Customer Reviews

The Clearing: A Novel

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In Tim Gautreaux' spellbinding novel, "The Clearing," Randolph Aldridge sets out to locate and reclaim his shell-shocked and spiritually lost older brother, Byron. Randolph's odyssey takes him not only to the most remote, primitive and violent region of Louisiana bayou virgin forest, but to the extremities of human nature as well. Randolph, the lumber mill manager, confronts an untouched geographic environment and must also face his worst fears: the primitive qualities of the human heart, an unalloyed fear of death, and his own capacity to comprehend vengeance and to exact it. In its exploration of the consequences of war, of good people's need to be just in the face of withering evil and of the human heart's capacity to love, "The Gathering" is nothing less than brilliant.

In search of meaning and purpose, Randolph and Byron are equally lost souls. As the younger brother, Randolph struggles with his place in the family, and he chafes at his subterranean disappointment with his life. His acceptance of his father's demand that he discover the whereabouts of his older brother and be the means of his brother's redemption presents an opportunity to not only discover the definition of manhood, but to become one on his own terms. Randolph's actions, which ultimately involve his own liberation, create a genuine interdependence with Byron.

It is Byron's existential despair that gives the novel its power. Ruined by the degradations of World War I, Byron has consciously sought to efface himself from his family and the nation which precipitated his emotional ruin. After reluctantly recounting but one horrific episode of his experiences in the trenches, Byron "stared down...and his face seemed like something carved by wind out of the side of a mountain." As a representative of the "Lost Generation," it is not surprising that Byron has chosen to enforce law and order on a population that, in Gautreaux' capable hands, appears incapable of civilized behavior. As a lawman, Byron's justice is swift, calculated and brutal. He offers no apologies but is fully aware of the human toll his work exacts.

As events spiral out of control in the "The Clearing," Gautreaux requires his readers to consider whether good men can overcome the antagonistic influences of geography, post-trauma distress and humans' ability to inflict pain, suffering and disgrace on each other. The novel's deterministic fatalism contrasts sharply with the brothers' understated heroism, and it is this tension between light and dark, degradation and realization that makes the novel a riveting read.

We face the "jaundiced anger" of battle-scarred World War I veterans and realize it is only the most delicate of lines which makes one man an amoral, vicious killer and another a despairing, driven lawman. Descriptions of the Louisiana cypress bayou are so meticulous and forbidding that we sweat sympathetically and our hearts palpitate in fear of primordial insects, snakes and alligators. Even those of us committed to non-violence may experience a diminution of belief as Randolph and Byron use whatever means necessary to prevail.

At once a powerful narrative and metaphorical allegory, Tim Gautreaux' "The Clearing" reminds us that our best writers squeeze our national character and wring out its essence. Whether his characters are debased or admirable, Gautreaux distills something vital from each. Through his exploration of family, justice and memory, he has given us a true picture of ourselves.

If you're looking to fell a cypress tree five feet in diameter, or if you need to incapacitate a man using a shovel, or if you need to pull half of a nightclub into a river using a steamboat, you'll find clear, step-by-step instructions in Tim Gautreaux's second novel, THE CLEARING. Although he certainly doesn't condone such actions, Gautreaux describes them so evocatively and in such detail that you almost suspect he is writing from firsthand experience. He has obviously researched the hell out of this novel, yet, to his credit, those long hours of study never show through in these passages. Instead, these darkly riveting descriptions attest to his storyteller's eye for process, historical verisimilitude, and specific setting.

It is also to Gautreaux's credit that these acts of brutality against nature and against humans all have grave costs. The violence he describes in THE CLEARING, albeit gruesome, is never gratuitous, but always instructive, and the alternation between action and consequence propels the plot in a flurry of suspense.

The story concerns Randolph Aldridge, a Pennsylvania Yankee who comes to the Nimbus lumber mill in remote Poachum, Louisiana, with dual purposes: to make the mill profitable again and to persuade his runaway brother, Byron, to return to the family in Pittsburgh. The former is easy, since the swampland surrounding Nimbus is rich with virgin cypress wood, but the latter is difficult unto impossible.

A veteran of World War I, Byron acts as the mill's constable, breaking up bar fights and scaring off alligators. But his propensity for quick, authoritative violence is unsettling. He has absorbed the horrors of the battlefield and the brutality of the lawless logging camp, and the moral burden has made him remote and hardhearted: "Byron's life was a motionless thing. Most people drifted and reshaped like clouds throughout their lives, pushed along by poverty or wealth, disaster or luck. Byron was a self-contained vessel of sorrow that needed to be broken open."

The novel persistently addresses the peculiar morality of violence through the actions of both Aldridge brothers. When a brawl erupts in the mill saloon, Byron stops it by shooting a man dead, claiming that by doing so he had saved the lives of the others who would have been killed. "You know, the angel of death is still an angel," he tells Randolph coldly. Or, as the parish marshal, a wiry, white-haired octogenarian named Merville, remarks, "It's a sin to kill, but what if I don't kill one, and that one kills two or three? Did I kill that two or three?"

As the Aldridge brothers escalate a bloody feud with a Sicilian mobster named Buzetti, the question of whether or not violence is justified if it prevents further violence echoes throughout the novel like a rifle report. Gautreaux knowingly shades the dilemma with hard intricacies, suggesting that violence takes a psychological as well as a physical toll on all those involved.

Without pushing an ecological or an anti-violence agenda, Gautreaux clearly equates the killing of human beings with the clearing of the cypress forest, and he recognizes the murky morality of each act. In THE CLEARING, many men are killed so that others may lead productive lives, both for the mill and for society in general. Likewise, the trees they cut and ship are, despite the barren landscape they leave behind, an economic necessity, eventually used to build homes, barns, churches, and businesses across the country and to provide comfort and shelter. Ultimately, the uncomfortable implications of this code haunt the novel: "We all guilty, and everybody got a death sentence," observes Merville.

Gautreaux describes the felling of men and trees with unflinching precision, but more importantly, he demonstrates by example how to write an expertly plotted, genuinely engrossing, and acutely affecting story about the ways in which violence strips the human heart.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

This novel takes place in the southwest Louisiana of the 1920s, a place at the very end of the virgin cypress era, a region no more tame than a sack plumb full of cottonmouth moccasins. In this tale, Tim Gautreaux's fourth book-length work of fiction, all of the innate wildness and danger of the cypress swamp comes full bore, like a reader's feast of unforgettable words.

Two brothers, Byron and Randolph Aldridge, the sons of a Pennsylvania timber baron, go south for different reasons. Byron, a lawman in the fictional Nimbus, is fleeing his memory and his war-torn past, the skull-wrenching effects of World War I service. His younger brother attempts to bring Byron back to the family and to sanity. This attempt, coupled with the hazards of the swamp, crazed sawmill workers, corrupt marshals, and the liquor-running mob, is slowly fashioned into a beautiful piece of work.

I will only mention Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses) in passing. Not mentioning McCarthy would be a mistake, for this book has the beautiful marks of McCarthy's influence on Gautreaux, and the language used throughout the story is at a level on par with McCarthy's inestimable prose. Ultimately, this is a novel about love and lust, place and period that only Gautreaux could write, now at the height of his powers as one of the South's greatest living authors.

The Clearing had me involved in a cast of characters far beyond what I'm used to. Believe it or not, I read it on my honeymoon. This says less about me and more about the strength of Gautreaux's novel.

A marvelous Louisiana story for our times. I highly recommend this novel.

---------- Reviewed by Dayne Sherman

That Tim Gautreaux is a very talented writer there can be no doubt. He is well known for his short fiction and has even been called by some critics the "voice of Louisiana". Gautreaux understands what makes good fiction and in his short stories he has crafted believable characters and events that are handled in a style that rivals some of the great Southern writers. Some writers excel in the short fiction category but can never quite extend this ability to the novel form; Larry Brown (who does for north Mississippi what Gautreaux does for south Louisiana) is one such example - and I think that this is true for this author. Unshackled from the space restrictions of the short story, often their novels ramble, are overly episodic and the characters, more often than not, come across as half realized and driven by forces that are often exaggerated or untenable.

Not surprisingly, the first part of the novel has the feel of a short story with its tightly wrought introduction to the scene of the action and the principle characters. The description of the journey of Randolph Aldridge from Pittsburgh to the deep recesses of a Louisiana cypress swamp is excellent, and the section describing the river boat portion of that trip brought back remembrances of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The book centers around the two Aldridge brothers, Randloph and his Kurtz-like elder brother, Byron. Byron Aldridge is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder acquired during his experiences in World War I, and has removed himself from family and friends. He is now working as a lawman in Nimbus, Louisiana, a lumber mill deep in the swamps, and has become immune to any moral restrictions on killing and maiming. When he is not dispensing justice in his back water jurisdiction, he drinks and listens to maudlin recordings on his Victrola. In a bit too contrived plot setup, the brothers' wealthy father has bought the mill in order that Randolph would have an excuse to try to bring his elder brother back to the family and life that he knew before the war.

Once he has brought the two brothers together, Gautreaux seems a little lost as how to proceed and the novel dissolves into a very convoluted tale of cypress lumbering, drunken bar room fights, moccasins and alligators, murder and revenge, late night involuntary trysts with a sexy housekeeper (you'll have to read the book) and the Sicilian mafia. Any attentive reader knows exactly what is going to happen as the peace loving younger brother is thrown into this "gumbo of confusion" (as Gautreaux nicely puts it), and is slowly immunized from the violence around him. That this immunization becomes overly dramatic, as well as overly scripted, underscores the weakness of the book. Although the majority of the characters never really come to life, the old Cajun marshall, Merville, is a brilliantly developed character but, unfortunately, plays only a peripheral role in the story. And there is one particularly brilliant scene which ends the novel, in which the two brothers, having cut every standing cypress within miles, abandons, in a most cowardly way, the old blind horse at the sawmill: a fitting metaphor for the greed and recklesslness of their lumbring venture. Because his plot is so over the top and the author really never gets control, he falls back on his literary talent for coming up with inventive similes and metaphors: "A pair of eyes opened, boiled eggs floating in a Tabasco of pain"; the blind horse has "eyes the color of a sun-clouded beer bottle"; Randolph "rose to wakefulness the way a Louisiana coffin pushes up out of the mud after a week-long rain." This is all very fine, but a good novel needs more than finely written metaphors.

The mill clearing at Nimbus is buried in the swamps of Louisiana, knee deep in snakes and alligators. The damp permeates everything, coating man and beast alike with a second skin. After purchasing Nimbus Mill, Noah Aldridge sends his younger son, Randolph, to make contact with the older brother, Byron, who hasn't been the same since he returned from World War II. Traveling the country in search of ever more innocuous jobs, Byron 's only impulse is to withdraw from the world into the wilderness, taking whatever menial jobs appeal to him.

For Byron's purposes, the mill is perfect, the clearing surreal, like a step into the primitive past, where the men's brutal, backbreaking days are followed by raucous nights of drunken reveling at the only saloon. After days of unremitting labor, drunken brawls are as commonplace as the hangovers the morning after. Mill life is harsh and dangerous; this is a place where death comes sudden and easily. Byron acts as the local constable and has quickly gotten a reputation for being unpredictable and moody. When not breaking up fights, Byron spends his hours listening to maudlin songs on an old Victoria. He has married a local woman, and derives some comfort from his wife and his music, the black nights filled with sad melodies.

Randolph arrives at the mill, ready to settle in as the new manager. The eerie, intense surroundings of the mill are a far cry from the elite lifestyle the men enjoyed as youths in Pennsylvania, but Randolph is determined to reconnect with his beloved older brother, willing to work alongside him for as long as it takes, rebuilding the cherished relationship. Before long, Randolph learns the details of an ongoing feud with the local Sicilian bootlegger and his assorted relatives, all of them involved in the illegal enterprises.

Stepping into the middle of a fray one night,to save his brother the trouble, Randolph is forced to shoot his opponent, a cousin of the Sicilian. The bad blood between the bootleggers and the Aldridge brothers is palpable, a reckoning hovering on the horizon. [Danger]trembles in the moist air after the Sicilians, adept at stealth and intimidation, send an assassin under the cover of night to exact revenge. Their swift assault and retreat is stunningly brutal, irrevocable.

Gauteaux's writing is superior, filled with the primal energy of desperate men in extreme conditions. The characters come to life on the pages, sound stifled by the dampness that weights the air. Each new day begins with an effort, a gasp for breath. Workers slog through mud and rain from one place to another, surrounded by timber, snakes and gators. This is the land that time forgot, a place where men struggle to survive, then fall victim to their own vices. Redemption belongs in another world, not at the mill. This Gothic tableau sits patiently, time passes slowly, the swamp ready to swallow any signs of civilization and return to its primeval existence.

My favorite sentence: "The mill manager rose to wakefulness the way a Louisiana coffin pushes up out of the mud after a week-long rain." Mr. Gautreaux's cypress swamp and his characters ring true to me. His acknowledgements mention "several old men, now dead, who didn't know I was listening." I think he was listening very carefully, and am grateful for his reconstruction of this post-World War I backwoods sawmill.

If truth is stranger than fiction, then this fiction is strange enough to be true. Gautreaux knows his characters thoroughly, even the bit players. Pay attention as you read. Little things happen constantly that, coupled with chance, eventually have enormous consequences. I recommend pausing at the end of each chapter to review what just happened. (It's enjoyable, easy reading, but i found myself being pulled along by the story's momentum faster than i could appreciate the subtleties.) At one point i wondered, now if Carl Hiaasen had a villain in this situation. . . Tim Gautreaux's world can be violent, and justice is not guaranteed.

I have come to think of Tim Gautreaux's stories as somewhat unique among contemporary writing in having a moral or ethical dimension. I don't feel that he's preaching to me, but after reading one of his stories (including this novel), i often conclude that what kept a particular character from disaster was an inner moral compass, which let him make the better choice in a difficult place, without knowing why. Being a prude doesn't cut it; you have to shrug off imperfections in the other guy and yourself. But when life gets serious, you have to take a stand.

As you'll see if you decide to read The Clearing, there are at least three social themes in the story. One or more may be of personal interest to you; if so there's enough detail in Gautreaux's characterizations to engage you. Alternatively, there's a rocking good story to carry you over the deeper issues, if you're reading mainly for entertainment.

This may be a book you'll want to read twice.

I can add little to what has already been contributed by the majority here except for my own enthusiasm for what was, for me, the best novel I've read in well over a year. I found the plot and conflicts riveting, the characters beautifully drawn and involving and the setting and atmosphere, first and foremost, almost overwhelming, the stuff of nightmares, which is offset by the sheer beauty of the writing.

Towards the novel's end, Gautreaux describes the sound of a distant train whistle as that of the cry of "a white ibis caught in an alligator's jaws," a phrase that could well apply to THE CLEARING.

A week on, I've yet to be able to stop thinking about it and have added it to a shelf of alltime favorites.

Perhaps it's just the context in which you read a book; those you have just read. None other than the great Annie Proulx claimed this to be 'an extraordinary novel, one of the best I've read in years'. Well, maybe I've had a better year than Annie as I can't claim as much for 'The Clearing'. All the promises are there: an intriguing locale aptly described by a native son of the deep South, grissly mill life, brothers rebuilding the connexions of their adolescence after the older one returns traumatised by war, and enough mafia meddling to keep the swamps buzzing with more than horseflies and mosquitoes. Yet, for all the muscular sensuality this yarn doesn't quite make it. The mayhem becomes redundant. The characters, apart from the 80 year old cajun sheriff, fail to breathe. The sundry figures and their purported concerns, ellicit little response from us. The narrative feels mechanical and plodding, the belts on the saws too slack. I wanted more from this work than its picturesque prose can convey.

I've almost forgotten what it's like to read a book primarily about men. Actually, this book is largely about the setting--a lawless swamp in Louisiana in the 1920s. Gautreaux's descriptions of the muck and rain made me feel that I needed to wring out the pages from time to time. The main characters are Randolph and Byron Aldridge, brothers whose father is a lumber industry tycoon. Byron, the elder, forever damaged by the horrors of WWI, has disappeared, until he turns up as the constable for Nimbus, the site of a cypress sawmill. Randolph leaves his wife and home in Pittsburgh to manage the Nimbus mill, which his father has purchased in the hope that Randolph can bring Byron back into the fold. The conflict between the brothers is rapidly overshadowed by the violent one-upmanship that ensues as they unite against the Sicilians, purveyors of entertainment in Nimbus--liquor, women, and a crooked card dealer. Randolph is at first appalled at Byron's use of bullets to resolve the frequent fights that break out in the saloon but soon realizes that sometimes one man has to die to prevent the deaths of a dozen others. At times I thought I was reading a slimy reenactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, complete with brothers as the good guys. The title refers to more than just what is left after miles and miles of cypress trees have been cut down. There's also the clearing of tensionsbetween the brothers and certainly the clearing of the debts paid after the Sicilians' increasingly horrific vendettas against the brothers in retaliation for killing one of their own. There are almost as few men left standing as there are trees.

I picked this book up from the library because I had read an interview with Annie Proulx in which she stated that The Clearing was the best novel she'd read in ten years. I thought that was high praise coming from a talented writer such as Proulx, who I respect and whose writing I really enjoy. And, in fact, similarities exist between Gautreaux's novel and some of Proulx's work. Both authors raise physical place almost to the level of a living, breathing character through their intricate and vivid descriptions of the rural locations they use as settings. In The Clearing, the wildness and extreme weather of the southern Louisiana cypress swamp permeates every page. I felt the sticky humidity and saw the sun trickling weakly down through the forest canopy as I read, even as the employees of the Nimbus sawmill worked tirelessly to slowly strip the swamp of all its valuable lumber.

Much like two of Proulx's characters, Quoyle in The Shipping News and Bob Dollar in That Old Ace in the Hole, Randolph Aldridge must also enter a small rural community that is alien to him and find a way to assimilate himself. Through often-painful experience, he learns to communicate with the inhabitants of the ramshackle community that has sprung up around the Nimbus mill. Aldridge comes to Nimbus ostensibly as an agent of his father, a prominent Pennsylvania lumber baron, who has bought the Nimbus mill for one purpose: to try to lure his long-lost son Byron home. Byron, whose psyche was severely damaged during World War I, is working as a constable at Nimbus. He spends his nights breaking up violent fights between desperate mill workers at the camp's saloon, and his days drinking whiskey while listening to mournful songs on his Victrola.

As Randolph's emotional investment in the Nimbus community deepens and he struggles in vain to reach his disturbed brother, both he and Byron become inextricably caught up in a deadly feud with the Sicilians who control the camp's saloon. Gautreaux carefully blends the extremes of the seasons in the swamp into the plot so that time passes by with a natural flow, in keeping with the precise pacing of the story. His cast of unique and fascinating characters quickly lures the reader into the vibrant and desperate life of the strange community of Nimbus. And he reminds us in The Clearing that humanity often reveals both its warmest and its most ruthless traits when existing in the wildest untamed and insulated environments.