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Power of Prose

The Northeast

American literature is unique in the number of voices and cultures it conveys, giving it the power to transform opinions and challenge stereotypes in both obvious and subtle ways. Christa Smith Anderson  explains that true Yankee voices have emerged in the literature of the Northeast, from Massachusetts to Maine – where submarine sandwiches are grinders, and milkshakes are frappes.

Novelist Carolyn Chute has gained fame for creating distinctively voiced characters who paint word portraits of poverty in rural Maine. The Beans of Egypt, Maine opens with Earlene Pomerleau talking about her family’s “ranch” house:

Daddy says it’s called RANCH ‘cause it’s like houses out West which cowboys sleep in. There’s a picture window in all ranch houses and if you're in one of ‘em out West, you can look out and see the cattle eatin’ grass on the plains and the cowboys ridin' around with lassos and tall hats. But we ain’t got nuthin’ like that here in Egypt, Maine.[1]

Somethin’ else catches my eye. It’s the sun on the fender of Daddy’s little khaki-color car... On the bumper is Daddy's bumper sticker. It says JESUS SAVES. The sun shifts on the fender, almost blinds me, like it’s God sayin’ in his secret way that he approves.[2]

In Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, a Brooklyn native returns to the Newfoundland home of his ancestors. There he’s exposed to dialect of an older cousin who spoke of Lindbergh coming to Newfoundland: “’E took off from ‘ere. They was all ‘ere, St. Brendan, Leif Eriksson, John Cabot, Marconi, Lucky Lindy.Great things ‘as ‘appened ‘ere. I always knowed of it. Knowed I was destined to do fine things. But ‘ow to begin?"[3]

The particulars of  Massachusetts speech appear in John Dufresne’s  “Johnny Too Bad.” In the story, a Florida man sees a story on television that takes him back to his Worcester, Mass. upbringing:

I worked at this very stadium selling soda at Holy Cross games (only we called soda tonic, so I sold tonic, and we called a water fountain a bubbler, and pronounced it bubba-la; we called lunch dinner; dinner supper; sprinkles jimmies; a submarine sandwich a grinder; a hard roll a bulkie; a porch a piazza; a cellar a basement; a rubber band an elastic; and a milkshake a frappe. We called a luncheonette a spa.)[4]