John Matteson

The Person Behind the Pulitzer: Getting to Know Professor John Matteson

by Erika Dreifus

It's not every day that the average person has the chance to sit down and chat with a Pulitzer prizewinner. But on a recent spring afternoon I had just that opportunity when I met with John Matteson, Associate Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York and author of Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (W.W. Norton, 2007), which has won the 2008 Pulitzer in biography.

Generations of readers know Louisa Alcott from her famous tale of the March sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy-and their indomitable Marmee, as chronicled in Little Women (1868). Fewer, however, remember Louisa's father. A contemporary and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott was an eminent thinker and educator, a philosopher who sought to wed his theories to practice in his own life and in the raising of his own four daughters (Anna, Louisa, Lizzie, and May). Matteson's book is the first to offer a cradle-to-grave examination of the lives of both Alcotts and the intricacies of their father-daughter relationship. In the words of Bookmarks magazine, Eden's Outcasts is both "prodigiously researched and eminently readable"; it is a book that offers many reading pleasures, including what a Los Angeles Times reviewer described as a most "rounded, detailed and compelling portrait of Louisa, Bronson, their family and their times" and "a valuable context for appreciating that enduring masterpiece ‘Little Women.'"

Such praise notwithstanding, it has not been a straight and easy path to Pulitzer success for Professor John Matteson. Originally trained as a lawyer (he earned his bachelor's degree in history from Princeton University in 1983 and a law degree from Harvard three years later), Matteson decided to pursue an academic career only after several years as a litigator. At that point, he says, only one graduate school admitted him (Columbia's). Not having quite completed his dissertation, he nonetheless applied for a position that seemed tailor-made for him in 1997: teaching literature and law at John Jay College. He was not offered the job, but was careful to follow up and express his continuing interest in working at the College; when August came around and John Jay needed a full-time substitute to teach literature and composition, he was offered four sections. Although at the time his dissertation remained unfinished, Matteson did have a wife and preschooler to support; he accepted the heavy workload. (In some respects, imagining Matteson's life at that time inspires a comparison with his description of Bronson Alcott as a young husband and father: "He was struggling to serve three masters at once: the necessity of earning a living; the care and nurture of his children; and the ceaselessly demanding appetite of his mind."¹ )

By the time the tenure-track literature and law position was reoffered, Matteson had proven himself as a teacher, colleague, and dedicated member of the John Jay community; he won the job. Matteson waxes eloquent about his academic home. "We are a school revitalized," he says, crediting the efforts of President Jeremy Travis and Provost Jane Bowers and the contributions of many "superb new faculty members."

Eden's Outcasts may be a work of literary history, but it possesses its own biography, too. Unlike many first books penned by professors in the humanities, it is not a revised doctoral dissertation (for the record, Matteson's Columbia dissertation is titled "Blasphemy, Prudence, Slavery: Ethics in Law and Literature in the Age of Emerson"). In 2001, Matteson published a scholarly article on Emerson, Herman Melville, and Daniel Webster in The New England Quarterly that caught the attention of literary agent Peter Steinberg. The agent contacted Matteson, and discussions ensued about book proposals rooted in the 19th-century literary and philosophical history that had captivated Matteson and would also appeal to a general audience.

Initially, Matteson considered writing a book focused on 19th-century utopian communities, including Fruitlands, the short-lived community Bronson Alcott spearheaded. But as he immersed himself in the research, Matteson discovered much more about Bronson as both a philosopher of child-raising and as a parent. Exploring Bronson's relationship with his famous daughter also appealed given Matteson's own close relationship with his daughter. A proposal emerged; fortunately, one publishing house was willing to buy it; and Eden's Outcasts (the title alludes to the Alcott family's ultimate failure with Fruitlands) was on its way.

Asked to name some of the writers who have influenced his work, Matteson has many responses. In terms of "learning a writing style," he cites his longtime admiration for the writings of John Steinbeck and George Orwell. In studying biography, he has found it helpful to read David McCullough's books. Matteson also expresses gratitude for the intellectual contributions of a CUNY Writing Fellow he came to know at John Jay College, David Yaffe, and for the advice of a Princeton professor, Victor Brombert, who, as Matteson writes in the acknowledgments prefacing Eden's Outcasts, "[taught] me how to write with love."

Indeed, in conversation Matteson expresses repeatedly a sense of obligation to treat his subject(s) not only with love, but also with respect. In an age when many writers may be tempted to sensationalize their works, Matteson takes the opposite approach while managing not to idealize the individuals he is writing about. One of the more controversial elements of Eden's Outcasts, for example, concerns Matteson's suggestion that Louisa May Alcott may have suffered from bipolar disorder. Rather than simply issue an eyecatching claim, Matteson presents his evidence and interpretation; admits candidly that "no definitive interpretation of Louisa's emotional condition has emerged"; and cites Madeleine Stern, whom he calls "the brilliant Alcott biographer" and who believes "that Louisa's vortices were simply part of her writing method and do not reflect any mental abnormality." He also shares the opinion he sought and received from the reigning expert in the field of bipolar disorder among artists, Kay Redfield Jamison, carefully quoting her conclusion that the evidence "'does not irrefutably show, but is consistent with, the strong likelihood that Louisa May Alcott suffered from a form of manic-depressive illness.'"²

Louisa's possible bipolar disorder is not the only surprise Matteson encountered in researching and writing the book. At the outset, he says, he expected the relationship between Bronson and Louisa to be far less complicated than he discovered it to be. And like this reader, he expected the Alcott family's circumstances to be far more comfortable than the historical record revealed them to be. In truth, not totally unlike the March family's dependence on wealthy personages like Mr. Laurence and Aunt March, the Alcotts depended to a remarkable degree on the generosity of others. Matteson writes, for instance, that as the 1860s dawned, the family's friend Emerson "continued in his generous ways. Whenever the family seemed more pinched than usual, a small sum would magically appear from under a book or behind a candlestick. Although Emerson tried to keep his contributions to the Alcotts' fortunes anonymous, Louisa was not fooled for a second." ³ Finally, Matteson did not expect the story of Bronson Alcott and "nurturing" to be quite so complex. This last point is something Matteson may be able to explore further as he continues with his plan to edit and annotate some of Bronson's writings on child-raising.

In the meantime, Matteson is immersed in his next biography, a study of Margaret Fuller (whom readers will meet in her cameo appearances in Eden's Outcasts). He will spend next year on sabbatical, but will return to take part in the John Jay English department's newly-approved degree programs and to occupy its new office space. An Eden, perhaps, for one who is now as far from a literary "outcast" as any writer can possibly be.

1 Eden's Outcasts, p. 52.

2 Eden's Outcasts, p. 305.

3 Eden's Outcasts, p. 260.