Kings of the Earth: A Novel
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- ISBN13: 9781400069019
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Following up Finn, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors . . . William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Planet, a powerful and haunting tale of life, death, and family tree in rural America.
The edge of civilization is closer than we reflect.
It’s as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older, wilder, and far less forgiving world—until one of them dies in his sleep and the additional two are suspected of murder.
Told in a chorus of voices that span a generation, Kings of the Planet examines the bonds of family tree and blood, faith and suspicion, that link not just the brothers but their entire community.
Vernon, the oldest of the Proctors, is cut-rate by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side, needy and indecipherable. And Creed, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army), struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We also meet Del Graham, a state trooper torn between his urge to know the brothers and his desire for justice; Preston Hatch, a kindhearted and resourceful national who’s spent his life protecting the three men from themselves; the brothers’ only sister, Donna, who managed to cut herself loose from the family tree but is then drawn back; and a host of additional living, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this deeply intimate saga of the human condition at its limits.Amazon.com Review
John Clinch on Kings of the Planet
Draw an X across New York State–letting one arm of it be the Erie Canal as it runs from Albany to Buffalo–and where the two arms of that X cross, you’ll find the city of Oneida. The place where I grew up. It’s a city by name and charter only, so when you picture it you should picture a town as a replacement for. A modest one. And on the perimeter of that town, past a sign at the edge of a cornfield that with no irony whatsoever inscription the “city limits,” picture a rich and endless panorama of farming country. A glacial landscape of fantastic beauty, at work in the service of corn and cows.
My father was born in that farming country, although he didn’t stay. He was the son of a previously itinerant day laborer and worker and circus magician, who had left Tennessee’s Clinch Mountain in order to start a new family tree in upstate New York. My mother, on the additional hand, was born in the town. She descended from educators and preachers who traced their lineage to William Howard Taft–not just America’s fattest President, but the only one who did double-duty as her Chief Justice.
No marvel I like that “city limits” sign, planted out there at the edge of a cornfield. No marvel I’m interested in whatever divisions it would seem to mark.
The thing is, I never saw the beauty of that place until I’d left it behind. And when I finally learned what I’d lost, I spent years finding my way back. Kings of the Planet was part of that journey.
In it I tried to capture and preserve the voices of my childhood. The sound of the world as I knew it. The tales that people told, the things they valued, and the ways in which they understood one another (or tried to). Writing it was, as one character says, “like trying to hear a tune somebody whistled last week.” But but impossible that kind of thing might be, building the effort can bring a person very close to something precious and vital.
Because in spite of the many different voices heard in Kings of the Planet–women and men, farmers and city folks, con men and criminals and keepers of the peace–the book isn’t just about how they talk. It’s about how they listen. To one another.
The tale starts with three ancient brothers on a dirt farm, just down the road from the place where my father came into this world. Three uneducated brothers who’ve lived and worked and slept together on that patch of hard ground and in that shack of a house all their lives long. Until the summer morning when one of them doesn’t wake up.
Whatever might have happened in that shared bed of theirs was deeply private, but it takes on a wide public dimension. And the effort to make sense of it draws together a community of personalities, each of them with his or her own point of view. Together they draw a portrait that spans the better part of the twentieth century in one tiny American town, a portrait not just of the brothers but of themselves.
Listening to persons people talk–giving them their own voices and putting them all in a book where they might suffer for at least a small while–was my aim and above all my honor.
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Hmmm…I can’t say that I cared for this book very much. It just seemed to go on and on and nothing ever seemed to get resolved.
The characters were real enough, but certain things just didn’t seem to make sense to me. A excellent deal of the tale seemed to hinge on the brothers’ nearly childlike innocence. They seem nearly incapable of telling a lie. Where then, does Creed’s “confession” come from?
Obviously, based on their findings, the police have questions about Vernon’s death. But one certainly did not get the feeling that the folksy local policeman was in any way out to get Creed or frame him for something he did not do. He reads parts of the confession to Creed and he does not refute any of it. But, then when questioned by his national who reads a copy of the confession to him, he regards it as something he never said.
Clinch gets the tone and the language right. No surprise since he is a native of the area in which the tale was based.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Farming is their way of life, but life has not been kind to the Proctor family tree. For decades, brothers Vernon, Audie and Creed have lived in relative isolation on the fringe of society. As farmers in rural upstate New York, they scrape by running their farm, as did their alcoholic and sadistic father Lester before his bizarre death. Their beloved mother Ruth has passed on as well, resigned to her fate after suffering the ravages of cancer. Her room, now boarded up, remains a shrine to her memory. But life on the farm continues for her boys, who struggle to suffer.
Vernon, the eldest, has led a hard life. Nearly drowned as a boy, maimed in a farming manufacturing accident, and neglecting his health out of dread and mistrust of doctors, he looks much older than his years. Despite his failing health, Vernon does his share of work and looks out for second-born Audie as they go about their daily routines on the farm.
As a young boy, feebleminded Audie is injured in a horrific manufacturing accident that leaves a painful scar and even more painful memories. Change isn’t simple for Audie, who takes the death of his mother especially hard, but his brothers and their kindly neighbors help him through the suffering.
For a time, Creed, the youngest of the three brothers, leaves the farm after being called to serve his country. As a soldier in the Korean War, he has learned about death — and a small about life — from additional soldiers. After the war, Creed returns to the only home he has known with hopes of finding a wife, or at least a name to like.
Donna, the youngest and the only girl, doesn’t have it nearly as terrible as the boys. She is also the only Proctor child able to escape farm life. She attends nursing school, marries and has a son. Yet the pull of family tree is strong. She remains in contact with her brothers and helps from a distance, but is brought back into family tree matters after the questionable death of her father.
Besides Donna, neighbors Preston and Margaret Hatch are the Proctor brothers’ tie to the outside world. Preston is a generous soul who assumes the role of advisor for the brothers. He acts on their behalf after the outside world intrudes on their simple ways, and the law tries to blame one of the brothers for the death of another.
Jon Clinch follows his critically acclaimed debut novel, FINN, with this haunting and sorrowful tale about a rural family tree and a way of life that spans decades and generations. Told from the voices of family tree, friends and law enforcement from the 1930s through the 1990s, KINGS OF THE EARTH is a family tree saga that is not simple to read and even harder to forget.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Others have written about what this novel is about…so I don’t need to do that.
I really have to reflect about some things after having finished this. Such as, what is “different”? And is it such a terrible thing? Perhaps we all need to be a small more tolerant. You can’t permanently help how you turn out and this book treats that topic with a dignity and respect that is deserves. The title itself does so. We’re all trying to do the best we can with what were agreed. I guess it’s pretty clear this really touch me somewhere very basic.
I guess I’ll be thinking about this book and what it meant to me for some time yet.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
KINGS OF THE EARTH is a new novel inspired by the Ward brothers, eccentric, bachelor dairy farmers in central New York, whose tale was told in the award winning documentary BROTHER’S KEEPER. When one of the brothers suffered an unattended death investigators believed foul play was involved and suggested motives ranged from a mercy killing to an incestuous sex act gone incorrect. The brothers’ primitive hygiene and living conditions probably increased law enforcement officers’ suspicions about this unusual family tree. Leader Clinch changes character and place names and reasonably a few facts of the case though the bare bones of the right tale stay in place. He also imagines a full subplot centering on growing marijuana on a family tree farm which is appealing and plausible.
Like a fantastic many novels I have read recently the tale is told by the voices of the major characters. Some of these voices speak for themselves in first person while others are narrated in third and one character, the “boys’” brother-in-law (DeAlton) seemingly tells the events in conversations with various unnamed listeners most frequently his son. Clinch is a skilled enough writer to juggle these characters, different narrative styles and a time frame that ranges from the 1930’s to 1990’s and still tell a coherent, believable tale. I’m not surprised to read that leader Clinch himself is a native of rural upstate New York as he obviously knows and understands his characters and setting and is able to expertly place their lives in to words for his readers.
The book is reasonably ambiguous in places which may not be to the liking of some readers (including me) who prefer most pertinent facts plainly spelled out and no loose ends left untied. KINGS OF THE EARTH reminded me reasonably a bit of some of the novels Joyce Carol Oates has recently published that are fiction based on infamous fact and anyone who enjoys Oates will likely want to read this novel. I recommend this book for its insightful, genuine, observations of farm and tiny town life and the uncertainties of the book would make for fantastic book club discussions.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Clinch’s use of language and ability to evoke emotion from the mundane are unparalleled. He develops each character with compassion, yet distills the essence of their tragic scenery with breathtaking clarity, building this this one of the best books I have ever read.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5