Robert V. Hine (1921–2015)
Auteur van The American West: A New Interpretive History
Over de Auteur
Ontwarringsbericht:
(eng) Full name: Robert Van Norden Hine, Jr.
Fotografie: University of California, Riverside
Werken van Robert V. Hine
In the Shadow of Fremont: Edward Kern and the Art of American Exploration, 1845-1860 (1982) 13 exemplaren
An Artist Draws The Line 1 exemplaar
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Officiële naam
- Hine, Robert Van Norden, Jr.
- Geboortedatum
- 1921-04-26
- Overlijdensdatum
- 2015-03-27
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Geboorteplaats
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Plaats van overlijden
- Irvine, California, USA
- Opleiding
- Yale University (PhD)
Pomona College - Beroepen
- historian
professor
memoirist - Organisaties
- University of California, Riverside (professor of history)
- Ontwarringsbericht
- Full name: Robert Van Norden Hine, Jr.
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 19
- Ook door
- 3
- Leden
- 471
- Populariteit
- #52,267
- Waardering
- 3.6
- Besprekingen
- 2
- ISBNs
- 39
And she, with her husband and child eventually arrived in California – that strange and dreaming land made even stranger, almost hallucinatory by an inrush of gold-seekers from America and just about every other country on earth. She was one of the very few articulate and observant women who were in that place and in that time, when to be a respectable married woman – or indeed any kind of woman at all - was a being of such rarity as to be practically an instant celebrity. Robert Hine visualizes her life and feelings with considerable sensitivity; the terrible wonderful journey, and the wonderful, hallucinatory experience of living in California, where hungry gold miners could pay her more for a single loaf of bread than her husband could earn working in the mines for a whole day. Sarah also encounters an old friend with dreadful scars and even more dreadful secrets, never quite daring to probe either one of them. The novel ends on an ambivalent note; was her old friend directly responsible for the death of another, and indirectly for the mob-lynching of the man held to be guilty? Sarah seems to accept her friends’ responsibility, but at the same time appears to feel that she owes her friend silence on the matter; perhaps God is best positioned to judge.
The novel is rather badly marred for me by occasional anachronisms and curious descriptions. Some of them I should better describe them as ‘presentisms’ – the use of a jarringly modern phrase or concept. For example, a woman conceals burn scars by wearing ‘floppy hats and scarves’ – a 19th century woman would have worn bonnets and veils to conceal such disfigurement. Would a small residence in San Francisco offered running water in the kitchen sink in 1850? A character draws a likeness of an emigrant company to a rubber band; tight when wrapped around danger and loose without peril – but the rubber band had only just been invented in 1845. Would a gold-seeker four years later been aware of such an invention? A meadow in the middle of the desert is described as having pines and yellow aspens growing in it (high-mountain trees? In the 40-Mile desert?) And at one point, an ox-team hitched to a wagon is described as being driven by reins in the hands of a driver sitting on the wagon seat – not so, at that time and in that place, ox teams were driven by someone walking next to the lead team and giving verbal commands. The author is described as a distinguished academic historian, so I do wonder how such curiosities slipped by in an otherwise satisfactory book.
… (meer)