Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408210109
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by M. KATHERINE GRIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In `Merry Men` Carolyn Chute combines the mass of an epic - almost 700 pages - with the tone of a ballad to tell three decades' worth of stories about the inhabitants of Egypt, Maine.
Madison Smartt Bell, a Hollins College alumnus, has aptly compared Chute's work to Faulkner's Yoknapatpha collection. Both Chute and Faulkner use bits of America to represent the whole, and both portray people of all classes sympatheticaly and accurately.
Chute's celebration of and mourning for rural America also call to mind Southern writers. When I met the warm and gracious Carolyn Chute at Hollins, I asked her about that connection and she mentioned Southern roots - her father is from North Carolina.
As other writers have said, we associaterural life with the South, and rural life forms the heart of `Merry Men.` Yet the book is not pastoral. Much as Chute loves her characters the way George Eliot loved hers, she isn't unrealistic or sentimental about them. Rarely are they beautiful, waif-like, handsome or perfect. They are often victims of their own lack of self-control. But more, they are victims of a capitalistic system that sees them as a nuisance, as people who want jobs, decent wages and health care. They are the modern Dickensian characters destroyed by not just the Industrial Revolution, but by the Reagan revolution which, Chute alleges, gave increasing power to corporations, and left people with nothing.
So Lloyd Barrington, with a master's degree in sociology, tends graves for a living and steals from those he thinks are rich to feed his destitute friends. His handicapped wife dies from a cough ubiquitous in Egypt, Maine, because the doctors don't care enough to save her. He cannot consummate his relationship with rich widow Gwen Doyle because her late husband was the enemy, a coporate executive. Pregnant Anneka Plummer suffers through three weeks of labor because it is not `progressive` and therefore not important to the medical profession.
Chute grieves for these characters. She mourns the loss of an agrarian tradition which thinks might have saved them:
`Where has the corn gone? Where are the cabbages, strawberries, hay? Where are the new calves on their knees? Where are the backs of people bent at their work? The soil is fertile. But it is screaming weeping bawling land. Sirens, whistles, alarms, a crackling stench, and strobes of light burst from these oceanic waves of the fallow.'
Like the twelve Southerners, Agrarians and Fugitives who published `I'll Take My Stand' in 1930, Chute sees the loss of the pioneer spirit as the death of the American dream. She has said that she lies awake at night because the poor are too helpless to grow their own food and make their own clothes.
In `Merry Men,` characters also lie awake because they can neither heal their own sick, nor stop the cruelty of the hunters whose dogs take away the peace of the night, nor salve their loneliness by connecting across class\ barriers.
This is a big book with big ideas. But Chute's fast-paced style and\ marvelous characters keep it from being overwhelming.
Occasionally Chute preaches. In fact, by the end, Chute's political agenda has almost overtaken the novel, making at least one character's actions seem\ nearly incredible. Despite the family and communal love that predominate, this\ book is not uplifting as `The Beans of Egypt, Maine` was. And so many\ characters can make a reader feel like a first-time viewer of a long-running\ soap opera. This is no t a beach book.
It is, however, the most powerful novel I have read since Toni Morrison's `Song of Solomon.` Treat yourself to this one, then go back to `The Beans.` Especially if you are in the Roanoke area, you should know Chute. She's spent time at Hollins and will probably be back. Be sure to meet her if you get the chance. Meanwhile, learn to know her enormous heart through her books.
- M. Katherine Grimes teaches English at Ferrum College.
by CNB