Guest Author Patricia Weil
Part Two
Synopsis of “
A Circle of Earth tells
the story of people whose lives were shaped by the limitations of
circumstance. Both main characters come
of age during the years of the Great Depression. Their story lines cross first
circumstantially, when Emma witnesses the loss of Henry’s home. Later, the story lines intersect again
through the marriage of the characters’ two best loved children.
Emma is an innocent, the product
of a simple piety that no longer exists in the world that most of us know. Her marriage is not a love match. She has been singled out and chosen, much in
the manner of a necessary life commodity.
Her husband, Ralston, a small farmer, is a man who has been emotionally
limited, even damaged. Ralston’s idea of
marriage precludes intimacy. A
determined and driven worker in his occupation as farmer, in his own time he
pursues a petty rural debauchery. Emma's
close relationships with other women, her gratification as a mother, form her
world.
Henry is an ardent
character. We first see him as a young
adult in love with the world and its possibilities, which for him will be
cruelly limited. Henry has a deep love
for the natural world, for his wife Lillian, his brother Drefus, as well as a
strong but thwarted love for learning. The relationship between Henry and his
genteel wife, Lillian, is as companionable and tender as Emma's marriage is
stark. Unlike Ralston, Henry is a loving
and playful father. Lillian becomes
aware very gradually, as we do as readers, that Henry is an alcoholic. Victim of this common disease, he is also
victim to forces beyond his control--the worst years of the Great
Depression. His family life cannot
withstand the circumstances into which it is forced: that of being moved into a flimsy shotgun
house at the farther edges of the town’s white slums. He and Drefus resort to "riding the
rails" for much of the Depression. It
is several decades later, during his stay in the state mental hospital, that he
forms a deep attachment to a young psychiatrist who, without being aware of it,
acts as a catalyst for Henry's self-reclamation.
For more information about this book and where it may be
purchased, click here: http://www.amazon.com/A-Circle-Earth-Patricia-Weil/dp/1478726806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403188518&sr=8-l&keywords=a+circle+of+earth
Questions and Answers
What writers do
you especially admire? Why?
It’s odd that the question of who
my favorite writers are has always created a sort of blank in my mind. There are just so many! But the following authors would be on any
list I put together, each one especially loved for a specific work.
Wallace Stegner. In Angle of Repose he illustrates not
just the feel and history of a region but the heart of an individual, with both
her great strengths and her weaknesses.
His fiction in general bears out the truth that no personality is less
than complex.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath has been called
sentimental. I don’t consider that a
derogatory term. The power–and yes,
feeling--of Steinbeck’s vision in this book may have provided for some their
first understanding of lives that society wills not to see.
Wendell Berry. His writing and environmental activism are on
a par. Works like The Memory
of Old Jack and the poem “The Peace of Wild Things” are reverential.
Barbara Kingsolver. In The Poisonwood Bible the truths of
the novel are just that: biblical in feeling.
The drama of the setting is paralleled by the drama within the main
characters’ family unit–the reader truly experiences the distress of these
characters.
Elizabeth Strout. In Olive Kitteridge Strout has the
daring to center her book around a character far too real to be entirely
likable, in a place that some would find too ordinary for notice.
Elizabeth Gilbert. Her achievement in The Signature of All
Things is near breathtaking, a tour de force that might not be expected
from the author of the likable Eat, Pray, Love. I was nothing less than amazed at the depth
and scope of her research in building this intricate piece of work.
What caused you to
want to write A Circle of Earth?
I have wanted to write since I
first began reading adult literature, which for me was in third grade. Even as a child I watched the world. It was a world of extremes: poverty and
wealth, privilege and insult (there was strong class prejudice, as well as the
prevalent race prejudice). All the
niches between these extremes were filled with people--in this case
white–trying to live their lives according to some vision. It was rich material for writing. And at age twenty-one I conceived the main
idea for this book. My motivation, then
and now, is the conviction that life should be taken full notice of. Everything matters. In the present we are told to follow our
dreams, even our bliss. My parents were
never told that–much less their own parents (the generation that this book
largely focuses on). Even the
opportunity to think in this way is a privilege that very few people
enjoy. I’m very aware of the injustice
of that.
I was especially impressed with your word selection and clarity of
expression. I know from experience that
portraying skillfully a character’s complex emotions and thoughts is difficult
to accomplish. Please explain how you
were able to do so.
For my graduate work I was caught
between Literature and Psychology. I’ve
always observed feeling, both my own and of the people I’ve come into contact
with. I’ve done a good deal of journal
type writing towards that end–it’s been important to me to get my
understandings just right. Since I was
so many years in the writing of Circle, I had the time to grow with my
characters and “watch” them, so to speak.
Their feelings and motivations became clearer and fuller to me as time
passed. In addition, some of these
characters are composites of different people in my family, as well as
composites of myself.
How long did it
take you to write your novel? Explain
why. Readers who are not authors need to
understand better the writing process.
I began A Circle of Earth
eighteen years ago. There have been many
revisions! I frankly didn’t know what I
was doing when I began. I had to learn
to structure and write by doing, and that required much trial and error. Over the course of the writing, my own
writing voice eventually emerged. Then,
what had been written had to be rewritten, to seem authentic to me!
In what ways has writing your novel benefitted you?
The overall personal benefit of
writing this novel has been the experience of true creative joy. This is such a rare thing, and I believe it
expands the person who feels it. I had
had glimpses of this sort of experience with my graphic art, but not of this scope. I felt very often like I was carrying around
a secret golden egg. The whole world was
enriched. I know I did a great deal more
talking to people, especially the oldest people I knew. There were details that couldn’t be found in
reading. I enjoyed the research I did
for this book (there was a whole lot of it).
At one point I honestly felt that I had lived during the Depression.
The mill whistle sounded, a long, monotonous blast. Noontime.
The noise of machinery was quickly replaced by a blur of voices and the
movement of feet. Henry shuffled down
the back stairs with more noise than was necessary, excessive energy, and on
this particular Thursday, especially good humor. The stairs stopped at the wall where coats
hung and pails were stacked. Henry
passed a youngster bending over to pick up a lunch pail.
"Something in your pocket,
son."
A couple of feet away a tall girl
was lifting a coat off a peg.
"Spider, miss!" Henry
smacked the wall with his palm, then pushed something into her hand. The girl smiled. She knew the one about the spider. What Henry had given her and the boy were
pieces of hard candy, cheap candies from the general store, lingering tastes of
sugar and flavoring delectable to the mill children.
"Hey there, June
bug!" This greeting to a little
girl named Eloise, who was also taking her coat from a peg. Eloise would get the peppermint, a favored
piece. The little girl's color was
wrong. It disturbed Henry.
Now he ducked inside the door to his
father's office, to collect his own things. "That little skinny one out
there, with the pigtails,” he spoke of Eloise, “she ought not to be here at
all."
Mr. Gray was used to these opinions
of Henry’s. It had occurred to him that
his boy was a dreamer. They’d never had
one like that in the family—it was frankly a curiosity. But he would get over it, Mr. Gray told
himself. In this same son there was
something that plumbed true and right, in a way that was absent in the others. And as for Henry and his running opinions, if
he'd realized Mr. Taylor was also present, he would have withheld his launching
comment. The two older men had grown up
together, had the habit of meeting during the day between business hours. Mr. Taylor was a drawling, self-satisfied man
of some leisure. The family owned land;
he ventured one business experiment after another with the capital. And Henry, who by habit observed all the
rules of good manners, was embarrassed to be caught in his unguarded, at-home
behavior. He snatched up his coat and
cap in a rush, while the older men watched him, then looked back at each
other. Mr. Taylor had a high opinion of
Henry, and the behavior amused him. He
often remarked to his friend Joe that Henry had, as he put it, fine prospects.
The truth
was that Henry’s loathing of the mill had increased to the point that he had to
allow it these little exits. He hated
being shut up, any place. But this place
he hated just walking into—the smell of it by itself annoyed him, stinking and
stale, the air itchy with lint dust. He
grew irritable, a thing not in his nature.
He broke out at times in a very fever of restlessness. Once, after closing time, he struck off in
the direction opposite to home. And in
the cover of first dark took off his shoes, tucking both under his arm like a
football, and ran—he didn't stop to think why.
Had run down a little dribbly sand road between cornfields, run to the
point of punishing himself, run until exhaustion brought him the relief of
mental and physical calm. He didn't
remember what he'd told Lillian about the sand in his clothes. He and Lillian had been married since that
summer, and she was several months pregnant.
= = =
"Is this it?"
Emma's tone had changed. It was
no longer a question, just a collection of words. Emma made a noise and handed the can to
Ralston. In her enthusiasm, she lost all
sense of the strain she had been under.
They were here. And the house was
her own. It was bigger than she would
have expected, solid and well built.
Tall and squarish, sitting high up on its cellar. It was a handsome house in a sturdy kind of
way. A porch ran along the front, with
three columns. The sight of it delighted
Emma, its neglect a detail too trivial for notice. They continued around to the back, where Emma
spotted the pump, built right into the back porch. The Swann children had always had to run back
and forth to get to the pump. Emma
remembered having to run in the rain.
In her eagerness, the inclination to
chatter returned to Emma. The house, empty
except for the kitchen range and an ornate, fussy-looking stove in the parlor,
had that strange feeling of vacancy about it.
Across the back porch lay drifts of rain-pocked pollen, withered oak
silk, and leaves. The prints of a pair
of man's shoes led back and forth from the porch steps to the back door. But there was no trace of ownership left in
those dim, hollow rooms. The house was
theirs.
…
When Ralston walked outside in the
late light, Emma trotted after him. They
stood together for a little, at the west fence, looking out over what had been
the cornfields. Where Emma saw acres,
Ralston saw neglect, even ruin. It was
the best of soils, one hundred sixty-six rich Black Belt acres. A soil almost black, heavy in the hand and
fragrant, not like the pale Wiregrass soil that fell through the fingers. Over the course of a single, sun-stricken
summer, the acres of crops had reverted, were by this time thick masses of half
wild vegetation. Emma knew a ruined
field when she saw one—she could see that the state of things troubled
him.
"Well," Ralston let his
head fall between his shoulders and shook it, with something like a
chuckle. "Looks like it's mine,
now."
"I know you're proud of
it." It was in Emma's nature to
comfort. She gave a little stroke to his
arm, and her hesitancy in touching him puzzled her. She felt a strong sympathy for him, then–she
felt it often. She could have lavished
him with affection at such times, if he had let her. Perhaps if she could have for once dropped
that restraint, have been herself freely and convincingly with this man she had
married, it may have made some small difference.
Ralston looked down at her
curiously. He felt no need to reply,
simply because a remark had been made.
Emma would have liked most to ask if
he were happy.
…
She and Ralston worked together,
that first week, then the second, another—Emma lost count. First, the ruined cornfields had to be dealt
with. Ralston moved inside the rows,
muttering profanities where the masses of weeds had already gone to seed. In places it was difficult for the two of
them to spot the stunted ears, and a good number of the corn plants were
barren. With the mules and wagon behind
them, they pushed through the tangles, twisting and snapping the small ears
where they found them. The tall grass
tickled and tormented Emma. Her face
splotched and broke out. It didn't take
long for the continuous twisting of the hard, stringy ears to make blisters in
the palms of their hands. The blisters
would rise, break, and make sore places.
Emma had to force her hands to work again—but she didn't try to beg
off. …
After the corn came the cotton. The bolls were small, undersized like the
corn, not easy to spot through the Jimsonweed and Johnson grass. The tiny bolls affected Emma like something
deliberately vicious. The hard, sharp
hulls stabbed her fingers. Emma's cuts
swelled and bled—and she knew she'd be stabbed again, in the same places. She wrapped her own fingers in strips of
cloth, but Ralston wouldn't let her wrap his.
The picking seemed to go on forever.
Ralston swore. Emma wept. Salt water ran through her eyes. Perspiration or tears, she couldn't say—it didn't
much matter. The plants caught and
tugged at the bag that she pulled. The
strong equinox sun hammered. With each
other Ralston and Emma grew silent, bruised by their weariness. There were times during the picking when Emma
cooked, served, ate beside Ralston without a word passing between them. Just to be still and be quiet—they needed that—though
Emma less so than Ralston. After the
corn and the cotton, the digging of the sweet potatoes, the lifting, cutting,
and bundling of pea plants were gentle harvests, in comparison.
…
… Emma's longing for her family
was like a physical illness. No one had
told her it could be this way. Always,
before, there had been company, the three other sets of hands, her mother's and
sisters'—she had lived with the closeness of bodily contact. Now
there was only Ralston’s brief, nightly gratification of that need of
men—there were no caresses, no fond touches—unlike her own family, Ralston was
not fond of being touched. And with her
own family there was always the jostling, the blandishments, as well as the
kisses and pinches. The stroking. There was a thing that she wanted—Emma couldn’t
have attached a word to this feeling.
She was nonetheless driven by it that night when she had come up to find
Ralston sleeping. He lay curled on his
side, facing away from the doorway. Emma
sat down to unpin and re-braid her hair; and as her fingers worked, she watched
him, not aware that her mind was also working.
She was lonely—there had never been reason to give the feeling a
name. The house was quiet. It was empty.
The fields lying around it were empty.
Silence—that mean, unaccustomed thing—filled the rooms of the
night-swallowed house. Emma blew out the
lamp and lay down behind Ralston. If
only, if just—she didn't know what.
Tentatively she touched his back, then withdrew her hand like she had
touched something hot. It was not the
sex act that she craved—Emma’s body was not yet awakened. She knew nothing of sensual pleasure. In his sleep, Ralston twitched a shoulder, as
he would have done to toss off an insect.
= = =
At not quite 6:30 on a Sunday morning, the sound of the telephone woke
Henry. The ringing was strange to his
ears, and he lay for some time resisting it, sleep-soaked and perspiring. Night had brought no relief from the early
heat spell that had lasted for more than a week. He and Lillian had tangled themselves in the
bed sheets, which felt damp to the touch.
"Henry?"
By now Henry was sitting up in the
bed. The ringing was shrill.
"It's got to be something
important, at this hour of the morning." Lillian’s voice was already
apprehensive.
She stood next to Henry in the
kitchen, her head below his shoulder, listening to the conversation. Which wasn't difficult to do. Mr. Taylor shouted into the receiver—it was a
habit. Why this call should have taken
place at that particular hour or why Henry should be asked to go out right away
was not clear. But no one asked for an
explanation. People nearby had got word
to the Taylors
"I'll be on out, soon's I can
get dressed," Henry hung up, and he and Lillian stood for a moment,
exchanging looks, then looking past each another. They were stunned. To the ground. That meant gone. All of it.
…
… His mind was quiet now. Blank.
The morning was quiet. From the
pasture across the road, the single sound of a meadowlark flew over the air—it was
a sound Henry particularly loved, a clean, sweet sound that fell like an
arc. It caught his attention. He looked up that way. When he glanced down again, he gave a push
with his foot, and the stair steps collapsed into pieces. It was at that stray moment that it came to
Henry that he wasn't sorry—he wasn't sorry that the sawmill had burned. The admission of it, once it was out, oddly
enough didn't amaze him. Now he stepped
across the road and walked a little. He
stood before a line of sagging barbed wire that ran along the stretch of
pasture. The old pasture hummed with sun
motes and the heat waves that stood in the distance. At the far end of the field was a single,
moss-hung oak, smoky green against the line of woods. Henry's eyes fastened on the shape of the
tree, taking in something he needed from it—there was a kind of knowingness
about old trees. He heard the sound of
the bird again, somewhere off where he couldn't see it. Now Henry knew for a fact that he wasn't
sorry. And once past that point, it was
difficult all of a sudden not to be glad.
He hadn't let himself actually think of the place as a trap; or if he
had, he'd grown too used to the weight of it to take much notice. Now the whole of it dropped away from him,
like a sheer pane of water. Already he
began to lose touch with the feel of its having happened at all.
…
… Myra Myra
"Now, everything will work out
all right, Lillian. He had a shock. That's all."
"That's not all."
"Why, baby, you've got to look
on the bright side. It was awful about
the sawmill. But Drefus already has a
job lined up for Henry. Things will work
out."
Now Lillian jerked her head
away. "He drinks, Myra
"This is different. He drinks all the time."
Now Myra
Lillian sighed, uncrossed and
recrossed her legs, which trickled with perspiration. "It's just that he's always
drinking. That's what I mean. All the time.
Even out with the children and me.
He carries a flask."
"A flask." Myra
"That's just what I don't
know." And here Lillian's face went
crooked. "It's so hard to tell with
Henry. It’s never much. Just a little all along. But all the time. All of the time." Her voice rose and collapsed on the words.
"Cheerful. I know.
Oh, I know." There was a
pause. "I'm scared." Lillian had never said that to anyone.
"Scared," Myra
"I don't know what I can
do about it!" Anger edged into
Lillian's voice.
"Have you talked to him?"
"I don't think he realizes it,
himself."
"What about Drefus?"
"I think it all started with
Drefus."
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