Plainsong (novel)

Last updated

Plainsong
Plainsong (novel).jpg
Author Kent Haruf
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date
October 1999
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages301 [1]
ISBN 0-375-40618-2
OCLC 41272953
813/.54 21
LC Class PS3558.A716 P58 1999

Plainsong is a novel by Kent Haruf. [1] Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, it tells the interlocking stories of some of the inhabitants. The title comes from a type of unadorned music sung in Christian churches, and is a reference to both the Great Plains setting and the simple style of the writing. The novel was adapted in 2004 into a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie. It is the first of a trilogy: the following novels are Eventide and Benediction.

Contents

Premise and characters

The book follows the stories of several families in a small town in eastern Colorado.

Characters

Reception

Plainsong, published in 1999, received rave reviews from critics and became a bestseller. [2] [3] It was first noticed and promoted by independent bookstores, before being praised by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly. [2] A limited marketing campaign from Knopf followed, but the company (and Haruf's editor Gary Fisketjon) attributed most of Plainsong's success to word of mouth. [4] The novel had sold more than 800,000 copies by 2004 and was described by the Wall Street Journal as a "runaway bestseller". [2] [3]

Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times called the book "so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader," [5] while his colleague Michiko Kakutani added that it was a "compelling and compassionate" novel. [6] Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book was a "stirring meditation on the true nature and necessity of the family... honest and precise." [7] Chris Waddington of the Minnesota Star Tribune wrote that the "steady, hymnlike unfolding" of the story along with the "unornamented yet elegant" prose brought to mind "the underlying cadences and accumulative force of the King James Bible." [8]

Joyce Carol Oates, writing for the New York Review of Books , took a less positive view, criticizing the book for "unabashed sentimentality" and describing it as a "fantasy to confirm our threatened sense of old-fashioned social cohesiveness", although she did concede that in some passages "the language of Plainsong truly sings." [9] The book peaked at #10 on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller list. [10] Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. [11] [3] Poet and academic Ann Fisher-Wirth compared the novel to Cather's My Antonia , noting their sensitive treatment of "sexuality, pregnancy, and birth as natural processes." [12]

Plainsong was adapted into a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie on CBS starring America Ferrera; although it received mostly positive reviews and high ratings, [13] Haruf did not care for it. [14] He called it "pablum" and noted that his letter to the director saying "everything they should not do" had been comprehensively ignored. [14]

References

  1. 1 2 Klinkenborg, Verlyn (October 3, 1999). "The Sheltering Sky". The New York Times .
  2. 1 2 3 McGregor, Micahel. "The Plain Truth: A Profile of Kent Haruf". Poets & Writers . 32 (4, July/August 2004): 32–35. ProQuest   203582839.
  3. 1 2 3 Maloney, Jennifer (May 14, 2015). "Kent Haruf's Last Chapter". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660. Archived from the original on November 18, 2023. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  4. ↑ Rose, Matthew (October 11, 1999). "Publishers Hope Word-of-Mouth Will Wake the Season's Sleepers". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved June 7, 2025.
  5. ↑ Klinkenborg, Verlyn (October 3, 1999). "The Sheltering Sky". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  6. ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (October 8, 1999). "Everyone's a Neighbor In a Small Prairie Town". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 17, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2025.
  7. ↑ "Plainsong". Kirkus Reviews. 67. August 15, 1999. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved May 26, 2025.
  8. ↑ Waddington, Chris (October 3, 1999). "Perfectly plain: Spareness of plains molds characters in 'Plainsong'". Minneapolis Star Tribune . p. 88.
  9. ↑ Oates, Joyce Carol (October 21, 1999). "Wearing Out the West". The New York Review of Books. Vol. 46, no. 16. ISSN   0028-7504 . Retrieved May 26, 2025.
  10. ↑ "Paperback Best Sellers: October 15, 2000". The New York Times. October 15, 2000. p. 36. ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 27, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2025.
  11. ↑ "Kent Haruf". Colorado Encyclopedia. State of Colorado, Department of Higher Education. Archived from the original on January 23, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2025.
  12. ↑ Fisher-Wirth, Ann (2003). "'Clean as a Cow That Calves': 'My Ántonia, Plainsong', and the Semiotics of Birth". Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 10 (1): 185–193. doi:10.1093/isle/10.1.185. ISSN   1076-0962. JSTOR   44086093.
  13. ↑ Attributed to multiple references:
  14. 1 2 Moore, John (January 24, 2008). ""Plainsong," with feeling". The Denver Post. Archived from the original on May 27, 2025. Retrieved May 27, 2025.
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