Alexandra Kingsley

As much effort as I put into holiday-appropriate reading for Halloween, I somehow always let Thanksgiving pass me by.  Who the hell wants to read about turkeys and the forced appropriation of land anyway?

This year, though, there’s been a lot of attention on Thanksgiving-related reading.  The Smart Set covers Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “John Inglefield’s Thanksgiving.”  Maud Newton points out how Mark Twain spent one Thanksgiving (being a lovable looney, just like any other day); the LOA posts Twain’s short story, “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey”; and the New Yorker shares the menu for one of Twain’s Thanksgiving dinners, which took place at the Park Avenue Hotel.

And then there’s the random assortment I found on that bastion on random knowledge, About.com.  Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Jane Murray’s Thanksgiving”; “Mirages” by Walt Whiman; “The Thanksgiving in Boston Harbor” by the wonderfully named Hezekiah Butterworth; and another Twain entry, the rather politically charged “What I Am Thankful For.”

But what will I really be reading?  The answer is obvious, since I didn’t get nearly enough creepiness in my Halloween reading: Joyce Carol Oates’s “Thanksgiving,” from Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque.  Oh, and this fascinating Thanksgiving Day letter sent from Yokohama, Japan:

Letter, To Benjamin Thackara, From A. M. Thackara, "Yokohama Japan / Thanksgiving Day"