)
Lyhyt elämäkerta: Maritta Martin Wolff was born and raised on her grandparents' farm near Grass Lake, Michigan, and attended a one-room country school. She was a senior at the University of Michigan when she wrote Whistle Stop, an 830-page story for an English composition class that went on to win the university's 1940 Avery Hopwood Award for excellence in writing. After being trimmed down, Whistle Stop was published as a novel in 1941 and became a runaway bestseller, surging through five editions. The book's gritty content and language drew mail from thousands of readers and thrust the 22-year-old Maritta into national attention that she shrank from. The book was adapted into a film starring Ava Gardner and George Raft in 1946. Maritta's second novel, Night Shift, was made into a 1947 film called The Man I Love. In 1942, Maritta met and married her first husband, Hubert Skidmore, a Michigan classmate and also a novelist; he died tragically in a house fire at age 36 in 1946. In 1947, she remarried to Leonard Stegman, a costume jeweler, with whom she had a son. Over the next 20 years, she wrote another four bestselling novels.After her death, the manuscript for her book Sudden Rain was discovered in her refrigerator, where it had lain for the last 30 years of her life because she refused to promote it. It was published (along with re-issues of Whistle Stop and Night Shift) to much acclaim in 2005.

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Whistle Stop: A Novel Tekijä: Maritta Wolff

I was engrossed in this novel from the get-go. The characters are written sublimely. The reader has their favorites, and roots for them, and the ones they think are just losers. In a way, this family reminds me of Ma and Pa Kettle. There are six children, and one grandchild. The two oldest, Ernie and Mary, are the only ones that have a job, so I don't know where the money comes from to feed this gang. The mama is overworked and overwhelmed with taking care of this mob, while the father lays around reading, cuz he can't work"for his rheumatism."

Kenny, a grown-up, good-for-nothing son, spends his nights hanging out with the gangsters from the nearest City, ostensibly Ann Arbor, comes home at dawn, and sleeps all day. In his Mama's eyes, he can do no wrong, so we can figure out why he's like that. He's also a woman-user, preferably married ones, who he drops when he's had his fill of using them. One of the women got so angry with him, she purposely drove into a concrete abutment while they were driving together. Mary and Ernie go to see Kenny the next morning in the hospital. Get a load of the lax rules of hospitals in those days:
"They left the automobile in the parking lot and went in the door of the big hospital together. In the vast cool efficient interior, Ernie was plainly embarrassed and out of place. Mary went to the information desk and stated her name and business directly. The crisp, white - garbed woman behind The desk consulted her cards and looked at Mary curiously while she talked. 'Your brother's condition is not really serious Miss Veech. He was unconscious when he came in here, of course. He has some smashed ribs and a broken collarbone and a bump on his head that we can't be sure about until after the x-rays.' " P.128
"The nurse, hovering in the doorway, smiled slightly at his words. 'Can I have a cigarette?' he asked her. 'Just one, please?' 'I think you might, if you want one,' she said." P.132

A young woman who Kenny used to date, a friend of his sister's, is dying from a brain tumor. His sister convinces him to go say goodbye to her before she dies. But on the way there, Kenny sees his sister Mary going into a bar with her boyfriend. This enrages Kenny, and gives us an idea of what's going on under the surface in this story that has subtly-drawn Dynamics. He goes into a restaurant and quickly downs 5-6 whiskies, further fueling his rage. When he continues on into the hospital, he brutally takes out his rage on the dying girl:
"Kenny turned and propped his arm against the door jamb and laughed magnificently. His voice was slurred and careless, and he chose each word with a calculated cruelty. 'Hell, if you ain't one screwy dame all right. You think I can remember back to them days? Maybe you can; I can't. Hell, it was too long ago and I had too many dames since. What do you think? I can't even remember what it was like, having you....' She winced in the bed, and he struck a posture of elaborate thought. 'Nah, I can't remember. I guess you wasn't nothing special. The only ones I ever remember are the ones I like or the ones that are real hot...'
Fran Cope shut her eyes tight. 'Goodbye, Kenny,' she said, 'Goodbye.' P.214

Josie, one of the twin young women of the Veech family, considers herself to be meant for a better life than the poor one she was born into, and is always aspiring to get invited to places with the upper-class set. She gets invited to a dance at the country-club by a young man who her friend sets her up with. As she is riding to the dance in his car, she dreams of him falling in love with her, marrying her, and giving her the life she's sure she deserves. She has a rude awakening when he tries to put the make on her during the dance:
"Josette sat quite still and let him do it, and felt his fingers, cool and delicate, against the arches of her feet. And, strangely enough, she thought again of Pat Thompson with bitter scorn. Never once in a million years would Pat have thought of sand in her shoes, or cared enough to take them off for her. She felt an unspeakable tenderness for Johnny Meredith. Her thoughts turned into rhetorical theatrical praises. She kept saying to herself over and over, 'This night, This moment must never end. This night is love.' Johnny set up again in the seat and put his arm around Josette and Drew her firm up against him, bent her head back against his shoulder gently with his hand. His words were disjointed peculiarly. 'Poor feet! All tired out after all that dancing. Now you can rest. Just relax and rest here, and shut your eyes, and listen to the waves down there on the beach, and the music... ' P. 178-9

This engrossing story was written by the author when she was 22 years old, and makes this reader marvel at the depth of her knowledge of the human condition, and talent for characterization, setting, and ability to depict life in a small Midwestern town in the depression years, at such a tender age.… (lisätietoja)

Merkitty asiattomaksi

burritapal | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Oct 23, 2022 |

Sudden Rain: A Novel Tekijä: Maritta Wolff

The kind of had the feel of an Afterschool Special for disenchanted adults—it read almost like a TV movie or radio play. But she really did capture the tone of the time—not quite the entire zeitgeist, but a kind of two-dimensional melange of conversations and cultural artifacts and these stage setlike places that end up coming together in this very oddly evocative portrait of what I think of as my parents’ and siblings’ generation. It reminded me a bit of Mary McCarthy’s The Group, if the women had all moved to the West Coast and become totally disillusioned—I don’t think Wolff has the degree of control McCarthy does, but she does understatement well. Maybe a little too well in places, but she makes her point. And the end is really dark in a rewarding way, which keeps the book from falling completely into trite social novel territory. It definitely dabbles there... but it was fun in a kind of confectionery way.… (lisätietoja)

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lisapeet | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Apr 29, 2018 |

Sudden Rain: A Novel Tekijä: Maritta Wolff

My friend DG has been recommending Wolff to me for about a year. She was his 2007 discovery. The lowdown on this forgotten novelist is that at age 22 she wrote this total blockbuster called Whistle Stop about a skanky family outside of Detroit. That was in 1941. She continued to produce novels for the next few decades after her death in 2002, a manuscript was found in her refrigerator. Sudden Rain is that manuscript.

Written in the early 1970s, Sudden Rain tells the story of half a dozen couples in and around Los Angeles, mostly unhappy and either divorced or well on their way. There's lots of drinking, smoking, an almost Flannery O'Connor-like act of violence, bad traffic and a spectacular fire. The dialogue crackles, the landscape is evocative, and I ate this up like a great big frosted cupcake.

Now I have to go back and read everything Wolff wrote.… (lisätietoja)

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laurenbufferd | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 14, 2016 |

Whistle Stop: A Novel Tekijä: Maritta Wolff

This is a great novel by a wonderful writer. It's like the Joad family moved into Peyton Place and they're all doing crack. And it works! Even though this book deals with some pretty heavy subject matter, especially for it's time, somehow throughout it remains a lighthearted and easy read. I will be thinking about this "fambly" for a very long time.

Merkitty asiattomaksi

flippinpages | 4 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 1, 2013 |

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