Farther Along (Stay More) [Hardcover]

Donald Harington (Author)

Book Description

Series: Stay More | Publication Date: May 1, 2008

With the gentle humor and earthy passion that characterize all of his novels, Donald Harington attempts to offer some knowing and some understanding, father along.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Escaping a devastating divorce by returning, in the 1970s, to his backwoods Ozarks roots, a successful, unnamed curator of American antiquities intends to drink himself to death. The Bluff-dweller, who narrates the first third of this quietly ambitious novel from veteran Harington (The Pitcher Shower, etc.), has installed himself in a cave near an abandoned village that retains a single resident, and old woman. She narrates the book's middle; her grandson, a millionaire pork packer, owns the town and most of the land around it—except the part that's a national park, overseen by a forest ranger, who suffers the Bluff-dweller's presence. Other characters include a moonshiner, and a historian, Eliza Cunningham, whose letters to a woman named Linda comprise the book's final third. The plot, such as it is, involves whether the village should be restored, and whether the old woman will be able to bring the Bluff-dweller and Eliza together. Despite unreliable narrators and heavy conceits, there's no sense of self-indulgence or self-consciousness to the seductive prose, which is laced throughout with wit and clever allusion. The result is a pleasing if perplexing read, with lots of observation but no real movement. (May)
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About the Author

Born and raised in Little Rock, Donald Harrington spent most of his summers in the Ozark mountian hamlet of Drakes Creek, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of 12, he listened to the vanishing Ozark folk language and old tales told by storytellers.
He has won the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize, the Heasley Prize, was inducted into the Arkansas Writer's Hall of Fame and has won the Arkansas Fiction Award of the Arkansas Library Association. In 2006, he was awarded the inaugural Oxford American award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Entertianment Weekly has named him America's Greatest Unknown Novelist.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: The Toby Press (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592642179
• ISBN-13: 978-1592642175
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Donald Harington was one of America's greatest writers of fiction. His fifteen novels have been called jubilant, lyrical, foxy, captivating, delicate, bawdy, playful, reckless, joyful, courageous. Set in the fictional hamlet of Stay More, Arkansas, Harington's stories blend myth, dreamscape and sharply observed speech and manners to depict a rich, eccentric, rural society. All fifteen novels--from the classic Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, to the redemptive Choiring of the Trees, the love story With and the concluding novel Enduring, published just two months before Mr. Harington's death-- are now available as The Complete Novels of Donald Harington, a must-have collection for all those who wish to read the very best, authentic, contemporary American writing.

"The quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary US letters." -Boston Globe

"Harington is hooked into the deepest traditions of storytelling, dipping his buckets directly into the well it all comes from, pursuing a literature dedicated not to documentation or self-expression, but to fascination, to lifting us out of ourselves and the dailiness of our lives -- to making our world again wondrous and large." --Los Angeles Times

"Totally satisfying... Harington reveres the most ordinary aspects of the lives of unexceptional people...he makes his joy infectious." --Time Magazine

Donald Harington (1935 -2009) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and spent nearly all of his childhood summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother's hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark dialect and the old tales told by local storytellers. He published his first novel in 1965, and fourteen more for a total of fifteen, most of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his own creation, Stay More, loosely based on Drakes Creek. Acclaimed by critics as "an undiscovered continent," "America's Chaucer," and "one of the most powerful, subtle and inventive novelists in America," Harington was the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Porter Prize, the Heasley Prize, and the Oxford American Lifetime Achievement Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better and Better, Farther Along, June 19, 2010

By 

J. E. Hazell (texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Farther Along (Paperback)

I am responding in part to the three-star review, which, as I write this, is the only other review of the book.
I am a big Harington fan and was also somewhat disappointed when I first read this novel. But I read it a second time and now believe it is a beautiful statement about literature's healing power.
The other reviewer is right - a quirky approach to narration makes the story somewhat difficult to follow. But the payoff from working my way through was worth it (although if you are new to Harington, I suggest reading "With," "The Cockroaches of Stay More," or "Enduring" first).
This appears to me Harington's most personal novel. It is about how a hopelessly alcoholic recluse finds meaning and healing through story telling.
And there are at least a half dozen passages - about the differences between rock star groupies and museum curator groupies, about the differences between a recluse and a hermit, about the conflict between expectations and reality, about living with regrets over the past - that alone are worth the price of the book.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Huh?, June 21, 2008

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Farther Along (Stay More) (Hardcover)

I've been waiting for more than a year for Farther Along, holding my breath in anticipation each time a package from The Toby Press arrived. When it finally did, I readied myself for the creatures, characters, and complexities of the Arkansas Ozarks and Donald Harrington's fictional town of Stay More.

I read and read. Farther Along takes its name from an old gospel hymn that tells us we will learn about life farther along. In Part One, an unnamed narrator describes an unnamed man's (could it be Clifford Stone from The Cherry Pit?) abandonment of a stellar career as curator of an Americana museum. He is the best man in his profession but feels a need to leave life behind and live in the past. He heads for the Ozarks where he settles as a bluff dweller. Twice a year, he hikes into a nearby town that still has a few residents (and weird-a fully stocked store) to load up on toilet tissue.

Confused? Me too. But it's a Harington novel so I keep reading. He makes some friends in the hills: an old woman who was once the postmistress of the town; a moonshiner whose ten fingers are different characters and communicates for him; and Ralph, the dog. Then page 79 and Part Two. Whoa! The narrator changes and new characters are introduced. I think. I no longer get the musical metaphors, but Harington researched the heck out of this book and even referenced it in the narrative.

Okay, I kinda get it. I think. Then I reach page 171 and Part Three, where all I can determine is that the protagonist almost OD'd on moonshine and was recuperating in the town's old hotel when a female historian researching an ex-governor's mistress arrives and has a lot of sex with the bluff dweller. Huh?

When I reach the conclusion of Farther Along, I find I have no idea what this book is about. I've loved all his other novels, so I won't give up on Harington-he has 12 other GREAT novels. I also know that this book was delayed for a year due to an injury suffered in a car accident.

Armchair Interviews says: Read Harington, but don't start with this one.