Written in the 20s, John Brown's Body redefines the word ananchronism. Its contemporaries are The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Professors widely praise these modern works for their groundbreaking aesthetics, and not without justification. However, it's hard to imagine a more daring or daunting task than the writing of John Brown's Body. Never mind the fact that he pulled it off marvelously. Stephen Vincent Benet remains the only writer to have even _attempted_ to write an American epic poem. Stephen Vincent Benet deserves high scores both for degree of difficulty and final product. Yet conventional education regarding 20th century American books never seems to give him these high marks.

Why Benet and his book don't get the recognition they merit is a terrific question. Is his book canonically superior to Gatsby and Their Eyes? No. And on some level, it's difficult to see what someone living in Taiwan could glean from this document of American struggle and triumph. To wit, the book can also be criticized for being slightly skewed toward a Yankee perspective. But as a whole, the book is outright better than a lot of works revered as American classics.

What does better mean? What it should mean. Simply a more impressive work of art. More entertaining. More provactive. More fun to read. More intellectual depth, conveyed subtly and beautifully, embedded skillfully but not invisibly in an absorbing tale. On these counts, John Brown's Body is vastly superior to classics like The Sun Also Rises; The USA series of John Dos Passos; Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis; and certainly Hawthorne's later novels. Yet John Brown's Body continues to get short shrift, to the point where it's well nigh unfindable in many a book store. One can only hope that the critics and canon-makers of later generations restore the book to its proper place, high atop our shining history of American letters.

Jabez Stone of Cross Corners, New Hampshire is a man of little luck, until, with his wife and children ill and a whitlow on his own thumb, he barks :

I vow it's enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devill And I would, too, for two cents!

With that, a stranger appears and Jabez makes a deal, signing it in blood, which changes his luck drastically.

Over the next ten years, Stone prospers, becoming wealthy and an important man in politics. But with his mortgage to the stranger coming due, Jabez Stone regrets
the deal he's made and pays a visit to his neighbor, Daniel Webster, of Mansfield, NH--the nation's greatest lawyer and New England's most revered citizen--to see
if Mr. Webster will take him on as a client and see if there's not some way out of the deal. A lesser man might balk at the prospect of such a fight, but Daniel
Webster has a special regard for his constituents and cheerfully assures Jabez that they'll prevail :

For if two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.

Webster's first ploy is to challenge the stranger's right to prey upon Americans :

'Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the service of a foreign prince. We fought England for that
in ë12 and weíll fight all hell for it again!'

'Foreign?' said the stranger. 'And who calls me a foreigner?'

'Well, I never yet heard of the dev -- of your claiming American citizenship,' said Dan'l Webster with surprise.

'And who with better right?' said the stranger, with one of his terrible smiles. 'When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there.
When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs, from the first settlements on?
Am I not spoken of, still, in every church in New England? 'Tis true the North claims me for a Southerner, and the South for a Northerner,
but I am neither. I am merely an honest American like yourself--and of the best descent--for, to tell the truth, Mr. Webster,
though I don't like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours.'

This prompts Webster to recourse to Stone's rights as an American :

'Aha!' said Dan'l Webster, with the veins standing out in his forehead. 'Then I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client!'

'The case is hardly one for an ordinary court,' said the stranger, his eyes flickering. 'And, indeed, the lateness of the hour-'

'Let it be any court you choose, so it is an American judge and an American jury!' said Dan'l Webster in his pride.
'Let it be the quick or the dead; I'll abide the issue!'

And so begins a trial, presided over by Justice Hathorne, who likewise oversaw the Salem Witch Trials, with a jury made up of the likes of Walter Butler, Simon
Girty, King Philip, Reverend John Smeet, and Morton of Merry Mount. Inevitably, even these dastards are swayed by the rhetorical power of Daniel Webster and
Jabez is released from his contract. The stranger good-naturedly conceding :

'Perhaps 'tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence,' he said, 'but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster.'

Despite this graciousness, Daniel Webster grabs and threatens him, but then relents to his pleading. In exchange for being let go, the stranger predicts Webster's
future for him. The stranger well knows of Webster's desire to be president one day and of his pride in his speaking ability. He warns that the dream will never come
true and, perversely, the ambition will be thwarted by Webster's own talent :

'[T]he last great speech you make will turn many of your own against you,' said the stranger. 'They will call you Ichabod; they will call you
by other names. Even in New England some will say you have turned your coat and sold your country, and their voices will be loud against
you till you die.'

Webster takes the news surpassing well and in turn receives an assurance :

'So it is an honest speech, it does not matter what men say,' said Dan'l Webster. Then he looked at the stranger and their glances locked.

'One question,' he said. 'I have fought for the Union all my life. Will I see that fight won against those who would tear it apart?'

'Not while you live,' said the stranger, grimly, 'but it will be won. And after you are dead, there are thousands who will fight for your cause,
because of words that you spoke."

'Why, then, you long-barreled, slab-sided, lantern-jawed, fortune-telling note shaver!' said Dan'l Webster, with a great roar of laughter,
'be off with you to your own place before I put my mark on you! For, by the thirteen original colonies, I'd go to the Pit itself to save the Union!'

Sure enough, Webster's great speech in favor of the Missouri Compromise in 1850 would ensure its passage but with its provision for admitting a new slave state to
the Union would make him anathema to hardcore abolitionists and doom his presidential hopes.

Benet helped adapt this story for the screen and it made for one of the really underrated great American films. With sterling performances by Edward Arnold as
Webster and Walter Huston as the stranger, here called Mr. Scratch, the middle portion of the story, detailing Jabez Stone's rising fortunes and declining character,
is greatly expanded. This is problematic because James Craig as Jabez is pretty nondescript, but Jane Darwell as his mother and Simone Simon as a sultry vixen who
becomes the Stone's housemaid help to carry us through until the trial starts.

One interesting aspect of Benet's tale is his refusal to let his countrymen off the hook; the Devil is obviously integral to the American experience and though Webster
matches the Devil in the end, he too hears the siren call of Mr. Scratch. In the end though Webster is redeemed by his all consuming love of the nation :

And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, 'Dan'l Webster--Dan'l Webster!' the ground'll begin to shiver and the trees
begin to shake. And after a while you'll hear a deep voice saying. 'Neighbor, how stands the Union?' Then you better answer the Union stands
as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, one and indivisible, or he's liable to rear right out of the ground.

What a worthy legend for America and for one of the greatest of her citizens.

GRADE : A

Benet wrote this a while back, but it's worth reading, particularly in view of some of the shenangians going on in the Monica affair. Stone sold his soul and lived a long and fruitful life, the devil not bothering him at all due to the promised eventual payoff.

Came time for the payoff, Jabez Stone hired the F. Lee Bailey of the time, silver toungued orator Daniel Webster. The jury was picked by the Devil, no voir dire there. And Webster started his talk. It's good reading today if you can find it.

I have searched hard for a Complete Works of Benet, prose and poetry. His ouevre is not so great that it should be difficult to do. There are many other good stories in there, Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer, By the Waters of Babylon, and poems, too, John Brown's Body of course, but How Hillbilly Jim Won The Georgia Fiddler's Contest, too, and a host of others. Benet is not an author to shove away on the back shelves and forget. He deserves to be read.