Who Was Joseph Pulitzer?

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

The lack of notes in this somewhat historical novel impinges on the validity of the genre. Terrence Crimmins has written a decent story about Joseph Pulitzer, but without defining notes, it just becomes a novel. I’m certainly not accusing Mr. Crimmins of making this story up; it’s just that without the appropriate notes...it’s merely a novel. There were also some storytelling errors, such as on page twenty two. Joseph was just fired as a waiter at a popular restaurant, when one of the restaurant’s regular customers says, “Aw, Joseph, don’t feel so bad. Being a waiter is a tough job...some friends of mine own a law firm and they could use somebody to run errands, and maybe more. What do you think?” Joseph says, “Can I start right now?” The very next line says, “So began Pulitzer’s career in journalism…” What happened to the law job? The lack of continuity is a big bugaboo of mine among other literary malfunctions. I’m not trying to be gruff to the author, but if you are writing a historical fiction novel...make it 100% believable. We all know that Joseph Pulitzer established his prize in various literary categories (in his will) upon his death, and Mr. Crimmins does enlighten the reader to the Hungarian immigrant’s rise to fame. But why does the reader have to refer to SparkNotes to verify the legitimacy of Mr. Crimmins claims. Again, I’m not charging Terrence Crimmins of anything...just make it easier for the reader to presume what you wrote is accurate. Make sense?
 
A seventeen year old Joseph Pulitzer didn’t approve of his mother’s second husband, so he left home trying to enlist in various armies including his homegrown Hungarian Army. He was rejected because of his frail looking body. Finally, when he went to Germany, he found a American Union Army recruiting office looking for men to fight in the Civil War. But when he arrived in the Port of New York, he found out that he was going to be cheated out of his bounty money, so he dove overboard and became a runaway. Subsequently, he joined the Lincoln NY Cavalry and received his bounty. But after striking a non-comm officer, he became a orderly for a officer throughout the Civil War. After the war, Pulitzer headed to St. Louis in hopes of finding work. “He had a huge ambition and a lofty opinion of himself as a man who could achieve great things, and in this he was correct. He was also very sensitive, did not take orders well, and was what we would today call a control freak. Pulitzer had an ego that made him feel he could do things better than other men, and considered it a gross injustice when any other occupant of the planet earth ever questioned his judgement...today we might call Pulitzer bi-polar.” Pulitzer goes to the library every night, “becoming a self-taught man who not only learned the intricacies of the English language, but passed an exam to obtain a law license.”

After many lowly jobs in St. Louis, he became a cub reporter for the St. Louis Post. The owner of the paper, Mr. Schurz, took him under his wing. Pulitzer exposed injustices throughout St. Louis thus making enemies of the greedy opposition (this habit would last a lifetime). He quickly rose in rank inside of Mr. Schurz’s newspaper, eventually buying the paper from Schurz. When he met his future wife, Kate, she wanted to know what his goal was. He said, “To help the millions of immigrants who weren’t as lucky as me.” Doesn’t that sound like today’s plight in the USA? Somethings seem to repeat themselves every hundred years or so. Pulitzer ultimately merged with The Dispatch and it became the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer hires a cub reporter, William Randolph Hearst, who recently dropped out of Harvard University. However, the golden spoon Hearst soon left for San Francisco to start his own newspaper empire. Meanwhile, Pulitzer’s continuing editorial attacks of “the powers that be” caused problems for his now wife, Kate. “Pulitzer had to hire bodyguards to accompany both himself and Cockerill (his main man) about town, and they continued to be snubbed in high society. This was deeply disturbing to Kate, who had never considered the possibility that her marriage would affect her social standing.” The rest of this book is history. It’s up to you to grab your own copy of this novel to unearth the conclusion. I know that I criticized the author in the first paragraph, but his novel deserves to be read.
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RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I especially liked page 263 (two pages from the end):

"So, now that we are at the end of our little story, who was Joseph Pulitzer? He was a man with a fascinating life, who came to America as an angry seventeen-year-old who barely spoke English, yet developed and owned two major papers in the country some twenty years later. Despite numerous challenges, including poverty and antisemitism, he succeeded, and not only did he succeed but he brought out a new and different kind of journalism. He reached out to people who had not previously read newspapers, connecting with them on a gut level that raised their expectations of their own fate. It was odd that, as an immigrant, he brought about a very American cultural revolution, and helped to shake the ground under the powers-that-be that changed the whole tone of political life.”