GIANT
Edna Ferber
Doubleday, 1952
447 pages
Although Michigan-born Edna Ferber isn’t a Southern or Southwestern writer, this work is still a, well, giant, in the lore and mythos of the Lone Star State. Indeed, a book this candid could’ve been written only by a total outsider, especially back then. And especially one with Ferber’s keen insights, sheer talent, and years of dogged research. Many respected nonfiction tomes are probably not as diligently researched as her novels. She often spent years learning the histories and intricacies and minutiae of settings like Texas, Connecticut, and Alaska, inadvertently underscoring America’s diversity of cultures. She took many trips to her intended settings and sought out interviews with as many people as she could meet there. She understood that her books’ main themes and points would fall completely flat if any little detail was not exactly right (sometimes literally down to the type of grass under the characters’ feet) and if she hadn’t precisely homed in on the very soul of a place. (For more about the groundwork Ferber put into Giant, see the review of Giant Love.)
When the novel Giant was published in 1952, many Texans initially took great offense at its less-than-flattering portrayal of their state, particularly its unjust treatment of Mexican Americans and women, and the excesses of some of its oil-boom millionaires. Some literally called for Ferber to be lynched. But by the time the movie Giant premiered at the box office in 1956, they seemed to have largely forgiven her more unsparing takes. Now it’s evolved into a beloved classic often giddily referred to as “the national movie of Texas,” and is still an integral part of Marfa’s tourism industry.
Yet the book itself, as well as the diminutive but dynamic woman who wrote it, seems to have fallen by the cultural wayside, which is almost another form of injustice. Rather ironic that a novel about a strong, smart, spirited young woman adapting to her new life in Texas (and the social changes occurring there) is somewhat eclipsed by the movie version produced by three men.
It’s often too easy to dismiss commercially successful writers, sort of a cultural shorthand for curmudgeons.
But her words still ring presciently true and are still culturally relevant today as we once again stare down fascism, misogyny, and racism, especially at the hands of big, rich men who cannot and will not see the truth about their overblown sense of exceptionalism, indifference to injustice, resistance to social change, and their neverending quest for unimaginable wealth. She was woke af before anyone ever even thought to call it that, but without being strident. Seventy-three years later, she’s still right, and there’s not a missed beat in this remarkable novel worth revisiting. –L. J. Gouveia
As long as you keep on fighting the things you think are wrong, you’re living. It isn’t the evil people in the world who do the most harm. It’s the sweet do-nothings that can destroy us.
–Edna Ferber, from Giant