V&B Forum
City Lights Bookstore
|
|
Kent Haruf: Gone But Not Forgotten
A Tribute
by Cathy Fiorello
Kent Haruf came into my life too late, and then left too soon. I read his novel Plainsong, published in 1999, just a few years ago, and went into “book mourning” when it ended. Its prose so lyrical, its characters so true that you expect to encounter them in your own life, remained in my head and would not allow me to move on to another book. When at last I did, it was to another Kent Haruf novel, then another, until I had read all three of his stories that take place in Holt, a fictional town in the eastern Colorado plains.
Haruf knows his characters; he’s one of them. He knows his place; he’s lived there. He brings his reader into that life and that place and makes us want to stay, a desire that translates into always waiting for his next book. There will no longer be a next book. Haruf died in 2014 at age 71. But he left a body of work for us to dip into, to re-read, in whole or in part, and experience again the “lovely, measured grace of an old hymn.”* When I’m between books, deciding what to read next, I sometimes pick up one of the books in the Plainsong trilogy, open to any page, and I am back in Holt again.
Let’s start with Plainsong, and go to Holt, where we meet the elderly bachelor brothers, the McPherons, two of the most endearing characters in contemporary fiction. They are cattle ranchers who know more about heifers than they ever learned about women. But that changes when they take in a pregnant teenager whose mother had banished her from home. What follows is a story of family and community, and how the latter fills in when the former drops out.
The citation Plainsong received when it was nominated for the National Book Award, said: “The Voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground.” Those voices are carried through the two books that follow in the trilogy: Eventide and Benediction. You will meet the McPherons again in each of these books, though in smaller roles. One of the brothers dies in Eventide. The other, now totally alone, is ready to learn something about women and a long-time widow in town is ready to teach him. His faltering step towards this great unknown is just one small treasure in a work filled with life’s small treasures.
Haruf’s final novel, published in 2015, is a quiet love story about two lonely people. Some couples share a song, some have a special place. The two elderly people in Our Souls at Night cherish quiet evenings together. It was written when Haruf knew he was dying. He wrote it in 45 days. His wife, also his copyeditor, warned him: “Don’t you dare die before you finish it.”
In truth, he was motivated by his need to help people who were facing their own mortality. Take stock of your life, he’s telling us. Try to heal whatever relationships you can.
Our Souls at Night is Kent Haruf’s goodbye gift to readers who love his writing.
Haruf knows his characters; he’s one of them. He knows his place; he’s lived there. He brings his reader into that life and that place and makes us want to stay, a desire that translates into always waiting for his next book. There will no longer be a next book. Haruf died in 2014 at age 71. But he left a body of work for us to dip into, to re-read, in whole or in part, and experience again the “lovely, measured grace of an old hymn.”* When I’m between books, deciding what to read next, I sometimes pick up one of the books in the Plainsong trilogy, open to any page, and I am back in Holt again.
Let’s start with Plainsong, and go to Holt, where we meet the elderly bachelor brothers, the McPherons, two of the most endearing characters in contemporary fiction. They are cattle ranchers who know more about heifers than they ever learned about women. But that changes when they take in a pregnant teenager whose mother had banished her from home. What follows is a story of family and community, and how the latter fills in when the former drops out.
The citation Plainsong received when it was nominated for the National Book Award, said: “The Voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground.” Those voices are carried through the two books that follow in the trilogy: Eventide and Benediction. You will meet the McPherons again in each of these books, though in smaller roles. One of the brothers dies in Eventide. The other, now totally alone, is ready to learn something about women and a long-time widow in town is ready to teach him. His faltering step towards this great unknown is just one small treasure in a work filled with life’s small treasures.
Haruf’s final novel, published in 2015, is a quiet love story about two lonely people. Some couples share a song, some have a special place. The two elderly people in Our Souls at Night cherish quiet evenings together. It was written when Haruf knew he was dying. He wrote it in 45 days. His wife, also his copyeditor, warned him: “Don’t you dare die before you finish it.”
In truth, he was motivated by his need to help people who were facing their own mortality. Take stock of your life, he’s telling us. Try to heal whatever relationships you can.
Our Souls at Night is Kent Haruf’s goodbye gift to readers who love his writing.
*Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, May 25, 2004.
