Lockridge family histories: looking for the raintree. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sandweiss, Eric
• Is Part Of: Rethinking history. Volume 21:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 103
• Page End: 119
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Fiction -- literature -- literary -- Lockridge -- Indiana -- suicide -- novels -- Raintree County; Historiography -- Periodicals; History -- Periodicals; 905
• DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2016.1270564
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1364-2529

Abstract

Abstract: Novelist Ross Lockridge, Jr., killed himself months after the publication of his highly publicized novel, Raintree County . Why? This article seeks an answer in the writer's conflicted relationship to History: of his country, of his family (including his father, the best-known historian in his home state of Indiana), of his own grand ambitions. Lockridge had crafted a fictional hero, Johnny Shawnessy, who sought to 'hear the words before the words become History.' For the writer himself – and, subsequently, for his children, who carry on the family quest to reveal historical truth – History has proved a harder burden to overcome.