Sometimes I'm Happy: A Writer's Memoir Book

Marshall Sprague's colorful lifetime spanned the century like a mountain rainbow. Somewhere between the time he learned the true function of the umbrella stand in the Midwest Victorian household of his youth and his first solo train ride to New York City, he surrendered to an innate talent and inquisitiveness that subsequently engaged tens of thousands of his friends and readers. He played the Tiger Rag with a Princeton band on transatlantic steamer crossings. He deftly navigated New York City during Prohibition. He interviewed Gertrude Stein and Eddie Rickenbacker for the Paris Herald. He crossed the Pacific on an oil tanker to get to Tientsin, where he reported the social news for the North China Star. Then, early in his career, Sprague was diagnosed with tuberculosis. With his wife and young son, he moved to Colorado Springs, where, according to the recommended treatment of the day, he was hospitalized. How he came to grips with this sudden incapacity is reflected in this candid and engaging memoir.

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Marshall Sprague's memoir displays the flair of an experienced feature writer--an enticing lead, intriguing body, and a conclusion that makes us turn the page and ask for more. Although best known for his histories of the western U.S., Sprague elected here to emphasize his youngest days. He takes us from his early years in Newark, Ohio, through rambunctious years at Princeton and his eventual writing career. Anyone looking for an accurate, engrossing account of the first 40 years of this century will find it here. Sprague attended concerts by Paderewski and Rachmaninoff, learned French from Thornton Wilder, applauded Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, interviewed Bertrand Russell, received writing advice from Booth Tarkington, and cried when George Gershwin died. His life reads like a Scott Fitzgerald novel, crammed with raccoon coats, Victrolas, jazz pianos, milk wagons, the Charleston, and hopeful assignations under" New York's Biltmore clock. His memoir is a fascinating look at the life of a warm, funny, serious man who learned through his recuperation from tuberculosis that life should be confined to the simple and the important: his wife, family, writing, and 1931 Model A convertible. This posthumous limited edition is a treasure.