In response to this old post on origins of the word “Hoosier,” someone named Gabriella writes on James Whitcomb Riley, pride of Agitator hometown Greenfield, Indiana:

I doubt very much that St. Louis holds James Whitcomb Riley in high regard. You should. As well as authors who followed him, like Booth Tarkington.

Riley, though best known as a children’s poet, also proved a point early in his career that paved the way for entire generations of Midwestern authors: He faked an Edgar Allen Poe Poem and sent it to an eastern newspaper. It was published, and believed to be one of his best. When the hoax was revealed, people still believed that it was an original Poe poem, because it was considered too good to have been written by a western author. One New York newspapers went so far as write, “Faking a poem is one thing, but to create the entire fictitious city of Kokomo Indiana? “Now that is ridiculous.”

This exposed eastern bias towards western writers and changed the world’s perception of them. He and many other Hoosier authors showed the world that our plains, prairies, and people were all our own. We were a new nation with splendors.

Tarkington helped authors in another way. He helped expose the over the transom attitude of eastern editros. It is an attitude that is still very much alive, but he helped to show that it was foolish. His first book, The Gentleman from Indiana, was an amazing success. When first proposed to the editor of the newspaper for serialization, it wasn’t even read. When Mr. Tarkington’s sister finally convinced the editor to read it and publish it, the newspaper’s circulation increased five fold.

These hardly seem the actions of unintelligent or unskilled people. Yet they were Hoosier to the core. They wrote constantly of Hoosier life and their writing was some of the most beloved of the time. I could name other important Hoosier figures, but it would take too much time. We’ve brought about a lot of good for this country and region, but our impact is often overlooked. Probably because of one value Hoosiers hold dearly that many other’s don’t: humility.

Anybody wanna’ shoot some hoops?

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2004 at 9:23 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.