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Work Song
Author: Ivan Doig
Type: Fiction
Finished: April 7, 2019
Rating: ★★★

Image from Amazon

Meh.

This story is narrated by Morrie Morgan about 10 years after his time in Marias Coulee in The Whistling Season. After travelling to the Southern Hemisphere he is back in Montana.

“But an urge can spin the points of a compass as strongly as the magnetism of ore, and in spite of all that happened back then, here I was once more in the western territory at the very edge of the map of imagination.” [p 3]

He arrives in the midst of labor troubles, and, although he tries to stay neutral, he has to take a side.

“There is something in me that attracts situations, I know there is. Here I was, faced by three people with whom I had spent only forkfuls of time, asked to make one of those choices in life that can dwarf any other. I had to pick a side, right now, or else hit the chandelier switch again and bolt into the night.” [p 12]

So, Morrie once again is in the middle of things and has to navigate carefully through the minefield. A couple of the mine company’s thugs suspect him of bad intentions; he has to navigate his relationship with Grace, who is renting a room to him; and he has to tiptoe around his employer – the city librarian.

“The library ran on one principle: Samuel S. Sandison was next to God. Whether above or below, opinions varied.” ‘[p 83]

And through it all Morrie has to wonder if his past his catching up to him – which it does.

The novel is a fun enough read but seeing Morrie through the eyes of others – as in The Whistling Season – is more interesting than hearing him tell his own story. Like the other Ivan Doig novels I’ve read, the hero wins big in the end. But getting there is half the fun.

There are a couple of times in the novel where actions are nudged along without clear cause from with the story itself. For example, Morrie finds that Sanderson has a troubling past. He discovers this past from others but just as he does, Sanderson takes him aside and shares his side of the story. But Sanderson doesn’t know that Morrie knows and it isn’t clear why he opened up to Morrie.

There are interesting side characters such as his fellow renters Griff and Hooper. I especially liked the young “Russian Famine” a skinny, energetic errand boy. He doesn’t like his real name and to my delight we see how the term “nick name” came to be.

“‘Famine ain’t too bad. It’d be one of those nicked names, huh?’” [p 143]

At the end Morrie is off again; Sanderson muses on his experience with Morrie.

“‘One good thing about you, Morgan,’ he looked down hjis beard at me. ‘You don’t stick around long enough for a person to get sick of you.’” [p 287]

A fun novel, but I like The Whistling Season and The Bartender’s Tale better.

The Whistling Season
Author: Ivan Doig
Type: Fiction
Finished: March 28, 2019
Rating: ★★★


Image from Amazon

As the novel opens, Paul, who is now the Montana state superintendent of schools, returns to the one room school house he loved and reflects on his seventh grade year that propelled his course in life. Paul is the oldest of three brothers living on a Montana homestead near Marias Coulee in the first decade of the 20th century. His mother had died a few years earlier and one night his father’s attention is caught by an ad in the newspaper by a woman who is offering housekeeping services: “Can’t cook but doesn’t bite”. Thus they send for Rose. After wiring an advance to get to Montana from Minnesota, she unexpectedly shows up with her brother Morrie.

Their meeting at the depot was intriguing :

“In fact, I had noticed Father give a double look as if there must be more of her somewhere.” [p 31]

And of Morrie:

“He was lightly built, and an extraordinary amount of him was mustache.” [p 33]

After a somewhat uneven start Morrie winds up being Paul’s Latin tutor. Rose is a tireless worker and soon has the house in order even if she does refuse to cook. It is enjoyable to follow the family’s life for the year.  The novel centers on the homestead and that “nearby” one room schoolhouse with occasional trips out to the Big Ditch irrigation project. There are memorable characters here including the school bully Eddie Turley and his imposing father Brose. But mostly we are intrigued by Morrie and Rose’s background. Paul finds out more and more about them and finally pieces much of it together. This is Ivan Doig’s strength: slowly uncovering a mystery with some steps creating more questions than answers.

I’ve enjoyed my recent sting of reading novels about the western homesteads and small towns in the first half of the 20th century.  I enjoyed Doig’s The Bartender’s Tale but thought it leaned toward juvenile fiction in that the children were so clever and happy endings were handed out to everyone. In this novel we can guess much of what will happen. But not everything. The ending is more mixed, but much brighter –  and less realistic – than, say, The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf which covers another homestead around the same time. But realism isn’t Doig’s purpose; I suppose I shouldn’t judge the book by comparing it to Haruf’s novels.

Regardless, Ivan Doig’s does bring that era to life. His prose is touching and keeps me coming back to his novels. I adore the adult Paul standing at the schoolhouse and looking around the prairie.

“Perhaps that pattern drew my eye to what I had viewed every day of my school life but never until then truly registered; the trails in the grass that radiated as many directions as there were homesteads with children, all converging to that schoolyard spot where I stood unnaturally alone. Forever and a day could go by, and that feeling will never leave me. Of knowing, in that instant, the central power of that countryt school in all our lives.” [p 120]

I recommend this novel as an entertaining read. I suggest starting with this before The Bartender’s Tale. Morrie’s adventures are detailed in a couple of Ivan Doig’s later novels including Work Song, which I will report on next.

Where You Once Belonged
Author: Kent Haruf
Type: Fiction
Finished: March 7, 2019
Rating: ★★★★

(Image from Amazon)

Although I read them out of order, I have now read all six of Kent Haruf’s novels about the fictional town of Holt, Colorado east of the Rockies. As the story opens, the town discovers that Jack Burdette has returned. Haruf’s beautiful prose perfectly captures him almost a decade after he left town.

“But Burdette looked bad now. In the eight years since Bird or any one of us had seen him he’d changed for the worse. He was fat now, obese; he was sloppy and excessive; his head had grown bald and the flesh hung on him like suet. ‘It was like’, Bird would say later, ‘like for eight years he’d be feeding on cream pie and pork steak and lately he hadn’t fed at all.’” [p 12]

The story is narrated by Pat Arbuckle who now owns the local newspaper. Arbuckle jumps back in time when they were kids and brings us up to date and why his return to small town Holt is such a surprise.  He was never a good student.

“Thus for eight years he was passed from one grade to the next, from one old local spinster or balding man to the next one, passing, being promoted each spring not so much by his own efforts with books and maps and pencils as by the absolute refusal of our teachers to have anything more to do with him.” [p 24]

Burdette grew up taking advantage of whomever he could without a second thought.

“For we had all begun to expect the unusual of him by that time, while, he, for his part, had already learned – if acting on bent and sheer heedless volition can be said to be a form of learning – not to disappoint the expectations of anyone. Least of all his own.” [p 40]

Because he was a star athlete he got away with it and received preferential treatment as he reached adulthood. That “sheer heedless volition” propels the action and explains why he left town.

This, Haruf’s second novel is more plot driven than his final novel Our Souls at Night. Through the action we learn as much about the narrator’s life as we do as the subject of the story. And we get another viewpoint into small town life out in the west.

Haruf creates rich, beautiful characters. Professional reviews of his novels exalt Haruf more than I can; the only thing I need to add is “read his novels!”  I suggest starting with Plainsong, then Eventide. Those two novels are among the best I’ve ever read. The older bachelor brothers in those two novels are so beautifully rendered they have stayed  in my mind for years. The Ties That Bind and this novel are also excellent.