John Joseph Mathews Message Board
Patricia posts on 2/4/2010 12:56:27 PM
I discovered Talking to the Moon in a used book store several months ago and have just started reading in. I am now on the Yellow Flower Moon. I really like this book and intend to add it to the collection of 'important books" that I am compiling for my grandson.
Is there any way that the pictures some of you have taken could be posted to this site?
I am looking forward to reading others of John Joseph Mathews books.
Homer J. Fincannon posts on 4/12/2008 8:17:49 PM
My great grand mother and father lived at the top of Grandview in Pawhuska. A.W. Comstock was a lawyer that represent the Osage tribe in different legal affairs. I have two heirloom family photos from the 1911's to the 1915's. One is taken on Grandview and refers to, the Matthews boy a tall semi dark skin good looking young man.The other is at a oil derrick where a great uncle Homer Comstock was working (1913-14's.Homer,who I was named after, was a amateur photographer. I was born and raised in Pawhuska ,leaving there in 1959.I do believe I saw your great grand father several time in the 50's a the general vicinity of the post office.I'd had ask my boss what type of a outfit this gentleman was wearing ? He replied, he'd had lived and was educated in England. My employer was Walter Johnson,one of the owners of the Johnson Funeral Home.I'll be sharing some of my many photo's in a Tribue in the coming months.
N Edwards posts on 3/26/2008 6:46:13 PM
"Anyone know anything about Mr. Mathews?"
He was my great-grandfather, and his house is (to my knowledge) now a museum near Pawhuska, on the reservation. Glad to see some people still read his work.
Marsha Hayes posts on 1/23/2007 10:42:07 PM
I have inquired about the location of the Blackjacks ( the name of the rock house where Mathews wrote) for decades. I absolutely think it should be preserved if possible. This writer is overlooked because he represents a region of American that is generally overlooked. I would love to even see a picture of where Talking To The Moon was written. Next time I am in Pawhuska, I will inquire at the Museum ( again) about this location. I used Wah-Kon-Tah in a literature class last summer called Osages and Oilmen. It was incredibly well received and discussed.
Jack L. Ashby posts on 1/17/2007 2:46:24 AM
About fifteen or twenty years ago I visited the secluded stone cabin in which Mathews lived and wrote "Talking to the Moon" I was fortunate to have taken some photographs at the time, especially the well house where he painted a story mural.
I don't know what shape the site is in today, but I hope that others, along with myself, will take steps to preserve the historic cabin. It is quite near, or may be in, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, maintained by the Nature Conservancy as a continuing native grassland, also home to a few thousand bison.
To read Talking to the Moon is to expand on Thoreau's Walden. Mathew's work speaks from a love of the land. The book is written in the calander, or moons of the Osage. In many ways this work speaks more realisticly of the nature of all men, than Thoreau's railings.
After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, John Joseph graduated from Oxford, then attended International Studies in Switzerland.
He was a very well read and well rounded writer.
Please read Talking to the Moon, as well as his other books; they are inspiring.
posts on 6/2/2006 9:20:39 AM
I loved Wahkontah so much, I looked up Mathews to learn more about him and then went on to read his other books. He was part Osage and born in Oklahoma right before the turn of the century. He went to the University of Oklahoma and then on to Oxford (!). I know he flew - and I think he was a flight instructor during World War I.
I think Wahkontah is by far the best of his books (I can't believe that it was a book-of-the-month club book). I think the agent is a huge character. But I did also love Sundown, which is a novel that's largely autobiographical. It took me a while to get into Talking to the Moon, which is a Mathews' book about returning to Oklahoma as a middle-aged man, to build a house and get to know his land again. But I still find myself thinking about parts of it even two years after I read it.
If you liked Wahkontah, I recommend Alice Marriott's Ten Grandmothers, which is about a Kiowa woman and also has a lot to do with the melding of cultures.
posts on 6/1/2006 8:07:22 PM
This is a grossly under appreciated author. Everyone should read Wah-Kon-Tah. Anyone know anything about Mr. Mathews?
Note: the views expressed here are only those of the posters.
