Lafcadio Hearn’s America: Ethnographic Sketches and Editorials ed. by Simon J. Bronner (review)

Gruenwald has written a most readable, wellar gued monograph. The book succeeds at the ambitious task of trying to fill an extremely wide breach in our knowledge of these early commercial networks ,and at offering an alternative model for regional development in the Ohio Valley. For that immense contribution,River of Enterprise deserves high praise and a wide audience. Clinton W.Terry Mercer University,Atlanta 1 · John E. Pixton,. In, " 1'aith vs. Economics: The Marietta aiid Cincinnati Railroad. 1845-1883." Ohio Historical Qi, arterly 66 (January 1957): 1- 10. Simon J. Bronner, ed. Lafcadio Hearn' s America:Etbnograpbic Sketches and Editorials . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky ,2002. 256 pp. ISBN: 0813122295 cloth), $ 35.00. Akhough there is a substantial literature about the eight years from 1869 to 1877 that Lafcadio Hearn ( 18501904 ) spent in Cincinnati, much more attention has been devoted to the last fourteen years of his life spent in Japan. It is the contention of Simon J. Bronner, a professor of American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, that Hearn is significant as a writer of ethnographic sketches, a form he developed first as a reporter focusing mostly on the underside of the Queen City' s life in the 1870s. After a thirtythree page introduction, the bulk of this volume reprints thirtytwo of Hearn's sketches, fifteen of which appeared in Cincinnati newspapersthe Enquirer and the Commercialbetween 1873 and 1877. Most of the rest focus on New Orleans, which was the next stop in Hearn's odyssey. Some of what Hearn wrote about the Queen City has been aptly described as " gruesome," but much of it,as Bronner' s selections show,is devoted to depicting,sympathetically,the downtrodden and the exotic groups with which Hearn clearly identified. Tc, pics include Hearn's account of a round with an overseer of the poor,a description of the city's rag pickers,outcast life in the East End, a tour of the county jail, and a comparison of the gentile and " Hebrew"slaughterhouses, highly favorable to the latter. Many of the Cincinnati sketches feature African Americans, one of whom was briefly married to Hearn. Obviously, a great deal of what Hearn wrote about Gilded Age Cincinnati should be grist for the urban historian's 111111, but it has been little utilized. Those seeking further Hearn Cincinnatiana should consult the listing of 439( !) items in Jon C. Hughes' collection of Hearn's essays, Period of tbe Gruesoine 1990). Bronner' s concerns are not essentially historical apart from alerting us to some of Hearn' s available writings;he describes some essays he does not print. His bibliography includes no history of the Queen City; his main historical resource is Philip D. Jordan' s Obic, Comes of Age,1 8731900 ( 1943). And some of the little historical,as opposed to biographical ,information provided by the author ( who was trained as a folklorist) is either wrong or inappropriate . He writes that " Cincinnati in 1871 was America' s largest inland city"( 9), a distinction it had surrendered to Chicago by the census of 1870,and the one illustration of Cincinnati ( 11)shows an early twentieth century street scene whose buildings date from after Hearn' s departure. That said, Hearn's sketches of both Cincinnati and other places provided in this volume are well worth reading,and,if reading this sample sends a historian or two to explore more of Hearn' s Cincinnati corpus, the volume will have served a very useful purpose. Roger Daniels University of Cincinnati WINTER 2003 61 ...