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[Newspaper Article]
"TIME OUT OF MIND"
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A Saga of Maine As Narrated By Popular Story Writer, Rachel Field
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An inquiry comes from Interlachen, Fla.: "Will you tell in your book column what you know of Rachel Field and her "Time Out of Mind"?
To Macmillan Company we are indebted to much information concern-
[Photograph] [Right corner of photo has a label that reads: FRANK FORRESTALL ADAMS Portland Maine]
RACHEL FIELD author of "Time Out of Mind" ___________________________
ing this gifted writer whom Maine claims although she was born in New York.
some day to do a l)ook about Just such a house and the people who lived in it. It must have been more piece of biography as has ever than a dozen years ago that the ,out of the !Maine background. -Rachel :Pield was born in iNilw York 1C~aracters of Kate and Nat and Her family moved to Springfield, 1R1ssa came into my mind, and they Mass., where she attendecl the public stayed there in the back of it all schools, later going to 'Radcliffe through the time I was trying to write College for special courses in litera- other things, plays which never ture and composition. During the reached Broadway (a far cry from the last two years there she become a coast of !Maine I), verse, and later the member of Prof. Baker's "4'/ work- 'books for chilmen. "Ironically enough, I wrote the shop," a playwriting course where the students wrote and produced their \New York chapters of 'Time Out of That marked the begin- Mind' last September under !Maine 1own plays. ning of her play writing ·career. After spruces within sound of the sea and that she tried her hand at poetry, the !Line Storm beating on the roof, "The Pointed People" being the first and many of the parts that had mol!t published venture and evecything else to do with sea and woods were written here in New York, with the followed in due course. Miss iField says of herself: "From clock in the Gas Company's tower the year I was 15, II have 'been 'going telling me the hours. It was no more b each summer to a small beautiful difficult to write of · erries and moss wooded island off the coast of Maine, and apples here than there. "I never went to a ship launching. and ,I suppose that it, more than a,1 y one thing. i?:l iny life .la.as ,helped ,me The echo of hammers on wooden with m,y wr,tipg. For Jt i~eans roots timber has come to me second-hand, ani;l background to me. !~'creeps into through the words of older people nearly everything l wrlt4tanci. l never whose ears have actually heard them. want to be anywhere else: when sum- I cannot ,b oast sea-captain ances: mer comes around. Many of my tors, yet here I am writing of the verses in 'The Pointed l;'eople' were passing of those days of prosperity. written there; and much of 'Hitty' One never knows how it wlll be, and all of 'Calico Bush' has that especially if one happens to ·be merely a 'poor 1knorant author' to borrow coast of !Maine setting.' Mfss Field spends her summers in a pet phrase from jCopey' of
ing this gifted writer whom !Maine Maine and her winters in /New York Harvard.". • • • • claims although she was !born in and Connecticut. Trotty, her dog, In the April 7th (N~w York Herald is one of her constant, worthr com\New York. Tribune "Books" "Time Out of Mind" 'Miss Field ror many years was panions. ' was reviewed by Robert P. Tristtam • • • • known as one of the most popular Referring to "Time Out of !Mind", Coffin, whose "Portrait of an Ameri!American story writers for young people of many ages. iHer prose here is what !Miss Field herself has can" and "Lost iearadise" ·belong to · th to say: e saga of which he speaks. rit is . . .. stories have always been enjoyed by In thmkmg over what. ·'.I could say grandly written and if only space a double audience. . The morals humorously implied in "Eliza and the of myself and why and how 'Time Out permitted entire re-print! Dr. 'Coffin !Elves"; the sedate and sagacious \ of Mind' came to be written, !I was says, in part: . "It is refreshing to read a book in side of "iHitty"; the historic detail 'of suli{)rised to discover a series of queer 1 ••qalico Bush"; the emotional analysis paradoxes. 1 wish could say that the year 1935 that leaves one vibrato! "Hepatica Hawks"; the old Eng- ~ ~ad been born on a sailing vessel on ing as one vibrates after reading a oyage round the Horn instead of saga. It is an event that a sage can lish 'background of "Little Dog Tobey"; the New York atmosphere of in a brownstone-front within two happen this. late in the form of a "Just Acmss the Street", all these blocks of the Grand central station. novel. Rachel Field's 'Time out of drew praise from · adults, while 1 would like to' think that my infant Mind' is such an event. This story younget readers loved their adven- eyes saw salt water and the bristling of !Maine is full of the ancient literspruces of the !Maine CO!l,St, ·but it ary absolutes. Thougb we are a turous pages. must 'be admitted that they peered young nation, we have 'been having·
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of Y rHer poetry, however, has been more from a carriage trundled in the brown a f east 1a t e1 of books built out 1 t· ou iBryant Park. sharply divided. "The Pointed People square of The coast of ·1Maint did not burst prir int~ 10na past which have the m 1ve and fundamental designs was the childrens' own, and "iPoints I was 15· [ often that would look well in an epic. 1 East", a kind of story telling in upon me till
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poetry definitely for those at least "Branches Green" over fifteen. struck a new note. It contained poetry written not for the purpose of pleasing young people, ,and theref ore has found for itself a double audience of older children who are appreciative of poetry_,and ~quits. Not so long ago Miss iField prowd her
wonder if that may not be the reaso:a Its dark, jugged shores and wooded islands made such lasting impressions on my adolescent emotions. "The big white houses that prosperous captains and shipbuilders set U? to overlook Penobscot Bay and the harbors always sth'red me to wonder at the 1011t era they represenFd. .And so [ suppose I was bound
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