I Hear Men Talking

by Meridel Le Sueur, Linda Ray Pratt (Introduction)

This work first appeared in a story collection in 1984, six years after the author, octogenarian Meridel Le Sueur, had rescued the yellowing manuscript from her basement. Strikingly parallel to Le Sueur's city novel The Girl , I Hear Men Talking was written primarily in the 1930s, depicting life in rural Iowa during the Depression. In the novel the girl Penelope runs about the town, visiting its principal actors and recovering their the ruined Mr. Littlefield recalls his bygone days of eloquence; the self-deceived Miss Shelly provides a mystery for Penelope to unravel; the farmers talking behind the closed doors of their houses stir up a fresh brew of revolt. Penelope's mother Mona and grandmother Gee recall the author's own family in troubled times. In this revised edition the novel stands alone. Linda Ray Pratt has carefully re-edited the manuscript and provides a new introduction. In an afterword written in 1984, Meridel Le Sueur considers her reasons for publishing the "The artist's duty now is to recreate a new image of the world, to return to the people their need and vision . . . . of a new birth of abundance and equality."

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1984

About the author

“The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost.”

Meridel LeSueur, North Star Country (1945)

Meridel LeSueur’s poetry, her short stories, and novels are a beloved part of the cultural and political fabric of our times. She was one of the great women literary and communal voices of the twentieth century, which her long life spanned. In describing her own roots Meridel wrote, “I was born at the beginning of the swiftest and bloodiest century at Murray, Iowa in a white square puritan house in the corn belt, of two physically beautiful people who had come west through the Indian and the Lincoln country, creating the new race of the Americas by enormous and rugged and gay matings with the Dutch, the Indian, the Irish; being preachers, abolitionists, agrarians, radical lawyers on the Lincoln, Illinois, circuit. Dissenters and democrats and radicals through five generations.”

Meridel was born on February 22, 1900, and she died in Hudson, Wisconsin on November 14, 1996. As a child she lived in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Minnesota. She believed in giving voice to people’s struggles. She said she learned early to write down what they were saying, hiding behind water troughs in the streets, under tables at home—listening. Listening to the tales of the lives of the people, her writings were grounded in these grassroots, salt-of-the-earth stories and experiences of working people, of the poor, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed. She strove to make history a living, moving entity in our lives. She once said that words should heat you, they should make you rise up out of your chair and move!

She led a colorful and vibrant life. As a young woman, she studied physical culture and drama in Chicago and New York City, and she plied her talent in the silent movies in California as a stunt woman. As a young activist she lived for a time in Emma Goldman’s commune in New York City. She wrote from and was part of the great social and political movements of her time. Her writing encompasses proletarian novels, widely anthologized short stories, partisan reportage, children’s books, personal journals, and powerful feminist poetry.

Her early works, in addition to profound working class consciousness, are also focused on the struggles of women, and particularly poor women, those sterilized without their consent in so-called mental hospitals, those on the breadlines, those whose lives and oppression more traditional leftwing ideologues did not comprehend.

Her children’s books found heroes and sheroes in US history and are especially noteworthy for their non-racist depiction of Native American peoples and cultures. Meridel believed her writing could be a bridge making connections across many different cultures. The diverse communities that identify with and celebrate her work are a moving testament to the depth and power of her writing.

Meridel saw Halley’s Comet twice, once when she was 10 years old and again when she was 85. We are certain that the impact of her work will be felt the next time Halley’s comes around….and the next… and the next….seven generations and more from today! Meridel’s life and writings testify to the profoundly democratic idea that positive social change always bubbles up—and sometimes erupts—from below. With Marx she would agree that to be radical means to go to the root of things—and at the root of things are the people themselves. She would enthusiastica

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel examines the coming of age of Penelope as she encounters the brutal world of sexuality amidst the grumblings of a home grown farmer’s rebellion. She lives with her cranky grandmother and her rebellious mother, both of whom fail to offer significant models of sexuality for the young girl to follow. Le Suer’s story is filled with memorable characters full of frustrations and failures. This book is very hard on men – as Penelope comes to realize the vicious brutality that the other female characters already know. Her crush is described as a hound or a wolf on pursuit. His betrayal of her mirrors his betrayal of the farmer’s movement.

The introduction to the book by Linda Ray Pratt is excellent, and worth reading even if you ignore the novel. The book itself was too slow and lyrical for me to get into right away, but by the end it captured me.

Meridel Le Suer was a prominent writer associated with the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. She retained her radical politics to the end of her days. I hear Men Talking was written in the early 1930s. Le Suer infuses her texts with an earth-based eco-feminist philosophy that grew out of her friendship with an older native woman she knew as a child. I was relieved that there were no problematic “ecological Indians” running through her work.

On the republishing of her novels Le Suer wrote, “I didn’t want these short novels, written in the Thirties and Forties, to be published unless they would serve the purpose of illuminating the struggle between the dying class of the oppressor and the rising class of the oppressed. This is the crucial axis of our time not merely an aesthetic. The artist’s duty now is to recreate a new image of the world, to return to the people their need and vision of a world of a new birth of abundance and equality.”

I was impressed by the similarity of the approach to nature and labor in the works of Sanora Babb, Meridel Le Sueur, and Tillie Olson.