Fun Facts About St. Louis
St. Louis is a very good place to be from, writes Lucy Ferriss in Unveiling the Prophet. Being in the middle of the country, St. Louis has a little bit of all of the regions in it -- north, south, east or west -- so you can find a little something familiar in any place in the United States where you might go. Ferriss is from St. Louis, went to college in California and now lives in New England. I saw her at the National Writers Workshop in Hartford, Conn., last week and was fascinated by her talk about her memoir and the historical research she had done to write it.
Unveiling the Prophet is a slim book and I raced through it after finishing Imperial Life in the Emerald City, finishing it yesterday. I felt a little lonely after finishing it and took Robert Frost: A Life back up.
In Hartford, I didn't talk to Ferris, but I pointed her out to my friend Tim, who is also working on a historical book about St. Louis. As an aside, I remember giving my brother pkhentz Dr. America, a book that came across my desk when I was working as an editorial assistant at the University of Massachusetts Press. (What is it about St. Louis? Is it just my own familial connection?)
The book has been bouncing about in my head, as my brother mentions the spring ball at his school in South St. Louis, as L. and I dropped by her school's prom held at the trendy Union Station banquet hall in Northampton, with the booty music blaring and the cool kids in this rural school district wearing hints of urban fashion. Ferriss concentrates on her experience as a debutante in the 1972 Veiled Prophet ball in St. Louis. (Read this 2004 Post-Dispatch story about the renamed "Fair St. Louis" for a short synopsis of the ball's history.)
I'm not from St. Louis, although I was born up the Mississipi River in Quincy, Ill. I grew up in Ohio and remember St. Louis mostly through visiting my grandparents, who then lived in St. Charles. But I find reading about St. Louis and its history fascinating. Particularly because it seems like such a submerged history, and yet so, well, central. Ferriss mentions Tom Spencer's history of the Veiled Prophet ball, which sounds fascinating, but doesn't delve into it too deeply (her book is just over 150 pages long). But she does talk about the ball's origins as a way to ward off a labor strike in the late 1870s. And she does probe the ball's strange metaphorical link to a Thomas Moore poem, Lalla Rookh. The 1972 ball was interesting because it was disrupted by a civil rights action, when a protester who had gained entrance to the private affair swung down from the balcony and unmasked the veiled prophet.
All that strange symbolism, all that pomp and power. A faded aristocracy, systematic racism and patriarchy on display. In the end, Ferriss seems torn about the whole thing. Her father was a circuit judge and an Episcopalian in St. Louis, a vestige of the city's old elite. Ferriss also talks about the strange history of St. Louis the city and its disconnection with the county of St. Louis. At first the city split from the county to ward off the hicks, but then the city elites jumped over the border to escape the city and its burgeoning black population.
It's a lot of history to weave into a personal memoir. I think that history and the personal connection really grabbed me and I felt a little disappointed to only get a 150 page ride out of it.
Unveiling the Prophet is a slim book and I raced through it after finishing Imperial Life in the Emerald City, finishing it yesterday. I felt a little lonely after finishing it and took Robert Frost: A Life back up.
In Hartford, I didn't talk to Ferris, but I pointed her out to my friend Tim, who is also working on a historical book about St. Louis. As an aside, I remember giving my brother pkhentz Dr. America, a book that came across my desk when I was working as an editorial assistant at the University of Massachusetts Press. (What is it about St. Louis? Is it just my own familial connection?)
The book has been bouncing about in my head, as my brother mentions the spring ball at his school in South St. Louis, as L. and I dropped by her school's prom held at the trendy Union Station banquet hall in Northampton, with the booty music blaring and the cool kids in this rural school district wearing hints of urban fashion. Ferriss concentrates on her experience as a debutante in the 1972 Veiled Prophet ball in St. Louis. (Read this 2004 Post-Dispatch story about the renamed "Fair St. Louis" for a short synopsis of the ball's history.)
I'm not from St. Louis, although I was born up the Mississipi River in Quincy, Ill. I grew up in Ohio and remember St. Louis mostly through visiting my grandparents, who then lived in St. Charles. But I find reading about St. Louis and its history fascinating. Particularly because it seems like such a submerged history, and yet so, well, central. Ferriss mentions Tom Spencer's history of the Veiled Prophet ball, which sounds fascinating, but doesn't delve into it too deeply (her book is just over 150 pages long). But she does talk about the ball's origins as a way to ward off a labor strike in the late 1870s. And she does probe the ball's strange metaphorical link to a Thomas Moore poem, Lalla Rookh. The 1972 ball was interesting because it was disrupted by a civil rights action, when a protester who had gained entrance to the private affair swung down from the balcony and unmasked the veiled prophet.
All that strange symbolism, all that pomp and power. A faded aristocracy, systematic racism and patriarchy on display. In the end, Ferriss seems torn about the whole thing. Her father was a circuit judge and an Episcopalian in St. Louis, a vestige of the city's old elite. Ferriss also talks about the strange history of St. Louis the city and its disconnection with the county of St. Louis. At first the city split from the county to ward off the hicks, but then the city elites jumped over the border to escape the city and its burgeoning black population.
It's a lot of history to weave into a personal memoir. I think that history and the personal connection really grabbed me and I felt a little disappointed to only get a 150 page ride out of it.