She has more like Waterwheel to get rid of?
I’m hoping these are your words, and not hers. :no:
yes, not her words, sorry to be irresponsible with my words. I do not support the attitude they suggest and have bought and adopted two horses from rescues. According to Lizthenag’s post, she said she “has more” and people should contact her…btw I have a Canter horse gelding who is not going to work out for our competitive goals, but I have no plans to sell him to another amateur home. Like Waterwheel, I think he is also a “dominant racehorse” (JS’s words there) he’s a 300k stakes winner and great at what he was supposed to do. But I think he would not be a good fit for most amateurs and I would not want any harm to come of it. I believe the owner claimed him for 80k and sold him to me for 2k, does that make him a bad person, too? BTW, it is really not fair for posters to allude that if Waterwheel’s reserve was not met, she might then have been sold to a meat dealer afterwards.
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I did a few searches trying to find Jane Smiley’s website, but I didn’t really find anything. Her “official” site is through her publisher (Random House) but it doesn’t say anything about her wanting to sell her horses or find homes for them. But maybe anyone who was interested could contact her through her publisher.
I think what is at issue is that JS used this horse to gain fame in her book. It would be like Marguerite Henry selling Misty back in the day to some pony ride. You don’t create a celebrity horse and then dispose of it when it no longer suits your needs, behind the back of readers you made love the animal in question. It’s just bad PR, bad judgement and honestly it sounds like she just wanted to get rid of the horse. Someone else might have figured out that making a horse famous, ups its inherent value, she could have put something up on a web page offering up the horse for sale, to an evaluated home and given the money to a horse charity. The lack of creativity (and for a writer no less) in this whole situation just reaks of her “getting rid of” not selling the horse for normal reasons.
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[QUOTE=darkmoonlady;3172469]
I think what is at issue is that JS used this horse to gain fame in her book.[/QUOTE]
Considering that Smiley won a Pulitzer prize a full decade before she published “A Year at the Races” (in which Waterwheel is not the primary equine character, fwiw), I think you’re trying too hard with this argument. Waterwheel had little (I would argue nothing) to do with fame Smiley has earned as an author.
Likewise, those who feel “duped” by her must have missed the parts of the book where she talks about selling horses that no longer fit into their owners’ programs–and does so without claiming that she would never do likewise. Indeed, she speaks of horses she raised and later sold.
Disagree or not with her actions, let’s not read things into the book we wish were there but aren’t.
Ravenclaw, I stumbled across Smiley’s personal (that is, non-publisher-related) web site a while ago. There is in fact a sales page, though it hasn’t been updated in a while. People who read “A Year at the Races” will recognize Hornblower.
[QUOTE=darkmoonlady;3172469]
You don’t create a celebrity horse and then dispose of it when it no longer suits your needs, behind the back of readers you made love the animal in question.[/QUOTE]
Maybe I’m oblivious, but I didn’t think much of Waterwheel after the book. I felt that the book was about Wowie - and, to a lesser degree, Mr. T - and wasn’t really endeared to Waterwheel.
It’s weird how readers think that Smiley owed them something beyond the book she wrote. We purchased the book, we read the book. … Was there more to the deal than that?
These are just idle questions, perhaps, but beyond the (IMO very accurate) comments on how this was bad PR, I think they’re at the root of this issue. The idea that horses - particularly dubiously famous horses - are somehow above being sold at all, or at certain types of sales. The concept that the author owed it to her readers to have informed them of her intentions to sell her own horse. The idea that we all know the horse better than she does, because we read about her in a book. The presumptions go on and on.
It’s not that!!! The problem I have is that JS made out like she loved the beasties so much and got so much from them - then sent Waterwheel to auction when she had many other choices. You have to admit, the woman had more options than most people who have unremarkable broken down TB broodies…
I think that given the image she likes to portray of herself as an empathetic horselover, lots of us are frustrated that she didn’t expend a bit more energy to make sure the mare found a good home. Sure, she’s free to do what she wants with her horses and it sounds like things worked out well for Waterwheel. That’s great, but JS missed a good opportunity to walk the talk :yes:
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EXACTLY BeastieSlave. Exactly. WALK the TALK.
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A Year At The Races is nonfiction, written in the first person. We are led to believe that it is a true and accurate account of the author’s point of view. I am very disallusioned by the “true” ending to this story.
I went to my copy of AYATR to read for myself. In her Epilogue, titled “That’s Horse’s” Jane Smiley writes, “When I set out to write my book about my year with Wowie and Alexis (her trainer) at the racetrack, it soon became clear to me that I had no control over whether the book would end happily or unhappily.” “The scary part, though, turned out to be … that I might have to write an unhappy ending.” She then describes Waterwheel’s injury and rehabilitation and states that she will “go back to work in a year as a broodmare…; the idea of the fiery Waterwheel submitting to the wishes of some affectionate little girl was laughable.”
She writes of Wowie’s beginning training in jumping. Waterwheel isn’t mentioned again. She concludes with, “And so, the reward for me, and sometimes it is a bittersweet reward, is still in seeing how it all turns out-how character and events add up to the appropriate, always appropriate, denouement.”
I, for one, am disappointed that she didn’t try harder for Waterwheel. I don’t think it was “appropriate.”
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Like FHOTD says, you broke it, you bought it. JS broke this horse and then tossed her aside. It’s worse because she wrote about how much she luuurves her horsies–sort of like John Denver writing “Annie’s Song” and then leaving the woman he wrote it about–but it isn’t something I would condone anyone doing. And no, I don’t buy that she “didn’t know” what might happen or what her other options were.
And, of course, I’m reasonably certain that the book made JS enough money to pay for Waterwheel’s retirement with plenty left over.
[QUOTE=BeastieSlave;3174033]
It’s not that!!! …
I think that given the image she likes to portray of herself as an empathetic horselover, lots of us are frustrated that she didn’t expend a bit more energy to make sure the mare found a good home. Sure, she’s free to do what she wants with her horses and it sounds like things worked out well for Waterwheel. That’s great, but JS missed a good opportunity to walk the talk :yes:[/QUOTE]
It is that for some posters here.
Your other points, I’ve been agreeing with those. But some people have been aiming some far more pointed criticisms, and those are the ones I find rather over-the-top.
[QUOTE=criss;3174467]
And, of course, I’m reasonably certain that the book made JS enough money to pay for Waterwheel’s retirement with plenty left over.[/QUOTE]
I’m not. I’m not privy to the sales figures on A Year at the Races, but most books barely break a living wage on the time spent on them. Smiley has some fame as an author, which helps, but a horsey memoir written by someone whose fame is in writing general fiction? Even if she’s a fast writer, it has at least 6 months of full time work in it and she’d probably be lucky to see $30k from it.
If horse books like this were making a lot of money, we’d have more than the trickle than we get, and from Renascence’s report, she doesn’t plan to write more horse books, which suggests that they aren’t big sellers in her portfolio.
I found vali’s radio program
I didn’t get to read all the threads - It took me like 20 minutes even skipping to get to the last page because something is so wrong with this site.
Here is the the link for the show you can listen but no transcription.
Though in the end she gives on the surface what seems to be a reasonable reason for sending to auction but there is a bit too much hemming and hawing for me.
No place in the horse community?
take temptation away (but then have her bred)?
Like everybody says its that she is being so hypocritical. And I like her books, i want to like her. It hurts when we find out our idols are less than ideal. I’m still in denial about John Wayne. But RR you are just as warm and fuzzy in person as in the book…
http://www.podfeed.net/episode/Jane+Smiley/1182871
hope the link works if not it is on KQED
Anyone have any ideas about how to find out what happened to Hornblower? Looking at her “for sale” page I would completely have snatched him up in a heartbeat! It would be cool to see who has him now and what they’re doing with him. Did a simple search but all it came up with was book reviews…
[QUOTE=piccolittle;3174710]
Anyone have any ideas about how to find out what happened to Hornblower? Looking at her “for sale” page I would completely have snatched him up in a heartbeat! It would be cool to see who has him now and what they’re doing with him. Did a simple search but all it came up with was book reviews…[/QUOTE]
A little earlier in the thread:
He is quite handsome, and I’m a fan of the Caro bred horses. I thought it was to her credit that she tried to breed and campaign a runner from those lines.
OMG, I just listened to that interview.
Thanks for the link, but it’ll take a while before I can put a response into words…
I couldn’t open the link here at work. Waiting for your response!
Love this thread. You go, Vali!:lol::lol::lol::lol:
“I gambled that she would, uh, find herself a nice home on a broodmare or stud farm, and she did.”
You can tell she was flabbergasted by the question. :lol:
I still don’t have the words…
I probably don’t listen to enough interviews with authors, but the whole thing turned me off. She sounded pretty pleased with herself in general and the interviewer was definitely a fan of hers. I haven’t read this new book, but was turned off by her suggestions that she was bringing the works of Boccaccio, Dickens, and Shakespeare into the current age - using their ‘systems’. Too much comparing herself to other great authors.
The question about Waterwheel definitely threw her. Her defense didn’t stand up IMHO. She made a comment that many people were finding that breeding their own racehorses was just too expensive these days. Well, DUH! There just aren’t that many “out of the blue” racehorses out there that are exceeding expectations!
Here are a few of my favorite snippets in response to Vali’s question: “Well Waterwheel is a broodmare… she’s small and is not at all sound and so her life is to be bred to TB stallions… there was no home for her in the horse community… and that’s what racehorse people do when they want to sell their horses… you don’t know that the auction is going to be that way before you go… apparently she (Waterwheel’s new owner) likes her, and that’s all I know.” Later, on the lives of horses: "They get stimulated for an hour a day if they’re lucky. "
BTW chester’s mom, she claimed that A Thousand Acres was “not based on any family that I personally knew. It was based on King Lear.”
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