MORE ABOUT THE DOLLMAKER

I'm still reading The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. Highly unusual for me--to be reading a book weeks after I started it. But life has intervened, what with our daughter from Puerto Rico here for a month, and a family vacation, and ministry, and other reading, and yada, yada, yada.

One reason I'm not rushing through The Dollmaker is because it is so emotionally gripping, as author Joyce Carol Oates says about it. Plus, I know where the story's headed because I saw the made-for-TV-movie of the same title starring Jane Fonda. Maybe I want to delay experiencing some sadness I know is in store for the characters. And for me as the reader. Oates calls the story "a depressing work, like most extraordinary works." Oates goes on to say, "It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece."

The story is set in the WWII years in the Kentucky hill country, and it was written by Arnow in 1954. Oates says, "This brutal, beautiful novel has a permanent effect upon the reader: long after one has put it aside, he is still in the presence of its people, absorbed in their trivial and tragic dilemma..."

Gertie, the lead character, has a lifelong goal of owning her own land. She and her husband and five children are sharecroppers living in a shack-like house working the land for a landowner. They barely have enough to eat, let alone purchase land. She's pinched pennies for years, though, and has managed to save some from her egg money and from the carving she does--mostly ax handles for farmers. If she tells her husband about the money, however, he'll demand it for new tires for the truck, or some other necessity, like he did the last time she managed to save some money.

I see two symbols in the story--her carving (where the title is derived from), particulary a large block of wild cherry wood she's hoping to turn into the face of Christ; and the money to buy her land. The author weaves them through the story, using them to give richness and depth.

The author also weaves scriptures throughout. Gertie explains to a soldier, when asked why she quotes the Bible so much, that her parents used it to teach her to read since she didn't get to go to school very much. She reads Ecclesiastes (and quotes it) to her children and explains the meaning. She has her children memorize the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, and the Beatitudes which she calls "the blessings." In talking to her children--whether it's explaining the meaning of life or breaking up an altercation, she spouts out scriptures. When her little daughter Cassie asks, "What makes you like to look at th (sic, meaning that's the dialect in the story) stars, Mom?", Gertie answers, "'The heavens declare th (sic) glory of God; an the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night..."

I'm wondering if perhaps the excessive quoting of scripture is why this book is largely unheard of. Oates says Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, though more famous than The Dollmaker, is not superior to it. Was the publishing world offput by the prolific quoting of scripture? The readers? The reviewers? If so, they're offbase, in my humble opinion. This is the way this Kentucky hillbilly talked and lived and breathed. To me, this is deep characterization, allowing us to crawl into Gertie's skin and live with and in her for the course of the book.

The New York Times said of The Dollmarker: "A masterwork...a superb book of unforgettable strength and glowing richness."

Author Joyce Carol Oates said: "There are certainly greater novels than The Dollmaker, but I can think of none that have moved me more personally, terrifyingly...The Dollmaker is one of those excellent American works that have yet to be properly assessed."

It's worth reading. And studying, for writers.