Word: coaltown
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...horse who'll fight back." As it happens, the second most impressive two-year-old, Swale, is another pupil of Woody's. The thought of two such talents in one barn is taking people back to Calumet days 35 years ago, to Citation and Coaltown, names like plucked strings, back when horses made love for a song...
Lady Golconda's maternal grandsire is Bull Lea, who was to racing just after the Second World War what Bold Ruler is to present-day racing. Bull Lea not only sired triple crown winner Citation, but also Coaltown, Armed, Bewitch, and many other superb horses. Unlike Bold Ruler, Bull Lea established his reputation on a limited number of high quality mares, without the benefits of the recent influx of fine imported bloodlines. Finally, Lady Golconda traces in tail female to Nellie Flag, a granddaughter...
Superstitious horseplayers also remember the famous paired entry in the 1948 Derby. Coaltown, a lightly regarded horse, finished a strong second. Coaltown's stablemate, Citation, won the Derby, then went on to capture the Triple Crown-the last horse...
...narrative demands a crucial, emotional confrontation, the author turns remote, reverts to brief explorations of life's enduring verities; and the reader is deprived of vital particulars. It is as if, viewing events from Olympus, Wilder sees the marvel of life but not the movement. The people of Coaltown, U.S.A. -Everytown, Universe-love, falter, hate, do good and deal in injustice, and carry on through eternity, still hanging on by the skin of their teeth, improving themselves a little as they go. In an old-fashioned mixture of Christian teaching and evolution, Dr. Gillies, Coaltown's resident philosopher...
...that last word adangle, Wilder presses home his conviction that man's story is unending and that come what may, man will prevail. The thought is unarguable, but its demonstration leaves the reader with characters who are merely symbols and a story that is an abstraction. After visiting Coaltown, readers may want to hop a fast freight to Grover's Corners, the setting of Our Town, whose scale was smaller but whose philosophy seemed almost as tangible as its strawberry sodas. Thornton Wilder remains engaging, thoughtful, a man to meet. Yet in this book, one longs for more...