Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr.

I tend to shy away from reading biographies written by family members of the subject, fearing the author's lack of objectivity. But having just read Raintree County on Sept 26, I decided to read this work by Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s son. That was a wise decision. I think the book is made better by the family insight which Larry Lockridge brings to the book, even though he was only five at the time of his father's death. The book is very well researched--probably better than it would have been if written by some unrelated author. And it is just as well written as it is researched, with it being clear that the author is an able and skilled writer. The reader gets caught up in the actually very impressive story, which goes thru the life of Ross Lckridge, Jr., in fascinating detail from his earliest years, thru his brilliant career at Indiana University (he amassed the highest grade score ever earned at the University), his time in Europe, his marriage to the love of his life on July 11, 1937, his teaching years, the writing of the book which has earned him a unique place in America's literary canon, and the fearsome events after the book was finished and when it was published. The account of the final months of the life made understandable to me what I had hitherto deemed inexplicable--that Ross Lockridge, Jr., should take his own life when his book was garnering nationwide attention. I am confident that anyone who reads Raintree County will be enriched by reading this excellent biography while the novel is still fresh in the reader's mind.

At 33, Ross Lockridge, Jr. gassed himself in his garage, following publication of his inventive, 1066-page novel Raintree County (1947). His son Larry Lockridge here cuts his father a new suit and redresses an injured great American writer. Few readers know much more about Ross Lockridge, Jr. than was drawn in John Leggett's Ross and Tom, a dual biography of two writers who seemingly could not face vast success, Lockridge and fellow literary suicide Thomas Heggan, the author of Mister Roberts (1948). Legget's Lockridge, a motormouth egomaniac, was underresearched, we now see, and distorted as a funhouse mirror. Larry Lockridge here faces the double task of writing a biography of his father and of answering the question: What drove his father to this ruthless act against himself. In doing this Larry Lockridge has written what amounts to a major work on depression: Shade of the Raintree is a superb analytic description of clinical depression, as it was vaguely grasped in 1948 and then as it is understood today. At the same time he describes a great American tragedy, the story of a Midwestern hero of great gifts and genius who inherits the spirit of Whitman but comes to grief against the materialism of Houghton Mifflin, MGM, and the Book of the Month Club who shrink the hero's great work down to salability. The hero's tragic flaw is "competitiveness." Known as "A-plus Lockridge" because of his unrivaled scholarly achievements, a master of many languages, a writer possessed of photographic memory who could type 100 words a minute, an athlete who married the most beautiful and intelligent woman he'd ever met, Lockridge set out to surpass Joyce, Wolfe, Hemingway, Melville, that whole crew, only to pull his country's commercial monoliths down on his head, with MGM then erecting a terrible movie as his marker. Immensely moving. Deserves the Pulitzer Prize that, in 1948, went to James Gould Cozzens' faded Guard of Honor.

This is a biography of the author's father, Ross Lockridge, Jr., who in 1948 published the novel RAINTREE COUNTY, 1,000 pages long, his only book. A few months later, he killed himself. Ross appears to have been an over-achiever who thought he'd written The Great American Novel, and couldn't stand the critics panning it. He also had tremendous difficulty with his publisher (Houghton-Mifflin), who demanded large cuts and much rewriting, under great pressure. The suicide is still a tough thing to comprehend, though, since once the book was published it was selling fairly well and had sold to Hollywood. This biography is interesting and very well written.

This book is a biography of his father, Ross Lockridge, Jr. The book was so good I almost emailed the author a few years ago to tell him so, but i wussed out. I read Larry's book right after reading Raintree County, and cried, and I never cry! It was so sad what happened to his father, not to mention America, for the loss of one of its' greatest authors, in my humble opinion. I highly reccomend it, but only for people who have read Raintree County.. I heard about Raintree County in James Michener's autobiography, "The World is My Home." (Pass on my email address to Larry Lockridge so maybe we can communicate)