Charlie Crosby (grandson of Tinkers' George Crosby) is trying to come to terms with the death of his daughter, Kate, which he does in an unusual way. He recreates her in many different incarnations: he imagines her in a scenario, has an interaction with her, loses her again, then starts the process over and over again. [...]
Novelist Austin Ratner (pictured, via) has won the Jewish Book Council’s $100,000 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in fiction for his debut novel The Jump Artist (Bellevue Literary Press).
This small press has had a great year. Last April, Bellevue author Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Tinkers. Runner up Joseph Skibell (A Curable Romantic) will receive the $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award.
The three Sami Rohr Prize finalists are listed below. Here’s more about the award: “Established in 2006, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature is the largest monetary award of its kind given to writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career.”
continued…
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It's a famous story by now—how Paul Harding's first novel,
Tinkers, wended its way through a world of publishing no's until it arrived at the door of Bellevue Literary Press (NYU School of Medicine) and was welcomed in with a yes. Early reviewers loved it; independent bookstores did, too. A few countable days ago,
Tinkers took the Pulitzer.
I ordered it at once, as I blogged I would. It arrived yesterday and this afternoon, after much tinkering myself (the large garden now weeded, the old wood of the azalea lobbed back, a leaking room cleared for the men who will fix it, two weeks of laundry finally done), I sat down to read. It's a small book; it can be read on either side of noon. It yields to no one's idea of a novel but the author's own, which makes it one of the most interesting things I've read in a long time. I'm not sure that it is entirely successful—this story of a dying son remembering an incandescent epileptic father who in turn remembers a father: these tinkers, all three. But books that take risks take risks; that's the point. They contribute something new, and we are grateful for what we've been taught.
Tinkers is deeply meditative, brilliantly descriptive, taking us inside clocks and lightening-lit brains, into backwoods, and up a new highway. There's dialogue here, but you'll have to search long for it. There's story, but it's cocooned within hallucinatory memory. Someone appears to be reading a book, and the book is arcane, and it is difficult. It is head scratching until, at last, on the second-to-last page, we understand its purpose.
Tinkers is thick with words like
imbrication, ichthyic, and
craquelure (these three appearing all on a single tiny page). And every now and then, when we need it most, it smacks the reader with something deeply human and moving:
Everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so. No, he thought. The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place. What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?Indeed.
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Tinkers by Paul Harding was the surprise winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Monday. It was rejected by publishers and agents for being a slow, contemplative, meditative, and quiet book. This story has become the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent history.
According to Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, who teaches writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, “One of the problems I have is making my students believe that they can write something that satisfies their definition of good, and they don’t have to calculate the market,” Ms. Robinson said. “Now that I have the Paul anecdote, they will believe me more.”
This gorgeous use of language and quiet attention to the details of life is what made Tinkers such a phenomenal success.
There's a
beautiful Motoko Rich story in today's
New York Times about Paul Harding, his novel
Tinkers, and his path to Pulitzer, which was paved by rejection letters, the assurance (by those in the know) that "nobody wants to read a slow, contemplative, meditative, quiet book," a $1,000 advance by Bellevue Literary Press (who has an "empathetic" reader at the helm), a rare blurb by Marilynne Robinson, Indie book store support (I love independent bookstores!!!!!!!!), and smart critics (go Laura Miller, among others).
Those writing books about heart and soul, about the ways in which the mind and memory work and about the workings of things must, I always say (I tell myself, when things get blue, and oh, they do get blue) keep going. Paul Harding gives us cause. Buy
Tinkers.
By: Dianah,
on 5/29/2014
By: Jason Boog,
on 3/22/2011
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 4/28/2010
It sounds well worth reading!
I'm really looking forward to this one. It's interesting to hear your thoughts on Tinkers as a novel. I wasn't the world's biggest fan of Olive Kitteridge (last year's Pulitzer, of course), but I'm glad it one because of its unique idea of literature somewhere on the spectrum of stories, interconnected stories and a novel. Thanks!
The quote is beautiful. Thank you.