Tinkers by Paul Harding
Bellevue Literary Press, 2009
A review by Mark Flanagan, About.com Guide
George Washington Crosby, a tinkerer of clocks and a grandfather, lies dying in a hospital bed in the Massachusetts home that he built himself. George’s family members – siblings, sons and daughters, grandchildren – fill the house, keep vigil, attend to his needs, but George is only vaguely conscious of their presence. He drifts in a fugue through memories of his childhood and of his father, Howard Crosby, also a tinkerer, who with a mule named Prince Edward, 70 years ago drove a wagon of wares through the New England backwoods, supplying its hardy dwellers with the necessities of life – tin pails, wood oil, tooth powder, soap.
Paul Harding’s Tinkers is the story of George and Howard, of fathers and sons, of existence and the end of existence. It is a poetic meditation in which Harding, with rich and evocative language, weaves the lives of three generations of Crosby men into a tapestry of life and death.
Paul Harding’s Tinkers is the story of George and Howard, of fathers and sons, of existence and the end of existence. It is a poetic meditation in which Harding, with rich and evocative language, weaves the lives of three generations of Crosby men into a tapestry of life and death.
Harding’s writing is sublime, especially while plumbing the metaphysical through Howard’s pastoral daydreams:
The quilt of leaves and light and shadow and ruffling breezes might part and I’d be given a glimpse of what is on the other side; a stitch might work itself loose or be worked loose. The weaver might have made one bad loop in the foliage of a sugar maple by the road and that one loop of whatever the thread might be wound from – light, gravity, dark from stars – had somehow been worked loose by the wind in its constant worrying of white buds and green leaves and blood-and-orange leaves and bare branches and two of the pieces of whatever it is that this world is knit from had come loose from each other and there was maybe just a finger width’s hole, which I was lucky enough to spot in the glittering leaves from this wagon of drawers and nimble enough to scale the silver trunk and brave enough to pike my finger into the tear, that might offer to the simple touch a measure of tranquility or reassurance.
The quilt of leaves and light and shadow and ruffling breezes might part and I’d be given a glimpse of what is on the other side; a stitch might work itself loose or be worked loose. The weaver might have made one bad loop in the foliage of a sugar maple by the road and that one loop of whatever the thread might be wound from – light, gravity, dark from stars – had somehow been worked loose by the wind in its constant worrying of white buds and green leaves and blood-and-orange leaves and bare branches and two of the pieces of whatever it is that this world is knit from had come loose from each other and there was maybe just a finger width’s hole, which I was lucky enough to spot in the glittering leaves from this wagon of drawers and nimble enough to scale the silver trunk and brave enough to pike my finger into the tear, that might offer to the simple touch a measure of tranquility or reassurance.
And similarly in George’s musings upon his approaching death:
I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about.
Tinkers swept up rave reviews in 2009 as well as the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but despite Harding’s deft hand, the novel came across as more of a series of confused (wonderfully written) vignettes than a cohesively compelling story. Ultimately, the whole was, for me, something less than the sum of its parts.
I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about.
Tinkers swept up rave reviews in 2009 as well as the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but despite Harding’s deft hand, the novel came across as more of a series of confused (wonderfully written) vignettes than a cohesively compelling story. Ultimately, the whole was, for me, something less than the sum of its parts.
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