Customer Reviews

Making Hay

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Klinkenborg knows this topic is off the beaten track. No puns, metaphors or euphemisms intended, it is literally a book about the production of hay in the vast fields of Minnesota and Iowa. His fascination perplexes no one more than the author's relatives, who make a living at it and observe his enthusiasm for the work with benign bemusement. Of course in the process of learning the family trade, Klinkenborg learns something about his own heritage, but he presents this as mere incidental observations, like an old friend waved to at the end of a row just before turning the combine around to get back to business. The writing is superb. I'd give it a 10, but he does tend to go a tad overboard with loving descriptions of the machinery.

The jacket blurb compares this book to McPhee's "The Survival of the Bark Canoe." While Klinkenborg tries manfully to achieve something like McPhee, he doesn't make it. He comes close at times, but only close and that not often enough.

From Klinkenborg I got only glimpses of the places and people living a life I know next to nothing about. He took me to the edge of the field, but not up close enough to understand what they are doing and why. A few times he describes machinery or processes well enough for me to see them, but most of the time he drops names with only the barest description, leaving me in the middle of nowhere. In contrast, when I finish one of McPhee's many books, I feel like I could BUILD the canoe, pick the oranges, or pilot the ship.

Klinkenborg does better with the people in the story, many of them family of his, and those parts were fine. But the heart of the story is in its title, and I was left wanting much more than I received.

As a suburban housewife with no experience and little interest in hay, I enjoyed it and would recommend it with some reservations. I spent a fair amount of time googling the terms/machinery (windrow, buckrake etc.). If you're curious about haymaking and/or curious about whatever Mr. Klinkenborg's curious about (that's why I read it), then what the hay! It was pretty good and I learned about hay.

Klinkenborg is a writer of great sensitivity, no matter what his subject. I have read a number of his books and am always on the alert for his New York Times columns. He is a master of the English language and is a keen observer of man and nature.