Really, really useless arty facts.

Theodore Dreiser came up with the title for his classic novel Sister Carrie before he even had a plot--he was at a party and someone asked him what he was working on. He said, "Oh, a novel," or something like that. His interlocutor asked him what it was going to be called. He came up with "Sister Carrie" pretty much at random (he himself had a sister with a similar name, so it was the first thing he thought of). He wasn't actually working on a novel at all (yet).

The novel itself he finished in about a month.

While many 19th century novelists got paid by the word, only Anthony Trollope publicly admitted what many suspected. He also admitted that he only wrote a maximum of three hours a day, all before breakfast, and set himself page quotas to meet per day. Once he met his quota, he stopped, no matter what.

Another novel with a random title is Faulkner's Light in August. It has nothing to do with the novel. In that case, Faulkner was completely done with the book but had no idea what to call it. He was sitting on his porch one summer night, shortly after he finished the MS. As the sun was setting, he decided on the title.

--M.

Theodore Dreiser's brother Paul, who called himself Paul Dresser, wrote My Gal Sal (starting at 3:00) and On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away.

Has the 2nd song has anything to do with the 'Wabash Cannonball'?

The Wabash is the principal river that runs across my home state of Indiana, so "the banks of the Wabash" is sort of a metaphor for Indiana as a whole. "On the Banks of the Wabash" (the song) is the official state song, in fact. (The better-known song "Back Home Again in Indiana" is unofficial; it also makes reference to the Wabash.*)

"The Wabash Cannonball" is of course about a ghost train. Like Big Rock Candy Mountain, it's a fictitious vision of hobo heaven--a train that never throws off the hobos, calls at every station in the country, and gets there before it leaves.

While there was an actual train called the Wabash Cannonball (an express run from Detroit to St. Louis that followed the Wabash river for much of the route), the train was named after the song, not the other way around. This was back when this country had actual passenger trains worth writing songs about. (Good mornin', America, I love ya.)

--M.

*on "Back Home Again": Everyone who grew up in Indiana eventually learns the song, I imagine (unlike "On the Banks of the Wabash," for which we probably couldn't even pick out the tune). Heres a nice version by some IU boys.

Back home again in Indiana
And it seems that I can see
The gleaming candlelight
Still shining bright
Through the sycamores for me
The new-mown hay sends all its fragrance
From the fields I used to roam.
When I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash,
Then I long for my Indiana home.

The Wabash, at least the stretch of it that flowed through my hometown, was a wide, mud-brown river that flooded its banks on a near-annual basis. We used to jokingly sing it as "When I think about the black stuff in the Wabash..." Or if we were feeling even less charitable, "When I think about the garbage in the Wabash," though the river was never actually POLLUTED polluted--agricultural runoff, mostly, which of course can be bad enough.

We also used to hold our noses on the line about the smell of hay. (Hay smells okay, provided it really is freshly mown, but farms in general take some getting used to, olfactory-wise (I was NOT from a farm community).)

They sing the song annually at the Indy 500, just after the Star-Spangled Banner, and just before the race director says "(Ladies and) Gentlemen, start your engines." (It's really too bad the 500 has to be an auto race. Everything else about it is absolute class, from the yard of bricks to the quart of milk.)

--M.

If Whitney Houston had have married Gene Pitney - her name would have been Whitney Pitney....

But it would be doubtful if Mike Whitney would have mixed in the same circles...

Nice post, mrpenney, and nice link.

Have you ever seen the movie Remember the Night with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck? Manhattan Assistant DA takes jewel thief back home to Indiana for Christmas. Worth adding to your netflix queue.

Thanks, I will.

--M.

Um, re: Light in August ....... it's been a good trillion years since I read the book, but I'd swear the title refers to someone whose baby was due in August -- she would be light in August. I can't remember why it's the title, though.

Wikipedia says:

Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom! Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and pencilled in Light in August. (But this is probably apocryphal given the huge symbolic role that both light and the month of August play in the novel.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald originally wanted to call his novel The Great Gatsby+ by the title +Everyone Goes to Rick's.

(Kidding! I kid. He wanted to use Trimalchio in West Egg, actually.)