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American Novels #9
Voices in the Dead House
Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott meet the horrors of the Civil War as they minister to its casualties
After the Union Army’s defeat at Fredericksburg in 1862, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott converge on Washington to nurse the sick, wounded, and dying. Whitman was a man of many contradictions: egocentric yet compassionate, impatient with religiosity yet moved by the spiritual in all humankind, bigoted yet soon to become known as the great poet of democracy. Alcott was an intense, intellectual, independent woman, an abolitionist and suffragist, who was compelled by financial circumstance to publish saccharine magazine stories yet would go on to write the enduring and beloved Little Women. As Lock captures the musicality of their unique voices and their encounters with luminaries ranging from Lincoln to battlefield photographer Mathew Brady to reformer Dorothea Dix, he deftly renders the war’s impact on their personal and artistic development.
Inspired by Whitman’s poem “The Wound-Dresser” and Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, the ninth stand-alone book in The American Novels series is a masterful dual portrait of two iconic authors who took different paths toward chronicling a country beset by prejudice and at war with itself.
After the Union Army’s defeat at Fredericksburg in 1862, Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott converge on Washington to nurse the sick, wounded, and dying. Whitman was a man of many contradictions: egocentric yet compassionate, impatient with religiosity yet moved by the spiritual in all humankind, bigoted yet soon to become known as the great poet of democracy. Alcott was an intense, intellectual, independent woman, an abolitionist and suffragist, who was compelled by financial circumstance to publish saccharine magazine stories yet would go on to write the enduring and beloved Little Women. As Lock captures the musicality of their unique voices and their encounters with luminaries ranging from Lincoln to battlefield photographer Mathew Brady to reformer Dorothea Dix, he deftly renders the war’s impact on their personal and artistic development.
Inspired by Whitman’s poem “The Wound-Dresser” and Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, the ninth stand-alone book in The American Novels series is a masterful dual portrait of two iconic authors who took different paths toward chronicling a country beset by prejudice and at war with itself.
288 pages, Paperback
Published July 5, 2022
About the author
Norman Lock
46 books41 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 8, 2022
Norman Lock's Voices in the Dead House is based on the fact that both Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott traveled to Washington DC during the Civil War to become hospital volunteers. In Voices in the Dead House, Lock gives each of these literary figures an opportunity to recount their experiences during this time. He's drawn on biographies, the writers' own work, and historical documents to assemble this pair of related monologues.
Lock is the author of the American Novels series, works of fiction that revisit classic literature and/or literary figures to explore the realities and possibilities of particular historical moments. His novels have drawn on the works of Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
His novels are not hagiographic. Instead Lock digs for the more complex identities of the individuals that can get lost over time as their legends grow. Of the two central characters in Voices in the Dead House, Whitman fares the worst. He's affectionate, generous, and alive to the world, but he's also clearly racist and quick to take offense, leading to brawling and wounded friendships. Lock is careful to document his sources for the racial opinions he ascribes to Whitman, anticipating readers' possible objections. Alcott fares better than Whitman, but is in a constant state of worrying/refusing to worry about her unmarried status, the financial burdens placed upon her by her family, and her father's abandonment of responsibility in his search for great truths along with other transcendentalists.
These are not necessarily the versions of Whitman and Alcott I want to celebrate. I want a Whitman who is as generous and all-embracing on issues of race as he is on other topics. I want an Alcott who doesn't repeatedly weigh every moment of an afternoon spent with a Union doctor about to move to a new posting. But I trust Lock's depictions and I appreciate their forced broadening of the our understandings of these figures.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.
Lock is the author of the American Novels series, works of fiction that revisit classic literature and/or literary figures to explore the realities and possibilities of particular historical moments. His novels have drawn on the works of Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
His novels are not hagiographic. Instead Lock digs for the more complex identities of the individuals that can get lost over time as their legends grow. Of the two central characters in Voices in the Dead House, Whitman fares the worst. He's affectionate, generous, and alive to the world, but he's also clearly racist and quick to take offense, leading to brawling and wounded friendships. Lock is careful to document his sources for the racial opinions he ascribes to Whitman, anticipating readers' possible objections. Alcott fares better than Whitman, but is in a constant state of worrying/refusing to worry about her unmarried status, the financial burdens placed upon her by her family, and her father's abandonment of responsibility in his search for great truths along with other transcendentalists.
These are not necessarily the versions of Whitman and Alcott I want to celebrate. I want a Whitman who is as generous and all-embracing on issues of race as he is on other topics. I want an Alcott who doesn't repeatedly weigh every moment of an afternoon spent with a Union doctor about to move to a new posting. But I trust Lock's depictions and I appreciate their forced broadening of the our understandings of these figures.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.
October 27, 2022
This is a wonderful book that spins out like a reverie from the single thread of a fact that Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott were both caring for injured soldiers during Civil War in Washington DC in January 1863. We are privy to their thoughts and actions.
Whitman is superbly drawn: he's magnanimous and bigoted, lusty and pure. The writing in his section is sonorous and lyrical.
Alcott's section is bit less thrilling. Perhaps, I have a stronger prior image of her personality in my mind. There's far too many thoughts about men and marriage. But the wanderings about her fiery temperament, her idols Emerson and Thoreau, the loss of her sister Lizzie and her irritatingly placid father are all well done.
The threads weave together in the last pages, with Alcott's typhoid dreams, the benign vision of the compassionate Whitman and Bronson Alcott all coalescing.
Recommended highly.
Whitman is superbly drawn: he's magnanimous and bigoted, lusty and pure. The writing in his section is sonorous and lyrical.
Alcott's section is bit less thrilling. Perhaps, I have a stronger prior image of her personality in my mind. There's far too many thoughts about men and marriage. But the wanderings about her fiery temperament, her idols Emerson and Thoreau, the loss of her sister Lizzie and her irritatingly placid father are all well done.
The threads weave together in the last pages, with Alcott's typhoid dreams, the benign vision of the compassionate Whitman and Bronson Alcott all coalescing.
Recommended highly.
January 20, 2026
This book bored me to tears. I was hoping for more
Half of it portrays Walt Whitman serving in a war hospital and the other half Louisa May Alcott doing the same. It's so stream-of-consciousness that it was difficult to follow. I didn't enjoy it, although I finished it.
Half of it portrays Walt Whitman serving in a war hospital and the other half Louisa May Alcott doing the same. It's so stream-of-consciousness that it was difficult to follow. I didn't enjoy it, although I finished it.
March 3, 2023
See my review at Reading World
February 21, 2025
loved !!!!!!
December 10, 2022
I wrote a much better review after I finished this and could remember it, but alas, it is still possible for one to disappear here. I was drawn to this book, which I received as an ARC in exchange for an honest review, because it featured actual historical figures, which I enjoy. And I did enjoy, but I think the author could have blended the points of view together better, it felt like there was an abrupt switch from Whitman to Alcott. Whitman came across at times as though speaking in a fever dream, and rather an odd duck, but of course, that may have have been exactly the case. My apologies to the author that my memory faded and I could not describe in better detail some of the finer details of his work - he certainly appears to be quite prolific and must know his history!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews