Wisconsin Death Trip -Michael Lesy
First published in the early 1970s, I found this strange book on a remainder table in the middle 1970s. A half-dozen moves later, I'm surprised I never lost it like I lost a cool Rolling Stones book by David Dalton.
It is a combination of old photographs and news stories
of Wisconsin country life in the late 19th century, during an economic slump.
The photos were taken by Charley
Van Schaick, a photographer in Black River Falls. There were 30,000
plates in the Van Schaick collection of which 200 were chosen for publication
in this book. The news accounts were taken from a newspaper called the Badger
State Banner. Along with stories about arson, psychosis, drunkenness, and
other high times of the good old days, this is typical
Joseph Shotgoe, aged 45 years, who lived in the town of Rose, Waushara County, tried to kill his wife with a kettle of hot water. A 14-year-old daughter sprang between them and saved her mother but was badly burned herself. The father then got a rope and . . . attempted to hang himself, but being discovered by neighbors was rescued before life was extinct. His wife soon [afterward] went to the barn and discovered that her husband had taken the lines out of the harness, put them over a beam, and hung himself
Looking at the photographs of country people at the end of the 19th century, I recalled in an essay by Edmund White or David Sedaris which said the French see us Americans as simple and nice. We’re uncomplicated, unencumbered by any sense of the tragic.
Yeah, right. Check out these news stories and photographs
of a happy-go-lucky people.
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