Title: The Egg and I by Betty McDonald
Details: Copyright 1945, J. B. Lippincott Company
Synopsis (By Way of Good Reads Summary): "When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor.
An immortal, hilarious and heartwarming classic about working a chicken farm in the Northwest, a part of which first appeared in a condensed serialization in the Atlantic monthly."
Why I Wanted to Read It: One of my childhood favorites that has carried into adulthood is by Betty MacDonald, although it is not The Egg and I. The stories of Mrs Piggle-Wiggle, the odd sort of magical nanny/baby-sitter/child psychologist, spans not just the original four books by McDonald published in the 1940s and 1950s (I can't find that they were ever out of print), but the unpublished stories/notes for stories found by her daughter after her death and completed years later and published fifty years after the first book (2007) and apparently a spin-off "Missy Piggle-Wiggle" which I haven't yet read.
But it's not for Mrs Piggle-Wiggle that MacDonald found fame. Her work before that was a bestseller that featured an enormously popular cinematic adaptation (that I haven't seen, but have heard much about). Since it was a kind of memoir, I was extremely curious to finally read it.
How I Liked It: The Mrs Piggle-Wiggle books are intended for children but with enough cleverness for adults (without too much winking) that they're easily enjoyable reading by any age. The Egg and I is a memoir very much for adults and I fully realize the pitfalls of reading a favorite childhood author's adult work, but the voice MacDonald uses for the memoir is still a bit jarring to those expecting Mrs Piggle-Wiggle.
The book begins not with the chicken farm that MacDonald was suckered into by her first husband, but a quick look at her life story until that point. It's genuinely funny in places as she describes her quirky family, but the book doesn't really find its footing until we get to the farm.
It's easy to see why the Kettles, a fictionalized version of MacDonald's uncouth and shyster neighbors (at least if her version is to be believed, and given their actions surrounding the book, she was probably fairly close), were the breakout stars. The book comes to life when MacDonald has them as foils. I've talked before recently about a narrative voice being an important part of a memoir, and MacDonald's is quite good. She's considered strange by her neighbors for liking to read and being so thoroughly incompetent at farm life, and MacDonald does neat work with filling in herself distinctly but relatably, particularly given the fact she's more or less the straight man to her neighbors. There's not just the Kettles, but other families all singularly strange and at times even hilarious in their own ways.
It's worth noting now that this book is an excellent piece of history. You probably have preconceived notions about what a humorous memoir in the 1940s (particularly one written by a woman describing her life on a farm) and I bet they don't involve abortion jokes, infertility jokes, and mocking her husband's masculinity (when in private they are equal partners, surrounded by other farmers, he becomes a sexist blowhard, dismissing his wife completely, and she's not only fully aware of this, it's considered remarkable).
But a preconceived notion you'd have about a humorous memoir written in the 1940s might possibly be racism and you'd unfortunately be right about that one. Here is where I feel the book takes such a drastic turn it's hard to get back.
To be clear, I'm not referring to the type of racism as "Well, yes, those characters I suppose are stereotypes with our modern knowledge but people didn't know that then" (although there is some of that), I'm referring to "THIS RACE IS INFERIOR" to the point that even at the book's initial release apparently that was a complaint. She alludes to this early on remarking that she doesn't want to share any characteristics with any Indian, and if you're hoping that's a one-off, pretty-awful-as-it-is comment, you're unfortunately woefully wrong. She devotes at least one whole chapter to the most vile and ugly stereotypes about Native people in the United States and it reads like a checklist. It'd be one thing if somehow the only Native people MacDonald met somehow embodied every horrible stereotype and she decided to write about them. It's another to repeatedly assert that they're all like that. There's a particularly vile mean-spiritedness about the subject whenever it comes up that derails the otherwise fairly carefree "can-you-believe-this?" nature of MacDonald's storytelling that makes it somehow even worse.
I admit, I struggled with how I felt about this. I think it's an interesting look at a genre we think of as being modern and it's fascinating to see how it was then. There are genuinely funny parts of the book that show why it has the reputation it does. But any time she mentioned Indians, it's like the music changes abruptly and as I said, this was apparently something felt even at the time.
I think the book still has value for historical purposes, and some of the humor is timeless. But a giant caveat has to be MacDonald's racism, and I think too often people are willing to handwave away bigotry as being "a product of its time" without realizing that we're not consuming it in its time (and sometimes even for its time, it would be considered bigoted).
For the strongest source of MacDonald's magic, it appears you still can't beat Mrs Piggle-Wiggle.
Final Grade: For content independent of her comments about Native people,
B
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