The Literary Horologist: Paul Harding “Tinkers” With Time

Paul Harding’s prose is like the interior of an antique clock; the copper wires of rhythm bound to sentences like brass gears that control the movement of loss. These marvelous mechanics propel readers through the provinces of memory—the angle of winter light on ankle-deep snow, the clink of metal spoons in wooden drawers, the missing father and his mule-drawn wagon making their way away from the embracing warmth of home.

“God hear me weep as I fill out receipts for tin buckets, and slip hooch into coat pockets for cash, and tell people about my whip-smart sons and beautiful daughters. God know my shame as I push my mule to exhaustion, even after the moon and Venus have risen to preside over the owls and mice, because I am not going back to my family — my wife, my children — because my wife’s silence is not the forbearance of decent, stern people who fear You; it is the quiet of outrage, of bitterness. It is the quiet of biding time. God forgive me. I am leaving.” (Pg. 122)

The movements of departure — of a husband from his family, of time from its timepieces, of a wife from the alliance of marriage — are rendered in language grounded in the precision of words.

“The house was gone. Kathleen stopped walking and looked around. The clouds that had colored the dawn copper had advanced and were now fastened overhead like a lid of stone. Flurries of snow spun in the wind. Kathleen surely stood in the right place and the doctor’s house surely was vanished.” (Pg. 91)

Paul Harding creates an immersive experience in which the present recedes naturally into the past on a journey through the frozen backwoods of New England, where an act of kindness elicits the gift of an American treasure, and the silences that deepen over dinner are the residue of love lost to the void of poverty, to illness, to unanswered prayers. Paul Harding’s steady hand pulls us in and leads us on, turning back the layers of legend to brighten its shadows with the reviving light of beautiful prose.

——Carlin M. Wragg, Editor