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Tinkers

3.32 of 5 stars 3.32 · rating details · 13,376 ratings · 2,915 reviews

Pulitzer Prize Winner
New York Times Bestseller

�There are few perfect debut American novels. . . . To this list ought to be added Paul Harding’s devastating first book, Tinkers. . . . Harding has written a masterpiece.” —National Public Radio

�In Paul Harding’s stunning first novel, we find what readers, writers and reviewers live for.” — San Francisco Chronicle

�Tinkers is t...more

Hardcover, 192 pages

Published January 1st 2009 by Bellevue Literary Press

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Mar 27, 2013 Nataliya rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer, 2013-reads

A year ago I got through fifty pages of this book and quit in bored frustration. But its alluring squareness kept nagging at a little corner of my brain, and I gathered my will to finish it a year later.

And I'm still not quite sure what I think about it.

On one hand, it's full of superb writing, smartly constructed prose, quite lovely memorably fascinating passages. Whatever I may think about the plot or the characters or the narrative passing, there is no denying that Paul Harding sure knows how...more A year ago I got through fifty pages of this book and quit in bored frustration. But its alluring squareness kept nagging at a little corner of my brain, and I gathered my will to finish it a year later.

And I'm still not quite sure what I think about it.

On one hand, it's full of superb writing, smartly constructed prose, quite lovely memorably fascinating passages. Whatever I may think about the plot or the characters or the narrative passing, there is no denying that Paul Harding sure knows how to yield a pen (or a typewriter, or a computer keyboard, or a smartphone - whatever he chooses to compose on).

"And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough."

The ideas this little square book tackles are also profound enough and quite literary - thus the Pulitzer. It's the memory and identity and life as seen through dying, and dreams and pain and inevitable disappointments and humiliations, and the family relationships that define our complicated selves. Especially those of fathers and sons (once immortalized by Turgenev - Fathers and Sons), full of hurt and pain, unexpected love and tenderness, and - hopefully - that one final moment of understanding.

"But after a handful of such stories, he began to talk about his father and his mother, his brother, Joe, and his sisters, about taking night courses to finish school and about becoming a father. He talked about blue snow and barrels of apples and splitting frozen wood so brittle that it rang when you split it. He talked about what it is like to be a grandparent for the first time and to think about what it is you will leave behind when you die. By the time the tape ran out an hour and a half later (after he had flipped it over once, almost without being conscious of doing so), and the RECORD button sprang up with a buzz, he was openly weeping and lamenting the loss of this world of light and hope."

Oh yes, the unexpected beauty of simplest things in life and the beauty and pain of family are the driving force behind Tinkers.

"When his grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up, and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart."

---------------
We start the story introduced to George Crosby, an old man dying from cancer, surrounded by family, experiencing his house (a symbol of his life, perhaps?) crumbling around him in semi-delirious hallucinations interspersed with moments of touching clarity that fill the reader with the sense of deep sorrow for a man whose life is just about over, whose dignity at this point is a questionable point, whose family is around in this semi-apologetic awkwardness of those who get to keep on living.

"When he realized that the silence by which he had been confused was that of all of his clocks having been allowed to wind down, he understood that he was going to die in the bed where he lay."

George, a clock-repairmen in his retirement, reflects on his father, Howard Crosby - the titular tinker of the 1920s backwoods, equipped with a cart, a mule, a list of items for sale and a soul of a poet or an artist trapped in a tinker's existence - and burdened with his dark secret: epilepsy which he hides from his children, a wife who is quiet and resilient and, as Howard eventually comes to see, resentful, as well as his son George whom he loves but who is deeply traumatized having had his father bite his hand during one of his grand mal seizures.

"His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. His despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verse from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better."

Howard is keenly attuned to the unexpected beauty of the world, enhanced further through his surreal quite-hallucinatory pre-seizure aura experiences. But what the rest of the world sees is a tinker crippled by his disease, a burden, a symbol of life gone wrong, a source of shame. Howard rebels - even though it means leaving his family behind. And years later, his son now retired is spending time tinkering with the clocks - tinkering like his father did, with clocks symbolizing pretty much everything your sharply attuned by your college English courses peppered with meanings and symbols and literary analysis and the significance of Holden Caulfield's hunting hat.

And yet, while I appreciated the writing and the themes and such, I could not shake off the feeling that so much about this book felt - how would I phrase this? - artificial, brought together for the purpose of getting the most 'literary' meaning out of it, to make it a sort of a book that begs to be discussed in a college English course. It has the execution and the themes, but it felt it was lacking a cohesive narrative glue to bring the story together, to make the reader feel for the characters.

It took me a while (a year, to be precise) to get past the point of not caring enough about the characters to be willing to continue with the story (and eventually at least Howard grew on me - but oh my, did that take time!). The clock repair manual segments interspersed throughout the book were clearly there to serve the important literary purpose - but to me had the jarring effect of pulling me out of the story and reminding me of the initial impression of smart artificialness of the story. And the characterization of Howard's wife - I could not shake off the feeling that a resentful unappreciated shrew of a wife is a device oh-too-frequently used in literature to underscore the vulnerability of a misunderstood sensitive and good male character.
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So here are my final impressions: smartly crafted book with all the necessary points built in to qualify for a literary prize - but with the lack of a spark to make it fully come alive. And therefore 3.5 stars from the brain, not the heart.

But at least now I don't have its unfinished white squareness quietly and resentfully staring at me from the bookshelf.(less)

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Michael Nataliya wrote: "...I haven't thought of Howard's grand mal seizures as disappearing, but in the context of this book it appears to make perfect sense...more
updated Mar 27, 2013 05:33pm

Nataliya Michael wrote: "Glad for some dialog on this. Was concerned about offending you. It just seemed we saw similar aspects in the book, so was trying to p...more
Mar 28, 2013 10:12am

Aug 07, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Joselito, Emir and all the loving fathers or even sons

Recommended to K.D. by: 2010 Pulitzer's Awards for Letters (Winner)

Shelves: pulitzer

ELEGIAC refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. An elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.

A tinker was originally an itinerant tinsmith, who mended household utensils. The term "tinker" was also used in British society to refer to marginalized persons. In this sense, "tinker" may mean: Irish Traveller, a nomadic or itinerant people of Irish origin; Scottish...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose-poetry, favorites, kindred-characters, 2013

I so, so recommend this...and not for narcissistic reasons. This is a book that transcends personal identity.

It's about loneliness, human frailty, fathers and sons, time and eternity. It's about so many things! If you like dense, complex writing, you should definitely read this. And, slowly. And, repeatedly.

“Tinkers is truly remarkable… It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls.”—Marilynne Robinson

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Dec 10, 2011 smetchie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who appreciate writing as art

Shelves: purchased-on-a-whim, lovely-bookness, favorites, re-reading, book-club, better-without-a-letter

This book is small and square.

I bought it at the airport Barnes & Noble en route to my hometown for my Grandfather's funeral. It's lovely small squareness caught my eye. The description on the back which reads "An old man lies dying." made me think it was serendipity. I read the first paragraph and it was all sealed up. This is some of the most wonderful writing I've come across in quite a long time. I'm thrilled to have found it and can't wait to share it.

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Aug 13, 2012 Scott Axsom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Paul Harding’s “Tinkers” is a profoundly moving meditation on death and time. I gave the book five stars and would rank it among the best of its kind. That’s why I was particularly shocked, after finishing it, to see the overall rating of 3.3 among Goodreads users. Nonetheless, I do have a good idea why “Tinkers” resonated so deeply with me, personally. Harding manages to describe the process of dying in much the same way that I’ve imagined it since losing my first close friend at the age of eig...more Paul Harding’s “Tinkers” is a profoundly moving meditation on death and time. I gave the book five stars and would rank it among the best of its kind. That’s why I was particularly shocked, after finishing it, to see the overall rating of 3.3 among Goodreads users. Nonetheless, I do have a good idea why “Tinkers” resonated so deeply with me, personally. Harding manages to describe the process of dying in much the same way that I’ve imagined it since losing my first close friend at the age of eighteen. I’ve lost far too many more dear friends since then and, each time, I've pondered death a little more deeply but, despite those often desperate efforts, each subsequent death has found me, as ever, wholly unprepared. As such, this novel sheds some welcome light into one of the darker corners of my understanding.

“Tinkers” is one in a long line of Pulitzer-winning novels that deals passionately with the concept of time and it does so in the context of the protagonist’s impending demise. The novel takes place during the final eight days in the life of an 80 year-old man, marking down the hours to his death. Talk about poignant. Talk about focused. And yet, the narrative occasionally ranges off into momentary anarchy, showing the protagonist’s inability to maintain focus in his final hours, demonstrating the delicate, often uncontrollable, natures of the human psyche, of life and, most of all, of death. The most beautiful elements of the book, to me, were Harding’s descriptions of death itself:

“The end came when we could no longer even see him, but felt him in brief disturbances of shadow or light, or as a slight pressure, as if the space one occupied suddenly had had something more packed into it… The world fell away from my father the way he fell away from us. We became his dream.”

Harding gives a circumspect, if meandering, view of the conventions of time and space in the context of death and, in doing so, he provides a spectacularly insightful examination of life itself. He places the concept of “reality” in its proper place and questions whether there is any such thing, when placed against the larger backdrop of death. For such an immense subject, “Tinkers” is barely more than a novella. In less than 200 pages, Harding delves into the beauty of dew on a flower petal, the undying love between fathers and sons, and the question of whether time and space exist anywhere but within our selves. “Tinkers” is a deeply philosophical dialectic couched in the very simple story of a man’s life and death, and I’ve read nothing that comes closer to helping me comprehend the wondrous, and frighteningly diaphanous, nature of our existence.
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Jul 03, 2012 Melissa Jackson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

If I could give this book 500 stars, I would. It was beyond description in its beauty. As soon as I finished, I wanted to reread it.

My friend Nellie who recommended it to me said, "The book is one giant quote." She was right. There was not a sentence that didn't make me ache in the best possible way.

"When the grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart."

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Oct 17, 2012 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american

This is like walking through a beautifully ornate, nostalgically built maze - each path you take opens possibilities and intrigue, and oops, the path is walled off, the trajectory cut, and you try another one, this one narrower, more nuanced, the path is promising, the wonderfully constructed and visually stunning way is... Ah! its severed. Another one,and...and they all interlace like the components of the bird nest that was described herein to a T.
The author apparently was rejected by everyon...more

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May 23, 2010 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Teresa by: Cynthia Tooley

I'd love to reread this book one day and read it straight through without stopping (something I couldn't do as I was traveling). As it was, I did immediately reread many of its beautiful and complex sentences. After I was finished the book, I thought of these sentences as a trail (perhaps that's because I did a lot of hiking on my trip!) that leads you back to where you started. I first read these sentences in pieces, stopping to think, letting my mind settle on ideas and images, until I got to...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: powells_indiespensable™, pulitzer-fiction

Wow. Completely blown away by this book's language. I'll tell you what, I never want to play Scrabble with Paul Harding.

Beyond that, the story is unexpected and engaging. It took me places I did not expect. On the outside, it seems like a simple tale. An elderly man lies dying and thinking of the past. But then interspersed is the sampling of the past: his father, his father's memories of /his/ father. I was left with the inter-connected relationships of this family. The oddities of their normal...more

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Oct 18, 2010 Janet Leszl rated it 1 of 5 stars

To me, it would have been a powerful story if it had been edited down to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of its volume. In many cases there were so many side stories that had no bearing on the meat of the tale. Was it really important to fully describe the picture on the box of scissors he retrieved to make the woven frame in the field?

As I was reading, I made a note to myself: too many pretty words strung together just for the sake of flowery prose. At times the writing was beautiful but at othe...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Gerry Wilson rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story behind Tinkers is almost more fascinating than the book. It's a debut novel, and Harding had a hard time getting it published. A very small press--Bellevue (yes, affiliated with Bellevue Medical Center, NYC--they also produce a nice literary mag that publishes only works that deal with mind/body, life/death/loss, illness issues, etc.) and they printed a very limited number of copies.

Along comes the PULITZER! In an interview Harding says he found out he won on the Pulitzer website befo...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Barbara by: NY Times Book Review, Teresa, Cynthia

Paul Harding's first book, Tinkers has totally amazed and delighted me. The fact that such a tiny novel could convey so much so well is a tribute to his literary skills. In an editorial in the Boston Globe, on April 16, 2010, it was reported how Harding was unable to find a publisher, passing the manuscript around to many houses, until a small publisher (Bellevue Literary Press)agreed to do it.Several people urged that the book be entered for the Pulitzer Prize and to waive the $50 submission fe...more Paul Harding's first book, Tinkers has totally amazed and delighted me. The fact that such a tiny novel could convey so much so well is a tribute to his literary skills. In an editorial in the Boston Globe, on April 16, 2010, it was reported how Harding was unable to find a publisher, passing the manuscript around to many houses, until a small publisher (Bellevue Literary Press)agreed to do it.Several people urged that the book be entered for the Pulitzer Prize and to waive the $50 submission fee. The writer went on to state, "Harding's rich prose drove some people to weep and many others to proselytize...it's worth remembering that some novels are still good enough to sell themselves." This causes me to wonder how many inferior books are accepted and even acclaimed!

Tinkers is not a novel with a linear plot, yet Harding's prose is so compelling and rich it is difficult to put it aside. It is deceptively simple, yet complex. An old man, George, is dying and we read of his memories, often disjointed, but a treat to one's senses. Within these evanescent thoughts Howard, his father is introduced. The sections relating to Howard were particularly appealing to me. He was a peddlar, traveling many miles year round. Father and son were both tinkers, menders and repairers of machine parts; in this case clocks of all types. Harding has added some whimsy to his descriptions of ancient timepieces with his accounts of fictional, yet credible(!)clockmakers and historians.

It would be easy to continue on and discuss each nugget that I discovered in this touching, sometimes humorous account. The passages of the seasons and the countryside were vivid, sometimes harsh, but often beautiful. Howard observed George fashioning a toy boat to sail:

"What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from ocean seige or October breeze." (p.77)

Among the many lovely run-on sentences in this novel, Harding has treated the reader with many tangible, engaging images. One of the most unusual is a scene of the moving of a huge house with the power of "eight titanic oxen".

I have borrowed this book from the library, but I will now purchase it in order to further digest Harding's gifted, billiant language. I have been totally captivated. His words sing to me! I look forward to future efforts by this talented, imaginative author.

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Feb 12, 2012 Kerri rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who digs reading stellar prose painting.

Recommended to Kerri by: Matt

Shelves: favorites, fiction

Exceedingly beautiful and undoubtedly harrowing, Harding has a gift for storytelling, and for employing some of the most authentic and haunting imagery of any author I've thus read. Rather than write a novella about why I'm considering re-reading this book moments after finishing it, I'll just leave you with two of my favorite passages:

"What looked like the end of the road was, in fact, merely a shift to the left or the right or a dip or a gradual rise. And the way the clouds moved, mostly invi...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Mom rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a challenging, original novel. George Washington Crosby is on old man, dying in his home surrounded by family after a simple modest life. Narrated mostly by George, we watch as he recalls his life,as well as his father's and grandfather's, drifts in-and-out of consciousness, hallucinates. The writing is spare and precise.

Since this novel won the Pulitzer prize, I was expecting something powerful and memorable. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, and found myself putting the book aside re...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Barbara A rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ecstatic/elegiac/epileptic/electric/ the passage of time/our bodies as reservoirs of time and memory/
the scraps with which we build our lives/the bits of of detritus with which we build edifices and stories/the inability to regain time that has been lost and fathers who have been lost to us/ the overloading of the senses and our inability to utter the transcendent, the ephermeral, the out-of-body experience.

There is no description I can give this book that would do it justice except to compare P...more

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Sep 12, 2011 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A friend recommended Tinkers and gave me an extra copy she had received from a colleague (who mailed copies of the book to everyone on his holiday gift list). Given these testimonials, and the fact that it won the Pulitzer, I thought I would love everything about this book. I really enjoyed Tinkers - it is one of the most unusual and beautiful books I have read. I read it twice (something I rarely do), and could read it again, but I don't think it is for everyone.
What I liked:
1) Harding's pros...more

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Mar 13, 2011 Kelanth, numquam risit ubi dracones vivunt rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa

Premio Pulitzer? Bha. Davvero di basso livello questa storia.
Scritto in maniera altamente poetico, aulico e descrittivo, con molte metafore davvero belle, storia commovente a tratti (solo a tratti purtroppo) e... e... niente di più. Il resto non pervenuto.
Un bel piatto decorato con all'interno niente da mangiare.
Rimango sempre più convinto che intorno all'assegnazione dei premi letterari, valgono più i poteri degli editori che il valore degli autori.
Potete, se volete, perdere un paio di giorni e...more

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May 22, 2010 Lee rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Other than a few stray hyperincantatory pages early on and an extended stretch of consistent story three quarters through, I found this short novel pretty damn dull. I wanted to love it, wanted to root for it, but turned on it, making guttural sounds to express dissapointment with oft-hokey, sometimes sentimental, and pretty much always excessive description of an isolated American region possibly once known as "Austere Caucasia" before its people of starch, hoarfrost, and flint settled on "Main...more Other than a few stray hyperincantatory pages early on and an extended stretch of consistent story three quarters through, I found this short novel pretty damn dull. I wanted to love it, wanted to root for it, but turned on it, making guttural sounds to express dissapointment with oft-hokey, sometimes sentimental, and pretty much always excessive description of an isolated American region possibly once known as "Austere Caucasia" before its people of starch, hoarfrost, and flint settled on "Maine."

I just read and LOVED 500+ pages of description by Georges Perec (Life: A User's Manual) -- he animated everything, made the familiar seem strange etc, absorbed me. But Harding's endlessly descriptive language expelled me from ye olde garden o' reading. Also, other than some seizure scenes, no sensationalism here, Ms. Robinson! Not even good ol' fashioned, very human, earthly desire. By which I mean, this is a book of spirit, a book of sermons, lost arts, and potentially mystical old-timey texts, not at all a book of the blood, the guts, the genitalia, all ye orifices engorged in conflict with major organs and themselves.

If, in 10 years, this unheralded book were recommended by a friend instead of by an affable author profile in the NYT re: the recent Pultizer Prize for fiction, I'd've probably been more generous with this, and I also might not have finished it. Sadly, I don't think this book can really withstand stricter prize-winner scrutiny, and also I really can't see how it won . . . If you've read some Faulkner, you're familiar with the "clock" as a symbol of order/disorder, not to mention echoes of "Memory believes before knowing remembers" and other riffs/images that showed up here. Reading this made me want to re-read Faulkner. Which is what I'd suggest to readers who rarely read fiction like this and who picked up this prize winner and were disappointed: try Light in August. Or Garden, Ashes: A Novel by Danilo Kis (best epileptic fit ever in this one).

Something cool, however: I think this might have been sneakily narrated by the boy in the book who sat by his grandfather's death bed and read to him, a boy who later recreates all these impressions about his grandfather and great-grandfather, a boy who says to his grandpop: ". . . I am a century wide. I think that I have my literal age but am surrounded in a radius of years. I think that these years of days, this near century of years, is a gift from you." Which is pretty cool, if I'm right about the narrator's identity. But which also makes for not the most scintillating reading: these "years of days" are conjured by unrepentantly incantatory language, sounds totally cool, but still . . .

Again, other than streaks of excellent attentive language throughout (almost enough to rate it three stars), I really just found this dull, isolationist, derivative, humorless, uber-white, and sort of empty content-wise -- it seemed to me like polite conservatory fiction that often enchants but rarely offers sufficient story or lesson (see this).

A serious performance in prose isn't enough, right? It seemed like it was missing some essential ingredients. I'd like to give it three stars but I just can't do it . . .

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Jan 01, 2012 Fahad rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

تأملات

كتاب غريب، أمنحه نجوما ً ثلاثة رغم أنني لم أستطع إنهائه؟ هل هي غواية البوليتزر؟ ربما، ولكني على أي حال أعرف الكتب التي أكرهها جيدا ً، وهذا الكتاب رغم أني شعرت فيه بموجات ملل وفقدان للتركيز، إلا أنني شعرت في لحظات منه بالمتعة، كل هذا في 158 صفحة، قرأت منها 134 قبل أن استسلم أخيرا ً.

والغريب أني عندما عدت إلى مراجعات هذا الكتاب رأيت من يعطيه النجوم الخمسة، وكذلك من يمنحه نجمة واحدة، وهذا يعني أن الكتاب ليس سيئا ً تماما ً، وأنه قابل للقراءة من وجوه متعددة.

فكرة الكتاب الأساس هي رجل يموت، يحت...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars

A small masterpiece, with poetic prose hung like pictures on the framework of the wandering story line, which, in turn, reflects George's varying sensorium as his death approaches. One feels the cold, the poverty, the difficulties of growing up and growing old. One feels multiple generations intermixing, sometimes historically, sometimes rhapsodically, sometimes deliriously.

The prose is complex and layered like a fine wine; with an aftertaste redolent of earth and fruit, with slight acid. I rere...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

A treasure. I just loved this. Some of the descriptive writing was such that I had to stop and reread it out loud to enjoy it more. A few reviews said it needs to be read slowly and that it does.

I was bummed to read what some other folks who didn't like this book had to say: that it didn't have any plot. Hmmmm...the musings of a dying man seems fine to me. And it really isn't just musings. I loved the stories about his father's family. It really was about fathers and sons. Do we need a beginnin...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Carrie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer, bpl

Well, I have a love/hate feeling for this book. By page 64, I was ready to give up. The story construction was so odd (reminding me a tad of Jonathan Safran Foer. Then I decided to trudge on, and really started to enjoy the beauty of the words and descriptions. Towards the end, when Howard was talking to his wife about people's shadows possibly having a life of their own, I was reminded of Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. As several other readers have commented, one sh...more

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Oct 24, 2010 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010, favorites, literary-fiction

This was different from most reading experiences I've had because of Harding's use of language. Using simple language in non-simple, metaphorical ways, he describes the last days of an elderly man who is dying at home--the memories of his youth, his father, the natural world he recalls, the clocks he fixed as both vocation and avocation. The clock metaphor runs through the book and the descriptions of nature are poetic. Though this is a slim volume it is dense in what it presents to the reader....more

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Feb 12, 2012 Thing Two rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer-prizes-winner, mfa-iowa-writer-s-workshop, ala-notable-book-for-adults, books-favorite-fiction, flaherty-dunnan-nominee

Although this won the Pulitzer in 2010, I haven't heard much else about it, which surprises me. This is a beautiful piece! The writing reminds me of Marilynne Robinson's, which means I loved it, of course.

Howard Crosby was the son of a "tinker", a peddler and a clock repairman and time is a theme the author weaves into the story well. As the author counts down the hours of Howard's life, he tinkers with our sense of timing, jumping, often without warning, from Howard's childhood to his adult lif...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Jürgen Zeller rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Diesmal fällt mir meine Meinungsäusserung äusserst schwer. Dieses Buch hat den Pulitzerpreis gewonnen und ich bin sicher das die Feuilletons der Zeitungen und Zeitschriften eine Laudatio nach der andern publizieren werden, Lobpreisungen dürften in Hülle und Fülle über diesen Roman und den Autoren Paul Harding ausgeschüttet werden und dann kommt so ein kleiner unbedeutender Amazon-Schreiberling wie ich und erfrecht sich das Buch zu kritisieren. Bin ich ein Frevler, ein Mensch der die hohe Kunst d...more Diesmal fällt mir meine Meinungsäusserung äusserst schwer. Dieses Buch hat den Pulitzerpreis gewonnen und ich bin sicher das die Feuilletons der Zeitungen und Zeitschriften eine Laudatio nach der andern publizieren werden, Lobpreisungen dürften in Hülle und Fülle über diesen Roman und den Autoren Paul Harding ausgeschüttet werden und dann kommt so ein kleiner unbedeutender Amazon-Schreiberling wie ich und erfrecht sich das Buch zu kritisieren. Bin ich ein Frevler, ein Mensch der die hohe Kunst des Schreibens nicht zu würdigen weiss, selbst wenn sie ihm, so wie hier, dicht vor Augen steht? Mag sein, aber ich bin ein Leser, ein Konsument der weiss was ihm gefällt und seine ehrliche Meinung schreibt.

Die Geschichte dieses preisgekrönten Romans hat keine nennenswerte Handlung, sie beschränkt sich auf die Erinnerungen, die einprägsamen Momente vom Leben des im sterben liegenden George Washington Crosby. Das ungewöhnliche an Erinnerungen ist, dass es nicht immer die grossen Ereignisse im Leben sind die bleiben sondern die flüchtigen Augenblicke eigentlich unwichtiger Dinge oder die kurzen Begegnungen mit Menschen die sich im Gehirn festsetzen und die man zeitlebens nicht mehr vergisst. Der Gewinn den solche an sich banalen Momente bieten ist manchmal höher als die einschneiden Ereignisse und prägen das Leben mehr und machen es so wie es eben sein sollte, LEBENSWERT.

George Washington Crosby ist in Gedanken versunken und mit dem Tod vor Augen beginnt er zu halluzinieren, sieht Wände einfallen oder den Himmel mitsamt den Sternen auf sich hinabstürzen. Das Leben zieht rasant an ihm vorüber und an einigen mehr oder weniger zufälligen Stellen bleibt es stehen und genau diese Momente werden im Buch beschrieben, dass was George so alles erlebt hat und wen er getroffen hat. Aber an was und wen erinnert sich das Gehirn in den letzten Stunden auf den Sterbebett? An seinen Vater der an Epilepsieanfällen litt, George früh verlassen hatte und als Kesselflicker durchs Land zog, die späte Leidenschaft von George für Uhren und diese zu flicken und bis zur kleinsten Schraube und Zahnrädchen zu verstehen. Aber auch an die Gefühle von Sehnsucht, Bitterkeit über stille Wut bis zur Hoffnung das sich stets alles zum Guten wenden wird..

Das Buch ist sprachlich und literarisch auf einem hohen Niveau, ganz fein geschliffen und überaus detailreich erzählt. Der Intellekt sowie der Geist werden direkt angesprochen und nach ein paar Seiten habe ich die beseelte Art wie die Geschichte erzählt wird gedanklich registriert. Aber leider geschah dies nur auf rationaler Kopfebene, mein Buchgefühl und mein Gemüt haben leider nicht den geringsten Zugang zur Geschichte und zur Person von George gefunden. Zu meinem Leidwesen entfaltete der Roman mit dem filigranen Stil nicht die erhoffte Wirkung, er blieb mir verschlossen wie ein Kokon dem nie ein wunderschöner Schmetterling entschlüpfen wird. Mein Herz ist aber weder morsch, noch verschlissen oder aus dem Takt, es konnte schlicht und einfach mit dieser Geschichte nichts anfangen oder es war das falsche Buch zur falschen Zeit. Mehr als 3 Sterne kann ich für diesen 189 Seiten kurzen und eher emotionslosen Roman nicht vergeben.(less)

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Mar 31, 2013 Chelsea Ursaner rated it 4 of 5 stars

I chose this book because I wanted to read something having to do with dementia and while it wasn't really what I was looking for in the sense of learning about the disorder, I loved Paul Harding's writing and am happy I read it. The New York Times review nailed it saying that it's a "mosaic of memories"... there are some feeble attempts at chronology but I was not following. The main character is a horologist - someone who makes clocks - named George who is dying and recounting memories of his...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Maggie Campbell rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "He imagined that his memoirs might now sound like those of an admirable stranger, a person he did not know but whom he immediately recognized and loved dearly."

"...so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else's frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrange...more "He imagined that his memoirs might now sound like those of an admirable stranger, a person he did not know but whom he immediately recognized and loved dearly."

"...so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else's frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great-grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam..."

"...and I didn't feel like I might be hurting a person anymore, which made me sicker."

"And yet, the thought of walking across the room and opening the shades and letting the raw, weak light pour down on them seemed worse, as if the least my father could be granted was that he be allowed to fall apart in the dark."

"It seemed to me that this was a dream of my father's death, a sort of rehearsal for when it really happened, rather than a simple fact of the waking world. It was difficult for me to distinguish the actual from dreaming during that time, because I often had dreams in which my father came into my bedroom to kiss me and cover me up with my blankets, which, restless sleeper that I was, had fallen to the floor. In those dreams, I awoke and, seeing my father, felt an overwhelming sense of how precious he was to me. His having died once, I understood what it would mean to lose him, and now that he had returned I was determined to take better care of him."

"Oh! Another day tucked away and here we are tired and honest and in love and happy as two peas in a pod, two peas in a pod!"

"He lifted his nose from a crate of limes, refreshed and eager to get home to a wife who spoke words out loud as she thought them up and held nothing to whirl and eddy and collect in brackish silences, silences that broke like thin ice beneath you to announce your drowning."

"...you are my heart's delight. Haven't we had a wonderful life together?"

"George awoke for the last time forty-eight hours before he died. He had been unconscious for two days. This was when he understood the situation and needed to tell people things. There was $2,400 in cash hidden in his workbench downstairs. The Simon Willard banjo clock on the wall was worth ten times more than he'd ever told anyone. There was an inscribed first edition of The Scarlet Letter in a safety-deposit box. He loved everyone dearly."

"...he saw no reason to doubt that his shadow dreamed just as he did for the reason that he could imagine himself to be a shadow of something-someone-else and that perhaps even his sleep, his dreams, constituted his duty as a shadow of someone else and perhaps while that someone else dreamed, he was free to live his waking life..."(less)

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Mar 19, 2013 Helene rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, pulitzer

What is it with Pulitzers, death and dying. I remember reading Gilead, and the final Rabbit, and others I can't remember. The language in Tinkers is just wonderful, the reminiscences paint extraordinary pictures. It is the story of a man's final eight days, yet it's not ... It is George Carroll's memories but then it is also his father's memories. How can the son have memories that are the father's? If it is supposed to be his memories as he is dying, then why are the vignettes about the father...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Jillwilson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jason Steger warmly recommended this book a couple of years ago so it’s been on my backburner to track down. It won a Pulitzer. I don’t entirely know why I think this but I feel that it is a novel that men will like more than women. It is about being a man (but so was ‘Ransom’ (Malouf) and I loved that novel). It is beautifully written. There’s just something in the emotional distance that it projects that pushed me into admiration rather than passion (and maybe this says more about me than the...more Jason Steger warmly recommended this book a couple of years ago so it’s been on my backburner to track down. It won a Pulitzer. I don’t entirely know why I think this but I feel that it is a novel that men will like more than women. It is about being a man (but so was ‘Ransom’ (Malouf) and I loved that novel). It is beautifully written. There’s just something in the emotional distance that it projects that pushed me into admiration rather than passion (and maybe this says more about me than the book).

There’s a lot to like, however. ‘Tinkers’ is the poetic account of a dying man’s last days and his relationship with his father. It’s set in northern Maine where the author grew up. The scenes with the dying man are entrancing; I wanted more, and Harding is apparently writing a second novel based on one of the grandsons in these scenes. Here is a snippet, where George, the dying man, reflects on his future:
“I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else’s frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their own time, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this word because they were made of this world . . .”

I like that: “the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors.” Harding’s evocation of the harshness of life in George’s childhood is fantastic. It’s a very visual book. Harding says (intriguingly) “… I don’t write the book in any order, I just literally wake up and wonder about whatever immediately strikes me as interesting. Usually I have a question about something: ‘What does she think at that point?’ Or, ‘What does he do?’ Or, ‘What does the cemetery look like in the autumn?’ And I just start writing.” (http://www.openlooppress.org/intervie...)

This interview is worth a look and you can hear him reading from the novel. When asked about plotting, he says: “No—no plot set out whatsoever. In terms of process, it’s all what I would call “interrogative writing,” you write in order to find out what the case is in any given sentence. You just sort of discover what’s true. The first thing I ever thought of for the novel, the first line or image that came to me, was the instant after the character Howard Crosby, the “tinker” of the title, has left his family and he’s realized it for the first time. I thought, “What would it be like to realize that you’ve just abandoned your own family?” Then I wrote the next sentence and the next sentence and the next sentence and eventually you think, “How does that radiate out over time? What are the consequences of that? What’s the wake that’s left behind?” And it naturally included his children and his legacy and all of that.” I wanted to love it more!(less)

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Jan 12, 2013 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had a hard time following the narrative, with flashbacks and floating POV, but I finally gave up and dove in and drifted through the story, enjoying it much more that way. By the time I finished, I was entranced, and couldn't stop thinking about it for days.

The prose is luminous. There's a thread running through three generations of men; they all have a gentleness, and an affinity with that which is small and finely detailed. They see beauty in the world, they write about it, they immerse them...more

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About Paul Harding

Paul Harding has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2000) and was a 2000–2001 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, MA. He has published short stories in Shakepainter and The Harvard Review. Paul currently teaches creative writing at Harvard. His first novel, Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Quotes from Tinkers

“Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split the frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you that that is beautiful, and a part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.” — 63 people liked it

“I breathed the book before I saw it; tasted the book before I read it.” — 26 people liked it

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