I hope you are enjoying our discussion of Kent Haruf’sPlainsong. I am, by profession, a teacher of English, but with a few publications in print, I like to think of myself as a creative writer. I enjoy studying novels and poetry for craftsmanship.
So. When I read a book, especially a GOOD book, one that really touches me, resonates with me, as Plainsong does, deeply, I like to learn something about the author’s writing process, the way that he or she sets about to write. In an interview for The Wall Street Journal, Haruf noted that he would first read a passage from a favorite author – Chekhov, Faulkner, or Hemingway—so as to remind himself “what a sentence can be.” While Haruf’s admiration of these earlier modernist writers is worthy of further exploration, what’s more important to us is to appreciate what it tells us to expect about his style – it’s spare—relatively free of detail and description; unadorned—plain, common words; yet, indirect, asking us to infer meaning.
Here’s a paragraph from the opening chapter, which introduces us to one of the families central to the novel:
“…Guthrie could hear the two boys talking in the kitchen, their voices clear, high-pitched, animated again. He stopped for a minute to listen. Something to do with school….He went outside across the porch and across the drive toward the pickup. A faded red Dodge with a deep dent in the left rear fender. The weather was clear, the day was bright and still early and the air felt fresh and sharp, and Guthrie had a brief feeling of uplift and hopefulness. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and stood for a moment looking at the silver poplar tree. Then he got into the pickup and cranked it and drove out of the drive onto Railroad Street and head up the five or six blocks toward Main. Behind him the pickup lifted a powdery plume from the road and the suspended dust shone like flecks of gold in the sun.”
I love the sound of Haruf’s sentences –beautifully cadenced, rhythmic, yes? Plain, common words, mostly of one or two syllables. When Haruf does offer specific details, be on guard: the clear skies, a bright sun…why is Tom’s feeling of uplifit and hopefulness “brief”? is his faded and dented , and probably old, truck a sign of hard-times, frugality? Does Tom keep it because he has trouble letting go? Is his own life also faded and damaged?
Does this style – spare, unadorned, indirect – emulate and reflect as well a High Plains style of language?
