Anita Diamant: The Last Days of Dogtown (2005)

The blurb on the back cover of Anita Diamant's The Last Days of Dogtown gives a useful introduction to this novel, which is set in Dogtown near the fishing town of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts:

'[T]he village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and "witches." Among the inhabitants of this hamlet are Black Ruth, who dresses as a man and works as a stonemason; Mrs. Stanley, an imperious madam whose grandson, Sammy, comes of age in her brothel; Oliver Younger, who survives a miserable childhood at the hands of his aunt; and Cornelius Finson, a freed slave. At the center of it all is Judy Rhines, a fiercely independent soul, deeply lonely, who nonetheless builds a life for herself against all imaginable odds.'

The 'real' Dogtown is now a deserted village remembered mainly for the inspirational boulders Roger Ward Babson paid workers to carve there (see link below), but Diamant's fictional construction, as the book title suggests, fictionally reconstructs the final years of Dogtown as an inhabited village.

The story begins in 1814 and continues over a number of years, and as the blurb suggests, Dogtown is depicted as a community of outsiders where (by 19th century values at least) social transgression is rife: Mrs Stanley's sex workers Sally and Molly have a happy (but hidden) lesbian relationship while her grandson seems to be asexual; the sexual relationship between the white Judy and the black Cornelius is to shock Cape Ann and drive Judy to Cambridge in the end; and the alcoholic Stanwood manifests distinctly psychotic tendencies: in parts, the reader can almost imagine, say, Jack Torrance, the character played by Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

The Last Days in Dogtown moves through a series of tableaux concerning one or two people as opposed to a strictly chronological sequence, and it follows from this that there is no central character. Nor is the style consistent: pages of cartoonish humor (Tammy Younger and her gruesome teeth extractions, Stanwood's brief (and very unconvincing) conversion) are counterpointed by pathos, by the triumph of different kinds of love over the material, making this a very moving – if slightly uneven – read.

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The Babson Boulders

Charles Olson in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

Often mentioned in the same breath as Black Mountain College, North Carolina, the poet Charles Olson - who was born in Saugus, Massachusetts - lived here from 1958, which was where he'd spent his summers as a child, and where he stayed until his death in 1970. The huge collection Maximus Poems centers on the history of Gloucester and the area, such as the abandoned Dogtown Commons. His main infuences are Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.

'Charles Olson

Poet

1910 - 1970'

Olson was friends (although not without problems) with another Gloucester poet - Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007) - whom he'd originally visited in Gloucester as a kind of fan after reading 'This House'. Ferrini was a working-class poet who'd worked as a shoe factory worker and in a GEC factory in Lynn, and had a picture frame workshop in his garage at his home on East Main Street, Gloucester, where he lived for 50 years.

This is a link to Hydra Magazine article 'The Battle of Gloucester: Vincent Ferrini Meets Charles Olson'.

Judith Sargent Murray in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

 Judith Sargent Murray spent almost all of her life in Gloucester and was a powerful supporter of women's rights. Her education came from reading in her parents' large library. She was an essayist, poet, playwright and editor who wrote 'On the Equality of the Sexes' (which predates Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)) as 'Constantia'.

And opposite the house, a long mural in which Murray is the main focus:

'THIS MURAL WAS PAINTED IN 1996 BY BE SARGENT ALLEN TO HONOR

JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY OF GLOUCESTER (1751 - 1820)

FEMINIST, VISIONARY & COMMUNITY ACTIVIST'

Boat Building, Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

I firmly believe that GPS is not sent from heaven, and that getting lost is very often educational: having turned off at the wrong interstate exit, we found ourselves lost in South Gloucester with no clue where to go, but then we spotted a resident getting into her car, and on her discovering that we were heading for downtown Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts, she told me to follow her, and I did – right up to the front of her workplace:

Susanne Altenburger builds boats, and this is what she's doing now in Gloucester.  It was fascinating talking about this project to Susanne, and more detail of this work is available in a Gloucester Times article here.