4 August 2004
Two Short Novels
I am getting ahead of myself. Or I should say I am getting ahead of my publisher. I have completed three novels– two short and one longer — which haven’t yet seen the light of day. The two short ones will be brought out by Viking this coming November. They will appear in one paperback volume entitled The Staggerford Murders The first of them, The Staggerford Murders, is based on a play I wrote a few years ago, which in turn was based on an early short story of mine entitled “Yesterdays Garbage.” It features three men: Dusty, a retired garbageman, Grover the elderly desk clerk as the rundown Ransford Hotel, and Ollie, an itinerant preacher who is Dusty’s nephew,. All three of them live at the Ransford and one day their attention is drawn back nine years to the unsolved murder of a prominent citizen and the puzzling disappearance of his wife. In discussing the case they solve the two murders, at least to their satisfaction.The second novel is called The Life and Death of Nancy Clancy’s Nephew and it too is based on an early short story. It features as the main character a retired and widowed farmer named W. D. Nestor, who lives unhappily with his daughter and son-in-law on his turkey farm. He finds companionship in a most unlikely place and person–the public library, where he meets and befriends a ten-year-old boy named Kevin Luuya, the son of Ollie the preacher from The Staggerford Murders. This is the only connection between the two novels.
The novels are separate in tone as well. The Murders despite the subject is a light and, I hope, funny story. Whereas Nancy Clancy is much more serious and rather grim. My proofreader Joe Plut considers it the best thing I’ve ever written. I will let my readers decide that.
Jon
August 4, 2004
The novels are separate in tone as well. The Murders despite the subject is a light and, I hope, funny story. Whereas Nancy Clancy is much more serious and rather grim. My proofreader Joe Plut considers it the best thing I’ve ever written. I will let my readers decide that.
Jon
August 4, 2004
February 2003
Ted Kooser, “Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps,” University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln Nebraska, 2002, 153 pages.
Reviewed by Jon Hassler.
Not since Dylan Thomas, in my opinion, has a poet created such a delightful work of prose as Ted Kooser has done in this book about the southeastern corner of Nebraska where he lives. Here, for example, are three sentences from his preface:
Contrary to what out-of-state tourists might tell you, Nebraska is not flat but slanted, like a long church-basement table with the legs at one end not perfectly snapped into place, not quite enough of a slant for the tuna-and-potato-chip casseroles to slide off into the Missouri River. The high end is closest to the Rockies, and the entire state is made up of gravel, sand and silt that ran off the front range over millions of years. Across this plain the Platte River meanders side to side, like a man who has lost a hubcap and is looking for it in the high grass on both sides of the road.
You will notice that two of these three sentences are made up of extravagant and wonderful similes–the slant of land compared to a table, and the river compared to a man on the road–and this proportion holds true for the entire book–one third bare fact, two thirds a poet’s highly entertaining descriptions of the eccentric relatives of his boyhood in Ames, Iowa, and the life he now leads on the sixty-odd acres he owns in the Bohemian Alps. These “alps,” which are only about a hundred feet high,
in the late 1870s began to be settled by Czech and German immigrants from that region of central Europe once known as Bohemia. . . . They’re made up of silty clay and gravelly glacial till with small red boulders that look like uncooked pot roasts.
As its title indicates, the book is divided into four parts according to the seasons, beginning with spring:
Fat slides of snow plop from the wet tin roofs of turkey sheds and it’s suddenly spring, the farmyard air in compartments of warm and cold, blue in the shadows and yellow over the pooled wheel ruts in the sunny pigpens.
Autumn begins this way:
The first official morning of autumn, sunny, cool and breezy, the leaves just beginning to fall. The cottonwoods that lean above our county road have started to pitch their gold coins into the beds of passing pickups, but the elms and hackberries and oaks stubbornly cling to fistfuls of green.
In early winter Kooser is out walking his country road when he sees a starling approach on foot. The bird looks out of place,
wearing an iridescent navy suit with spots of mud from a passing car, a purple silk neck scarf, and far too much oil in his hair. I have seen him before, walking the concourse at O’Hare in Chicago, dragging a cart of sample cases, locked with silver chains.
“When God wishes to rejoice the heart of a poor man, He makes him lose his donkey and find it again.” With this Czech proverb the poet begins the penultimate and most serious part of the book:
In the summer of 1998, I lost the donkey upon which I had ridden for many years, the ability to write. It was something that had given meaning to my life for forty years, and it was gone.
The cause of this devastating development was a seige of cancer of the tongue, which, by means of surgery and radiation, he survived. Then in the final section he gets movingly philosophical, describing life as
a long walk forward through the crowded cars of a passenger trains. . . . There is a windy perilous passage between each car and the next. . . . For you there may be the dangerous passage of puberty, the wind hot and wild in your hair, followed by marriage, . . . then rhe rushing warm air of the birth of your first child,and then so soon it seems, a door slams shut behind you, and you find yourself out in the cold where you learn that the first of your parents has died.
As you can see, this is a very quotable book. I guess I’d better stop this review before I quote every page.
October 2002
The Staggerford Flood by Jon Hassler (Viking, 199 pages $24.95)
My new novel, The Staggerford Flood, came out in September. It’s about a late, wet spring during which the Badbattle River overflows its banks and drives a number of people out of their houses. Agatha McGee invites seven friends and neighbors to bunk with her for four days and nights, because her house is the highest in the neighborhood and the only one spared from the flood. Most of these people, besides Agatha, my readers will recognize from previous books:
Lillian Kite, Agatha’s lifelong friend from across the alley and her daughter Imogene, a nasty malcontent.
Janet Meers, the woman who accompanied Agatha on her green journey to Ireland some years ago, and her daughter Sara, a teenager whose first love appears to be the telephone.
Beverly Bingham Cooper, who was a major player in the novel Staggerford, the high school student who lived with her deranged mother.
Linda Schwartzman, the married name of Staggerford’s new undertaker. She turns out to be the former Linda Mayo, the student Simon Shea fell in love with in Simon’s Night.
The only newcomer is Calista Holister, an old friend of Agatha’s who is grieving for her dead sister.
My readers may also be interested to meet again Father Frank Healy (North of Hope) who has come to St. Isidore’ss church in Staggerford as its new pastor; Leland Edwards and his mother Lollie (Rookery Blues and The Dean’s List), the latter of whom, despite a chronic cough, is still broadcasting her “Lollie Speaking” show over KRKU radio three mornings a week; and Frederick Lopat, Agatha’s grand-nephew who occupies a room in her house on River Street.
There are others. I’m not sure why I felt the urge to bring all these old characters back to life. It may have been a feeling that this would be my last novel about Agatha McGee, and I wanted to let my readers know how all these people getting along at present. On the other hand, maybe it was simply easier to bring all these ready-made characters onstage rather than go to the trouble of inventing new ones. Whatever the reason, I, for one, was happy to meet them all again.
Lillian Kite, Agatha’s lifelong friend from across the alley and her daughter Imogene, a nasty malcontent.
Janet Meers, the woman who accompanied Agatha on her green journey to Ireland some years ago, and her daughter Sara, a teenager whose first love appears to be the telephone.
Beverly Bingham Cooper, who was a major player in the novel Staggerford, the high school student who lived with her deranged mother.
Linda Schwartzman, the married name of Staggerford’s new undertaker. She turns out to be the former Linda Mayo, the student Simon Shea fell in love with in Simon’s Night.
The only newcomer is Calista Holister, an old friend of Agatha’s who is grieving for her dead sister.
My readers may also be interested to meet again Father Frank Healy (North of Hope) who has come to St. Isidore’ss church in Staggerford as its new pastor; Leland Edwards and his mother Lollie (Rookery Blues and The Dean’s List), the latter of whom, despite a chronic cough, is still broadcasting her “Lollie Speaking” show over KRKU radio three mornings a week; and Frederick Lopat, Agatha’s grand-nephew who occupies a room in her house on River Street.
There are others. I’m not sure why I felt the urge to bring all these old characters back to life. It may have been a feeling that this would be my last novel about Agatha McGee, and I wanted to let my readers know how all these people getting along at present. On the other hand, maybe it was simply easier to bring all these ready-made characters onstage rather than go to the trouble of inventing new ones. Whatever the reason, I, for one, was happy to meet them all again.
July 2002
By the Lake by John McGahern, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2002
I have often thought in recent years that it has become harder and harder for a writer to please me. If, one, a book doesn’t have an interesting plot, and if, two, it isn’t well written, I will not finish it. But now John McGahern has made me rethink my standards, for by using the second of these criteria alone, he has tugged me through to the end of By the Lake.
The morning was clear, There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire world to themselves.
So begins, in midsummer, this all but plotless novel, recounting the daily lives of a few rural neighbors who live on the shore of a lake in Ireland. The central characters are Ruttledge, a gentleman farmer, and his wife Kate, relative newcomers to the neighborhood, who have come in semi-retirement from London. Their closest friends are Jamesie, an impetuous, gossipy farmer, and his wife Mary, who continually scolds him good-naturedly. Among others who turn up from time to time are James’ difficult brother John Quinn, a womanizing, hard drinking fellow who comes home on an extended vacation every summer from England; Ruttledge’s wealthy uncle, nicknamed the Shah, the owner of a junkyard in the nearby town; and Bill Evans, a retarded, misshapen hired man on a neighboring farm, who stops in at the Ruttledge’s occasionally demanding cigarettes and whiskey. We follow these people through the harvest, through, market day, through a slaughtering plant, through the lambing season, through a wedding and a funeral, until we come to the next summer, where the book stops.
Having made eight visits to Ireland over the past twenty years, I feel confident in saying that there is no author quite like john McGahern for evoking the people and landscapes of the West of Ireland. And in this, the latest of his five novels, he seems content to do little more than that. Which is all right with me, because the dailiness of his characters’ lives is portrayed in such lovely prose. Here is spring coming on:
The fields long sodden with rain hardened in the drying wind. Small flowers started to appear on banks and ditches and in the shelter of the hedges. . . . Birds bearing twigs in their beaks looped through the air. In the shallows along the shore the water rippled with the life of spawing pike and bream; in the turmoil their dark fins showed above the water and their white bellies flashed when they rolled. The lambs were now out with their mothers on the grass, hopping as if they had mechanical springs in their tiny hooves
The only fault I find with the book–and it’s a small one–is the curious, and sometimes confusing, similarity of names. Besides he aforementioned Jamesie, there is his son Jim, as well as Jimmy Joe McKiernan, a bar owner, and Jimmy Lynch, the church sacristan . And in preparation for the funeral of John Quinn, one of the gravediggers is a townsman whose name is John Quinn. Either the author could have used a more alert editor or the people of this locale show a remarkable lack of imagination in naming their children.
The morning was clear, There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire world to themselves.
So begins, in midsummer, this all but plotless novel, recounting the daily lives of a few rural neighbors who live on the shore of a lake in Ireland. The central characters are Ruttledge, a gentleman farmer, and his wife Kate, relative newcomers to the neighborhood, who have come in semi-retirement from London. Their closest friends are Jamesie, an impetuous, gossipy farmer, and his wife Mary, who continually scolds him good-naturedly. Among others who turn up from time to time are James’ difficult brother John Quinn, a womanizing, hard drinking fellow who comes home on an extended vacation every summer from England; Ruttledge’s wealthy uncle, nicknamed the Shah, the owner of a junkyard in the nearby town; and Bill Evans, a retarded, misshapen hired man on a neighboring farm, who stops in at the Ruttledge’s occasionally demanding cigarettes and whiskey. We follow these people through the harvest, through, market day, through a slaughtering plant, through the lambing season, through a wedding and a funeral, until we come to the next summer, where the book stops.
Having made eight visits to Ireland over the past twenty years, I feel confident in saying that there is no author quite like john McGahern for evoking the people and landscapes of the West of Ireland. And in this, the latest of his five novels, he seems content to do little more than that. Which is all right with me, because the dailiness of his characters’ lives is portrayed in such lovely prose. Here is spring coming on:
The fields long sodden with rain hardened in the drying wind. Small flowers started to appear on banks and ditches and in the shelter of the hedges. . . . Birds bearing twigs in their beaks looped through the air. In the shallows along the shore the water rippled with the life of spawing pike and bream; in the turmoil their dark fins showed above the water and their white bellies flashed when they rolled. The lambs were now out with their mothers on the grass, hopping as if they had mechanical springs in their tiny hooves
The only fault I find with the book–and it’s a small one–is the curious, and sometimes confusing, similarity of names. Besides he aforementioned Jamesie, there is his son Jim, as well as Jimmy Joe McKiernan, a bar owner, and Jimmy Lynch, the church sacristan . And in preparation for the funeral of John Quinn, one of the gravediggers is a townsman whose name is John Quinn. Either the author could have used a more alert editor or the people of this locale show a remarkable lack of imagination in naming their children.
May 2002
It's Hard to Write Endings
Several months ago I wrote a piece entitled “It’s Hard to Get Published,” in which I complained about three books I had completed and which failed to find publishers. Well, my fears have been relieved somewhat by the people at Viking, who have agreed to publish my next Agatha McMGee novel, The Staggerford Flood in October of 2002. So I have turned my attention back to writing, where it belongs, and find myself approaching the end of two novels with great difficulty. The first is a novelization of my play The Staggerford Murders, in which George Bauer is the murderer of his wife Blanche and was, earlier, an accomplice in another murder, of Blanche’s husband Neddy Nichols. But all this happened nine years ago and the only person who witnessed his dirty dealings is a garbage man named Dusty, and Dusty has died– but not before telling what he knows to his two friends, an old man named Grover and a young preacher named Ollie. Ollie and Grover, by shading the truth somewhat, and with the help of Blanche’s daughter Penny Jean Nichols, convince the sheriff that George Bauer ought to go to trial, but for the murder of Blanche’s husband rather than Blanche herself, because it will be easier to prove. The play ends before George Bauer comes to trial, when Ollie and Grover run off to Florida rather than testify. Grover is too shy to get up on the witness stand and Ollie, an itinerant clergyman, doesn’t want to tell a lie under oath. Judging by audience reaction, this ending seemed to work on the stage, but it doesn’t work in a book, where the reader has time to ponder and analyze and wants to know how the trial comes out. So in the book Grover becomes the main character, and we follow him to Florida where he has moved into a condo on the beach with his well-to-do and widowed sister. He follows the trial in the Staggerford Weekly and learns that George Bauer (who lives in the Nichols’s palatial house) is acquitted, but that Penny Jean has accused him in a civil trial of taking her property. Grover returns to Minnesota to testify in Penny Jean’s behalf, and he, a confirmed bachelor in his seventies, is pursued by an old widow who’s sweet on him . And on and on . . .
So you see why I say endings are hard. The second work is a young adult novel entitled Our Seventh Friend, about Claire Sims, the seventeen-year-old daughter of divorced parents who comes to Minneapolis to spend the summer with her father, a famous painter named Samuel Sims. This is the summer that Samuel falls in love with a young woman named Ricki, who not only steals his heart but plans, with the help of a thief named Jake, to steal several of his paintings as well. I have just finished the chapter of the robbery during which Samuel saves his paintings, but Ricki and Jake escape. If I were a different kind of novelist, I’d have the thieves caught and put in jail and I’d be done with it. But as an agent told me one time, I never take the easy way out. Now Claire (and I) are faced with a new problem–her father’s depression over losing Ricki–and it’s slow going.
So you see why I say endings are hard. The second work is a young adult novel entitled Our Seventh Friend, about Claire Sims, the seventeen-year-old daughter of divorced parents who comes to Minneapolis to spend the summer with her father, a famous painter named Samuel Sims. This is the summer that Samuel falls in love with a young woman named Ricki, who not only steals his heart but plans, with the help of a thief named Jake, to steal several of his paintings as well. I have just finished the chapter of the robbery during which Samuel saves his paintings, but Ricki and Jake escape. If I were a different kind of novelist, I’d have the thieves caught and put in jail and I’d be done with it. But as an agent told me one time, I never take the easy way out. Now Claire (and I) are faced with a new problem–her father’s depression over losing Ricki–and it’s slow going.
April 2002
Here are a few answers to questions asked by the editors at Loyola Press, publishers of my latest book, "Good People . . . From an Author's Life."
Q. Where are you from? How, if at all, has your sense of place colored your writing?
A. I lived the first sixty years of my life in small-town Minnesota, and although I moved to Minneapolis eight years ago I don’t suppose my fiction will ever leave small towns.
Q. When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?
A. I began to write on September 10, 1970, at the age of 37. I believe I had imagined myself a writer form the age of five, when my parents read to me, but I was a late starter. On that morning I awoke to a voice in my head saying, “Half your life is over, Hassler, you’d better get started.”
Q. In a sentence or two, what is the point of your book? Why should someone read it?
A. ”Good People” is a kind of memoir of my first 65 years on this earth. I think the memoir is a fascinating art form because we continually compare our experiences and reactions to the writer’s as we read.
Q. Are there any personal experiences that were important in inspiring you to write this book?
Q. Why do you think that religion and spirituality has been the fastest-growing part of the publishing business in recent years?
A. Obviously the reading public hungers for spiritual direction.
Q. What books have influenced your writing most strongly in recent years?
Q. What are you reading now – both professionally and for relaxation?
A. I have just finished former bishop James Shannon’s autobiography called “Reluctant Dissenter,” a fascinating account of a person following his conscience no matter what dire things might result.
Q. What trends do you see in religion in the coming decade?
A. I’m afraid I foresee an even greater division between the liberal and conservative wings of believers.
Q. What book would you like to read that no one has written yet?
Q. What is your favorite book? Who is your favorite author?
A. I have a couple of favorite authors–William Trevor and Alice Munro–although the best book I’ve read in the last two years was “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf.
A. I lived the first sixty years of my life in small-town Minnesota, and although I moved to Minneapolis eight years ago I don’t suppose my fiction will ever leave small towns.
Q. When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?
A. I began to write on September 10, 1970, at the age of 37. I believe I had imagined myself a writer form the age of five, when my parents read to me, but I was a late starter. On that morning I awoke to a voice in my head saying, “Half your life is over, Hassler, you’d better get started.”
Q. In a sentence or two, what is the point of your book? Why should someone read it?
A. ”Good People” is a kind of memoir of my first 65 years on this earth. I think the memoir is a fascinating art form because we continually compare our experiences and reactions to the writer’s as we read.
Q. Are there any personal experiences that were important in inspiring you to write this book?
Q. Why do you think that religion and spirituality has been the fastest-growing part of the publishing business in recent years?
A. Obviously the reading public hungers for spiritual direction.
Q. What books have influenced your writing most strongly in recent years?
Q. What are you reading now – both professionally and for relaxation?
A. I have just finished former bishop James Shannon’s autobiography called “Reluctant Dissenter,” a fascinating account of a person following his conscience no matter what dire things might result.
Q. What trends do you see in religion in the coming decade?
A. I’m afraid I foresee an even greater division between the liberal and conservative wings of believers.
Q. What book would you like to read that no one has written yet?
Q. What is your favorite book? Who is your favorite author?
A. I have a couple of favorite authors–William Trevor and Alice Munro–although the best book I’ve read in the last two years was “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf.
January 2002
Dear Friends,
By this time I’m sure you’ve come to expect this annual letter from me. This year I’m happy to report that the Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview, Minnesota, has succeeded to the point where it is offering stage productions year ‘round. I am less happy to tell you, however, that next summer’s Hassler presentation will beDear James, a tale I’d just as soon forget because it features me as the main character and brings such a flood of memories to mind, not all of them good.
The playwright, incidentally, seems to have been writing plays against his will. Sally Childs, artistic director of the Theater, has unearthed a letter she received nine years ago in which he tells her, after completing his first work for the stage, Simon’s Night, that he “simply can’t generate any enthusiasm for writing another play.” He states further, “When my head is full of a new novel, as it is now, I resist using my allotted daily portion of creative energy for other things.” Then he says, “Being a world-class introvert, I’m daunted by the whole process of play production–the readings, the critiques, opening night, etc.”
Since then, four other plays have gone into production, and nobody enjoys opening nights as much as he does. Isn’t it a wonder how he can write about other people when he doesn’t even know his own mind? And isn’t this ironic?–he is now working on a novelization of his play The Staggerford Murders.
And speaking of novels, he has just finished a draft of something called The Staggerford Flood. It has to do with the year I turned eighty and the Badbattle River overflowed its banks and flooded every house in the neighborhood except mine. A number of people sought refuge at my house and I had seven guests for four nights and four days–a kind of old folks’ pajama party.
Well, that’s enough about him. The purpose of this letter is to solicit funds to ensure the ongoing success of the Jon Hassler Theater. As successful as it’s been, it takes a great deal of money to maintain a professional Theater, and in addition to grants and ticket receipts, the staff depends on the kind contributions of people like you. Then too, there is the Jon Hassler Writer’s Center in Plainview. Its exterior is nicely finished and landscaped but the interior will require more work before it is usable. Thank you very kindly.
Yours truly,
Agatha McGee
PS. I am continually asked about the playwright’s health. His companion, Dr. Parkinson, has all but immobilized him, but hasn’t yet figured out how to keep him from his daily stint at the word processor.
By this time I’m sure you’ve come to expect this annual letter from me. This year I’m happy to report that the Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview, Minnesota, has succeeded to the point where it is offering stage productions year ‘round. I am less happy to tell you, however, that next summer’s Hassler presentation will beDear James, a tale I’d just as soon forget because it features me as the main character and brings such a flood of memories to mind, not all of them good.
The playwright, incidentally, seems to have been writing plays against his will. Sally Childs, artistic director of the Theater, has unearthed a letter she received nine years ago in which he tells her, after completing his first work for the stage, Simon’s Night, that he “simply can’t generate any enthusiasm for writing another play.” He states further, “When my head is full of a new novel, as it is now, I resist using my allotted daily portion of creative energy for other things.” Then he says, “Being a world-class introvert, I’m daunted by the whole process of play production–the readings, the critiques, opening night, etc.”
Since then, four other plays have gone into production, and nobody enjoys opening nights as much as he does. Isn’t it a wonder how he can write about other people when he doesn’t even know his own mind? And isn’t this ironic?–he is now working on a novelization of his play The Staggerford Murders.
And speaking of novels, he has just finished a draft of something called The Staggerford Flood. It has to do with the year I turned eighty and the Badbattle River overflowed its banks and flooded every house in the neighborhood except mine. A number of people sought refuge at my house and I had seven guests for four nights and four days–a kind of old folks’ pajama party.
Well, that’s enough about him. The purpose of this letter is to solicit funds to ensure the ongoing success of the Jon Hassler Theater. As successful as it’s been, it takes a great deal of money to maintain a professional Theater, and in addition to grants and ticket receipts, the staff depends on the kind contributions of people like you. Then too, there is the Jon Hassler Writer’s Center in Plainview. Its exterior is nicely finished and landscaped but the interior will require more work before it is usable. Thank you very kindly.
Yours truly,
Agatha McGee
PS. I am continually asked about the playwright’s health. His companion, Dr. Parkinson, has all but immobilized him, but hasn’t yet figured out how to keep him from his daily stint at the word processor.