Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: elizabeth crawford, evidentiary argument, foundation speech, Fred Kaplan, New Salem, Mary Todd (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this intriguing biography, English professor and literary biographer Kaplan (The Singular Mark Twain) analyzes Abraham Lincoln's writings, from the great civic anthems of his presidency to love letters, legal briefs, poems and notebook jottings, and finds a first-rate literary talent—a master storyteller with an earthy wit, sharp logic and an ear for poetic phrasing. From wide reading, Kaplan contends, Lincoln gleaned influences—an Aesopian moralism, a biblical sense of providence, a Byronic melancholy, a Shakespearean understanding of human complexity—that shaped his approach to issues and, through his words, the nation's attitude toward slavery and war. Kaplan sometimes overdoes his critical exegeses of Lincoln's more forgettable efforts ([Lincoln's] comic depiction of what happens when two people of the same sex are bedded has a heterodox clarity that reveals his familiarity with bodily realities) but many of these readings, like his recasting as free verse a speech on agricultural improvements, are eye-opening. The result is a fresh, revealing study of both Lincoln's language and character. (Nov. 3)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley The literature about Abraham Lincoln is so vast as to defy comprehension, yet historians and other scholars -- not to mention novelists, poets, artists, sculptors, even composers -- continue to find new and revealing things to say about this greatest of all Americans. Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, is the latest case in point, a book that is certain to become essential to our understanding of the 16th president. To be sure, many others before Kaplan have dealt in various ways with Lincoln's love of literature and writing, but no one has explored the subject so deeply or found so much meaning in it. Kaplan's central subjects are Lincoln's "compelling interest in language as the instrumental vehicle for civilization and culture" and his specific interest in written language, about which he once said: "Writing -- the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye -- is the great invention of the world. Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it -- great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space; and great, not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions. . . . Its utility may be conceived, by the reflection, that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, and the Bible, all history, all science, all government, all commerce, and nearly all social intercourse go with it." The language of that passage may seem a trifle quaint to today's reader, but the essential truth of it is clear and beyond argument. And at a time when careful writing has fallen into disrepute -- a time of lower-case e-mail, text messages and advertising idiocy -- its importance may well be greater than ever, especially when one contemplates the debased state of political discourse. As Kaplan points out, "Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached," and he "was also the last president whose character and standards in the use of language avoided the distortions and other dishonest uses of language that have done so much to undermine the credibility of national leaders." Some presidents have been well served by their speechwriters, but "the challenge of a president himself struggling to find the conjunction between the right words and honest expression, a use of language that respects intellect, truth, and sincerity, has largely been abandoned." It is always instructive to study Lincoln, but now is a particularly good time to consider his devotion to words. Yes, times do change and with them the ways by which we communicate with each other, but the need for clear, honest and comprehensible speech and writing has never been greater, as the political season now ending has made all too apparent. How we will be served in this regard by the person who is elected president on Tuesday remains to be seen, but the rhetoric of recent presidents -- in particular the two most recent ones -- does not bode well. Mendacity, as we know to our sorrow, has become a well-established presidential prerogative, and Adlai Stevenson's pledge to "talk sense to the American people" is a figment of a forgotten past. So let us contemplate the example of Abraham Lincoln, who before the age of 10 -- and in circumstances scarcely conducive to learning, much less deep learning -- had developed the habit of reading. As a boy on a farm in Kentucky in the early 1800s he seemed to face a "lifelong fate" of manual labor, as his father had, but in 1816 he came under the influence of a schoolmaster who set him on a different path. His "first formal lessons in literacy came from Thomas Dilworth's New Guide to the English Tongue, popularly known as Dilworth's Speller, a widely reprinted textbook first published in London in 1740." The book "taught Protestant theology and moral behavior" as well as grammar, and "some of the language and its lessons entered deeply into him" as "guideposts in his formative years." Then, in 1818, not long after the Lincolns moved to Indiana, Lincoln's mother died. A year later his father married Sally Bush Johnston, a passionate reader who brought "a small but marvelous library" with her. Young Abe's world changed forever "when she took from her luggage the Arabian Nights, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Noah Webster's Speller, Lindley Murray's The English Reader, and William Scott's Lessons in Elocution." Though he could not have been aware of it at the time, Lincoln's constant, obsessive reading was teaching him how to write. The rhythms and cadences of the prose and poetry that he read -- Shakespeare (his lifelong "secular Bible"), Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Edward Gibbon, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope -- insinuated themselves into his capacious, ever curious mind and became the bedrock upon which his own majestic prose eventually was constructed. His reading also made him, again all unwittingly, a son of the Enlightenment, one who "had little mind for transcendence, let alone permanence," but was connected "to the rooted quotidian"; to him, "reason, logic, and experience seemed the best guides." The Enlightenment's "prevailing synthesis, which Lincoln absorbed, emphasized a combination of Christian ethics, classical style, and natural law." Shakespeare's "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason. . . ." became his touchstone: "No matter how powerful the appeal of bombast, moodiness, and melancholy, Lincoln found in his Enlightenment models and in Shakespeare the affirmation of his tested but sustained faith in man's reasoning faculty as his highest and in reason's power to advance good works." He believed that he had the capacity to do important things but often feared that the opportunity would never come his way. His young adulthood, his long apprenticeship in law and politics, his romantic disappointments and strange yet crucial marriage to Mary Todd -- all gave him cause to wonder whether at worst failure or at best modest accomplishment was to be his fate. Through it all, though, he kept reading, and by 1846, when he was practicing law in Springfield, he decided to "try his hand as a writer of literature, attempting to use language as a vehicle of self-exploration and pleasurable expression in a way distinctly different from the writing that he had done as a political man addressing public issues." In three poems of his that have survived "the two alternative modes of his personality -- the melancholy and the humorous -- provided literary guidelines." He wrote little poetry thereafter, but "the command of literary models and of language that enabled him to write these credible poems in 1846," Kaplan says, was "inseparable from his command of language as a prose writer." Kaplan -- emeritus professor of English at Queens College and author of well regarded biographies of Mark Twain, Henry James and Charles Dickens, among others -- meticulously analyzes how Lincoln's steadily maturing prose style, "projecting a persona of dignified but amiable authenticity," enabled him to come to grips with slavery and, as his own views evolved, to express his deepening opposition to it. In 1854, not long after Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which permitted slavery's westward expansion, Lincoln tartly exposed what Kaplan calls the "flawed and dangerous" logic of slavery's adherents. Then, the next year, he exploded: "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equals, except Negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy." Five years later he was elected president. We know the rest of the story, and Kaplan devotes far less space to it than to Lincoln's education as a writer, for by then -- just in time -- that education was complete. In one of the finest passages in this fine, invaluable book, Kaplan sets him on the road to Washington: "If intellectual readiness is everything, he was ready, as he well knew when he said goodbye to his Springfield world, having prepared himself over a lifetime to become a well-read master of the human narrative. If that narrative was to have its tragic dimension in Lincoln's failure, despite his talents, to prevent the South's secession, shorten the inevitable war, or alleviate Northern racism, it was to be an object lesson in the limitations of language rather than a failure in preparation. At the same time, the unfortunate givens of the narrative provided the context for his two greatest achievements, the Gettysburg Address and the second inaugural address, in which he did what great writers do: create useful texts from which readers can derive inspiration, literary pleasure, and universalizing direction." Amen.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060773340
• ISBN-13: 978-0060773342
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #42,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lincoln's Writing Analyzed, December 18, 2008

By	David Kinchen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

BOOK REVIEW: Abe Lincoln: Writer Extraordinaire

By David M. Kinchen


Abraham Lincoln was a rising star in the new Republican Party when he was invited in August 1859 to speak at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society fair in Milwaukee at the end of September. He accepted the offer despite a busy court schedule, relates Fred Kaplan in "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer" (HarperCollins, 416 pages, $27.95).

Kaplan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College in New York City, devotes more space in his book to this speech than he does to more famous literary efforts by Lincoln, including the Gettysburg Address. Using perhaps the best analytical mind of any of our presidents, Lincoln presented a powerful but subtle argument for freedom at a time when the nation was about to be torn asunder over slavery. To put the speech into its historical context, John Brown's raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), was only a few weeks in the future (Oct. 16, 1859).

Arranging the opening elements of the Milwaukee speech like a poem, Kaplan creates verse that is reminiscent of Walt Whitman, whose "Leaves of Grass" was first published in 1855 and revised several times thereafter.

Here are the opening lines from Kaplan's typographical realignment of the opening of Lincoln's September 1859 Milwaukee speech:

Every blade of grass is a study;
And to produce two,
Where there was but one,
Is both a profit and a pleasure.
And not grass alone;
But soils, seeds, and seasons
Hedges, ditches, and fences,
Draining, droughts, and irrigation --
Plowing, hoeing, and harrowing --
Reaping, mowing, and threshing --
Saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops,
And what will prevent or cure them --
Implements, utensils, and machines,
Their relative merits,
And [how] to improve them --
Hogs, horses, and cattle --
Sheep, goats, and poultry --
Trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers --
The thousand things
Of which these are specimens --
Each a world of study within itself.

* * *

Kaplan says the Milwaukee speech is Lincoln's best poem and the reference to specimens anticipates Whitman's 1882 volume "Specimen Days."

The book explores new ground in the vast field of Lincoln biographies -- especially relevant with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth next Feb. 12 -- and the election of another Illinois lawyer, Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States.

The subtext is that the tall, gangly railsplitter, originally from Hardin County, Kentucky and almost totally self-educated, has a present-day counterpart in the Ivy League educated Obama, whose education more closely mirrors that of Robert Todd Lincoln, the 16th president's oldest son.

Kaplan stresses throughout this exhaustively researched and very readable book -- you don't have to be an English major like me to appreciate it -- that words mattered to Lincoln. He knew the difference between lightning and a lightning bug -- as Mark Twain so aptly phrased it -- and used language as a vehicle to express complicated ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment.

This was true whether Lincoln was composing speeches like the Milwaukee one that examined capital and labor; legal arguments (Lincoln was a prominent railroad attorney with a busy practice first in Springfield, the state capital and later in Chicago, the Prairie State's booming metropolis); or even love letters.

So, you say, aren't all presidents gifted with the ability to make words work for them. Actually not, says Kaplan. Ronald Reagan may have been the Great Communicator, but the Illinois native and former California governor was blessed with talented speech writers. The same goes for Franklin D. Roosevelt and most other presidents. You have to go back to John Quincy Adams, the 6th President (1825-1829) to find someone as gifted with the pen as Lincoln, Kaplan writes.

Kaplan, the author of biographies of Twain, Gore Vidal, Dickens and others, says that the literary output of Lincoln, collected in a standard eight-volume edition published in 1953 (see the wonderful annotated bibliography for details on this and other relevant works) is inseparable from his life story.

Lincoln from the start was a bookworm or, to use the phrase Dorothy Parker employed, a "constant reader." Although not religious in the traditional sense -- a topic Kaplan also explores -- Lincoln was intimately familiar with the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. He loved the poetry of Robert Burns and in the last year of his life, in January 1865, was invited to give a tribute to Burns at the Washington, D.C. dinner held on January 25, Burns' birthday.

Otherwise engaged -- the war was still raging -- Lincoln sent a toast to the Burns Club of Washington: "I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart, and transcendent genius. Thinking of what he has said, I can not say anything which seems worth saying."

By modestly saying that he couldn't add to the tributes to Burns, Lincoln was actually giving the Scottish poet his highest praise. Now that's great writing!

He devoured Byron, Shakespeare and read constantly when he was on the legal circuit in central Illinois or during any spare moment. Fellow bookworms -- and I'm one -- can instantly identify with Lincoln.

Lincoln put his reading to good use, Kaplan writes. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature.

We can only hope that Barack Obama -- like Lincoln a transplant to Illinois -- can express his ideas and ideals in words he has crafted, as Lincoln did. Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and reached out to his audience as effectively as the man who had only a few months of formal education, but who was supremely skilled with the English language.

Words count, Kaplan reminds us, as if we need reminding in the wake of past presidencies -- of both political parties -- when words led the nation astray. "Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer" highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.

Kaplan: "Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached," and he "was also the last president whose character and standards in the use of language avoided the distortions and other dishonest uses of language that have done so much to undermine the credibility of national leaders."

43 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of two presidents who liked to read, October 28, 2008

By	Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Another book about Lincoln?

Yes! And a great book. From his love letters to the Gettysburg and second inaugural addresses, Lincoln was a master of putting great ideas into succinct words. In contrast to recent presidents, who are "too busy" to read much of anything, Lincoln and John Quincy Adams are the only presidents for whom literature and life were inseparable.

During his presidency, his two favourite volumes were Shakespeare's plays and the Bible -- both written in the same era -- in which he found an echo of the tragedy of the American Civil War. Most significantly, he did not often read to relax. Lincoln read to educate himself, to improve his mind and to understand the motives and methods of himself and others.

Think of the current financial crisis in which "deregulation" became liberty for bankers and a disaster for consumers. Lincoln understood such issues in terms of stories, such as "the shepherd who drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a Black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty."

"The claim that white Liberty requires Black servitude is a definition of liberty, in Lincoln's telling phrase, from 'the wolf's dictionary', and that dictionary must be repudiated," Kaplan wrote. Think of the impact today had former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan read and understood as much as deeply as Lincoln.

From his earliest days Lincoln used stories to illustrate his views. This explains the origins of the quality of his writing, both in terms of style and content. It's much more than just "another book about Lincoln", this is primarily a book about the growth of a great writer.

It's similar to 'Lives of the Artists' by Calvin Tomkins; the bottom line is the dedication to a single theme that produces greatness. As a child he was brought up on 'Dilworth's Speller'; in his early adult years he read Byron, then Weems, Burns and Goethe. None were passing fancies; each was a dedication to a particular author before he moved on to a more serious topic. His "reading" for the law took 10 years.

This book helps explain why men such as Lincoln are very rare.

Interestingly, instead of relying on the will of God, friends such as John Todd Stuart said Lincoln was "an avowed and open Infidel -- Sometimes bordered on atheism ... always denied that Jesus was the son of God as understood and maintained by the Christian world." Instead of an instant acceptance of Jesus as his saviour, Lincoln's reading was on the great authors to understand the ways of mankind.

He didn't reject the Bible, but he didn't "court" evangelicals and other true believers. Instead of instant salvation, he rejected fanatics. Lincoln was always eager to read, to learn and to write better. He never thought himself as blessed with complete wisdom which closed his mind to any and all new ideas.

Breathes there such a man today ?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating speculations about the influences on Lincoln, January 4, 2009

By	B. D. Weimer "lex rex" (Minnesota, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Professor Kaplan does an excellent job of reconstructing the likely influences upon Lincoln as a developing writer and thinker.

Lincoln was a very guarded and private man, and so much of the evidence mined by Kaplan is necessarily circumstantial. In particular, he draws many inferences about Lincoln's private beliefs from authors he likely carefully read as a youth, such as Burns, Byron and Shakespeare. Professor Kaplan's expertise in literature and history makes him well suited to this task. And many of the inferences he draws do seem very plausible.

Still, I give the book only 4 stars rather than 5, because it seems that Professor Kaplan gets carried away at times with his speculations about Lincoln's thought life, projecting greater certainty than the circumstantial evidence would warrant, and downplaying contrary evidence.

For example, Professor Kaplan seems anxious to establish that Lincoln did not believe in the afterlife. He returns to that point repeatedly throughout the book. Yet he quotes from a speech that Lincoln gave in honor of Washington, which stated his belief that the deceased Washington was only sleeping, and that "the last trump shall awaken our Washington." (Page 78) Kaplan does not comment on the significance of these words -- he quotes the speech for another purpose. Yet Lincoln was very careful with the language of his public statements, seeking honesty and precision. And he chose his words on religion very carefully. Why then would he have given a speech stating his belief that Washington's soul was only sleeping, and that he would be resurrected at the end of time?

(I suspect that Lincoln was uncertain about the immortality of the soul in his early years. But we know from Lincoln's public statements that he believed in both God and prayer, and that his belief in a personal God became stronger in his White House years. Lincoln also had a high view of humanity. Thus, it seems likely that he came to believe that humanity, with its ability to grasp the infinite, was made for immortality.)

Overall, though, Kaplan's book provides many fascinating insights into the probable development of Lincoln as a thinker and a writer. It is very enjoyable to read. So, with the caveat noted above, I recommend the book to the many fans of our greatest president!