Raiders
04-02-2011, 04:25 PM
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
- Ecclesiastes 1:3-11
And so this end in confusion, where when things stop I never get to know it, and this moving is the space, is that what is yet to be, which is for others to see filled wherever it may finally be in the frame when the last pieces are fitted and the others stop, and there will be the stopped pattern, the final array, but not even that, because that final finitude will itself be a bit of scrolling, a percent clump of tiles, which will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled, with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that 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 downtime, 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, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world because they were made from this world, even though the fleeting tenants of those bits of colored glass have vacated them before they have had even the remotest understanding of what it is to inhabit them…
- Paul Harding, Tinkers
My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected he was whittling at my skull — no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels.
- Paul Harding, Tinkers
Fragments of time; snippets of memory; pieces of personal history scattered amongst the ether of someone’s mind. These are the moments that Paul Harding focuses on in his masterful debut novel. Interspersed throughout the fragmented narrative (and I use that word only as a habit as it cannot be held to apply here) is the metaphor of the clock. The clock is a simple structure on the surface, telling time and moving forever forward. But underneath is an entire dictionary of pieces, each with a specific purpose and identity and each with its own tale and history. Together, they form the image we know; an hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand all moving in an eternal dance around the clock, keeping the universe’s tempo. So too does Harding posit that we can view a clock as a constant cyclical motion, always moving one step forward to return to its starting place. Such is life, generation after generation, performing the cyclical routine of life time and again. As spoken also in Ecclesiastes, “all come from dust, and to dust all return. (Ecc. 3:20)”
Harding’s book is the tale of three generations of men, all framed through the countdown to George’s death (he of the youngest generation as well as a clockmaker and repairer). The largest character is his father, Howard, an epileptic “tinker” by his own admission. Through his story we learn of George’s childhood as well as, in the book’s finest passage--a single oscillating point-of-view chapter—Howard’s own father, a small town minister. Harding tells not a straightforward story, but captures moments, often starting in the middle of a tale and telling it to the end and then perhaps going back later to tell the earlier part. Like a clock, he is putting all the pieces into place to create a very singular perspective: that of viewing life as the fleeting, ephemeral series of actions and encounters, for all is but a brief speck in the universe, all nothing but the toils of man under the sun.
Harding’s gift is not characterization through traits, but in tracing surroundings and creating singular, impeccably detailed environments and the literary mise-en-scene that each of the characters inhabits. He also populates the book with passages from a fictional clockmaker’s book titled “The Reasonable Horologist” and a journal (possibly written by George) which defines specific life events, each called a type of “borealis.” These journal entries float in and out of the story, merely adding another layer of memory and specific experience to the book’s tapestry of history. Ultimately, that’s the book’s brilliance; it’s specificity and intimacy. It feels unlike any other story ever written and each character with their own sense of vocabulary and unique experience. It is a short novel (191 pages) and no character is ever given anything resembling a traditional narrative arc, yet Harding creates a remarkable lived-in feel and a familiarity. This sense of closeness is what creates the after-effects, the way the stories continue to impact and dig into the subconscious so that in the end, we wind up defining these characters with our own population of the blanks created by the book.
I’m not sure I have ever been as moved or as astounded by a book on a first reading. The craftsmanship is so elegant and imagery so fierce that Harding’s book will ever have but a few peers.
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
- Ecclesiastes 1:3-11
And so this end in confusion, where when things stop I never get to know it, and this moving is the space, is that what is yet to be, which is for others to see filled wherever it may finally be in the frame when the last pieces are fitted and the others stop, and there will be the stopped pattern, the final array, but not even that, because that final finitude will itself be a bit of scrolling, a percent clump of tiles, which will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled, with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that 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 downtime, 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, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world because they were made from this world, even though the fleeting tenants of those bits of colored glass have vacated them before they have had even the remotest understanding of what it is to inhabit them…
- Paul Harding, Tinkers
My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected he was whittling at my skull — no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels.
- Paul Harding, Tinkers
Fragments of time; snippets of memory; pieces of personal history scattered amongst the ether of someone’s mind. These are the moments that Paul Harding focuses on in his masterful debut novel. Interspersed throughout the fragmented narrative (and I use that word only as a habit as it cannot be held to apply here) is the metaphor of the clock. The clock is a simple structure on the surface, telling time and moving forever forward. But underneath is an entire dictionary of pieces, each with a specific purpose and identity and each with its own tale and history. Together, they form the image we know; an hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand all moving in an eternal dance around the clock, keeping the universe’s tempo. So too does Harding posit that we can view a clock as a constant cyclical motion, always moving one step forward to return to its starting place. Such is life, generation after generation, performing the cyclical routine of life time and again. As spoken also in Ecclesiastes, “all come from dust, and to dust all return. (Ecc. 3:20)”
Harding’s book is the tale of three generations of men, all framed through the countdown to George’s death (he of the youngest generation as well as a clockmaker and repairer). The largest character is his father, Howard, an epileptic “tinker” by his own admission. Through his story we learn of George’s childhood as well as, in the book’s finest passage--a single oscillating point-of-view chapter—Howard’s own father, a small town minister. Harding tells not a straightforward story, but captures moments, often starting in the middle of a tale and telling it to the end and then perhaps going back later to tell the earlier part. Like a clock, he is putting all the pieces into place to create a very singular perspective: that of viewing life as the fleeting, ephemeral series of actions and encounters, for all is but a brief speck in the universe, all nothing but the toils of man under the sun.
Harding’s gift is not characterization through traits, but in tracing surroundings and creating singular, impeccably detailed environments and the literary mise-en-scene that each of the characters inhabits. He also populates the book with passages from a fictional clockmaker’s book titled “The Reasonable Horologist” and a journal (possibly written by George) which defines specific life events, each called a type of “borealis.” These journal entries float in and out of the story, merely adding another layer of memory and specific experience to the book’s tapestry of history. Ultimately, that’s the book’s brilliance; it’s specificity and intimacy. It feels unlike any other story ever written and each character with their own sense of vocabulary and unique experience. It is a short novel (191 pages) and no character is ever given anything resembling a traditional narrative arc, yet Harding creates a remarkable lived-in feel and a familiarity. This sense of closeness is what creates the after-effects, the way the stories continue to impact and dig into the subconscious so that in the end, we wind up defining these characters with our own population of the blanks created by the book.
I’m not sure I have ever been as moved or as astounded by a book on a first reading. The craftsmanship is so elegant and imagery so fierce that Harding’s book will ever have but a few peers.