A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Betty Smith – certainly no pretension there, in her name. 

Why does a book like this, or any book, achieve “classic” status – read and recommended by millions – timelessly, decade after decade. 

There’s no, for all books, one single answer.  Every classic will have its own genesis.  For the Brooklyn book, I am a proponent of the following reasons. 

There is the classic memoir style of personal exploits, romances, tragedies, and successes.  This starts with Odysseus by Homer millennia ago and continues to this day as the most popular form of relating stories.  With the semi-lyrical form of crafting her stories as though told around the kitchen table, Betty Smith captures the metrical, the choral, and the familial moral essence of all story-telling.

This memoir style works best in modern {written} times, when the primary subject is the major upheaval of the majority segment of society.  Classical subjects have been: class change: serf to urban worker; urban to intellectual worker {yet to come}; political upheaval – governing ideas; wars; technology; and the inclusion of women, racial differences, and sexual preferences {in process}.  A sub-stylistic aspect is the incorporation of local argot, which she does very well – no bias.  The writing is at a generic, common-man level:   gender,  race,  religion --- all are included at the table.

Well, these criteria still allow for tens of thousands of texts.  How do I keep filtering?  It is very hard, but oh, so important, to be able to age with your protagonist as a story begins to span years.  Betty Smith has used the writing devices available to her.  The pre-teen girl recounts her adventures in perfect memoir style: recounting all the well-researched specifics that will please her middle-aged audience.  Her romantic “PaPa” is her icon of this period.

Betty’s writing about her teen years tended to drift into the play scripting of O’Neill and Wilder, with revelations sort of like Dreiser’s.  Her stories became more dramatic and less factual.  Practical “MaMa” became her icon for these years.  There is no dis-associating the author from her personal history.  This is still memoir.

And finally, when she writes, for her older audience, about America going off to WW-I, the ethos is far more about WW-II.  She’s grown up as an author and really can’t capture those thoughts of 25 years before.  But why should she? 

Do all women have the Lee vs Ben conflict?  Francie has moved on, well beyond “on” by the end of this book.  I have been reminded, from this reading, that all women have this Lee-Ben quandary.  I get no vote: I’m neither Ben nor Lee.

But this is another thing about being a great classic, the story must pose questions, and Betty’s does,  dangled throughout, that are never answered:  Ben or Lee; Michigan or Brooklyn; marriage or not; children or not; writing or working; career or children.