Paul Bunyan: How a Terrible Timber Feller Became a Legend by D. Laurence Rogers
I know it’s a mouthful, I’m sorry, but it’s also my non-fiction book for the month of May. Yes, Paul Bunyan is a character of American/Canadian folklore, but that doesn’t mean a book about him can’t be factual.
This book was written by Laurence Rogers when he was searching for the origin of the Paul Bunyan stories. The thing that makes Paul Bunyan stories different from other folklore is that the Bunyan tales are a fairly recent addition to the world of folklore. We can ask people who told them the story, then we can ask that person who told them the story.
Laurence had to do a lot of research into the world of Paul Bunyan and one of the men he might have been based on, a French-Canadian named Fabian “Joe” Fournier. Joe was a lumberjack working in the lumber camps near the Canadian border in the later 1800s. Laurence actually does paint the life timber fellers would have been living in the area. Honestly, I didn’t know a lot about how lumberjacks lived before reading this book. It was a rough life and they were rough people.
Joe was not very old when he was murdered, yes, murdered, but those years had been enough to paint him as a legendary lumber man. Supposedly, he had two rows of teeth. This is actually something I’ve heard before in connection with the region. So it’s probably not as far-fetched as you might think it is. Supposedly, skeletons have been uncovered in the area containing not one set of teeth on top and bottom, but two sets. So most likely we’re looking at a regional inbreeding result.
Even after reading this book, I’m not particularly sure why Joe Fournier was singled out as a possible Paul Bunyan. There were other men who the tales might have easily been based on. Most likely, the tales are a collaboration of the legends and boastings of several real men.
You might ask yourself why these stories started circulating around in the first place. Well, these guys were bored. They packed up what little they had on their backs and went into the deep woods to harvest timber. They lived in barracks or tents. There wasn’t any nearby entertainment. They would have told stories. They would have made jokes. They would have played music on violins or guitars that someone chose to haul to camp. There were more reasons for these stories than boredom though.
Like any large industries, the owners and overseers can often treat the workers like they don’t matter. This was also the case with large lumber interests. The men were paid little for the back-breaking labor they did and were often tricked out of it by company stores and people hired by the companies themselves. Working conditions could be bad. Food could be bad. This was a rough life. Bunyan stories not only served as a respite from work, but they served as a hero. Paul Bunyan was this American hero who stood up for lumberjacks everywhere. He was larger than life and these men who spent their time sawing trees and moving trees looked up to the idea of him.
The Bunyan stories grew as various writers published stories and poems in newspapers and in book form. Folklorists said Bunyan stories weren’t really folklore because there was something of a discernible origin and many authors had created stories about him. Because of these purists, you almost lost out on hearing those stories about Paul and Babe the blue ox when you were in school.
What I liked
I liked learning about the possible origins of the legends of Paul Bunyan. I think it’s kind of neat that we can trace him to a specific time period. We can’t do that with many varieties of folklore. Stories have often been told for so long that we’ve lost any trace of provenance. We know, sort of, where Paul Bunyan came from. That’s neat.
I also liked learning about the history of logging in the United States and Canada. At one point in time, my own grandfather did a bit of logging. I remember him being fairly skilled in cutting down larger trees. He doesn’t have much excuse to cut down large trees these days, but I’ve watched him do so in the past. I never really imagined the world of a lumberjack would be so complex. They had their own culture.
Laurence actually has a good notes section at the end of the book, which I did actually read because it was so good.
What I didn’t like
Laurence doesn’t have a definite conclusion. He doesn’t have a lot of evidence to support the idea of Joe Fournier being Paul Bunyan. He talks about Fournier’s life a bit and his death, but other than that, there aren’t any real ties to Fournier, that I can tell.
This book was poorly put together. Images take up a whole page and the caption font is almost as big as the regular font, so if you’re reading one page, then you flip over and there is an image, you read the caption as the next part of the story, but realize that it doesn’t make any sense according to the last thing you read. I eventually caught on, but I did find it a bit counter-intuitive.
The writing style of this book is awful. I’m not saying that Laurence sucks, it’s not that; I’m speaking about types of writing styles. You went to college at one point and you took English class. You might remember that you had to cite your sources in APA, Chicago Manual of Style, and there is one more I can’t remember off the top of my head that is pretty popular. In these writing styles everything from Grammar to instructions on how to cite a video of a recording is covered. Some writing styles will insist that an author underline titles of various things in the text of a work. That’s the type of style this book was written in. I find it distracting. I’ve gotten too used to having titles italicized. Honestly, it just looks unprofessional, but that could be just because I haven’t seen it in so long.
Overall
Giant pancakes…that’s what I like about the Paul Bunyan stories. Who doesn’t love the idea of a giant pancake?
american legends, bunyan, bunyan legneds, d. laurence rogers, fabian joe fournier, joe fournier, laurence rogers, logging, logging camps, paul bumyan: how a terrible timber feller because a legend, paul bunyan, paul bunyan: how a terrible timber feller became a legend by d. laurence rogers, stories are paul bunyan
History, Non-Fiction, Rogers-D. Laurence
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