by Archana Subramaniam by CNB
Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SATURDAY, February 20, 1993 TAG: 9302200096 SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DID LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE HAVE A GHOST . . . WRITER?
For more than 60 years, young readers - and some not so young - have thrilled to the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder's growing-up days on the American frontier.Pioneer life, as depicted in Wilder's nine-book "Little House" saga and later in the popular TV series "Little House on the Prairie," could be tough, what with hostile Indians, hungry wolves and devastating grasshopper plagues. But there was plenty of sunshine along with the shadows, and the good old-fashioned family values that Laura grew up with and later chronicled continue to strike a chord with contemporary kids.
"Laura Ingalls Wilder's name is revered from coast to coast in elementary schools," said William Anderson, a composition teacher in Lapeer, Mich., and longtime Wilder authority. "She is an icon and a goddess to American children."
Now comes word that the icon and grass-roots goddess, who died in 1957, may have had literary feet of clay - or, at least, a good deal of previously unacknowledged help with the books that bore her name.
William Holtz, a professor of English at the University of Missouri and author of the coming "The Ghost in the Little House," contends that Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a critically acclaimed novelist and journalist, essentially ghostwrote all eight "Little House" books published during her mother's lifetime.
"Laura Ingalls Wilder remained a determined but amateurish writer to the end," concluded Holtz, who spent 15 years researching Lane's correspondence and comparing her mother's original "Little House" manuscripts with the published versions.
"What Rose accomplished was nothing less than a line-by-line rewriting of labored and underdeveloped narratives," he writes. "Almost everything we admire about the `Little House' books - the pace and rhythm of the narrative line, the carefully nuanced flow of feeling, the muted drama of daily life - are created by . . . Rose's `fine touch,' as shining fiction is made from her mother's tangle of fact."
Not surprisingly, Holtz's controversial conclusions are causing a stir among "Prairie" partisans, few of whom are in sympathy with his sentiments.
"I've looked at the same manuscripts and papers that Dr. Holtz has, and I think it's too simplistic and not quite fair to the two women to say Rose ghostwrote the books," said Anderson, the author of "Laura Ingalls Wilder Country" and "Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography," a new children's biography.
"Certainly, Rose helped Laura," Anderson acknowledged, "but . . . I would hate for children to get the idea that Laura Ingalls Wilder was some kind of fraud."
"It seems like we've come to the point where nobody can have heroes anymore; people have to find something negative about everyone and everyone's writing," lamented Vivian Glover, head of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society in De Smet, S.D., which publishes a semiannual newsletter, Laura Ingalls Wilder Lore, and maintains a number of Wilder family historic sites.
"There's definitely a resistance to seeing an icon toppled," said Holtz, who is gearing up to take some heat from "Little House" lovers when the book arrives in stores in April. "One of my colleagues told me, jokingly, `Next, you'll be telling us that there's no Santa Claus.' "