Labour of a Lifetime

Labour of a Lifetime Helen Hooven Santmyer is now 88 years old, crippled and halfblind. She also suffers from emphysema. Because of her infirmity, she resides permanently in a nursing-home in Xenia, Ohio, U.S.A. Over fifty years ago, when Helen Hooven Santmyer was working as a reference librarian, she started to write a book. At first she worked on it in her spare time. Then, when ill-health forced her to retire, she continued her work in the nursing-home where she now lives. She wrote the whole book out herself, in longhand, on a ledger. In 1982, her work completed, she presented it to the Ohio State University Press for publication. The final manuscript filled 11 boxes. A handful of copies were printed, but the book met with no initial success. It seemed as if Helen Hooven Santmyer’s name would vanish without trace from the American literary scene. But at least one person who bought the book read it and liked it. He was praising it in an Ohio library one day when the librarian overheard his conversation. The word was passed on to a producer, then an agent, then the American Book-Club. Each party found the book entrancing and worthy of a greater audience. Finally Helen Hooven Santmyer’s book, entitled “...And Ladies of the Club,” was nominated for the Book-Club Award in January 1984. It won the Award, and with it a sum of over 1 million dollars. Helen Hooven Santmyer did not seek fame or wealth from her novel. Its topic—the story of two Ohio families in the period between the American Civil War and the great depression of the early 1930’s— is obviously not aimed at the commercial market. The author believed that Sinclair Lewis had painted a false portrait of the American dream in his novel of the 1920’s, “Main Street”. She wanted to correct that picture. As Haynes Johnson writes in the Washington Post: The author was clearly not in the market for big bucks. She obviously was motivated by saying something in which she believed. The bare account of how she produced the work over the year, in her spare time, in sickness and in health, in itself provides an astonishing testament of her perseverance. (Guardian Weekly, January 29, 1984) Strong belief in something makes one rise above one’s worldly situation. It makes one concentrate on one’s end in life. No matter