FICTION
Real people
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`Eventide conveys the subtle experience of the very values that matter most in life.'
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KENT HARUF has proved once again that he can mesmerise. It may be difficult to pinpoint the nature of Haruf's magical hold, but there is no denying the pervading magic of his writing. Eventide, sequel to his earlier novel Plainsong (1999), reaffirms Kent Haruf's magical story telling effect. It continues the story centred around the McPheron brothers, Tom Guthrie and Maggie Jones, Victoria and her daughter Katie, with other new entrants as well, set in the prairie town of Holt, Colorado. Eventide is head and shoulders above many novels that deal with the simple progress of human life, going beyond the pages to convey the subtle experience of the very values that matter most in life. For, the residue that is left after a courtship with the pages of Kent Haruf's Eventide is only an overwhelming sense of human involvement.
Moving narration
Recipient of the Whiting Foundation Writer's award and the Maria Thomas award for fiction, he has also rightly earned the special citation of the PEN-Hemingway Foundation, and the American Library Association Distinguished Book List. His literary biography, that includes novels (The Tie That Binds (1984), Where You Once Belonged (1990), Plainsong (1999)) and short fiction (that has appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Grand Street, Prairie Schooner, and Gettysburg Review), is rich in wisdom and humanity, and characterised by a moving narration. He has also been featured in Best American Short Stories (1987) and Where Past Meets Present: Modern Colorado Short Stories (1993).
In a recent interview with Alan Mudge, Haruf is quoted to have talked about an exclusive familiarity and bonding with the high plains of eastern Colorado where he grew up. "I had such affection for it as a kid, and I later taught school and high school out there for about seven years. So I know it well, probably better than any place in the world. It's still the way I think the world should look." As in books that have rooted stories on the terra firma, like Thomas Hardy's Wessex countryside, or William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, or R.K. Narayan's Malgudi, the imaginary town of Holt that is part of Colorado's rocky terrain becomes the vivid backdrop where his characters live and fight life's challenges.
About the characters who people his novels, he has said, "I want people to think that they have been in the presence of real people." Haruf has more than exceeded his intentions. After finishing the book a reader continues to mull over the Mcpheron brothers, Victoria Robideaux, her child Kate, Tom Guthrie's family, or D.J. Kephart and his grandfather. The immediacy of sharing their lives for a brief period of time elicits a compelling and meaningful involvement from readers.
Double vision
In unfolding a situation as poignant and as delicate as child abuse, for instance, the pathos runs not only in the victim but also in the victimiser; there is empathy for the helplessness of the parents, and the teachers; and finally there is disappointment at the ineffectiveness of a system that allows these things to happen. Refraining any judgemental comment, this writer has got into the skin of the child tormenter as much as into the skin of the abused children, a brother and sister team. The stark, matter-of- fact manner in dealing with the deep tragedy of the child victim that is felt by the school authorities, the parents, the immediate society, is remarkable. No melodrama here, no heightened poetry, no epic character, to transmit to every reader the aches and pains of the heart-rending plight.
Haruf says with the tenderness of a compassionate writer, "Childhood is such a vulnerable, tender time. So many things happen to kids, things that the people around them are doing and are not conscious of but that have a lasting effect on the children. And they are so unprotected. DJ, for example, has no power over what happens to him. He's born out of wedlock, his mother dies when he's little, and the only recourse is for him to go to his grandfather, who is an old man and probably doesn't want him to be there. But DJ is a boy who lives in an honourable way. He has enormous integrity and a clear moral code that he abides by. And yet he is powerless." The blending of the double vision of adult perspective with the child's psyche sensitises readers towards the chinks and corners of an unexplored awareness, and the very loneliness of the human soul.
Astonishing range and depth
Only an unpretentious sympathy towards human existence and an astonishingly direct mode could achieve this range and depth. This asset is meaningfully woven against the sharply etched backdrop of the Colorado terrain. The snow and chill of the terrible winter, the smells and colours of the tavern or cows and horses in Mcpheron's courtyard, the muddy moist earth that hugs on to the shoes, the fragrance of the tea brewed by Victoria, the feverishness and the stoic stature of DJ's grandfather — once experienced cannot be wished away from the reader's awareness. The emerging, densely evocative cadences easily eschew the tangible elements of the novel like story or plot in which events move in some kind of linear progression towards a climax. Instead it is the clutch of situations from the lives and times of the simple-minded folks of Holt whose value system is held intact that occupies centrestage in this novel. Haruf is moralistic without being moral, presenting in unsentimental terms the pain of grief and the joy of robust living. Haruf says that his aim is "to write clear, simple, direct sentences and to believe that if you write clearly and cleanly enough then the reader will get what you want him or her to get". This focus has clinched a style of writing that has continued to be the envy of many a writer, where stark simplicity and grandeur co exist. This brand of undemanding simplicity that carries human nobleness and values is the façade behind the craft of this storyteller.
PADMINI DEVARAJAN
Eventide, Kent Haruf, Knopf, 2004, p.320, $24.95.
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