R.I. bound

A state guidebook is the greatest story ever told

by E.L.Widmer

What is the greatest book ever written about Rhode Island? John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick? Doubtful. Geoffrey Wolff's Providence? Don't make me laugh. Thornton Wilder's Theophilus North? No. Minor works by Edith Wharton and Henry James that briefly mention Newport? They don't count as Rhode Island books, and besides, they're boring.

Let's face it, almost all the fiction written about Rhode Island is disappointing. Some fanatics will argue for H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is certainly important in his way. But Lovecraft is a kind of special-interest candidate, appealing more to 13-year-old boys and people with bad skin than the populace at large. So where can we turn?

The answer is non-fiction. When you know the unique daily tribulations of our little universe, there really is no need to make anything up. Spalding Gray understands this, and his memoir, Sex and Death to the Age 14, is one of the better Rhode Island books, though not the best either. It is required reading for anyone struggling to understand the state's strangest community (Barrington), but it doesn't move too much beyond those boundaries.

Tired of guessing? OK, the best book ever written about Rhode Island is simply titled Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State. It was commissioned by the United States government and published in 1937. Long out of print and available only in used bookstores, it is by far the most thorough book ever written on its subject. And despite all the changes to the state's contours over the last 60 years, it's still relevant, a towering monument to the virtues of big government and crushing taxation.

Back in the '30s, under the benign stewardship of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US government tried a lot of different ways to relieve Americans suffering from the Depression. One of the more innovative was the Federal Writer's Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration. The basic premise was that if you hired a lot of starving writers, you could do two things at once -- keep them off the dole for a few years and make them work on projects that helped Americans understand their country.

Artists, photographers, and filmmakers also were hired in droves, and this simple idea led to the most comprehensive cultural mapping of America in our history. For relatively little money, the government sponsored an extraordinary achievement that hasn't been duplicated since. Around the country, Americans from all walks of life were interviewed for their life stories. Photographers snapped invaluable shots of the conditions of everyday existence. Patriotic films were shot that helped boost morale, despite mildly Stalinist overtones. Suddenly, it felt great to be American. It felt even better to get paid to tell people how great it was to be American.

The centerpiece of the Writer's Project was a series of state guidebooks that began coming out in the late '30s. Each of the 48 states, along with Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, was the subject of a comprehensive study. Major cities were also included in separate volumes.

The impact was immediate. As the guidebooks issued forth, Whitmanized Americans used them to travel around and to discover more about their country. The books had long sections devoted to car drivers, and a wave of domestic tourism helped get the USA out of the doldrums. I would go so far as to say that without the American Guide Series and the Rhode Island book in particular, we never would have kicked the rest of the world's ass as completely as we did during WWII.

Offering an excellent, concise history of the state, the Rhode Island book is fat and fact-filled, despite its tiny subject. Even more focused are specific chapters on aspects of the Rhode Island Way: The Natural Setting, the Indians, the State Government, Industry and Commerce, Labor, Transportation, Agriculture, Foreign Groups, Folklore, Education, Religion, Sports, Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, and the Theater! Can you dig it? This book has everything.

Then there are incredibly detailed profiles of each Rhode Island community -- how best to drive there and what to do when you arrive. I can't even read it without wanting to go rev up the old DeSoto and pile everybody in. Unfortunately, I have no friends, and therefore I can't. That's what happens when you read too much Rhode Island history.

Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State is not perfect. Like all books written back then, it's a little Waspy, and the authors could've spent more time on ethnic and racial variations. But it's not bad in this category, either, and it's superlative at giving out the raw geographical facts that make Rhode Island Rhode Island.

Let's be honest: there will never again be a 500-page book about Rhode Island, in tiny type, no less. Nothing published since comes close to the wealth of information included here. "Wealth" is the right word, for the self-esteem that comes bounding out of every page must have made the financial terror of the Depression seem like a distant bad dream.

Americans are still torn about how to remember FDR. The simple act of reading this book helps restore a sense of what he pulled off. Today, conservatives are outraged by the tiny amount of money the government gives artists and writers. At the other extreme, maniacal performance artists go berserk when people object to taxpayer support for their intentionally offensive, self-obsessed happenings.

It is soothing to remember how cheerfully Roosevelt paid the bill for the Writer's Project and how enthusiastically it was received by a wide audience of different Americans. Thanks to FDR and hundreds of nameless researchers, we have one priceless work of Rhode Island literature.

Thirty Days to Improved Narragansett
Kuttánoonsh: I will hire you.
Kummuchickeónckquatous: I will pay you well.
Yó aûnta: Let us goe that way.
-- Roger Williams's A Key Into the Language of America, 1643