I have put together a complete archive (that is at the bottom of this newsletter) of the Taylor Caldwell newsletters for 2020. I also have one for a hefty part of 2019, which the newsletter started in early September. They represent my having learned a great deal about TC to go along with my having read during this time many of her novels. Of course, I knew about her from a peculiar angle when I was an adolescent.

Just the knowledge gleaned from my having grown up in a conservative city, Buffalo, during the time of the influence of the McCarthy era and hearings, would have influenced me. Also, there was the background ideology pushed by the John Birch Society. Though I had no idea in High School just how much TC influenced that organization.

I had a grandmother for whom Drugstores carried (literally) racks of her books. Still, not a grandmother that I had come to know. In these last few years, I have discovered sources related to our grandfather's family. That includes letters between TC and our grandfather. The few times I visited TC's house, Marcus Reback (her second husband) was a pleasant presence to me.

Too, his daughter Judy and I had had periods of being around each other: When I worked in Boston when I was 19, and again when I was a professor at State University of New York at Stony Brook, while Judy lived on Long Island.

Judy and I talked much more than I ever talked to my mother. Yet, the period of my talking to her was short. Then, Judy died a suicide quite young. Still, nothing quite affected me as a resource than when I gleaned TC's connection to the still extant JBS. A newsletter recipient researched that with me.

Without, however, the accumulated pages of Peggy's autobiography I could't have fathomed much of how TC's thoughts and life jibed with, or were confounded by, her interactions with the public. Joyce Carol Oates (reminder: from the same area in Buffalo) is a public personality.

Oates often appears in front of audiences to speak about her views of America as epitomized by her literary characters. Indeed, as a Princeton Professor, she interacts with her students continually. They are a smart, loyal, following to her.

Of a different nature, but with an equally public life was Ayn Rand. Five years younger than TC, she famously influenced many economists and politicians through a small number of novels. Even if they are not known for their literary quality, they were exceedingly well known for their influence on the ideological positions that many adopted during succeeding generations.

My best friend in High School foisted Ayn Rand upon me. He expected that we would share enthusiasm for her. We did not.

I did not even know that others knew that I was TC's grand child. Nor did I interchange with my peers on the few TC novels of hers that I had read by the end of High School. Sports, surviving at home, reading science fiction, thinking, girls, were my preoccupations. A jumbled potpourri, the glue without organization to my life. I went through undergraduate school in two years: Electrical Engineering. I have had some well known friends in college especially, but also as a mathematician. Still, I concentrated then, and still do, on expanding my understanding of the world around me.

Of course, I had to make money and I did – after I had a PhD. That was by at first writing mathematics papers that solved some famous problems (to mathematicians). Then, I later formulated my own view of what a serious problem should be.

I hardly ever had even a glimpse of TC, except when my mother – I've said this in newsletters – needed some of her children present in US ports. That was during the time she accompanied TC on those long world cruises on ocean liners.

Peggy needed her children precisely to prove to those who gathered around TC that she had been a mother. Here's a truth: The world hardly knew Peggy. They certainly hardly knew Peggy with her children, for she did nothing with them. She, like TC, didn't much want them around.

TC wrote novels, not essays. It was from her novels, and tabloid articles that appeared sporadically during special periods in her life, that she was known. There is one addendum to that. She did write to other public figures, some of whom reciprocated. Alas, half of what she wrote to them was vitriol for which the recipients seem to have been proud.

One thing we know about TC: her ideology, and whom she hated. She was therefore valuable to those who felt comforted by her predilections. Though, you wonder if she didn't choose some of her predictions to sell books. Certainly there were those who learned from her to defend their ideology in some of the same strident tones she used.

I will use some of the materials I have from the learning experience encapsulated in pieces in these newsletters. Here is the 4th quarter's letters.. Below I have links to the whole of the newsletters for 2020, one hell of a year. Ah, but you know that.

I myself qualify as a worshiper of Jesus. I have been sparing of comparing myself on that with TC, for, while I speak often to (not just of) Jesus, I don't expect others to understand that easily. Yes, I have been on the councils of churches I have attended. No one doubts my sincerity. Yet, for myself it is between me and Jesus.

These are tough times for people religious in the way of myself, though I am pretty fearless about it. Those who know me know that I'm skeptical of religiousness based on pronouncements without truth that can be accessed by those around us. I work hard to understand many things. Key to that, I know Jesus approves of my attempts.

I also know Peggy's autobiography has much still to offer about TC. Especially how she started and how she ended up. I will continue in that direction putting together what I have learned. Yet, (sincerely) expecting now to get to a solid and reasonably swift understanding of TC's influence then, especially on that sad creature, my mother, Peggy.

I will also offer in newsletters some solid tidbits. There was a time reporters for various well known magazines would have relished receiving these. Guessing what interests people is not easy.

*|FNAME|*, for myself, while I have interacted considerably with a small number of newsletter recipients, what I have to go on about most of you is the response to the newsletters. Here's some data.

The three most well-received newsletters during the 4th Quarter of 2020 had these titles: "TC, Charles Koch, and the John Birch Society: Taylor Caldwell lives on," "Aspasia" the heroine of "Glory and the Lightning and Seven TC promotions, and what we've learned about TC. For those, 50+% of you opened the newsletters. Mailchimp gives me clues about newsletters doing OK, by comparison with my 'peers." They are doing OK, though, without direct feedback, it is hard to tell what that means.

I was surprised by the last of those. I sent that during the hectic days of Christmas, and the confabulations that followed.

TC-Descendants Newsletter: 2020

Taylor Caldwell sits aboard the Rotterdam, the ship on which she often sailed for many months: With her two daughters, Peggy (left) and Judy and Judy's husband Ted Goodman. 		Taylor Caldwell, her two daughters Peggy and Judy, and Ted Goodman, Judy's husband
Rainbow Line

1st Quarter 2020
Introduction to Peggy's Autobiography (mostly a biography of TC).
Chap. 2 Access: Peggy's remembrance of TC just before Dynasty of Death:
TC's first published novel, appears.
Two trilogies epitomizing TC's non-historical themes over 40 large novels.
Rainbow Line


✺ List of newsletters with abstracts → messlist-tc1QT20.html

2nd Quarter 2020
TC as a person, through Peggy's autobiography and by comparing recognitions:
for her, Ayn Rand, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Four newsletters that take on the parts of Pillar of Iron:
the time of Rome to which history is glued.
Getting closer to TC's major themes, and those who epitomize them.
Rainbow Line

✺ List of newsletters with abstracts → messlist-tc2QT20.html

3rd Quarter 2020
Dealing with TC's trilogies and tetralogies, starting with The Armaments Family.
Reckoning with TC's personification of evil by reviewing the 4 parts of Pillar of Iron.
1st 3rd of an historically acknowledged love story: When Aspasia met Pericles
While not by any means the first to take it on, TC's approach is unique.
Rainbow Line

✺ List of newsletters with abstracts → messlist-tc3QT20.html

4th Quarter 2020
The three parts of the earliest and most exciting characters in TC's historical novels: Pericles and Aspasia.
Personal letters of TC; examining how she judged the politics of now and then.
Her tropes and her exceedingly strong relation to the John Birch Society.
Rainbow Line

✺ List of newsletters with abstracts → messlist-tc4QT20.html

Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell
TC's start
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