Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life

Jerome, John

ISBN 10: 0874517621 / ISBN 13: 9780874517620

Published by University Press of New England, 1996

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # Q-0874517621

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life
• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0874517621
• ISBN 13: 9780874517620
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 11 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

With grace, style, and gentle, self-deprecating wit, John Jerome describes the back-breaking but soul-mending task of building a stone wall on his New England farm. The job begins on a whim-he decides to move one from his woods for the sheer pleasure of seeing it from the house-and as the wall progresses, the physical occupation leads Jerome to philosophical preoccupation. Thus Stone Work, first published in 1989, becomes a discourse on the meaning of craft, the stolidness of work, the gifts of the seasons, and the complexities of being male and fifty-five.

Jerome finds something pure in the lugging and the struggling with the stones, a clarity that leads him to insights into family ties, the tenuousness of nature's beauty, and his ongoing quest for fixity in a world of flux. "Maybe gravity is all the alignment one ever gets," he thinks as he pushes a stone into place, "and therefore all I ought to need. What more could one want, anyway, than the sure sense-right there, at any given moment for the noticing-of a straight line pointing toward the center of the earth?" While his wall isn't a masterwork-isn't even finished-his hands-on labor allows Jerome to grasp some elemental truths; with him we come to see the "riches, riches, everywhere, just for the paying of attention."

About the Author

JOHN JEROME lives in western New England, where he is a full-time freelance writer. He has written for various magazines, including Esquire, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine. His books include The Sweet Spot in Time (1980), Truck (1977, 1995, see page 23), and a forthcoming travel book about water.