Turkey RPCV Kent Haruf's prose is so sure-footed, it's hard to imagine he didn't publish anything until he was in his 40s
Life builds characters: Kent Haruf was too busy living to rush into writing
"Everything has to be in the service of the story," says author Kent Haruf.
By Christy Karras
The Salt Lake Tribune
Kent Haruf's prose is so sure-footed, it's hard to imagine he didn't publish anything until he was in his 40s. But perhaps it was his late start in professional writing that saved him from becoming self-absorbed or overly impressed with his own craft.
Working in odd jobs all over the West gave him an authenticity and an authority rarely seen in those who rise through the creative-writing ranks without doing much else. Haruf worked on a chicken ranch, did construction in Wyoming and pest control in Kansas, staffed an orphanage in Montana and taught at a country school in Colorado, among many other things.
Encountering such a variety of people and places, he says, helped give life to his characters. "I was simply trying to make a living for myself and my family. Certainly, in retrospect, those jobs were very useful. I feel it has given me insight into all kinds of people and all kinds of lives," he said. "It seemed to me I had to go through a long apprenticeship to be able to write something that someone would want to read or want to publish."
Haruf decided in his 20s that he wanted to write, and though it took him a while to get into it full time, he remained sure it was what he wanted. He was raised in a couple of small northwestern Colorado towns that became the basis for the town of Holt, where his books are set, and still speaks in the same manner as his characters, with no wasted words or flowery language.
Though the high prairie and farm towns scattered upon it give his books some of their flavor, "What happens to these people is not different from what happens to people all over the world," he said, mentioning single mothers, old women dying alone in dingy upstairs apartments, kids foisted off on people who never set out to raise them, parents not equipped to take care of their children. "Everything happens everywhere, even in little towns."
Haruf taught writing at the college level until the success of Plainsong enabled him to finally write full time. "It's ideal. Life is good. I write in the morning and do something outdoors in the afternoon. I've just reached a place in my life that suits my compulsions," he said. Still, "I don't think of myself as someone who has arrived."
Haruf was last in Salt Lake City as part of a couple dozen writers in town to christen the new city library, which he calls "magnificent." His new novel, Eventide, continues the story of some characters from his critically acclaimed Plainsong, winner of the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the New Yorker Book Award.
Long before his readers clamored for more from the characters in Plainsong, Haruf knew he would write a companion book. "I knew that I was not done with that story, especially the McPheron brothers," the bachelor farmers who take in a pregnant teenager in Plainsong and who face new, deeper challenges in Eventide. "I don't really, in my own thinking about it, think of it as the sequel. I think of it as a continuous story about their lives. . . . I also think Eventide is a different story. It's a darker story."
The new novel introduces new characters, who fight the same kind of everyday battles Haruf chronicled in Plainsong: raising families despite hardship, making friends despite difficulties, overcoming the trials of childhood.
But the elderly McPheron brothers continue to give the story a dignified emotional core. "In this country, we're so obsessed with youth," Haruf said, "But my goodness, most older people have very vital lives." Their age doesn't stop the brothers from bravely forging ahead into unfamiliar territory; in the new book, one brother faces a crisis he isn't sure he can handle.
Bachelor farmers aside, some of Haruf's most memorable characters have been women. Haruf recalls a woman, part of an awards panel, who mystified him by telling him he shouldn't win the award because he was a man writing female characters. "It seems to me that it's a mistake to think that a man can't write about a woman," he said. "At some basic core, I'd like to think all people have some characteristics that are similar to one another."
Like Plainsong, Eventide has earned Haruf praise for his ability to use carefully crafted descriptions of small events and details to tell a larger story. (Publishers Weekly called it "an uncommonly rich novel" in which the characters "maintain an elemental dignity no matter how buffeted by adversity.") Those details, he says, were missing from a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie based on Plainsong that aired last month. "I thought they took the sting out of it."
The simplicity of his writing is intentional. "What I've tried to do is learn to write as clearly and directly as I can, hoping someone will feel something when they read it," he said. "Everything has to be in the service of the story."
The tide rolls in
* Kent Haruf will read from and sign Eventide on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Salt Lake City Main Library auditorium, 210 E. 400 South in Salt Lake City.
* Call 801-524-8200 for information.
