Journey in the Dark

by Martin Flavin

Good condition book. 1944 Peoples book Club edition. All pages appear to be present, no writing or tears to pages. The title is printed in the spine and much of it has rubbed off and is hard to make out.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, Coming Of Age, Literature, 20th Century

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Martin Archer Flavin won Pulitzer Prize for novel in 1944 for Journey in the Dark, his fifth and last work of fiction. It is the story of a boy who grew up in a poor family and his adventures in love and business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_...

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never grew very attached to Sam in this book and was never really rooting for him. I found that he was not a very interesting protagonist and that his life was truly not all that interesting. I didn't really feel that his morals were as compromised as other Pulitzer heroes Martin Arrowsmith or George Amberson who both felt more human. It was also very depressing (as perhaps a novel written at the beginning of a horrendous war would be expected to be.)
Granted that 1942 was a war year and so folks had other preoccupations, maybe the committee suffered from a lack of choices. In any case, I was not inspired by this one at all.

Some quotes:
"The taxi emerged out of the park and turned west onto Deming. And it had changed. The neighborhood had cheapened and was getting shabby. There were few private homes left; the street was lined with flat buildings, not very good ones - milk bottles on the window sills. No suggestion of that pleasant old world atmosphere remained. The war had finished that:and the good German people who had brought it from their homeland had nearly all passed on..." (pp. 392)

"I don't hate anybody, and I don't believe they can make me feel that way, or that it's necessary to feel that way to win, or that winning wouldn't be defeated by it. And I think that most of my friends feel about the same as I do - the boys I knew at Harvard and the fellows in the factories making guns." (pp. 400)



My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!):

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is the story of Sam Braden’s life. Sam’s family, who lives in the small town of Wyattville in Iowa, just across the border from Ilinois, is very poor, mostly because Sam’s father shows little initiative. Sam becomes aware at an early age of the class differences in the town and of the financial situation of his family. Sam quits school early to help his family financially and to get an early start on his career. He is determined to make some money and to make something of himself. Sam’s mother encourages him to be a “good man, rather than a great man.”

Journey in the Dark won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. This story of Sam’s life encompasses the late 1800’s through WWII. The novel has its flaws. In the first 100 pages Sam Braden, as a boy, says “Shucks” and Aw, Shucks” so many times as to become irritating for me. There are also a few turns in the plot that seem very unlikely. Finally, the structure is repetitive: a plot twist is partially revealed and then the story goes back to cover events up to that point, including details about the plot twist. This structure is well executed but became tedious for me. The novel addresses issues of class differences and racial discrimination but doesn’t give enough weight to these issues. The real crux of the novel, though, is what makes someone a “good man” or makes a life have meaning. Flavin is a good storyteller, and I found myself interested in the characters and how everything would turn out all the way to the end.

I have found that many of the American novels that I have read that were written during the 1920’s - 40’s focus on the lifetime of a single individual or a generation of a specific family. Clearly that was a successful approach for that time period. This novel very much follows that approach, but does it with good storytelling, which almost always makes for a winner.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story about a young man, Sam Braden, shaped by his earliest realization of being poor and following his life up and out of poverty to become a man of some prominence and influence. The story itself is quite engaging and follows a pattern typical of much of the writing of the period: a kind of personal epic and the story of an unsung hero of the best of American values in a rapidly changing country. I would describe the depiction of Sam Braden's life as steadiness and quiet persistence. He is not really heroic in any traditional understanding of the term, but his regular steadiness and goodness make him what could be considered an exemplary American hero story.

I very much consider this novel Pulitzer worthy and I found the depth of development in the more important and central characters of the story to be very well-plumbed. Sam Braden, Mitch Ballou, Eileen Wyatt, Emelie Kranz, Nelly and Madge Braden, all have some surprising depth to them.

The two main criticisms I have of the novel are that the narrative at time gets to be a bit jumpy and scattered. I think maybe Flavin struggled with how to mark transitional phases in the telling of Sam Braden's life. He manages it o.k., I guess; but I would still contend that it was one of the disconcerting weaknesses in the novel. The intermingling of flashback and in-time narrative at times threw off the chronology of the narrative; but it was always redeemed. In other words, the reader feels a bit lost in the narrative timeline for a few pages on multiple occasions, but Flavin always recovers the storyline and gets the reader back on track without losing the reader's interest or the narrative's overall coherence. The second criticism has to do with the incredulous coincidence of paths crossing over time in ways that defy any realistic aspect of life. For instance, I just found it too unbelievable that Sam would randomly encounter his brother Tom in a saloon in "Tia Juana" or his sister Nelly at a burlesque show; or that his own son would make friends with his alter-ego's son (by his own former wife, nonetheless!) in a school in Switzerland. And there were dozens of such moments that simply would never happen in real life with the frequency that they did in this novel.

Even still, the novel was an engaging read. It reminded me in many respects of Margaret Ayer Barnes' "Years of Grace" (in the sense of a personal life story serving as the proxy for the generational changes of the late 1800s and the early 1900s. It also follows the story-telling conventions of Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons" and Ernest Poole's "His Family." I recommend the book, again not as a transformative and timeless work of American literature, but simply as a very competent effort to represent a particular kind of literature at a particular moment in American literary history.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark won the Pulitzer in 1944 and interestingly seems to be a fairly unknown book I happened to find a copy in a library book sale for 50 cents and had I not been looking for Pulitzer's I would have passed it by. It is the life story of Sam Braden who grows up poor in a town a couple hours outside of Chicago and vows to be rich like the Wyatt's who are the most prominent family in Wyattville. He falls in love with Eileen Wyatt and spends most of his early years trying to impress her. The book is amazingly ahead of its time as you read through there is a lot of foreshadowing and then it does some jumping from current to past tense. Although Sam himself is successful, his family is a mess - his siblings are made of bums, drug addicts and a lonely spinster. However as he goes through life, his Journey in the Dark, the book is a cautionary tale that says you can have money but it doesn't buy the true happiness. Overall an amazing book...

[William Adam Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a Pulitzer winning novel, this book seems to have been largely forgotten. You don't hear people mention it like the other Pulitzer winners. It was a compelling read, creating several memorable characters. It's the story of Sam Braden, who is born into a family living in poverty at the turn of the century in rural Illinois. As a young boy, Sam is instructed to deliver a dress that his mother made to the house of the Wyatts, the rich, admired family in town. Sam secretly holds a flame for Eileen Wyatt, his classmate, but she seems to him to be out of his league. He is carrying the dress up the Wyatt's steps when he slips on some snow and falls. Several kids laugh at him, but not Eileen, and Eileen's uncle Elliot Wyatt gives Sam a half dollar to cheer him up. Sam would be connected to the Wyatt family, in one way or another, all his life. The Wyatts don't view Sam as a rival, but Sam uses them as the touchstone of what it means to be a success. And Sam wants to make his life a success.

This book felt surprisingly modern in some ways, such as Sam's relationship with Cassie, but of course it is very much of its time. There are a lot of references to the events of the 20th century. A few slight drawbacks to the story marred it slightly. Flavin would often start off the chapter giving an event, such as Glencoe being burned down, and then go back in a fill in supporting details about what led up to that event. This was slightly confusing because you weren't always sure when you were in the past and when you were in the present. Also, Flavin had a way of talking about Sam and some other male characters and over relying on the pronoun "he" when it wasn't clear who was being referred to. This came up throughout the novel. Almost always, the "he" was Sam, so I figured it out, but this was a slight annoyance. I really liked how Sam's life was contrasted with the Wyatt family. The supporting characters were interesting, especially Hath, Nelly, Mitch, and Emilie. Sam was viewed by others as a success because he rose up out of poverty to become wealthy, but he also could not communicate well with others. But Sam realizes this problem and works to correct it in the end. The ending of the novel is satisfying and the writing was engaging. Rated 4th out of the 31 Pulitzer winners I've read.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER: 1944
===
3.5 rounded up

I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I expected by the end. I do think the pacing is a bit off--the chapters are suuuuuper long, which just isn't my reading preference, and the book essentially spans a man's entire lifetime from childhood to old age, so there's a lot of ground to cover but the various time chunk skips between chapters were sometimes jarring. It was also sometimes disorienting what time we were actually reading in as time almost seems to happen all at once in that things that happened in the past, present, and future could all be mentioned on a single page which gave a bit of whiplash. But in the end I cared about the characters and even teared up at the end. Sort of a sweeping epic of a man's life that also parallel's and touches upon the big cultural changes in the country/world.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark chronicles the life of Sam Braden from his humble origins in Wyattville, Iowa to life as a successful businessman in 1920s and 1930s Chicago. In some ways a typical rags to riches story, Journey in the Dark almost transcends the formula of its structure with its superb evocation of early 20th-Century America and Flavin's fluid and richly detailed prose. The story is also driven by a strong sense of morality. While still a young boy, Sam Braden yearns for riches from the moment he understands that the poverty of his upbringing imposes limits on what he can do and what he can have. But the path to financial success is neither smooth nor straightforward, and he is constantly aware that the acquisition of wealth means taking advantage of the misfortune of others. Braden's is a life of triumph and tragedy that comes full circle when he retires to Wyattville to live with his spinster sister. Flavin's novel may not tell us anything we did not already know, but it was good enough to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1944.

[Nancy Mannikko · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an odd book. Maybe the rags-to-riches plot line is a little too predictable, but I couldn't finish it. It's well-written but, at least for me, fell flat. It's the first time I can recall giving up on a book that qualified as easy reading based but still felt like work. Too many cliched characters -- the suffering older spinster sister who gives up the man she loves to take care of her younger siblings (who weren't actually that much younger and could have managed without her), the unattainable rich girl, the useless slacker of a father, the hardworking mother who keeps the family afloat with her needlework skills -- and not enough real people.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is interesting to me that other than this book, which won the pulitzer for 1944, I have never heard of this author. And yet, I'm impressed with his writing. The fluidity of his style and his skill as a storyteller. The timeline in the story seemed to move in a circular motion, and although it was sometimes a little disconcerting, it didn't feel like it darted back and forth between timelines. Rather it seemed to waltz in slow circles that eventually lead to the end, from boy to senior citizen. If books are a peek into the thinking and values of ages past, then I see in this one a past where motives were honorable. That is what I liked best about this book, there were no bad guys...everyone is likable, though imperfect, and honorable in their own way....humanity flawed and fumbling but reaching forward to the best of what makes us human.

The story follows the life of Sam, a simple boy born to a poor family, in a small town called Wyattville where the Wyatts are friends and neighbors and ideals of prosperity to aspire to. At the age of 9 Sam first realizes that he is poor and the handicap that this position is in life, and decides that he will be rich someday. As the great legend of the American dreamers go, he rises out of poverty by his sheer will and hard unending work. Sam is obsessed with Eileen Wyatt from an early age, and determines to become so wealthy that he can win her. But his dream once realized is not what he had hoped, as the dreams of our childhood so often turn out to be. But, it doesn't end there....as is his nature, he picks himself up and keeps moving forward and stumbles into true happiness along the way. This is not a love story, it is not sentimentally told, indeed it could have been, but the author doesn't take it in that direction. It is just the story of a man who kept trying, making mistakes and trying again.
The best part of the book for me was how easy it was to slip read and to identify with the characters...and the worst part was how difficult it was to stop reading after the first couple of chapters.

[Pharmacdon · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you search "Journey In the Dark," you might search for some arcade game, which is a shame since this book is worth reading. Journey in the Dark won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. It is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature or the American Dream.
The novel tells the story of Sam Braden, a young man who rises from poverty to become a successful businessman. The book spans from the 1880s to the 1940s and explores the themes of ambition, family, and the American Dream.
Sam Braden is a complex and sympathetic character. He is driven and ambitious, but he is also flawed and vulnerable. Sam makes mistakes but learns from them and ultimately becomes a successful man. The novel follows Sam's journey from humble beginnings to financial success. Still, it also explores the personal life as he becomes successful. As with anything, life happens whether you are poor or prosperous. As the title implies, life is a Journey in the Dark; no matter what goals and successes you might have, circumstances beyond our control happen, and life is about how adept we are in adapting ourselves to these bumps in the road. And, how things we wished for are not so great after getting them, and does "things" really matter?
The novel is written interestingly, which makes it harder to read. For example, the author tells us that someone has died. As the story progresses, it regresses to tell us the situation and circumstances of that person's death. Then, the story picks up after the regression. Another example is his brother, Tom, who is pronounced dead early in the book. Still, he appears throughout the storyline until he actually dies. In one chapter, several paragraphs jumped from the present to the past, then to the present again. I had to re-read a few paragraphs to realize what was being said. Also, our main character, Sam, is often referred to as "he" or "him," but occasionally, the "he" in the story relates to another male character.
Despite these bumps in the road, the book is worth reading.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging family saga mainly set in a town in Iowa covering the period from around 1900 to the early 1940s. The main character is Sam Brandon. Sam’s father was the sheriff of the town and his mother a seamstress. Sam had two sisters. Sam had a financially poor childhood. His mother needed to work to help feed and cloth the family. When his mother died Sam decided to leave school at the age of 15 and work at the local general store. Sam goes on to learn how to electronically message and worked at the train station.

As a young boy Sam was smitten with Eileen Wyatt, the daughter of socially prominent home town people. Sam goes on to be successful as a salesperson and manager.

A well told story with interesting characters and an eventful plot.

Winner of the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

[Marty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the next Pulitzer Prize novel that Steve and I read. It was sort of a sleeper - we weren't crazy about it at first - seemed to go slowly. Of course, as the pace picks up here in Sarasota as friends return to the resort, we have less time for reading, and that impacts the continuity when reading a story like this. Eventually, about halfway through - Steve commented that "this is getting much more interesting!" and we were quite involved by the time we finished reading it. The story of a poor boy who becomes a self-made man, and his journey and family relationships, loves and losses. Well written - again, we could easily understand why the Pulitzer was awarded to this novel.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark, by Martin Flavin, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. I had a difficult time getting this book. It was not in our library network but my library was able to borrow it from the Lake Forest College Research Collection. The book on loan was actually autographed by Martin Flavin on June 17, 1948. I loved this book which is the story of the life of Sam Braden who started out his life poor and became a wealthy man. However, his personal life had many difficulties. Martin Flavin is a master story teller. I give this book 5 stars and it is one of my all-time favorite Pulitzer Prize winning books.

[Zadignose]

And now for my most superficial judgment ever: Having never even heard of this book before, nor its author, I must declare the book's description to be nightmarish and dreadful. The little badge on the cover too. Blech. Archetypal "literary" crap, I tells ya'! Title? Suck it. Musta sold a bazzillion.

Am I right!?

[Bookslut · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. Generic writing, foreshadowed way too heavily for my taste, but not a bad book.

[Beatrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

To start with the first surprising fact about this novel: I have no idea how it became such a forgotten novel. It's a very good novel, similar to Theodore Dreiser's novels about American life in the first half of the 20th century, and sometimes it's even better than Dreiser's novels because Flavin's style is way less pompous and convoluted - and yet, this became a forgotten novel. Looks like nothing, not even a Pulitzer Prize can guarantee eternity.

Anyway, on to the book. Flavin's novel tells a very American story. Very American partly because such success stories can only ever happen in America, and partly because all the major American historical events from the end of the 19th century until World War II are featured in the novel. And I like such things - I like it when the characters of a novel belong to their era, when the events of the real world touch their lives. And I can't complain here, because here, they're really touched by reality: from the tragedy of the Titanic through the Great Depression to World War II - everything affects the characters, and in a natural, non-contrived way. So the novel is also good as a mini course in 20th century American history.

But it's even better as a personal story - and much sadder.
The protagonist is Sam Braden, an average American boy, who decides early in life that when he grows up, he won't be such a good-for-nothing slacker as his father - who spent his life leeching off the goodwill of his town and his wife's hard work -, instead, he'll make a lot of money and will leave his childhood poverty forever behind.

Sam is a very American protagonist: he's hard-working and determined, he always knows the way forward, and he also has a bit of luck, so after a while he realizes his childhood dreams: he gets rich, and he gains the hand of his childhood crush, the rich & seemingly unattainable girl of the town.

However, the novel is far from being over here - Flavin ignores all the established rules of success-stories by continuing his story - continuing it all the way until it becomes an almost-complete life story of Sam Braden. And perhaps it's not obvious in the beginning, but it becomes very obvious after a while: that Braden has seemingly made the American dream come true, but in fact, he hasn't, or at least: he's lost something important along the way - even though Flavin's hero (I would not call him an antihero - Braden is far from being an evil, despicable character) is really a good guy - generous, supportive, and so on - but still, he's somehow in-human, lonely, soulless and character-less, and his success never feels like real success.

Throughout the story, some characters criticize Braden for his inability to really connect to anyone - and these criticisms are true. But the reasons for this inability are unfathomable. Braden is also interested in other things besides money, he's not a cruel and cynical businessman, and he does have feelings - yet, he's never motivated by his feelings, rather, by the idea that the world shouldn't find fault with him. He's a strangely in-human character, remote from emotional reality, and he can't even connect to the person closest to him. Or - when he finally can, it's often too late.

Flavin's style and the way he depicts Braden are quite interesting. Braden is a character who hardly speaks. I'm not sure: maybe Flavin wasn't a master of dialog? Perhaps he wasn't, but it's a fact that whenever Braden speaks, he speaks in half-broken half-sentences, and he never expresses anything important in words. We only learn about Braden's emotions and thoughts from Flavin's descriptions, but from those descriptions, we get a very precise picture of them. And I can't help thinking that this style can't be an accident - it seems inevitable, considering that Braden only lives, feels, plans, and thinks, but never shares anything with anyone and never even looks into himself. He only cares about his goals - while it's not even clear whether the goals are his own, or he only has them because they happened to be the most handy goals. (What poor American country kid wouldn't like to be rich when he grows up, and what poor kid wouldn't like to gain the hand of the seemingly unattainable girl?)

And after all this is a very sad novel - it's not a success story but a story of a life that's ultimately wasted.

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel offers us another example of an author using the story of one person (or family) to serve as a proxy for massive changes occurring in the United States. This seems to have been a very popular writing device, especially in the early 20th century. In this case, the time period of massive change is the late 1800's to the mid 1900's (the book was published in 1942) and the main character is Sam Braden, born into poverty in Wyattville, Iowa, a small town along the banks of the Mississippi river. The defining experience of his younger years is the moment he realizes that he is poor. From then on, he sets out to correct that problem, dropping out of school to get a job, and eventually moving to larger towns and cities to make his fortune.

If we assume that Sam serves as a metaphor for the American way of thinking, what we see is a character who always believes the grass is greener. In the early chapters of this novel, the young Braden becomes enamored with Eileen Wyatt, a rich girl from the town's founding family. But does he love her for who she is, or for what she represents? Much later in the book, when Eileen reenters the narrative, Sam appears to become disillusioned by the high society she represents. Material success, which he eventually achieves as the owner of a wallpaper factory, isn't all that he had thought, believed, or hoped it would be.

The narrative skips around a bit, mostly moving forward through time, but also offering flashbacks to fill in pieces of Sam's life that we missed. The entire book covers perhaps 60 years in Braden's life, including his early years, adolescence, early professional successes, a couple of marriages, and eventual retirement. There are highs and lows and many heartbreaks to be had. Martin Flavin describes specific incidents to illustrate various phases of Braden's evolving life. There is a scene of humiliation at a garden party held by the Wyatts, or a moment where a young child is accidentally killed in Wyatt's factory. Each scene feels carefully selected, and feels well-drawn and engaging.

Nonetheless, it doesn't always feel like the book adds up to much. Sam's journey feels somewhat rudderless, motivated only by a vague sense of wanting a better life than his parents had. Few moral or philosophical ideas pass through his head, beyond some passing thoughts about family, love, friendship, and eventually patriotism. None of these get much time though, and in the end we - and Braden - are left a little emptier than we started. And this appears to be the Journey in the Dark of the title. Flavin suggests that Americans are a people pursuing wealth and prosperity without knowing what these things are good for.

The book ends with Braden returning to Wyattville from Chicago and agreeing to assist with the war effort. Too old to fight, he puts his skills as a businessman to work at the local factory. Still, the novel hints at a regret and loneliness in his life, the cost of his years of relentless work. Who is he at the end of life? It's a classic theme, although not necessarily fully fleshed out in this book.

One wonders how this book might have landed for contemporary readers in 1943 or 1944. Perhaps they viewed this as a wake-up call. Or maybe it was enough to say, "What will we do with the material success we have been granted?" and then answered that question with the notion of saving the world from the Nazi threat. To a reader 80 years later, the whole thing feels stale and out of date. I would take nothing away from its effectiveness then. But it doesn't feel like a book for now any longer. The United States has other fish to fry in 2024.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark covers much of the life of Sam Braden and his family from the 1880s to 1942 when the book was written. The Braden family ends up in Wyattville, Iowa, a town of very wealthy and very poor. Though coming from a poor family, Sam works hard, gets breaks, takes risks and ends up a multi-millionaire. His life, like others from Wyattville, comes full circle and he ends up back in his hometown.

A lot of history is coved in the novel: WWI, the sinking of the Titanic, the introduction of the automobile, the Great Depression, WWII. Many social issues including race tensions/relations, communism, poverty, social class, marriage, affairs, divorce and families are also explored in great detail.

It is a long but interesting read. There is a lot of repetition and the author writes directly to the reader, a writing style I do not enjoy. I had hoped there would be more closure of some long-term, inter-personal relationships Sam had with others but maybe the lack of closure it is a reflection of reality.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully told story of a mans journey through life. Sam Braden was born into poverty to parents who settled in a town because they had no more money to travel further. As a young boy he was determined to be wealthy when he grew up and he eventually was able to achieve his goal. The book relates the many ups and downs in his life. It is told in a very low key style and could be considered by some as rather boring except I didn't find it that way. Martin Flavin was able to tell the story in a way that kept me engrossed through the entire book.

[Jeff krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not know what it was but this simple story i read in 3 days really stuck with me for days after reading and that does not happen to me very much. So this is up there with my favorites.

[Dan Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He could only be convicted of having realized the fruit which his fellow men had coveted, of being a winner in a race in which, as it turned out, there were not any winners, since there were not any stakes -- no real reward for winning; but only the winners had a chance to find that out. He would plead guilty to success -- the very same in pursuit of which most peope lived and died, ever knowing that the stars at which they grasped were fireflies and marsh lights. And success, had this advantage; once in your hand you could examine it and appriase its actual value--a benefit denied to less successful men."

Notes for my future-self
————————————
Engaging 3
Story 3
Structure 3
Writing 4
Pace/Flow 3
Characters 4
Dialog 3
Imagery 4

Won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 1944. This one reads a lot like the Puliitzer winners from the 1920s. A nice, straightforward story with a message at the end. It this one, we are asked to consider what we are giving our lives to. Money? Success? Notariety? We follow the life of Sam Braden who is a great businessman but not so great with his wife, son or people in general. Over time he gains a sense of what is imporant in his life and becomes much more tolerant and likeable.

Unlike some of the older novels, Flavin didn't simply paint his characters as good or bad. All were flawed, but they introspected and all became better over time. A bit sappy maybe, but I thought it made the story work. This is a VERY low 4 star, but still worth picking up.

If you look at the quote above, Flavin writes with plenty of dashes, commas and semi-colons. I realized it can almost be distracting but I tend to do the same thing. I also realized I don't really know what I'm doing. When do you you use a dash over a semi-colon?

2025 NEW YEARS RESOLUTION: Learn punctuation.

[Brakob Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the story of Sam Braden from his birth in the 1880s through the WWII. Martin Flavin did a very good job of following his life. Beginning in poverty he builds a business and becomes quite wealthy. I liked how well-rounded he made some of the characters, especially Sam. Not a saint or a monster, but both at different times of his life. Just as real people are. Nobody gets through life without making mistakes, and Sam made his fair share. I really liked the character even though there were parts of his life where he did some unpardonable things.

Other characters in the book were a mix. Some were very one-sided and shallow. Others changed quite a bit as the book moved on.

The title really does seem to capture the book very well. Sam seemed to stumble through life not knowing how to proceed through a lot of it. But somehow managing to make his way. The way life feels for most people at times.

[Steven Yoder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark was the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 1943. It is a very good book. It is the story of Sam Braden's live from growing up in poverty with an incredible work ethic and his ultimate success in business. His personal life was tumultuous however. He seemed to make a lot of decisions but the outcome was a mystery to him in many ways. One sister gave up her dreams to take care of their father after the mother died. Another sister thought she would be a famous actress and drove herself crazy. Braden just plodded along with a great work ethic, a couple of marriages and a lot of luck. One example of luck: he decided to sell out of his business in mid 1929, a couple of months before the stock market crash. Braden had no special insight, he just decided to sell out his interest and ended up with 5 million dollars for his fortune. I believe this deserved the Pulitzer Prize and should be read by more people.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale of social classes; striving for something you will never attain; love; hate and regrets. The most touching part of the book for me comes near the beginning when the main character, a young son in a poor family, comes into a financial windfall. He decided to use the money to get his under-appreciated mother a Christmas gift instead of using it for something he really wanted. For me this bitter-sweet scene made the book. There are many other portions of the book which will hold your interest. My one criticism is that the author relied on too many unbelievable coincidences to illustrate his points.

[D.H. Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was part of my attempt to read all of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Novel/Fiction. The winner for 1943, it was not easy to find. I wound up getting a first edition copy on EBay for about ten bucks. So my 75 year old copy of the book kind of smelled funky the whole time I was reading it. It's too bad this one isn't more widely available as it gives a panorama of American life from the 1880s through the early 1940s. It is a bit dated in the way it was written, and I even stumbled across a few typos. But it is worth reading. I've gone through 75 Pulitzer winners now, and this is in the upper half of them, I would say.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This pulitzer prize winning book makes you think about what you want, how you go about getting it and in the end, what is really meaningful. Sam Braden had a rough start from the wrong side of the tracks. He idealized everything the rich and powerful had. He made thoughtful decisions all along the way as he achieved wealth, a family, notoriety, etc. Each of those fell short in some way and ultimately he loses interest. He comes to terms with his situation and does something "good for his soul".

[Raime · Rating 1 out of 5]

The NYT quote from the Wikipedia calls it: "a story of a boy from Iowa who becomes a business tycoon at the price of his integrity.” which is a lie. The main character becomes a millionaire through perseverance and work while being a pretty charitable person to boot. So I don't understand where's that quote coming from.

A big disappointment this book was. A cheap melodrama that concentrates on all the wrong things. Has couple decent scenes and the 1933 famine in ussr is mentioned which is always a plus, but the sheer stupidity of the overall message brings the rating all the way down.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
10 out of 10


Journey in the Dark is a Magnus opus that has been awarded The Pulitzer Prize, but appears to have fallen out of favor with a public that prefers easy, dubious fare from the likes of Dan Brown, to a solid, enchanting book like this one.

Sam Braden is the hero of the narrative and it is his Journey in the Dark that we would follow...at one point, a friend, Mitch, talks to him about his experience and remarks on the fact that he had pursued wealth, but otherwise, his life appears to have been goalless on other levels.
Indeed, the main character seems to be the epitome, paradigm of a psychologist phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation, in that he does become rich, but as it happens, material wealth does not bring well being...well, not a meaningful, lasting, deep one and we may think of the Dalai Lama, who entered a supermarket and exclaimed:

Wow, so many things I don't need!

Nevertheless, the quest for riches is understandable in the case of the hero, for he was born in a family with financial problems, poor actually, where the father was the marshal of the town, but his son mentions him later as 'a useless man', and it is the hard working mother who keeps the family, with her special talent for sawing and making garments and clothes required by the people of the town.

Throughout his life, Sam seems to be fascinated by the Wyatt family, competing with Neil, who seems to be always a rival...even when he is out of the picture, they still name an airfield nearby after him and his son comes to tell a tragic story about Hath, Sam's own son.
After his mother dies, the main character talks with his elder sister, Madge, about the fact that they cannot continue in the same circumstances, for their only remaining parent would not provide the food, nor pay the bills and thus the prospects are more than grim.

Indeed, Madge has a suitor that would later become an advisor at the White House as an appreciated intellectual, but the poor woman sacrifices her future and does not marry the man, feeling that without her, the family would become destitute and they will be hungry, perhaps worse.
Sam himself, abandons school practically as a child, in order to bring home the money needed for them to survive, in the first place, he would work in the shop of Clem Wyatt, where he will be appreciated as a reliable, determined, astute, amiable teenager, already entertaining big dreams.

However, the boy understands soon that with the salary of five, then more dollars, but limited to about fifteen per month - this a long time ago, more than one hundred years in the past - he would never be rich and Clem explained that the is a limit to how much he can pay and the assistant may have to think of alternatives.
After a discussion with the judge, the next step taken by the protagonist, at the advice of the wise man is to learn telegraphy and get a position at the local railway station, from which he would soon be promoted to a bigger town, where he tries to help his sister, Nelly.

The latter is trying to become a performer, given that her voice is exuberant and people have always admired it, she thinks in the first place that she would become an opera singer, but when her brother takes her to see a play, the young woman is transfigured, elated by the performance and thus asks for some acting lessons from the actor in the leading role.
Alas, this is a charlatan that makes me think of Trump - this orange fool has become a symbol of stupidity, viciousness, crookedness- and after some lessons, bad as they could be given his lack of talent, he runs away from wife and child and eventually he is the one who would destroy the life of Nelly.

Well, that was exaggerated perhaps, but we can still stay that the villain was an important factor, if not the only reason for the consequent perdition.
After the scandal of the elopement, covered in the newspapers, Sam decides to abandon his position in the railway station and travels to Chicago, where his talents, resilience, ambition, drive, tenacity, intelligence, persistence mean that he becomes a success as a salesman and so he can shortly make the next decision.

The hero starts working for himself, in partnership with a Frenchman who has a wallpaper designing and manufacturing company, taking the venture that was in serious trouble and launching it towards tremendous success.
It would not be an easy ride, for the partner is aggressive, stubborn, foolish and potentially calamitous for the enterprise, when they have workers on strike and he deals with it in a most stupid, reckless manner, hiring under aged boys and having one killed in a gruesome manner, caught and smashed into one of the machines.

The private life of the hero is less successful, in fact, we can see it as a failure, up to the point where he marries a Wonder Woman, for even if he is accepted by one of the rich Wyatts, there appears to be no real love in the marriage, which is actually not even consummated...not on the wedding or the following night...seemingly not for a long time.

The mantra that has animated the protagonist was to get as much money as possible, but this has not made him happy.
Hence the title:

Journey in the Dark

Toward the second stage of his life, after he is thirty, he does make the most wonderful, perfect woman his wife and things change, although there is suffering, tragedy and drama even after that.

A wondrous, excellent book, with only 27 reviews on goodreads, as opposed to the millions for Dan Brown...

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Underrated. Not perfect, but very well written and quite satisfying in the end. The middle third in particular moves along quite nicely and covers some interesting ground. The author plays some clever tricks with timeshifting and changing points of view that keep you on your toes...in a good way.

Along the lines of other books that tell the rise and fall (or not fall) of one man's life in an attempt to capture a picture of a certain America.

Highly recommended.

[Arleen Ayala · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't give it more than 3. It's as the other reviewers say, very dark and lonely. This character Sam seems to have drifted from being poor to wealthy and completely detached. He went along afraid of everything as he almost wanted to be lonely. Depressing. However, it was well written and I can understand why in 1944 it would win the Pulitzer Prize.