Thomas Sigismund Stribling
Encyclopedia
Thomas Sigismund Stribling (March 4, 1881 – July 8, 1965) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer and lawyer who published under the name T.S. Stribling. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933
1933 in literature
The year 1933 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 17 - The magazine Newsweek is published for the first time.* James Joyce's Ulysses is allowed into United States.-New books:...

 for his novel The Store
The Store
The Store is a 1932 novel by Thomas Sigismund Stribling. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933. It is the second book of the Vaidan trilogy, comprising The Forge, The Store, and Unfinished Cathedral.-Introduction:...

.

Life

Born March 4, 1881, in Clifton, Tennessee
Clifton, Tennessee
Clifton is a city in Wayne County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,699 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Clifton is located at ....

, a small town off the Tennessee River
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...

, Thomas Sigismund Stribling was the first child of lawyer Christopher Columbus Stribling and his wife, Amelia Ann (Waits) Stribling. Christopher Stribling had been a soldier in the Union Army, while the Waits family had fought in the Confederacy. T.S. Stribling would later say this resulted in his being a "doubter and a questioner" (Bain, 433). He would go on to use the stories of his parents, grandparents and extended family on both sides to create the realistic depth of his Southern Reconstruction novels.

Stribling completed his high school education at the age of seventeen, at Huntingdon Southern Normal University in 1899, in the nearby town of Huntingdon, Tennessee
Huntingdon, Tennessee
Huntingdon is a town in Carroll County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 4,349 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Carroll County.-Geography:Huntingdon is located at ....

. By this time Stribling was convinced that he was meant to be a writer, having already sold his first story at the age of 12 for five dollars; Stribling was ready to get started with his future in literature. With that in mind, Stribling became the editor of a small weekly newspaper called the Clifton News. Stribling was hoping to use the Clifton News as a launching pad for his writing career, unfortunately Stribling was only there for about a year before his parents convinced him to return to school and complete his education. In the fall of 1902, Stribling graduated from the Florence Normal School, what is now recognized as the University of North Alabama
University of North Alabama
The University of North Alabama is a coeducational university located in Florence, Alabama, and the state's oldest four-year public university....

, in Florence, Alabama
Florence, Alabama
Florence is the county seat of Lauderdale County, Alabama, United States, in the northwestern corner of the state.According to the 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the city's population was 36,721....

. There, Stribling was able to earn his teaching certification in one year.

In 1903, Stribling moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west central Alabama . Located on the Black Warrior River, it is the fifth-largest city in Alabama, with a population of 90,468 in 2010...

, to teach at the Tuscaloosa High School. He taught both mathematics and physical education. He actually only taught at the school for one year, having "no idea whatever of discipline." (Kunitz, 1359) before departing, preferring instead to continue his own education. In 1905, Stribling completed his law degree at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

 School of Law. Yet again he only used his newly earned education for a brief time, moving quickly from law office to law office: The Florence law office of George Jones, serving as clerk, the Florence law office of Governor Emmett O'Neal, where Stribling worked (again) briefly as a practicing lawyer, as well as the Law Office of John Ashcraft, also as a practicing lawyer. Stribling went through three law offices in less than two years. It turns out that instead of working diligently on client cases, Stribling was in fact using the office supplies and typewriter, and paid hours, to perfect his writing craft. Under the advice of his fellow lawyers, Stribling gave up practicing law in 1907.

Writing career

After moving to Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

 in 1907, Stribling picked up a job at the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine as a writer and salesman of ads and subscriptions and as "a sort of sublimated office boy." (Kunitz, 1359) It was at the magazine that Stribling had two works of fiction published: The Imitator and The Thrall of the Green, both reflecting the social themes he would later become well known for.

Repeating his pattern and encouraged by his small success, Stribling left the magazine in 1908. He then moved to New Orleans where he produced "Sunday-school stories at the phenomenal rate of seven per day; many of these stories were eventually published by denominational publishing houses." (Martine, 73) Stribling went on to write many more Sunday-school stories as well as adventure stories for boys that were printed in various pulp magazines such as: American Boy
American Boy
"American Boy" is the second single from the album Shine by British R&B singer Estelle and features American rapper Kanye West. The song is her first international single...

, Holland’s Magazine, Youth's Companion
Youth's Companion
The Youth's Companion , known in later years as simply The Companion—For All the Family, was an American children's magazine that existed for over one hundred years until it finally merged with The American Boy in 1929...

,
Adventure
Adventure (magazine)
Adventure magazine was first published in November 1910 as a monthly pulp magazine. Adventure went on become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines...

, and Everybody’s Magazine; it was these writings that afforded Stribling to, for the first time, live off the profits of his creative ability. For Adventure, Stribling wrote detective stories featuring his psychologist sleuth Doctor Poggioli. Stribling also wrote some science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 stories with satirical undertones, such as "The Green Splotches" (1920), about aliens
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 in South America, and "Mogglesby" (1930), featuring intelligent apes.

In 1917, The Cruise of the Dry Dock was published in a limited print run of 250 copies. This was Stribling's first effort at a novel. It most likely was heavily influenced by his boy-like adventure writings for his various pulp magazines. It was a World War I seaborne adventure story set in the German infested waters of the Sargasso Sea, where the American crew tries to escape capture and certain death by the hands of the evil enemy. "A potboiler, The Cruise of the Dry Dock is neither in its style nor its choice of subject matter particularly original or impressive." (Martine, 73)

Serialized in seven parts in Century Magazine, Birthright was collected into novel form in 1922. This is considered to be Stribling's first serious novel as well as being the work that introduces to the world his ability to reconstruct not only the landscape of the South, but the heartache as well. Birthright was highly praised by critics in both the black and white communities. Birthright is the story of a young African American (mulatto) man, Peter Siner, who returns home after completing his education at Harvard; he is hoping to effect some changes and to heal racial rifts in his small southern home town of Hooker's Bend, TN. He fails to heal the social rift of the community because of the wide and dividing prejudices of both the white and black man. In defeat, Peter ends up moving to another small town just north of the Dixie Line.

Birthright was a major departure from the pulp adventure stories for which Stribling was thus far characteristically known. Birthright is a serious social critique of not only the social practices of the South, but all of America—its social rules, taboos and even laws such as the Jim Crow Law or The Tennessee Initiated Segregation Seating Act for Railroad Cars in 1881, which paved the way for other states and the creation of other related laws. This novel also reflects historical populace movements such as "The Great Migration". WWI had broken out in Europe, and although America was not yet fighting in the war, we were supplying goods for the war; in response, the Northern manufacturers recruited Southern black workers to fill the demand for factory workers. "From 1910 to 1930 between 1.5 million and 2 million African Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the North." (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2003) It is from these times that the South, as well as America, is trying to heal the social fault; it may be this America that Peter Siner is supposed to embody.

It is when Siner leaves the South that the reader sees the true critique of the Southern social condition. Siner is of mixed blood, he is the representation of both the black and white communities, he is the incarnate of peace between two peoples, he is the educated man, he is what the two races should look up to with respect and wanting Yet both races are only able to view him with suspicion and mistrust. All Siner can do is leave the people in their pits of muck and mire.

During the time that Stribling was writing his adventure stories for the various pulp magazines, he was also doing some world travel, going through Europe, Cuba and Venezuela. It was in Venezuela that Stribling formed the inspiration for the novels Fombombo (1923), Red Sand (1924), and Strange Moon (1929). All three are set in Venezuela, and all three focus on the different class levels of Venezuela, with a touch of a love and adventure thrown into the stories. All three are considered to be the lighter, “fun” reading of Stribling's works.

Teeftallow (1926) and Brightmetal (1928) are both novels returning to what Stribling would eventually be well known for: the social satire of middle Tennessee. Both novels are set in middle Tennessee and even share some of the same characters. These novels approach the problems of the South through the eyes of the middle class and the poor of the local white people. Neither won any high critical praise, but both were well received by the reading community.

The Vaiden Trilogy

1930 was a highly significant year for Stribling. It was the year he produced his eleventh novel, The Forge (1931), the first book of his trilogy following the Vaiden family. Further, the same year he married Lou Ella Kloss, a music teacher and hometown friend.

Set in Florence, Alabama, this trilogy follows three generations of the Vaiden family. "Through not great literary art, Stribling’s trilogy is, nevertheless, historically significant; for in The Forge, The Store, and Unfinished Cathedral, Stribling introduced a subject matter, themes, plot elements, and character types which parallel and at the same time anticipate those that William Faulkner, who owned copies of this trilogy, would treat in Absalom, Absalom! and in the Snopes trilogy." (Martine, 76) These three novels represent the best of Stribling and his ability to call forth the Southern landscapes, as well as the Southern heartaches during the period of the Civil War restoration.

The Forge follows the story of Miltiades Vaiden who served in the Civil War and has now returned to his homeland in hopes of picking up again his family’s yeoman tradition and rebuilding the now destroyed south that he remembers with longing. Finding work, Vaiden soon also finds the woman that he wishes to marry, not out of love or even lust, but as a means to reach his dreams. The girl rejects him, instead choosing to marry a richer man with political ambitions. Vaiden does not miss a beat; he instead marries another girl, middle-class Ponny BeShears, who he does not find especially attractive, but she will gain a nice inheritance when her father passes away, which he hopes will be enough to move him into the middle-class.

Stribling’s most famous novel, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Store (1932), is the second book in The Vaiden Trilogy. Returning to the story of Miltiades Vaiden, several years have passed since the closing of The Forge, who has since risen from his position of poor white boy to a respectful middle-class position. Where the first novel opened up at the beginning of the Civil War and ended with the abolishment of slavery, The Store picks up with the South establishing a new economic order. Vaiden and his wife own a profitable store in the small Florence town where Vaiden has no qualms creating an artificial friendship with some of the newly free local blacks, or even the now economically desperate whites, cheating them out of their money to ensure his own success. Vaiden uses loose book keeping practices and heavy loan rates to ensure that he gains land from the unknowing blacks. Slowly, Vaiden is building a larger estate and bankroll to the loss of Florence and to the loss of social trust between the peoples.

Meanwhile Vaiden has raped a young black girl working on his land, Gracie. Gracie becomes pregnant with a girl. The Gracie is kept quiet by allowing their daughter to work in the home and get some schooling. Vaiden and his wife have a son about the same time that his mulatto daughter is being born.

The final book in the trilogy is The Unfinished Cathedral (1934). Again set in Florence, now in the 1920s and focusing still on the Vaiden family. President Hoover has enacted the Tennessee Valley Authority works in order to supply electricity to the nearby towns. This has caused a real estate boom in the small Alabama town, where the now well aged Vaiden wants to take full advantage of this boom. Anyone who can read already knows about the coming dam and the coming housing boom, so the people that have even a little money go after the people that are left out of the loop, the local blacks. The local whites offer these uneducated black people sums of money they can't refuse, or simply run them off their land, or find other means to cheat them out of their land.

Repeating the cycle of his father, the younger Vaiden son has repeated his father's acts by raping the mulatto girl that works in their house…not knowing that the girl is actually his half sister, getting her pregnant with a son. The girl and her son run off north in hopes of finding something better for themselves. The boy then ends up in jail, where his Vaiden grandfather has to come rescue him.

Meanwhile, the town pastor has also gotten caught up in the fever of all the materialism around town. This is reflected in his ignoring the spiritual needs of the townspeople and instead putting his focus on building a great cathedral.

Stribling's last two novels are set far away from the rural south in New York City and in Washington, D.C. The Sound Wagon (1935), a political novel set in both cities, is a look at America’s political system and ideals. Like The Vaiden Trilogy, the novel is a satire. The main character is a young lawyer named Henry Caridius who goes to Washington, D.C. in hopes of making great changes and fails, very similar to the plot of Birthright.

These Bars of Flesh (1938), Stribling’s last book, is set in New York City. This novel may have been a reaction to Stribling’s own time teaching English at Columbia University in 1935. The novel is set in a NYC university with Andrew Barnett attending from Georgia hoping to attain his degree. Stribling takes a satiric look at campus politics, professor tenure and education, and the amount of the students’ lack of awareness.

After his last novel, Stribling continued to write mysteries for various magazines. These were eventually collected: The Best of Dr. Poggioli, 1934-1940 (1975).

Stribling and his wife returned to his hometown of Clifton to live in 1959. During his final months, when he was in declining health, the couple stayed in Florence, where he died on July 8, 1965. He is buried in Clifton, and the town has turned the Striblings' home into a museum and library devoted to his life and career.

Novels

  • The Cruise of the Dry Dock (1917)
  • Birthright (1921), First published as a serial in Century Magazine in 1921, then as a novel in 1922, later adapted into a film under the same title in 1924 and 1939.
  • Fombombo (1922)
  • Red Sand (1923)
  • Teeftallow (1926)
  • Bright Metal (1928)
  • East is East (1922)
  • Strange Moon (1929)
  • Backwater (1930)
  • The Forge (1931)
  • The Store
    The Store
    The Store is a 1932 novel by Thomas Sigismund Stribling. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933. It is the second book of the Vaidan trilogy, comprising The Forge, The Store, and Unfinished Cathedral.-Introduction:...

    (1932), winner of the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
  • Unfinished Cathedral (1933)
  • The Sound Wagon (1935)
  • These Bars of Flesh (1938)
  • "Apology To Florence", June 1934, an article in Wings Magazine.
  • Coauthor (with David Wallace) of Rope, a dramatization of Teeftallow, produced on Broadway
    Broadway theatre
    Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

     (1928)

Short fiction

  • Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D. (1929)
  • Best Dr. Poggioli Detective Stories (1975)
  • Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (2004)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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