FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 30, 2008
CONTACT: Matt Stevens, [email protected], 6264052167
The Huntington Acquires Papers of Novelist Kent Haruf
Acclaimed author of Plainsong explores the influence of the American West through spare, graceful prose
SAN MARINO, Calif.—The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has acquired the papers of contemporary novelist Kent Haruf, whose works explore the profound influence of the West on the national character.
“The story of life on the Great Plains is, to a great extent, also the larger story of life in America,” says Sara S. “Sue” Hodson, The Huntington’s curator of literary manuscripts. “The Haruf material extends our ability to capture and study that experience.” It joins a collection of more than 100 overland diaries at The Huntington as well as the archives of Mary Austin and the extensive correspondence files by Willa Cather. “It is a great, and welcome, addition,” says Hodson.
The Haruf archive at The Huntington includes extensive corrected drafts of novels and stories, plus correspondence with publishers and editors as well as letters from such fellow authors as T. C. Boyle, John Irving, Tracy Kidder, Howard Mosher, and Annie Proulx.
“His spare, graceful prose transports the reader’s imagination to a deeper understanding of the human condition,” Hodson says. Like his peers Annie Proulx, Ivan Doig, and Gretel Ehrlich, Haruf writes of the harsh life of the plains, where existence is stripped down to its essentials. In novels such as Plainsong (2000) and Eventide (2004), the land itself becomes a character, exerting its inexorable influence on peoples’ lives, says Hodson.
Plainsong is his best known work; it was a National Book Award finalist and a Notable Book of the Year for both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times called it “a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader.” And a citation from the National Book Award reads, in part, “From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace—a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground.”
Haruf has received equal praise from fellow fiction writers, who awarded him the Hemmingway Foundation/PEN Citation for his first novel, The Tie That Binds (1984). The work also earned him the Whiting Foundation Writers’ Award. Page 2
Born in eastern Colorado in 1943, Haruf worked a series of odd jobs—farming, construction, and railroading—and served in the Peace Corps in Turkey before teaching high school English. He later joined the faculty at Nebraska Wesleyan University and then Southern Illinois University.
His writing career began after he graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He followed The Tie That Binds with Where You Once Belonged (1990), Plainsong, and Eventide. His latest book, West of Last Chance, published in 2007, is a collaboration with photographer Peter Brown in which the text and photographs form a dialogue about the western plains.
A stage adaptation of Plainsong was presented earlier this year at the Denver Performing Arts Center, where it received critical praise. Several of Haruf’s novels are under option by film studios. Haruf currently lives in eastern Colorado.
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