Thomas Sigismund Stribling

Thomas Sigismund Stribling (March 4, 1881 – July 8, 1965) was an American writer and lawyer who published under the name T.S. Stribling. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933 for his novel The Store.

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T. S. Stribling, photo taken prior to 1907, from T. S. Stribling collection at University of North Alabama archives

Life

Born March 4, 1881, in Clifton, Tennessee, a small town off the Tennessee River, Thomas Sigismund Stribling was the first child of lawyer Christopher Columbus Stribling and his wife, Amelia Ann (Waits) Stribling. Christopher Stribling had been a soldier in the Union Army, while the Waits family had fought in the Confederacy. T.S. Stribling would later say this resulted in his being a "doubter and a questioner" (Bain, 433). He would go on to use the stories of his parents, grandparents and extended family on both sides to create the realistic depth of his Southern Reconstruction novels.

Stribling completed his high school education at the age of seventeen, at Huntingdon Southern Normal University in 1899, in the nearby town of Huntingdon, Tennessee. By this time Stribling was convinced that he was meant to be a writer, having already sold his first story at the age of 12 for five dollars; Stribling was ready to get started with his future in literature. With that in mind, Stribling became the editor of a small weekly newspaper called the Clifton News. Stribling was hoping to use the Clifton News as a launching pad for his writing career, unfortunately Stribling was only there for about a year before his parents convinced him to return to school and complete his education. In the fall of 1902, Stribling graduated from the Florence Normal School, what is now recognized as the University of North Alabama, in Florence, Alabama. There, Stribling was able to earn his teaching certification in one year.

In 1903, Stribling moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to teach at the Tuscaloosa High School. He taught both mathematics and physical education. He actually only taught at the school for one year, having "no idea whatever of discipline" (Kunitz, 1359) before departing, preferring instead to continue his own education. In 1905, Stribling completed his law degree at the University of Alabama School of Law. Yet again he only used his newly earned education for a brief time, moving quickly from law office to law office: The Florence law office of George Jones, serving as clerk; the Florence law office of Governor Emmett O'Neal, where Stribling worked as a practicing lawyer; and law office of John Ashcraft, also as a practicing lawyer. Stribling went through three law offices in less than two years. It turns out that instead of working on clients' cases, Stribling was in fact using the office supplies, typewriter, and paid hours to perfect his writing craft. Under the advice of his fellow lawyers, Stribling gave up practicing law in 1907.

Writing career

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The March 1927 Amazing Stories cover-featured a reprint of Stribling's "The Green Splotches"

After moving to Nashville, Tennessee in 1907, Stribling picked up a job at the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine as a writer and salesman of ads and subscriptions and as "a sort of sublimated office boy." (Kunitz, 1359) It was at the magazine that Stribling had two works of fiction published: The Imitator and The Thrall of the Green, both reflecting the social themes for which he would later become renowned.

Repeating his pattern and encouraged by his small success, Stribling left the magazine in 1908. He then moved to New Orleans where he produced "Sunday-school stories at the phenomenal rate of seven per day; many of these stories were eventually published by denominational publishing houses." (Martine, 73) Stribling went on to write many more Sunday-school stories as well as adventure stories for boys that were printed in various pulp magazines such as: American Boy, Holland's Magazine, The Youth's Companion, Adventure, and Everybody's Magazine; it was these writings that afforded Stribling to, for the first time, live off the profits of his creative ability. For Adventure, Stribling wrote detective stories featuring his psychologist sleuth Doctor Poggioli. Stribling also wrote some science fiction stories with satirical undertones, such as "The Green Splotches" (1920), about aliens in South America, and "Mogglesby" (1930), featuring intelligent apes.

In 1917, The Cruise of the Dry Dock was published in a limited print run of 250 copies. This was Stribling's first effort at a novel. It most likely was heavily influenced by his boy-like adventure writings for his various pulp magazines. It was a World War I seaborne adventure story set in the German infested waters of the Sargasso Sea, where the American crew tries to escape capture and certain death by the hands of the evil enemy. "A potboiler, The Cruise of the Dry Dock is neither in its style nor its choice of subject matter particularly original or impressive." (Martine, 73)

Serialized in seven parts in Century Magazine, Birthright was collected into novel form in 1922. This is considered to be Stribling's first serious novel as well as being the work that introduces to the world his ability to reconstruct not only the landscape of the South, but the heartache as well. Birthright was highly praised by critics in both the black and white communities. Birthright is the story of a young African American (mulatto) man, Peter Siner, who returns home after completing his education at Harvard; he is hoping to effect some changes and to heal racial rifts in his small southern home town of Hooker's Bend, Tennessee. He fails to heal the social rift of the community because of the wide and dividing prejudices of both the white and black man. In defeat, Peter ends up moving to another small town just north of the Dixie Line.

Birthright was a major departure from the pulp adventure stories for which Stribling was thus far characteristically known. Birthright is a serious social critique of not only the social practices of the South, but all of America—its social rules, taboos and even laws such as the Jim Crow laws or the Tennessee-initiated Segregation Seating Act for Railroad Cars in 1881, which paved the way for other states and the creation of other related laws. This novel also reflects historical populace movements such as "The Great Migration". Wprld War I had broken out in Europe, and although America was not yet fighting in the war, the nation was supplying goods for the war; in response, the Northern manufacturers recruited Southern black workers to fill the demand for factory workers. "From 1910 to 1930 between 1.5 million and 2 million African Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the North." (Encarta Encyclopedia 2003) It is from these times that the South, as well as America, is trying to heal the social fault; it may be this America that Peter Siner is supposed to embody.

During the time that Stribling was writing his adventure stories for the various pulp magazines, he was also doing some world travel, going through Europe, Cuba and Venezuela. It was in Venezuela that Stribling formed the inspiration for the novels Fombombo (1923), Red Sand (1924), and Strange Moon (1929). All three are set in Venezuela, and all three focus on the different class levels of Venezuela, with a touch of a love and adventure thrown into the stories. All three are considered to be the lighter, “fun” reading of Stribling's works.

Teeftallow (1926) and Brightmetal (1928) are both novels returning to what Stribling would eventually be well known for: the social satire of middle Tennessee. Both novels are set in middle Tennessee and even share some of the same characters. These novels approach the problems of the South through the eyes of the middle class and the poor of the local white people. Neither won any high critical praise, but both were well received by the reading community.

The Vaiden Trilogy

1930 was a highly significant year for Stribling. It was the year he produced his eleventh novel, The Forge (1931), the first book of his trilogy following the Vaiden family. Further, the same year he married Lou Ella Kloss, a music teacher and hometown friend.

Set in Florence, Alabama, this trilogy follows three generations of the Vaiden family. "Through not great literary art, Stribling's trilogy is, nevertheless, historically significant; for in The Forge, The Store, and Unfinished Cathedral, Stribling introduced a subject matter, themes, plot elements, and character types which parallel and at the same time anticipate those that William Faulkner, who owned copies of this trilogy, would treat in Absalom, Absalom! and in the Snopes trilogy." (Martine, 76) These three novels represent the best of Stribling and his ability to call forth the Southern landscapes, as well as the Southern heartaches during the period of the Civil War restoration.

The Forge follows the story of Miltiades Vaiden who served in the Civil War and has now returned to his homeland in hopes of picking up again his family's yeoman tradition and rebuilding the now destroyed south that he remembers with longing. Finding work, Vaiden soon also finds the woman that he wishes to marry, not out of love or even lust, but as a means to reach his dreams. The girl rejects him, instead choosing to marry a richer man with political ambitions. Vaiden does not miss a beat; he instead marries another girl, middle-class Ponny BeShears, who he does not find especially attractive, but she will gain a nice inheritance when her father passes away, which he hopes will be enough to move him into the middle-class.

Stribling’s most famous novel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Store (1932), is the second book in The Vaiden Trilogy. Returning to the story of Miltiades Vaiden, several years have passed since the closing of The Forge. Where the first novel opened up at the beginning of the Civil War and ended with the abolishment of slavery, The Store picks up with the South establishing a new economic order. Throughout the course of the novel, Vaiden cultivates a reputation for honesty and square dealing, as well as choosing opportune moments to lie and steal. His successes and failures in the arena of commerce contribute much to the dynamics of the storyline.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that Vaiden long ago raped a young black girl working on his land, Gracie, whose father was Jimmie Vaiden, Miltiades' own father. Gracie became pregnant with a boy and named him Toussaint, never revealing the truth of his parentage to the boy or to Vaiden. Keeping her son with her and educating him over the course of his life has been beneficial to the young man, and Gracie quietly hopes that Toussaint, who appears to be white, will some day be able to travel north, pass as a white man, and marry a white woman. Toussaint's behavior and "uppity" attitude are a central point of tension throughout the story.

The final book in the trilogy is The Unfinished Cathedral (1934). Again set in Florence, now in the 1920s and focusing still on the Vaiden family. President Hoover has enacted the Tennessee Valley Authority works in order to supply electricity to the nearby towns. This has caused a real estate boom in the small Alabama town, where the now well aged Vaiden wants to take full advantage of this boom. Anyone who can read already knows about the coming dam and the coming housing boom, so the people that have even a little money go after the people that are left out of the loop, the local blacks. The local whites offer these uneducated black people sums of money they can't refuse, or simply run them off their land, or find other means to cheat them out of their land.

Repeating the cycle of his father, the younger Vaiden son has repeated his father's acts by raping the mulatto girl that works in their house…not knowing that the girl is actually his half sister, getting her pregnant with a son. The girl and her son run off north in hopes of finding something better for themselves. The boy then ends up in jail, where his Vaiden grandfather has to come rescue him.

Meanwhile, the town pastor has also gotten caught up in the fever of all the materialism around town. This is reflected in his ignoring the spiritual needs of the townspeople and instead putting his focus on building a great cathedral.

Stribling's last two novels are set far away from the rural south in New York City and in Washington, D.C. The Sound Wagon (1935), a political novel set in both cities, is a look at America’s political system and ideals. Like The Vaiden Trilogy, the novel is a satire. The main character is a young lawyer named Henry Caridius who goes to Washington, D.C. in hopes of making great changes and fails, very similar to the plot of Birthright.

These Bars of Flesh (1938), Stribling’s last book, is set in New York City. This novel may have been a reaction to Stribling’s own time teaching English at Columbia University in 1935. The novel is set in a NYC university with Andrew Barnett attending from Georgia hoping to attain his degree. Stribling takes a satiric look at campus politics, professor tenure and education, and the amount of the students’ lack of awareness.

After his last novel, Stribling continued to write mysteries for various magazines. These were eventually collected: The Best of Dr. Poggioli, 1934-1940 (1975).

Stribling and his wife returned to his hometown of Clifton to live in 1959. During his final months, when he was in declining health, the couple stayed in Florence, where he died on July 8, 1965. He is buried in Clifton, and the town has turned the Striblings' home into a museum and library devoted to his life and career.

References

• Bain, Robert, comp. and ed. Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Press, 1979. 433.
• Kunitz, Stanley, ed. Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942. 1359.
• Martine, James J., ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Volume Nine, American Novelist, 1910-1945, Part 3: Mari Sandoz-Stark Young. Detroit, MI: 1981. 72

Works

Novels

• The Cruise of the Dry Dock (1917)
• Birthright (1921), First published as a serial in Century Magazine in 1921, then as a novel in 1922, later adapted into a film under the same title in 1924 and 1939.
• Fombombo (1922)
• Red Sand (1923)
• Teeftallow (1926)
• Bright Metal (1928)
• East is East (1922)
• Strange Moon (1929)
• Backwater (1930)
• The Forge (1931)
• The Store (1932), winner of the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel
• Unfinished Cathedral (1933)
• The Sound Wagon (1935)
• These Bars of Flesh (1938)
• "Apology To Florence", June 1934, an article in Wings Magazine.
• Coauthor (with David Wallace) of Rope, a dramatization of Teeftallow, produced on Broadway (1928)

Short fiction

• Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D. (1929)
• Best Dr. Poggioli Detective Stories (1975)
• Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (2004)
• Web of the Sun (2012) - also contains "The Green Splotches"

Poetry

• Design on Darkness

Non-fiction

• Laughing Stock: The Posthumous Autobiography of T.S. Stribling (1982)

External links

• T.S. Stribling Museum
• "T. S. Stribling: Southern Literary Maverick" short biography by William E. Smith, Jr. at the University of North Alabama Collier Library website.
• Thomas Sigismund Stribling at the Internet Movie Database
• T.S. Stribling at the Internet Broadway Database
• Photos of the first edition of The Store
• Works by Thomas Sigismund Stribling at Project Gutenberg