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Hardcastle
Book by Yount, John
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 28, 2018
I've heard that HARDCASTLE was Raymond Carver's favorite book. It is a fairly straightforward story. Bill Music, a Virginia farm boy who went off to Chicago to electrician's school, has fallen on hard times during the Depression and has failed to find work, so is headed home to his family farm in Virginia via foot and freight car. He is passing through the mining country of Switch County, Kentucky and seeks overnight shelter in a stranger's haystack and a bit of food from the stranger's garden. This overnight stay changes the whole course of Music's life, and a theme of the book, which philosopher's could argue till the cows come home, is that Music's life was "chosen" by fate and that he had very little "agency," as the academics say, in the events that transpired.
The story is in clear prose and in dialect form that probably represents the speech of Kentucky mountain people circa 1930's, at least to some degree. I'll leave that up to a linguist and dialect expert to decide. The tale probably could serve as a template for various mining strikes and efforts to unionize miners by "syndicalists" in the early 1900's.
Yount does give the tale a few twists, as the man whose haystack Music squats in, one Regus Patco Bone, is a former miner, as was his late father, but is working as a mine guard--about the equivalent of a former armed robber becoming a cop assigned to the robbery division. Music and Regus develop a quick friendship and Music is given the chance to hire on as Regus's partner helping to guard the Hardcastle mine, owned by a typical, tight-fisted old bastard named Hardcastle. The mine guard job basically consists of patrolling the outside of the mine areas and be on the lookout for outside agitators (union organizers) who may try to inveigle the minors into organizing and striking just for the sake of a living wage.
I won't say much more about the story so that I don't give away any "spoilers." I see this book is listed among a giant list of "Darkest Books." I take issue with that term "dark" because some awful things do end up happening but the term "darkness" seems to imply that these are unnatural occurrences. What transpires is the sort of violence that seems to have been transpiring since Homo Sapiens, or maybe all of his progenitors, began to walk upright.
I'll confess that this was my 2nd time trying to read this book. I had tried maybe 10 years before and found it too dull and just stopped reading maybe 100 pages into it. It IS a slow-moving book but not extremely so. The story actually moves along at a decent pace compared to many novels I've read.
The book's strength's include that it is readable and tells a story that you can lose yourself in. One could read this book as a history book if the dialogue and extraneous parts of the tale were taken out. Its major weakness, in my view, is that sometimes it stinks of the "MFA syndrome," where the writer appears to be trying too hard, at times, to make the characters more introspective than they probably would have been in real life. It is the story that carries this book and makes it rise above the mediocre. And despite the occasional suspect introspection, the story is quite believable. The mixed reviews it's gotten here demonstrate the immense variety of readers' tastes, not the merits of the actual novel.
The story is in clear prose and in dialect form that probably represents the speech of Kentucky mountain people circa 1930's, at least to some degree. I'll leave that up to a linguist and dialect expert to decide. The tale probably could serve as a template for various mining strikes and efforts to unionize miners by "syndicalists" in the early 1900's.
Yount does give the tale a few twists, as the man whose haystack Music squats in, one Regus Patco Bone, is a former miner, as was his late father, but is working as a mine guard--about the equivalent of a former armed robber becoming a cop assigned to the robbery division. Music and Regus develop a quick friendship and Music is given the chance to hire on as Regus's partner helping to guard the Hardcastle mine, owned by a typical, tight-fisted old bastard named Hardcastle. The mine guard job basically consists of patrolling the outside of the mine areas and be on the lookout for outside agitators (union organizers) who may try to inveigle the minors into organizing and striking just for the sake of a living wage.
I won't say much more about the story so that I don't give away any "spoilers." I see this book is listed among a giant list of "Darkest Books." I take issue with that term "dark" because some awful things do end up happening but the term "darkness" seems to imply that these are unnatural occurrences. What transpires is the sort of violence that seems to have been transpiring since Homo Sapiens, or maybe all of his progenitors, began to walk upright.
I'll confess that this was my 2nd time trying to read this book. I had tried maybe 10 years before and found it too dull and just stopped reading maybe 100 pages into it. It IS a slow-moving book but not extremely so. The story actually moves along at a decent pace compared to many novels I've read.
The book's strength's include that it is readable and tells a story that you can lose yourself in. One could read this book as a history book if the dialogue and extraneous parts of the tale were taken out. Its major weakness, in my view, is that sometimes it stinks of the "MFA syndrome," where the writer appears to be trying too hard, at times, to make the characters more introspective than they probably would have been in real life. It is the story that carries this book and makes it rise above the mediocre. And despite the occasional suspect introspection, the story is quite believable. The mixed reviews it's gotten here demonstrate the immense variety of readers' tastes, not the merits of the actual novel.
October 4, 2014
Few novels being published now are both so well written, so absorbing, and so crucial to our understanding of the darkness that makes up the fabric of American history.
Not may are left who lived through the Great Depression in America and lived through it in coal country Kentucky where miners, like workers in many other parts of our country, worked for what they could and that was so little no worker in America would think today of lifting a finger for those wages.
But people had to eat, and that is why Bill Music, walking home to Virginia from Chicago, stops and accepts one of the meanest jobs then – mine guard – their purpose? Intimate and make sure the miners did not get out of line – think of unionizing – and if they did – report them immediately so they would be fired and evicted from their mine company homes.
Reflecting on his life, Music considers his life, ‘It is not the one he had in mind when he started out, or the one he would have chosen, but the one that claimed him. And, all things considered, it had been good enough.’ And that is true of many – maybe all of us.
This is a remarkable novel - a must read for all Americans and all who reflect upon their lives – and that is all of us.
Not may are left who lived through the Great Depression in America and lived through it in coal country Kentucky where miners, like workers in many other parts of our country, worked for what they could and that was so little no worker in America would think today of lifting a finger for those wages.
But people had to eat, and that is why Bill Music, walking home to Virginia from Chicago, stops and accepts one of the meanest jobs then – mine guard – their purpose? Intimate and make sure the miners did not get out of line – think of unionizing – and if they did – report them immediately so they would be fired and evicted from their mine company homes.
Reflecting on his life, Music considers his life, ‘It is not the one he had in mind when he started out, or the one he would have chosen, but the one that claimed him. And, all things considered, it had been good enough.’ And that is true of many – maybe all of us.
This is a remarkable novel - a must read for all Americans and all who reflect upon their lives – and that is all of us.
September 12, 2019
An almost perfect novel.
August 26, 2025
Bill Music is the hero of this depression-era tale set in the south. When I am reading the beautiful (and, I swear, *perfect* is not over-stating it) prose I wonder why this isn't as widely read as The Grapes of Wrath (which I hated...) Granted, it doesn't narrate the change our country saw that Steinbeck iconically depicted, and focuses instead on a couple of men in one place at one time, but the rhythm, characters and writing here are fantastic and you will find yourself thinking in the vernacular of the characters..."I was fixin' to...", etc.
And darned if you can't almost hear the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou playing in your head while you read.
And darned if you can't almost hear the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou playing in your head while you read.
November 6, 2015
Fascinating look at coal country Kentucky during the depression--a topic that interests me because my mother in law was from Paradise, Kentucky and lived through the depression there. I ordinarily hate novels in dialect because, well, dialect, but this is well done and does what dialect is supposed to do: put you in the middle of the action, the conversations.
Regardless of your feelings about unions (mine is very pro), it's honest about the good and the bad of labor and ownership.
Regardless of your feelings about unions (mine is very pro), it's honest about the good and the bad of labor and ownership.
March 17, 2018
Thankful
A very good book, it really gives a person a feel for how tough life can be and how thankful I am for what I have. Definitely a good read.
A very good book, it really gives a person a feel for how tough life can be and how thankful I am for what I have. Definitely a good read.
January 23, 2013
When I moved to NY I started a book club and we met for five years before disbanding for moves, busy jobs and families, etc. I remember this as one of my absolute favorites. If I remember correctly it was written by the stepdad of one of our book member's graduate school roomies otherwise I don't think we ever would have happened upon it. It is a slow-paced, depression-era novel following an unemployed man who ends up working as a non-union worker in a mine. It was one of those books where it seems that every word is carefully carved into the book. I loved it.
July 4, 2020
Almost five stars. A tale of the past that isn’t past, written with beautiful simplicity and uncomfortable truth, about poverty, exploitation, and the tensions between community and self-sufficiency in a Depression-era coal mining town. I know nothing about John Yount, but look forward to discovering the rest of his work.
December 12, 2010
American history...1931 Kentucky miner camp...Depression, coal mine, unions, poverty, Communism. 3.5 for me -- I just ended up liking the glimpse of real person history, but this book wouldn't be for everyone.
August 22, 2014
It's kind of long and I felt like I was still reading just to get through to the end.
December 27, 2010
I read this when it first came out and really liked it.
January 18, 2019
Anytime over the last few years I came across a reference to this book I would inevitably read how it was one of the underrated books of the American canon. After reading it I would have to agree that it is a telling, biting picture of the underclass in America in the days of the depression. Will Music is on his way home in 1931 after two years of riding the rails around the country trying to find his way. He had left his parents farm in Virginia, feeling their disappointment, and thus has hesitated to return in the shame of not finding success.
Still, as the story begins he is hopping boxcars back east headed for home after coming to the conclusion while looking for food in a trash can that returning home might be a better option.
The story has a brief prologue in 1977 when an aged Will Music is asked by his grandsons about a youthful experience when he had shot two mine guards in a strike action at a coal mine. Not wanting to, or feeling prepared even now to share the feelings of that experience we see him ponder age and memory “ Oh, he knows well enough he could account for his age as a man might for an extraordinary amount of money he finds has slipped through his fingers. Sure, he could think back and satisfy himself that nothing was lost, but merely spent. Yet the odd notion persists, that if just knew how to do it, he might shake himself awake and discover that he is young after all and had only dreamt otherwise.”
If you can find a better description of the feeling of age on a person who still feels youth in his veins I do not know what it would be.
As he makes his way across country Will seeks shelter in a haystack for the night only to wake up with a gun pointed at him and a dog licking his face. The man, gruff but not really meaning harm, turns out to be a mine guard for the local coal mine. Kentucky mines are in a hotbed of fear of potential unionization. Within thirty six hours Will is living with Regus T Bone on his hardscrabfle farm, eating real food, and has a job making three dollars a day as a mine guard. Will is never comfortable with his role and as the threat of union activity increases he eventually convinces Regus of the wrongness of their position.
The lives of coal miners, the corruption of both the union and the mine owners leave these men no safe harbor. The story is fairly predictable in its path. The two major, and really only, female characters, Regus’ Mother and Music’s love interest are more than just window dressing and offer the book more depth than it would have otherwise.
This is a hurtful book, it’s hard to read in its bleak descriptions. It’s a good primer on the mindset of the coal miners today still clinging to whatever windmill promises they and theirs salvation that will never be delivered once the votes are counted.
Late in the book, in a postscript where the aged Music thinks of the past and those gone forever contemplates the meaning of home we have another quote that strikes home. “ He suspects home is not a place after all, but simply a time, and when it’s gone, it’s gone forever. “
It seems to me this is true. Recently in another story I read someone talk about memory and nostalgia and how often it isn’t for a place or thing remembered so much as a feeling of different, potential, or multiple outcomes. Simply the feelings of youth that cannot be replicated.
A very strong book.
Still, as the story begins he is hopping boxcars back east headed for home after coming to the conclusion while looking for food in a trash can that returning home might be a better option.
The story has a brief prologue in 1977 when an aged Will Music is asked by his grandsons about a youthful experience when he had shot two mine guards in a strike action at a coal mine. Not wanting to, or feeling prepared even now to share the feelings of that experience we see him ponder age and memory “ Oh, he knows well enough he could account for his age as a man might for an extraordinary amount of money he finds has slipped through his fingers. Sure, he could think back and satisfy himself that nothing was lost, but merely spent. Yet the odd notion persists, that if just knew how to do it, he might shake himself awake and discover that he is young after all and had only dreamt otherwise.”
If you can find a better description of the feeling of age on a person who still feels youth in his veins I do not know what it would be.
As he makes his way across country Will seeks shelter in a haystack for the night only to wake up with a gun pointed at him and a dog licking his face. The man, gruff but not really meaning harm, turns out to be a mine guard for the local coal mine. Kentucky mines are in a hotbed of fear of potential unionization. Within thirty six hours Will is living with Regus T Bone on his hardscrabfle farm, eating real food, and has a job making three dollars a day as a mine guard. Will is never comfortable with his role and as the threat of union activity increases he eventually convinces Regus of the wrongness of their position.
The lives of coal miners, the corruption of both the union and the mine owners leave these men no safe harbor. The story is fairly predictable in its path. The two major, and really only, female characters, Regus’ Mother and Music’s love interest are more than just window dressing and offer the book more depth than it would have otherwise.
This is a hurtful book, it’s hard to read in its bleak descriptions. It’s a good primer on the mindset of the coal miners today still clinging to whatever windmill promises they and theirs salvation that will never be delivered once the votes are counted.
Late in the book, in a postscript where the aged Music thinks of the past and those gone forever contemplates the meaning of home we have another quote that strikes home. “ He suspects home is not a place after all, but simply a time, and when it’s gone, it’s gone forever. “
It seems to me this is true. Recently in another story I read someone talk about memory and nostalgia and how often it isn’t for a place or thing remembered so much as a feeling of different, potential, or multiple outcomes. Simply the feelings of youth that cannot be replicated.
A very strong book.
November 19, 2023
A historical novel set during the Depression years of the early 1930’s and taking place in the coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky.
William Music is on his way back home to his family’s farm in Virginia after traipsing around the country via rail and foot seeking employment during those harsh times. After spending the night sleeping in the hay on one farm he meets up with the residents of that farm, a mother and her adult son, who offer him shelter and food if he will agree to stay awhile and help out at the local mine, owned by a Mr. Hardcastle, working as a security guard, the same position held by the son. Compared to other jobs, if one can actually find the work, the pay for that position is exorbitant. Having a background only in farming and schooling in electrical work, Music reluctantly agrees. Although he intended to stay only long enough to finally get some money in his pocket so he can continue his journey back home, he finds that he is becoming more and more involved with the plight of the hapless miners and their families as the despotic mine owners in the region, with the help of local law enforcement, fight harder and harder to prevent unionization of the miners.
The author did a very good job of describing in detail the living conditions and day to day life of the people in that region of the country and at that period of time. My only gripe with the story, and it’s a teensy one, is that I wished the author would have included a bit more information and detail regarding current events of that historical period of time. Rather, the scope of the book does not extend beyond Music’s own personal knowledge, experiences and interactions.
William Music is on his way back home to his family’s farm in Virginia after traipsing around the country via rail and foot seeking employment during those harsh times. After spending the night sleeping in the hay on one farm he meets up with the residents of that farm, a mother and her adult son, who offer him shelter and food if he will agree to stay awhile and help out at the local mine, owned by a Mr. Hardcastle, working as a security guard, the same position held by the son. Compared to other jobs, if one can actually find the work, the pay for that position is exorbitant. Having a background only in farming and schooling in electrical work, Music reluctantly agrees. Although he intended to stay only long enough to finally get some money in his pocket so he can continue his journey back home, he finds that he is becoming more and more involved with the plight of the hapless miners and their families as the despotic mine owners in the region, with the help of local law enforcement, fight harder and harder to prevent unionization of the miners.
The author did a very good job of describing in detail the living conditions and day to day life of the people in that region of the country and at that period of time. My only gripe with the story, and it’s a teensy one, is that I wished the author would have included a bit more information and detail regarding current events of that historical period of time. Rather, the scope of the book does not extend beyond Music’s own personal knowledge, experiences and interactions.
April 16, 2020
Hardcastle is a beautifully written book with cinematic descriptions that are easy to visualize. The dialogue is incredible; it sounds completely natural and authentic. I don’t usually read depression-era stories, but the characters drew me in, beginning with Bill Music’s cross-country journey by rail.
The plot is a bit slow-moving, which actually fits the tone of the piece, and the time and location. The story feels true to life, meaning there are no simple solutions. The two main male characters grow in understanding and empathy during the course of the story, as real people often do, and discover new truths about themselves as well as the world at large. The two main women had smaller roles to play, but both were vibrant, fully dimensional characters.
This book is particularly relevant because of the universal theme of the rich taking advantage of the poor, which eventually drives the latter to revolt. Without getting too political, I’ll say it had me thinking about the situation in the U.S. right now. Overall, I found the story to be both a powerful snapshot of the past and a cautionary tale for the future, and it’s hard to get any better than that.
The plot is a bit slow-moving, which actually fits the tone of the piece, and the time and location. The story feels true to life, meaning there are no simple solutions. The two main male characters grow in understanding and empathy during the course of the story, as real people often do, and discover new truths about themselves as well as the world at large. The two main women had smaller roles to play, but both were vibrant, fully dimensional characters.
This book is particularly relevant because of the universal theme of the rich taking advantage of the poor, which eventually drives the latter to revolt. Without getting too political, I’ll say it had me thinking about the situation in the U.S. right now. Overall, I found the story to be both a powerful snapshot of the past and a cautionary tale for the future, and it’s hard to get any better than that.
September 26, 2016
This hauntingly evocative Depression-era novel centers around a coal battle near Harlan, Kentucky. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the DRC. Our protagonist is Bill Music (originally Musik, before the Ellis Island people decided to yank the German element from the family name). Music has gone from his family's bare-dirt farm in Virginia to seek his fortune in Chicago. He worked his way through a nine month electrician's certification program, did hard labor to support himself, and just when he was ready to go on home, he was robbed. His attackers even found the $20 hidden in his shoe, since they took his shoes also. Barefoot, broke and hungry, he joins throngs of other down-and-out Americans by jumping a freight train toward home. The third day on an empty stomach, he sees a farm with piglets in the back yard and crazed from hunger, leaps from the train with no thought how he'll get back on one. A twenty mile, post-piglet walk leads him to Hardcastle, a mining town filled with impoverished, bitter miners on the brink of unionization.
Regis Patoff may be my favorite character Yount's story. The name itself is great; I will leave the reader to uncover its origin, one of the few humorous moments in the story. Patoff offers Music the heart-stopping salary of three bucks a day, more than he used to make in a whole week, to be a mine guard. He deceives Music by telling him that the mine is too small to attract union drama anyway, and so he will be paid this handsome amount to routinely trudge around the property at night three times a week.
When something looks too good to be true, it generally is.
Music moves in with Regis and his mother, the wonderfully drawn Ella Bone, who takes to him as a second son. When all hell breaks loose, Music is in too deep to walk away. Winter is coming; he has been away so long that he can no longer imagine the faces of his parents or siblings, but Regis, Ella, and his beloved Merlee are right there in front of him. He stays.
The reader should expect to deal with a certain amount of Appalachian/country dialect. If English is your second language, you will want an e-reader for definitions, or a native English speaker to guide you through some of the vernacular.
For me, however, it created an immediate bond. Two generations ago, my father's people were miners; they were comfortably ensconced in more lucrative, less dangerous work by the time I was born. Until I read Yount's novel, I was unaware of how many cultural artifacts had leeched into my own childhood from the mines of the Depression era. Immediately a little girl calls her grandfather "Pappaw", and I found myself missing my own Pappaw, who died in 1977. One of the main characters calls out the greeting, not hello but "Hydee!" and I can hear my father's voice, gone 35 years, as clear as day. When you read the word "victuals", hear it as "vittles", and it means food, usually a good meal. And so it went.Somewhere along the way I realized I had flagged so many terms I hadn't heard for ages that those reading my review would not want to march through all of them with me, so I will leave off here and continue with the story.
For me, this was a page-turner. The last star fell off the review during the last ten percent of the story, when some historical inaccuracies too great to dismiss as mere story-telling devices came up. The greatest was the depiction of the United Mine Workers as a union made up entirely of communists. And given that contemporary working class history is my field of expertise, it really grated. For those who want the truth, here it is:
During the early years of American union struggle, most industrial unions banned anyone who was not Caucasian; who was not an American citizen; or who was a communist from their ranks. The UMW refused to let its ranks be decimated by these distinctions, believing in solidarity. So yes, people who were communists and said so openly were allowed to join, and if the ranks voted them into leadership, they were allowed to take their posts. The union did not yield to red-baiting. There were white folks in the union who didn't think people of color should be allowed in, but the UMW pointed out that solidarity was the best way to keep workers all on the side that would fight for their interests.
Yount correctly depicts the UMW as inclusive of every ethnicity, race, and nationality, but it incorrectly paints the UMW as a communist union, to the extent that in order to stay in the union, members were ultimately expected to renounce their Christian beliefs and take up little red flags. It is preposterous. When it came into the story, I expected some other thing to happen in order to undo the incorrectness of it, but he left it lay there, the dead elephant in the room. It really got in the way of the story. It was just stupid, and I did a complete 180 from being really entertained and enjoying the story and its characters, trying to determine what would happen in the future to the main surviving players, to being aggravated at the lie on which the resolution of the tale hinges. I also didn't like the implication that mine workers were dumb enough to be led around by the nose without having known who was leading them. Many of them (including my grandfather) had a low or nonexistent literacy level, but that didn't make them stupid, just poor.
For other readers, the whole story may be entirely enjoyable. The characterizations are endearing, the setting palpable. When Yount brought winter, my feet got cold. His writing is really strong.
But watch the history. Changing major historical events and realities through fiction is a dangerous thing, because when emotion runs high, people bond to what's in the text, and if they have no reason to believe otherwise, they assume they are getting the truth, or the mostly-truth. And this author hasn't merely tampered with some minor realities for the sake of a good story; he has stood the historical record on its head.
Regis Patoff may be my favorite character Yount's story. The name itself is great; I will leave the reader to uncover its origin, one of the few humorous moments in the story. Patoff offers Music the heart-stopping salary of three bucks a day, more than he used to make in a whole week, to be a mine guard. He deceives Music by telling him that the mine is too small to attract union drama anyway, and so he will be paid this handsome amount to routinely trudge around the property at night three times a week.
When something looks too good to be true, it generally is.
Music moves in with Regis and his mother, the wonderfully drawn Ella Bone, who takes to him as a second son. When all hell breaks loose, Music is in too deep to walk away. Winter is coming; he has been away so long that he can no longer imagine the faces of his parents or siblings, but Regis, Ella, and his beloved Merlee are right there in front of him. He stays.
The reader should expect to deal with a certain amount of Appalachian/country dialect. If English is your second language, you will want an e-reader for definitions, or a native English speaker to guide you through some of the vernacular.
For me, however, it created an immediate bond. Two generations ago, my father's people were miners; they were comfortably ensconced in more lucrative, less dangerous work by the time I was born. Until I read Yount's novel, I was unaware of how many cultural artifacts had leeched into my own childhood from the mines of the Depression era. Immediately a little girl calls her grandfather "Pappaw", and I found myself missing my own Pappaw, who died in 1977. One of the main characters calls out the greeting, not hello but "Hydee!" and I can hear my father's voice, gone 35 years, as clear as day. When you read the word "victuals", hear it as "vittles", and it means food, usually a good meal. And so it went.Somewhere along the way I realized I had flagged so many terms I hadn't heard for ages that those reading my review would not want to march through all of them with me, so I will leave off here and continue with the story.
For me, this was a page-turner. The last star fell off the review during the last ten percent of the story, when some historical inaccuracies too great to dismiss as mere story-telling devices came up. The greatest was the depiction of the United Mine Workers as a union made up entirely of communists. And given that contemporary working class history is my field of expertise, it really grated. For those who want the truth, here it is:
During the early years of American union struggle, most industrial unions banned anyone who was not Caucasian; who was not an American citizen; or who was a communist from their ranks. The UMW refused to let its ranks be decimated by these distinctions, believing in solidarity. So yes, people who were communists and said so openly were allowed to join, and if the ranks voted them into leadership, they were allowed to take their posts. The union did not yield to red-baiting. There were white folks in the union who didn't think people of color should be allowed in, but the UMW pointed out that solidarity was the best way to keep workers all on the side that would fight for their interests.
Yount correctly depicts the UMW as inclusive of every ethnicity, race, and nationality, but it incorrectly paints the UMW as a communist union, to the extent that in order to stay in the union, members were ultimately expected to renounce their Christian beliefs and take up little red flags. It is preposterous. When it came into the story, I expected some other thing to happen in order to undo the incorrectness of it, but he left it lay there, the dead elephant in the room. It really got in the way of the story. It was just stupid, and I did a complete 180 from being really entertained and enjoying the story and its characters, trying to determine what would happen in the future to the main surviving players, to being aggravated at the lie on which the resolution of the tale hinges. I also didn't like the implication that mine workers were dumb enough to be led around by the nose without having known who was leading them. Many of them (including my grandfather) had a low or nonexistent literacy level, but that didn't make them stupid, just poor.
For other readers, the whole story may be entirely enjoyable. The characterizations are endearing, the setting palpable. When Yount brought winter, my feet got cold. His writing is really strong.
But watch the history. Changing major historical events and realities through fiction is a dangerous thing, because when emotion runs high, people bond to what's in the text, and if they have no reason to believe otherwise, they assume they are getting the truth, or the mostly-truth. And this author hasn't merely tampered with some minor realities for the sake of a good story; he has stood the historical record on its head.
September 17, 2017
A strong true voice. A most compelling story.
Being raised in rural Arkansas, with Depression Era grand parents, it was very moving to hear the authentic voices from my youth resurrected in "Hardcastle" Written with honesty throughout and shining light into dark shadows that lesser authors would hide, this story is one that sticks with you to be pondered for days after reading. I will surely re-read this one more than once.
The balanced truth seeking approach used in this book does have one drawback. It last the visceral and overwhelming emotion, the highly coherent force of the one-sided apologetic seen in a story like "The Grapes of Wrath". Yount is more honest, but somewhat less persuasive than Steinbeck with this easily compared book. I would like to read much more from this author. I would especially like to read more Labor Movement stories.
Being raised in rural Arkansas, with Depression Era grand parents, it was very moving to hear the authentic voices from my youth resurrected in "Hardcastle" Written with honesty throughout and shining light into dark shadows that lesser authors would hide, this story is one that sticks with you to be pondered for days after reading. I will surely re-read this one more than once.
The balanced truth seeking approach used in this book does have one drawback. It last the visceral and overwhelming emotion, the highly coherent force of the one-sided apologetic seen in a story like "The Grapes of Wrath". Yount is more honest, but somewhat less persuasive than Steinbeck with this easily compared book. I would like to read much more from this author. I would especially like to read more Labor Movement stories.
June 17, 2020
A very dense book, but in a good way. Serious and sad.
Read
May 28, 2021Realism!
April 29, 2023
Just as it's always been, it remains today-cops are stooges and thugs of the wealthy, with religion not far behind.
May 20, 2023
Love this writing style. Excellent!
July 11, 2023
Hellkatoot
April 23, 2023
A classic. This was one of those books that draws you in and stays with you. I didn't want it to end. What a gem of a novel!
May 18, 2012
Until I read “Hardcastle” by John Yount, I never knew that ginseng was gathered by farmers in Virginia in the 1930s. Furthermore, I had never heard of John Yount until I read a brief biographical note about an author whom he encouraged to take up writing as a profession, John Irving.
This story is set mainly in the 1930-31.
Bill Music, unemployed, is slowly making his way home to his home in Virginia by taking illicit rides on freight trains. When he reaches Switch County in Kentucky, he leaves the train and begins walking, searching for food and drink. He falls asleep in a haystack, which belongs to Regus Bone and his mother Ella. They take a shine to him. Regus, who is employed as an anti-union mine guard at the local Hardcastle coal mine, persuades Music to enrol as a guard. Music does this with considerable misgivings. The mine guards are regarded with hatred, and scorned, by all the mine workers, and this discomforts Music greatly.
Time passes, and Music falls for Merlee, the embittered young widow of a miner cut down in his prime. At first she does not reciprocate, but, being almost destitute, does accept his gifts. A certain warmth begins develop between them, and a relationship flowers. One evening Regus and Music, suspecting correctly that there would be a secret meeting between the workers and union officials, apprehend two union agitators, and prepare to take them to see the sheriff. If I tell you anymore, I will spoil this tale for you.
The writing is slow paced, as I imagine life was in a sleepy mining community in Kentucky, until near the end of the story. A feeling of impending doom hangs over almost every page. The Great Depression is already underway. Will the mine go ‘bust’? Will the unions stir up trouble? Will Regus and Music be shot by angry miners or company ‘goons’? These are the uncertainties that hung over the lives of those living in Valle Crucis, Mink Slide, Bear Paw, and other settlements around the mine.
The writer’s descriptive powers good. Occasionally, I felt that he went into too much detail. For example, when Yount describes Regus and Music overhauling an ancient .44 Walker Colt gun, the text reads almost like an instruction manual. The author certainly has an eye for detail, but I’m not sure whether so much detail and the dialogue (in what I assume is Kentucky dialect) was 100% effective in creating a thoroughly credible ambience for the novel.
I read the book, wondering what would happen eventually. I mostly enjoyed it, but would not recommend it as essential reading.
Having now read something by Yount and also by the person whose writing he encouraged, John Irving, I believe that I understand why Irving’s novels attract a greater audience than those of Yount.
This story is set mainly in the 1930-31.
Bill Music, unemployed, is slowly making his way home to his home in Virginia by taking illicit rides on freight trains. When he reaches Switch County in Kentucky, he leaves the train and begins walking, searching for food and drink. He falls asleep in a haystack, which belongs to Regus Bone and his mother Ella. They take a shine to him. Regus, who is employed as an anti-union mine guard at the local Hardcastle coal mine, persuades Music to enrol as a guard. Music does this with considerable misgivings. The mine guards are regarded with hatred, and scorned, by all the mine workers, and this discomforts Music greatly.
Time passes, and Music falls for Merlee, the embittered young widow of a miner cut down in his prime. At first she does not reciprocate, but, being almost destitute, does accept his gifts. A certain warmth begins develop between them, and a relationship flowers. One evening Regus and Music, suspecting correctly that there would be a secret meeting between the workers and union officials, apprehend two union agitators, and prepare to take them to see the sheriff. If I tell you anymore, I will spoil this tale for you.
The writing is slow paced, as I imagine life was in a sleepy mining community in Kentucky, until near the end of the story. A feeling of impending doom hangs over almost every page. The Great Depression is already underway. Will the mine go ‘bust’? Will the unions stir up trouble? Will Regus and Music be shot by angry miners or company ‘goons’? These are the uncertainties that hung over the lives of those living in Valle Crucis, Mink Slide, Bear Paw, and other settlements around the mine.
The writer’s descriptive powers good. Occasionally, I felt that he went into too much detail. For example, when Yount describes Regus and Music overhauling an ancient .44 Walker Colt gun, the text reads almost like an instruction manual. The author certainly has an eye for detail, but I’m not sure whether so much detail and the dialogue (in what I assume is Kentucky dialect) was 100% effective in creating a thoroughly credible ambience for the novel.
I read the book, wondering what would happen eventually. I mostly enjoyed it, but would not recommend it as essential reading.
Having now read something by Yount and also by the person whose writing he encouraged, John Irving, I believe that I understand why Irving’s novels attract a greater audience than those of Yount.
July 12, 2011
Great writing, sharp action, well-defined characters–so why didn’t this book ever find an audience? There are no copies in the Salt Lake County Library system, and hardly any reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. So what’s wrong with the book? For one thing, the focus changes too often. Who are the good guys? The mine owners? The union organizers? Who are the villains? Probably the mine goons, but they don’t show up very often. What we mostly get is the underbelly of depression-era life in a small coal mining town, with all its dirt, grime, poverty, rot, sweat, tears, bitterness, etc. etc. Is that a problem? Maybe. Although most of us don’t enjoy sugary-sweet literature (like breakfast cereal that’s overly sweetened, we gag on it), we also don’t enjoy spoonful after spoonful of grit. It just doesn’t go down very well.
July 9, 2011
Had thought I'd give this book only two stars, but found when I was done that I really cared about the characters and their story.
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