My Staggerford Journal [Hardcover]

Jon Hassler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 1999

"April 3, 1976. Completed Staggerford this morning at 9:15. . . . The most satisfying thing I've done since playing high school football."

In the spring of 1975, an unknown Minnesota teacher named Jon Hassler decided to take a sabbatical and fulfill his lifelong dream of writing a novel. A year later, Hassler typed the final page of Staggerford--a book that has won a cherished place as a classic novel of small-town life in America. Now, many years and many novels later, Hassler shares the private story of Staggerford's creation as recorded in the vividly revealing journals he kept while writing the book.

Hassler's My Staggerford Journal is at once the narrative of a work of art struggling to be born and the portrait of a creative mind in the throes of a life-altering breakthrough. Day by day, we peer over Hassler's shoulder as he breathes life into his creation--realizing with a sudden flash of insight that his hero Miles Pruitt should not have a wife, shaping and reshaping the character of the Bonewoman, heeding the good "advice" of the spirited Miss Agatha McGee, stumbling on the perfect title. Here, too, is the moving account of the novelist's inner doubts and comic missteps, his lonely triumphs and jarring sacrifices.

My Staggerford Journal affords a rare glimpse into the imagination of one of the best-loved masters of contemporary American fiction. Jon Hassler's many fans, as well as all readers interested in seeing the creative process at work, will be spellbound by this wonderful book.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This slim volume is the journal that popular author Hassler kept during 1975, when he took a sabbatical year from teaching and wrote Staggerford, his first novel of small-town life. He has since written ten more novels and in September brought out a book of short stories (Keepsakes and Other Stories). Hassler says he discovered early on that his journal writing had more vitality if he wrote to friends rather than just to himself, and he dedicates this book to Dick Brook, to whom most of it was originally addressed. The rigors of preparing manuscripts before the days of PCs and other historical details are effortlessly and charmingly presented. The tone throughout is friendly and conversational, hard to fault but also hardly stimulating. Recommended only where interest in Hassler's work is strong.
-Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., CO
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Hassler (Emeritus, St. Johns Univ., Minnesota) gives readers an over-the-shoulder glimpse at the creative process, self-doubt, and elation that accompanied the first of his nine novels, Staggerford (1977). In 1975, with six short stories having brought 85 rejection slips, a restless Hassler requested a one-year sabbatical from teaching English at a community college in Brainerd, Minnesota, in order to realize his dream of writing a novel. The result was Staggerford, a tragicomedy about a high school teacher that has now gone through 15 paperback printings. Despite his success, however, Hassler presumes too much in expecting his loyal following to snatch up what is essentially grist for a luncheon speech or a magazine article. Instead of providing glimpses of the embryonic ideas, structures, themes, and descriptions that crop up in the journals of John Cheever or F. Scott Fitzgerald, these journal entries sound already worked over for publication. Hassler does show how writers, in tenaciously grasping general principles of the craft, can still flounder. In fleshing out The Bonewoman, for example, he remarks that he knows how she looks, but not how she sounds: You need more than one sentence from a person to get a good grasp of her voice, its timbre and tone. Other entries, less valuable to aspiring writers, catalogue the minutiae of an authors routine (I go through a lot of contortions when I write. I jump up from the typewriter and stride around the table. I flit from window to window). Too often, Hassler stuffs these inventories with autobiographical filler, reflecting on his lonely sojourns in an isolated cabin and the reactions of family and friends to his crazed, but ultimately triumphant, pursuit of an impossible dream. When he focuses on the writers craft, Hassler can be wonderfully revealing. But the rest of this could have been saved for the family album. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (December 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345432886
• ISBN-13: 978-0345432889
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #686,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For Staggerford fans only, September 3, 2000

By 

Author Bill Peschel "Writers Gone Wild" (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Staggerford Journal (Hardcover)

"What is any artist but the dregs of his work?" the author William Gaddis said, and one wishes Jon Hassler had remembered that before publishing "My Staggerford Journal," the tearings from his diary he kept in 1975 when he took a sabbatical from his English professorship to write his first novel. While the book is only 100 pages long, there is very little that is of interest to anyone but fans of his work.

Those interested in the artistic process will find little here of interest. Hassler recounts the decisions underlying the writing of "Staggerford" in the fashion of a carpenter building a chair ("Coach Gibbon will talk about sports. Stella about the press box and her dentist. Imogene? Knowledge.").

The best parts of the book are things that have nothing to do with writing. He visits Emily Dickenson's home in New England, and spends three weeks in Great Britain and Ireland. He recounts a vacuous committee meeting at the community college where he taught. After a week writing alone, he goes out into the Minnesota snow seeking any kind of social connection. When he book is accepted by Atheneum, he worries that he doesn't know how to pronounce the name. But overall, the best part of Hassler is found in his novels.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Staggerford Journal, September 6, 2010

By 

Jane (Utah) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Staggerford Journal (Hardcover)

I had the extreme privilege to be taking a class from Jon while he was in the process of getting Staggerford published. He shared the galleys with us and talked about the process of publication. So needless to say, I loved this book. I loved the peek into what he was doing while writing it. Jon was a complex man with a kind and gentle heart... and this other side that one did not get to see, but was obviously there and came through in his books. I'm definitely biased and I loved the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Writing a first novel in 1970s Minnesota, March 6, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Staggerford Journal (Hardcover)

I had never heard of STAGGERFORD nor of Jon Hassler till I bought this book today and devoured it in one sitting. Now I'm looking forward to reading the nove, STAGGERFORD. If you can believe the jacket copy and the back of the jacket, STAGGERFORD is one of those beloved masterpieces like CATCHER IN THE RYE that high school students everywhere are assigned to read, and even though they grumble, they eventually fall in love with the book and take it to heart. Even Hillary Clinton, says Mr. Hassler, has read STAGGERFORD. I feel so dumb not having known about it. Maybe I should have read the book before reading Mr. Hassler's 1975 journal describing the year he took off from an oppressive community college somewhere in Minnesota.

He took time off to visit historic sites in New England, including the House of the Seven Gables and Walden Pond. He makes an embarrassing faux pas inthe home of Emily Dickinson, in her bedroom, where like any other tourist he whips out his canera and the guide reminds him in a miserable shriek, "Cameras are not permitted in Emily Dickinson's bedroom." You can really feel his abjection as sadly he pockets his camera. He's lucky they didn't destroy it I guess. I had no idea that this house in Amherst is a private home and that you can see only two rooms, this bedroom and a sitting room. Who would want to live there, it would be weird.

Once STAGGERFORD gets published, by Atheneum, you get the feeling that finally Hassler gets some self-respect, indeed some balls. He quotes Thoreau to beautiful effect; "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in the common hours."

I didn't like the part where he encounters a colleague who praises him and tells him his own favorite line from STAGGERFORD, which is, "If you wish to befriend an Indian, feed him pie." I don't know, it just sounds a little racist. Outside of that, the book is well worth every penny.