By Ethan Li
Ernest Poole’s His Family. Those words filled me neither with recognition nor particular joy. Nevertheless, there it was, displayed on the pixels of my computer as the first novel ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, back when it was called the Prize for the Novel; it would be remiss for me not to read it. His Family was published in 1917, making it one of the first books I’ve read to come out of that time period. Placing a hold on the book, I was already dreading my decision to read it: I was picturing in my head a massive, heavy block of text with pages upon pages of description and heavy dialogue. But from the moment I went to pick it up and saw an average-sized 345-page paperback to now, His Family truly surprised me.
First, some history: Ernest Poole was born in 1880 in Chicago to a decently affluent and established family. He put on many different coats throughout his life: settlement worker, magazine correspondent, playwright, and then novelist. He was also part of the Socialist Party of America, and is perhaps most famous for his journalistic coverage of the Bolshevik Revolution. His Family, his second novel, was praised by many publications at the time including the New York Times, and received the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918.
In His Family, Ernest Poole paints the picture of an aging man and his family of three daughters. The man is Roger Gale, a widower, and the daughters he tries to get closer to throughout the book are Edith, a mom of four, Deborah, a dedicated school principal, and Laura, a spirited party girl. Roger feels driven to know his daughters by his wife’s last promise that he will “live on in [their] children’s lives.” Although the premise didn’t immediately intrigue me, I found there to be a lot of heart in His Family. Following Roger’s often misguided attempts to connect with his daughters entertained me, and the book moved along at a quick pace to cover multiple years of family drama. Poole writes using a third-person narration that intimately describes Roger’s thoughts, even using short phrases and exclamation points to convey his emotions. This style of narration, known as free indirect discourse, made even narration interesting to read, and it surprised me to see free indirect discourse again after learning about it in Mr. Haskett’s AP Language class. In addition to the charming father-daughter relationships, I enjoyed the discussion surrounding generation gaps. The narrator often discusses Roger’s thoughts on the changing New York, sometimes dismayed at the heights of the new buildings. 100+ years later, with New York City in the current state it is, I found it funny to hear Roger’s complaints and interesting to hear about a time when NYC was just starting to grow into the gigantic metropolis it is today.
However, for all the book’s praises, I couldn’t help but notice many faults from my perspective. Poole’s deep dedication to describing landscapes was impressive, but the long descriptions often bored me and made me wish I was reading more of the lively dialogue. However, the biggest problem does come from the time period that the book was published in. Many of the morals and values displayed within the world of His Family don’t apply today, and alienate the average modern-day reader as a consequence. For example, there is a main plot where Roger tries to get one of his daughters Deborah to marry and settle down; the concept of marriage is presented as an obvious thing that every woman should do which isn’t how we think about it today. As a result, at least to me, Roger felt overly controlling and unjustified in his plot to convince Deborah to settle down, which I don’t think was the intention of Poole. Also, there were random moments of period-specific language that is frowned upon today that pulled me out of the story, such as when the narrator used the word “Jap” to refer to a Japanese person. Although it’s obviously not Poole’s fault, as a modern reader approaching this book, it felt hard to feel fully connected to the world and the characters.
To conclude, I would say that Poole’s His Family is an overall good book that doesn’t fully work today. It’s my least favorite of the books I’ve read for this series so far, indicating not that it is bad, but that it isn’t excellent. Other evidence supports my middling feelings on the book: at least one critic has claimed that the Pulitzer Prize given for this novel was mainly for Poole’s prior book The Harbor, and that this book only received the prize because The Harbor was published before the award was established. Perhaps I would have enjoyed The Harbor more, but as it stands, I wouldn’t recommend His Family to read unless you are really intrigued by the culture of the late 1910s. Still, I was glad I read the book, as a piece of history and as a sometimes charming depiction of a man just trying to know his family.