Harriet Doerr’s First Book

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I’ve just started reading a book by Harriet Doerr, and I’m wondering how I managed to miss her work all this time. It’s called Stones for Ibarra. Have you ever read that, Grant?

Nope, but I’ll add it to the list.

I think you would like it. It’s her first novel, and it’s known for this sparse, evocative prose. And I just want to read you a little bit from the beginning, okay?

Here they are, two North Americans, a man and a woman, just over and just under 40, come to spend their lives in Mexico and already lost as they travel cross-country over the central plateau. The driver of the station wagon is Richard Everton, a blue-eyed, black-haired, stubborn man who will die 30 years sooner than he now imagines. On the seat beside him is his wife, Sarah, who imagines neither his death nor her own, imminent or remote as they may be. Instead, she sees in one of its previous incarnations, the adobe house where they intend to sleep tonight. Now, I dare you to stop reading there.

That sounds great. It’s a good mix of what’s happening internally in the characters to scene setting to describing the characters. I know who they are, what they’re doing, and something is about to happen. Something’s going to happen.

Yeah, it’s a remarkable first novel. But you know what’s really remarkable about this novel is she published it at the age of 73.

Yay for her. Yay for her. And more yay. She won the National Book Award for that book.

Nice. This is great. So how does that happen? I mean, this is a woman who started college and then she dropped out to have a couple of kids, moved with her husband to Mexico and lived with him there for many years and came back after his death. And then she started college again at 65. She went to Stanford to study history. And eight years later, she’s winning a National Book Award. How does that happen?

I’ve got a theory. I think when we get older, we strip away what’s not important. We stop the little things that don’t matter and start concentrating on the life work, be it raising kids or writing a book or finally building that business. We just stop doing the little useless things that were distracting us from doing the big thing. And I think she did it.

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned that because she has said before, I mean, she died about 10 years ago, but she said that she was often happy to spend an entire hour writing one sentence. She compared herself to a stonemason, you know, just chipping and chipping and sanding until she got it exactly right. Literally, you know, paring away everything, sort of like what you’re saying in a metaphorical sense.

Yeah. Well, good for her. I think that those late life starts have just as much potential. We have a myth that genius comes from the young, but I don’t think that’s true. There’s something about the accumulation of life experience as well, which can color and provide nuance to writing that you just can’t get in the eyes and ears and pen of a 20 year old.

I think you’re right.

I find that so fascinating that she spent most of her life just sort of marinating, you know, and reading and having lively intellectual discussions and then boom.

Well, here’s to the late life successes. If you’ve got a story about one, an author or artist or somebody famous or somebody not so famous who did something great late in life, let us know.

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