Stars Fell On Alabama by Carl Carmer is a book of folkways. It is not journalism, or history, folklore, or a novel. It is at times impressionistic, and at other times it conveys deep insights into the character of Alabama's people and places.
This book is really a "best of," as chosen by the author himself. These are Carmer's favorite pieces, drawn from three decades of work. He mixes leisurely reminiscences with folklore, verse, and portraits of Upstate's diverse population. Geographically, they range from Niagara Falls to Montauk Point, and include pieces on the fate of Native Americans, ghost stories, tall stories, character sketches, a piece on the erosion of New York State's natural beauty, as well as poems and works of wit and humor.
New York State has had its share of writers who have, at some point in their careers, taken New York as their subject. The writings compiled here by Carl Carmer, a native of New York State and one of its finest folklorists, celebrate what he calls the "undefined gleanings" of this great state, spanning four centuries and six regions of its upstate region. Carmer writes in his foreword: "I have long held that "York State" is a country, that its people have specific characteristics that make it distinctive." Tavern Lamps gives us 98 British and American authors (with a biographical listing of the authorship in the back of the book) and over 150 selections celebrating the ruch culture and heritage of the state. In the collection, we read Rudyard Kipling on Buffalo's grain elevators, Edith Wharton in the Hudson River Country, Theodore Dreiser on Owego, Herman Melville on the Erie Canal, Henry James on Saratoga, Washington Irving on Knickerbocker, Samuel L. Clemens, De Witt cLinton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and many more. This collection, complemented by 40 paintings from the collection of the New York State Historical Association gives us upstate New York from a myriad of its inhabitants and visitors, a multi-faceted portrait of an area about which Carmer hopes "the peppered reader will be convinced that there is an over-all one of a kind nonesuchness that separates upstate from the rest of the world.
The Susquehana River is the longest river in the eastern United States, running 444 miles from its headwaters in the Appalachian Mountains of New York to its outlet in Chesapeake Bay. Its storied history includes the early native populations of Susquehannock and Iroquois peoples, the key roles it played in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and environmental degradation brought on the by industrialization in the 19th century.
In this classic book, Carl Carmer describes the social life and customs of his native New York. Wandering from Buffalo to the Adirondacks across upstate New York, he heard folk tales, tall tales, stories of religious fervor and scandal. A born storyteller himself, Carmer writes about the beautiful Genesee, the Seneca and Tuscarora, the Cardiff Giant and the Loomis Gang, and the story of the Murdered Bride of Rensselaer County.
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