Little House on the Prairie. Η σειρά που παίχτηκε στην ελληνική τηλεόραση από το 1974 έως το 1981. Κράτησε συντροφιά σε εκατομμύρια παιδιά σε όλο τον κόσμο και δημιούργησε τις καλύτερες εντυπώσεις για την αγροτική ζωή. Συναίσθημα, δεσμοί αγάπης στην οικογένεια, αλληλεγγύη, το κακό τιμωρείται (ευτυχώς) πάντα και όλα όσα θέλουμε για να κρατάμε τις ισορροπίες μας στον κόσμο της αδικίας, τα συναντούσαμε στο Μικρό Σπίτι στο Λιβάδι.
Εν τούτοις όλα ήταν ψεύτικα, σύμφωνα με την αποκαλυπτική αυτοβιογραφία της συγγραφέως του Μικρού Σπιτιού στο λιβάδι, Laura Ingalls Wilder, η οποία όπως αποκαλύπτει μέσω της βιογράφου και συντάκτριάς της η συμμετοχή της Laura και της αδερφής της στον τεμαχισμό του γουρουνιού, που θεωρήθηκε ως η πιο ωμή σκηνή στο “Μικρό Σπίτι Στο Λιβάδι”, δεν είναι τίποτα μπροστά σε αυτά που πραγματικά συνέβαιναν στο σπίτι.
Μεταξύ άλλων, η συγγραφέας αποκαλύπτει μία σκηνή από τα παιδικά της χρόνια, με έναν γείτονά τους, ο οποίος, αφού ήπιε μερικά ποτηράκια ουίσκι, έλουσε με κηροζίνη την κρεβατοκάμαρα του σπιτιού του κι άρχισε να σέρνει την σύζυγό του γύρω από τις φλόγες, κρατώντας την από τα μαλλιά.
Η Pamela Smith Hill, ο επικεφαλής συντάκτης και βιογράφος της Laura δήλωσε στο Associated Press: “Μπορείτε να διαβάσετε “Το μικρό σπίτι στο λιβάδι” ως κάτι πραγματικό και όχι κάτι ως φαντασία. Έτσι θα πάρετε μια καλύτερη αίσθηση για το πώς η ιστορική οικογένεια Ingalls έζησε πραγματικά.
Οι υπεύθυνοι του τυπογραφείου “South Dakota State Historical Society” κυκλοφόρησαν το Φθινόπωρο του 2014 αυθεντικό χειρόγραφο, χωρίς ίχνος λογοκρισίας, υπό τον τίτλο ‘Pioneer Girl” σίγουροι ότι θα σοκάρουν τους αναγνώστες.
Πηγή εδώ
In her beloved Little House on the Prairie series of books, Laura Ingalls Wilder painted a wholesome picture of pioneer life in which the most scandalous event was schoolgirl rival Nellie Olsen pulling her pigtails.
But the reality behind her life with her parents and three sisters as they travelled across the American West, documented in the long-running Little House on the Prairie television series as well as her eight books for children, was rather more gritty.
Now the full story of Ms. Wilder’s early life is to be told for the first time with the publication this fall of her autobiography, A Pioneer Girl, which she originally wrote for an adult audience before adapting it for children in the Little House series.
The unsanitized version of events includes tales that were left out of the children’s books, including an episode in which a drunken neighbour batters his wife, details of an ill-fated love triangle, and even a scene where Ms. Wilder’s supposedly saintly Pa, her father, Charles Ingalls, ducks paying the family’s rent.
Ms. Wilder began writing about her early life during the Depression in 1930, recalling her days as the daughter of a pioneer family travelling west before eventually settling in De Smet, S.D., in 1870. After she was unable to find a publisher, she and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane turned her stories into a series of books for children.
These stripped out much of the harsh truth of prairie living, making some characters out of amalgams of real-life people and editing events to make a better story.
The unedited draft, which has been preserved for decades at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum in Mansfield, Mo., is being published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press as Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography and includes the original misspellings and idiosyncrasies.
Pamela Smith Hill, the lead editor and Ms. Wilder’s biographer, told The Associated Press, “You can read Pioneer Girl as non-fiction rather than fiction and get a better feeling of how the historical Ingalls family really lived, what their relationships were and how they experienced the American West.”
Amy Lauters, an associate professor of mass media at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has read the manuscript and is writing a book about Rose Wilder Lane, added, “That first version was blunt, it was honest.
“It was full of the everyday sorts of things that we don’t care to think about when we think about history.
It’s certainly not the fantasized version
“And it’s certainly not the fantasized version we saw on … the television show.”
It includes the story of a love triangle “gone awry,” although the characters who were involved have not yet been disclosed.
In another incident, while living in Burr Oak, Iowa — a period not referred to in the children’s books — a neighbour sets fire to his bedroom while drunk on whiskey and drags his wife around by her hair until Mr. Ingalls intervenes.
Far from being the God-fearing and saintly father figure of the books and television show, Pa was a rather more irascible character in real life, once skipping out on paying the family’s rent after falling out with his landlord, whom he described as a “rich old skinflint.”