The Rural Life - Hardcover

Klinkenborg, Verlyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316741671 ISBN 13: 9780316741675

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2002

Synopsis

The author of Making Hay and The Last First Time celebrates the rural life, its pleasures and hardships, and the beauty of the American landscape in a series of reflections corresponding to the months of the year. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Verlyn Klinkenborg comes from a family of Iowa farmers and is the author of "Making Hay" and "The Last Fine Time." He is a member of the editorial board of "The New York Times" and has written for "The New Yorker," "Mother Jones," and "Harper's." He lives on a small farm in upstate New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Klinkenborg's third book (after Making Hay and The Last Fine Time) is a selection of columns originally appearing on the New York Times editorial page under the heading "A Rural Life." They document in vivid detail the daily challenges of life in the country, and on a farm in particular. Though the columns are drawn from seven years of writing, the book is organized into a single year-12 chapters starting in "January" and ending in "December"-and flits from topic to topic, relying on a few short passages of news or descriptions of holidays to mark the passage of time. Likewise, the author never sticks to one place for long, but ranges across the continent of the U.S. and glimpses events in dozens of country towns from Wyoming and New Hampshire to Minnesota and New Mexico. Some episodes are emblematic of contemporary American culture: a high school football game, President Clinton's dedication of Walden Pond, the disquiet in the days following September 11. Others are more intimate passages discussing the author's family and the solace he finds in keeping bees, stacking hay or simply turning earth. Though this highly personal chronicle lacks any narrative arc other than the changing of the seasons and the author's emotional reaction to them, nothing in the prose is accidental, and the deliberate, finely hewn sentences convey, above all else, the seriousness with which Klinkenborg takes the task of watching the world around him. A heady meditation on our relationship to nature, echoing the works of the transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson, the writing is much closer to poetry than essay.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0316741671
• ISBN 13: 9780316741675
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224