Merry Men [Hardcover]

Carolyn Chute (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1994

The Barringtons' clan wins a reputation for eccentricity with the behavior of Unk Walty, who constructs life-like and life-size sculptures of Egypt, Maine, residents. By the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine. 40,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Chute's writing is wayward, her style turbulent, lyrical, fragmented. Yet, through the unleashed whirlwind scenes of her third novel (unlike the terse control of The Beans of Egypt, Maine ) throbs the raw genius of her voice. Continuing her saga of Egypt's country folk, Chute delineates the lives of three men--Lloyd, Forest and Carroll. College-grad, poet and working man, Lloyd broods on death and quotes ominous verses to his discomfited kin. He reacts stoically when a brain tumor reduces his wife, Sherry, to idiocy. Lloyd is lacerated by his desire for Gwen, a genteel, affluent widow, while she is spellbound by Lloyd's rude, dour charisma when he delivers her firewood. Lloyd's half-brother Forest (clandestinely fathered by the same ladies' man) advances from backhoe digger to Road Commissioner, minus one foot and some toes from the other, and agonizes over his son's career as a California artist and druggie. Carroll, a boozing, depressive ex-con, is courted and healed by towhead waitress Anneka, mouthy and endearing in her ardent campaigns against social injustice. Throughout, Egypt's "wise men" pass judgment from their creaky chairs in Moody's Variety & Lunch. A dark, angry, swollen book, Merry Men gathers preacherly momentum as it charges toward a denouement of woes. Characters rail helplessly against crushing forces: "Big Biz" layoffs, union busters, rapists of the land, hunters who gleefully club wildcats and carelessly shoot housewives in their backyards and all those who work in white shirts with clean hands. As enthralling as this novel is in places, it would have benefited from more thoughtful editing. The undefined closure seems to promise a sequel. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Who is stealing from the few well-off people of Egypt, Maine, and leaving behind coffins containing life-sized, look-alike dummies? Is it the same person who leaves jars of money on the doorsteps of the needy? To answer these questions, and to develop her Robin Hood metaphor, Chute ( Letourneau's Used Auto Parts , LJ 6/15/88) gives us a graphic look into the lives of several generations of Egypt's working-class clans. Seeming at first like a loose collection of disjointed tales, a portrait gallery of rural grotesques, the novel gains unity as its theme of exploitation becomes more apparent and its two central stories--a teenage girl's attempt to organize the townswomen to protest hunting and a road commissioner's maneuver to control his men by firing them and hiring them back for lower wages--begin to interconnect and reflect off one another. Chute's politics get a little too preachy near the end, but her people and their universal plight linger in the memory. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/93. --Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 695 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151592705
• ISBN-13: 978-0151592708
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Prize by The Greatest Female Writer of Our Time, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Merry Men (Paperback)

Just as "Ulysses" was derided at it's debut, so has this book been. And just like "Ulysses" is now celebrated as a masterpiece of the millenium, so this book will be. Carolyn Chute, with only four titles in print, is the undisputed heavyweight champeen woman writer of the world. If you love Hemingway's wry just under the surface populism, you will love Chute. In fact, if you only read one book in your life, make it this one!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book---true-to-life "Maine" characters, November 23, 1998

By 

B. Alan Basinet - See all my reviews

This review is from: Merry Men (Paperback)

Carolyn Chute has an amazing talent at bringing to life the very heart and soul of her characters. This book exemplified that ability. Being from the same part of Maine of which she writes, I can identify strongly with these characters. Reading this book thrust me back in time to my youth in Maine---I was overwhelmed with nostalgia simply because Mrs. Chute wrote so well and was able to breathe life into her story. The characters of this novel were Maine personified. Anyone who grew up in Maine can understand what I mean---it wasn't like reading a novel, but rather was like actually being there and experiencing it. Thank you, Carolyn, for treating me to a part of my life I had previously thought forgotten and past.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read it for the gorgeous writing, August 31, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Merry Men (Hardcover)

Carolyn Chute can write, no doubt about that. With rich, spicy, earthy prose she brings to life her rural Maine setting and a whole town full of characters in this third novel.

The setting is the same as for her first two books: Egypt, a small town on the edge of the woods in western Maine, a place where impoverished natives and rich folks "from away" live side by side, but seperate existences.

The characters in this 695-page novel include most of the population, with emphasis on LLoyd Barington, of working-class/farming stock, Forest Johnson, Jr., whose backhoe and 'dozing business employs many of the town's poorest, and Gwen Curry, whose horrid mother proves that money and Connecticut gentility are no proof against cruelty.

The plot, well, here the novel runs into trouble. There is no plot, so to speak. While her characters do cross paths with one another, there is no unifying progression of events- except the slow generalized denigration of a rural way of life. That, it turns out, is Chute's point. "Merry Men" is a documentation of hard times getting harder, of the corporate mindset grinding down the individual.

Not that all her Maine folk are saints, although Lloyd Barrington comes close. Forest Johnson, Jr., for instance, takes advantage of his employees' desperation at every opportunity.

As the book opens, Forest has called out the constable on a bitter winter night. A prank -the fifth in as few days. "Forest, Jr.'s frozen breath bunches and bounces around his face so now there's no face. When his face reappears, it's just this dark sovereignty of eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses and a fierce close shave." Faced with the constable's impotence, Forest vows to lie in wait and kill the merry prankster.

The book then jumps back 30 years, although this is not apparent unless you glance at the top margin of the page. We meet Lloyd Barrington, age 8 3/4, fat, earnest, sensitive, a writer of poetry, a lover of shade trees. This lengthy section is breezy, humorous, affectionate and deeply touching.

Lloyd's mother has died. He lives with his taciturn, incomprehensible father, Edmund, and a houseful of uncles, including Unk Walty, who cooks fabulous meals for them all, unless he's absorbed in one of his papier mache projects, like his masterpiece - lifesized reproductions of all the local women Edmund has slept with, seated around a table dressed in beautiful last-century costumes.

At night Lloyd sneaks out of bed and flits around town in his Super Tree Man costume. "A fat boy by day, maybe so. But tonight and many nights to come, he's a thing of glory." Lloyd plants baby maples. "If they make it, in thirty years, the fat lady's yard will be in deep cool splendorous shade."

Next we meet Gwen Curry on the day her father, Dr. Curry, has died. Gwen is a fearful, lonely child, her mind flickering between the awful events following her father's death and jagged memories of her short life with Phoebe, her mother. Every night Phoebe sings under the grate to Gwen's bedroom. A few times her father had remonstrated. "So Phoebe sang louder. Show tunes. Pop tunes. Rock and Roll. Television jingles. And once a shattery tinkling splat! A glass thrown into the sink."

Chute's portrait of manic cruelty and bewildered child is heart rending. Yet when Grandma packs them off to Connecticutt that's the last we see of Gwen for hundreds of pages.

In between there are numerous vignettes - Forest Johnson, Jr., fires an illiterate man and Forest's dissolute son returns from California bringing a grandson who's soon embroiled in family strife. The Soules, Lloyd's wife's people, lose their family farm to the bank. A young Soule falls in love with a middle-aged cousin of Lloyd's, a man on parole, suffering from clinical depression. They marry and as the husband loses his job, she becomes pregnant. Many of these stories end badly; some Chute simply abandons. Each absorbs the reader; none are fully resolved.

Finally Gwen Curry comes back, a rich, very rich, widow of an industrialist, a symbol of all the things gone wrong in Egypt. Her attaction to Lloyd, educated former hippie, man of all work, crusader, prankster, is instant. He is more ambivalent.

How Chute resolves this final conflict adds to the reader's frustration. Such magnificent writing, so often leading nowhere. And towards the end, Chute cannot resist long preachy passages explaining what's wrong with America even though she just spent 500 pages showing us. But Chute is worth reading for the breadth and beauty of her language and characters - even if you turn the last page and throw the book across the room.