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KNOPF, 1999
(available in paperback from Vintage, 2000)
THE PROSE in Kent Haruf’s novel about the interconnected lives of seven people in a small rural town is as spare and haunting as the eastern Colorado landscape where Plainsong is set. A finalist for the 1999 National Book Award, Plainsong is the story of people whose lives come together after a series of heartbreaks, conflicts, and tragedy.
At the center of Plainsong is a high school teacher, Tom Guthrie, who loses his wife to a deep depression and must raise his two sons, Ike and Bobby, alone. Tom finds support, and romance, in the arms of a colleague, Maggie Jones.
When seventeen-year-old Victoria Robideaux becomes pregnant and is thrown out of the house by her abusive mother, it is Maggie, the emotional touchstone for all of Haruf’s principal characters, who arranges for Victoria to get room and board in exchange for chores at the ranch of two elderly bachelor brothers, the McPherons. After an awkward and wary beginning, an abiding mutual affection develops between the childless McPherons and Victoria. Perhaps the most memorable of all of the novel’s vivid characters, the McPheron brothers become fierce protectors of Victoria’s interests and her dignity.
Each of Haruf’s characters has a desperate, if unarticulated, emotional void that is filled, often in the most unexpected way, by one of the others and, eventually, by the extended family they become. Plainsong is, ultimately, a book about families, the ones we are born to and the ones we create.
Haruf uses food to represent the nurturing that the characters in Plainsong give to one another. When asked about his use of food in Plainsong, Haruf told an interviewer:
One of the ways you show love is to prepare food for somebody. The father is doing that at the beginning of the story. At the end, Victoria feels confident enough and secure enough in her place out there so that she is the one who has begun to do the cooking and she’s the one who presents the food to the boys when they come out to the McPherons’. At the very end of the book there is the suggestion that soon they will all go in and eat supper together.
The Attic Salt Book Club, based at the Sullivan Free Library in Bridgeport, New York, enjoys serving a dessert related to the theme of their reading selection, and the group’s leader, Karen Traynor, baked oatmeal cookies to accompany the discussion of Plainsong.
“In Plainsong, the two young boys, Ike and Bobby, go to visit an elderly neighbor, Iva Stearns, shortly after their mother leaves them,” says Traynor. “It’s obvious that the boys need some mothering, and Iva Stearns, out of despair of anything better to do, sends them to the store to buy the ingredients for oatmeal cookies. The boys help her bake them and it’s a memorable scene in the book.
“When the book group met I had the oatmeal cookies on the table,” adds Traynor, “but I told them they couldn’t eat them until someone figured out why I made those particular cookies. It took a few minutes of furious page turning, but someone found the scene and we all enjoyed the cookies.”
Traynor’s favorite recipe for oatmeal cookies was adapted from a Crisco recipe. For the Plainsong discussion, she divided the batter and made half a batch with ½ cup of raisins and ½ cup of walnuts. For the other half, she made a favorite combination, replacing the walnuts and raisins with ½ cup each of milk chocolate chips, pecans, and dried cherries.
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1¼ cups firmly packed light brown sugar ¾ cup butter-flavored vegetable shortening (such as Crisco)
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract 1 egg 3 cups rolled oats, quick or old-fashioned |
1 cup all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 cup raisins 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts |
Preheat oven to 375°F. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, mix together the brown sugar, shortening, milk, vanilla, and egg until well blended. In a separate bowl, combine the oatmeal, flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to the shortening mixture, beating at low speed just until blended. Stir in the raisins and walnuts.
Drop dough by rounded tablespoons on a greased baking sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake, one sheet at a time for 10–12 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned. Do not overbake. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: About 2½ dozen cookies
NOVEL THOUGHTS
Book-related food is an important feature for Wuthering Bites, a women’s book club in Seattle, Washington. The group created a website, www.wutheringbites.com, that combined their mutual interests in literature and food.
Wuthering Bites thoroughly enjoyed Plainsong, especially the character development and writing style. “Haruf’s writing is so beautiful, it doesn’t matter if you know where the story is going,” said Sue Gray. “You just go along with the ride and soon you find you’ve begun to care about these characters.”
Several of the “simple but real characters” in Plainsong particularly appealed to the group, according to Gray. “My personal favorites were the two young boys. The chapter where they befriend an old and lonesome lady on their paper route is very touching.” The McPheron brothers, two aging bachelor farmers, also inspired the group’s admiration, especially in the scene where they are chopping and removing ice from the horses’ water tank as they decide to take a pregnant teenager into their home. “We thought this moment, when they are making a decision to change their solitary lives, was beautifully captured,” says Gray. “Our group found the central themes of the novel—the connection between people in need and those that can help them, and life in a small town—very compelling.”
When Britta’s Book Club of Irvine, California, discussed Plainsong, Britta Pulliam prepared food from the pages of the novel: peppered beefsteak, boiled potatoes, green beans, a chocolate cake, and coffee.
For the Plainsong dinner discussion for her Chicago-area book club, Rose Parisi prepared all-American comfort food: her grandmother’s recipe for oven-fried chicken, accompanied by steamed green beans, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.
cup milk