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A Healing Melody: Commentary on Kent Haruf's Plainsong |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / COMMENTARY |
| Author: Diana Postlethwaite |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2000 |
| Size: 2,944 Words, 18,345 Characters |
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Plainsong, Kent Haruf's third novel, both returns to familiar territory and stakes out new ground. Like his previous books, The Tie That Binds (1984) and Where You Once Belonged (1990), it is set in and around the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. But the novel's literary style represents a dramatic departure from the more conventional cadences of his earlier work. In an interview, Haruf (whose name rhymes with sheriff) revealed that Plainsong's new style emerged from his unconventional approach to the physical process of writing: Sitting at his typewriter, removing his glasses, and covering his eyes with a stocking cap, Haruf would type blind, listening to instead of looking at his words. With Plainsong, he has found a striking new fictional voice: supple, distinctive, filled with echoes of classic American predecessors yet unmistakably itself. Nominated for the prestigious National Book Award in fiction, Plainsong has justly become his breakout book.
Defining place and voice
Haruf, who teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University, prefaces his novel with a definition: "Plainsong--the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air." The concept informs the book at many levels. Plainsong suggests a geographical pun as well as a musical metaphor: Haruf's song of the plains weaves together life stories of a multigenerational community on the Great Plains of northeastern Colorado.
"Place" and "voice" are the deeply complementary modes that define this beautifully written, bighearted work of fiction. The novel speaks with a distinctively American voice on two levels: Haruf's carefully crafted literary style contains echoes of classic American writers, while the place where his characters live and the voices with which...
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...at the dining room table out in the country after supper was over and after the table was cleared, while outside, beyond the house walls and the curtainless windows, a cold blue norther began to blow up one more high plains midwinter storm." As the universal storm rages outside, Plainsong's men and women are strengthened and protected within, by the sheltering communion of human conversation.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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