Today, another deep cut into the lore of middle America. Yesterday, we celebrated the birthday of Ray Bradbury,, whose fictionalized version of his boyhood home in Waukegan, Illinois,, showed up in so many of his stories as Green Town. And today is the birthday of Edgar Lee Masters, who was born on this date in 1868. His Spoon River Anthology transformed American poetry by letting the dead residents of a small Midwestern town tell the truth about their lives from beyond the grave. Edgar Lee Masters grew up in Lewistown, Illinois, and spent time in nearby Petersburg, which is about 20 miles from where I'm writing this: a lovely, peaceful drive down Illinois Route 97 flanked on either side by corn and soybean fields. Masters drew heavily on the people, gossip, scandals, politics, and social tensions he saw and heard there when creating the inhabitants of Spoon River, and many of the characters in the book were inspired by real residents, though the names and details were changed.
Today's video is a rare old clip (1969) of Andy Kaufman performing “Indignation Jones” from Spoon River Anthology while Kaufman was still attending Grahm Junior College.
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