The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks
Donald Harington
Notes for an Oral Book Report by Ray White
1. Comment
You all know or have heard of Prof. Ben Kimpel at the UA — the journalism building Kimpel Hall is
named in his honor -- I was fortunate enough to take his contemporary novel class and he did something
in the first class I thought was brilliant and worth sharing — something I have used ever since. That first
day he made a little speech about the papers he expected us to produce every week for his class. (Now
this is the guy, not some Brit, that Oxford University Press picked to write the definitive biog. He said he
was very particular about the word “comment” — he wanted a comment, he explained, not a review, not a
criticism, not a summary, not a recitation but a comment. A comment wasn’t a critique - he didn’t expect
us to weigh the novels we were reading, he just wanted us to notice things and comment on them, say
what we were gleaning from our reading. I found that word liberating. It’s a word with no pressure behind
it.
Then, every day to begin class he would, off the top of his head, a biography of the author of the book we
were discussing and put the work in some sort of context. Then he would comment on it. Extremely nonjudgmental air about him. I have tried to use his method as a template for my own approach to books
ever since. I mean, I probably don’t have any business criticizing Donald Harington, so I’d much rather try
to appreciate him, learn from him, take what I can from him. And Ben Kimpel, genius, author of the
definitive two-volume biography of Samuel Richardson, I think would agree. And probably put some red
marks on whatever I just said if it were written down and turned in as a “comment” to Kimpel.
2. The basics from Wikipedia entry and a couple of other sources:
B. December 22, 1935
Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
In 1948, at the age of 12, Harrington contracted meningococcal meningitis, which he survived but it left
him deaf. Grandparents lived in DRAKES, ARK., or Drake’s Creek where he heard stories on the porch of
their general store.
D. November 7, 2009, at 73, from complictions from pneumonia
Springdale, Arkansas.
BA in Art in 1956, University of Arkansas
From The Guardian: His long stay in hospital (for meningitis) also introduced him to the work of Faulkner
and Erskine Caldwell. Determined to be a novelist, he wanted to study something that wouldn’t interfere
with writing, and took a BA and MA in art at the University of Arkansas, and a second MA in art history at
Boston University in 1959. He enrolled for a doctorate at Harvard, but left after a year to teach at Bennett
College, a finishing school for young women in Millbrook, New York.
There he began a long friendship with the novelist William Styron. Harington’s first novel, The Cherry Pit
(1965), was written in Styron’s summer house, and published by Styron’s editor at Random House. The
book, which he described as a “personification” of Little Rock, was runner-up for the PEN-Faulkner first-
novel prize. Harington’s second novel, Lightning Bug (1970), introduced Stay More, whose residents are
known, affectionately, as Stay Morons.
He is very tall, 6-foot-six, with glasses and gray hair
The following year, 1957, he married Nita Harrison, and together they had three daughters: Jennifer,
Calico, and Katy. Separated 1979.
Where is she? No idea. Where are daughters? No idea.
Masters in Art History, Boston University, 1959
(Enrolled i art history graduate program at Harvard but did not take a degree; taught art history 20 years
at Bennett College, a finishing school in Milbrook, NY, and Windham College in Putney, Vt.
In addition to his wife, the former Kim McClish, he is survived by three daughters from his first marriage:
Jennifer Brizzi of Rhinecliff, N.Y., Calico Harington of Bethany, Conn., and Katy Harington of Chicago; a
stepson, Mickel McClish of Salem, Mass.; a sister, Sue Kavanaugh of Sun Lakes, Ariz.; and four
grandchildren.
Harington graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1956. The following year he married Nita, and
they had three daughters: Jennifer, Calico, and Katy. He received his M.F.A. in studio art from Arkansas
in 1958 and then earned an M.A. in art history from Boston University in 1959. He did doctoral work in art
history at Harvard University in 1959-1960 but left without a degree. His first teaching job, as an instructor
in art history, was at Bennett College in Millbrook, N.Y., from 1960 to 1962. He then moved to Windham
College in Putney, Vermont, where he taught from 1964 until it closed in 1978. During that time he
published four novels: The Cherry Pit (Random House, 1965); Lightning Bug (Delacorte, 1970); Some
Other Place. The Right Place (Little, Brown, 1972) and The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (Little,
Brown, 1975). None of these books was commercially successful, although Harington developed a loyal
following of readers who admired his postmodern narrative art, his sometimes broad but often gentle
humor, and his incessant, inventive wordplay.
He “never took any lessons” in writing and instead studied art and his undergrad was studio art. But at
heart he was always a writer, he tells interviewers, and that dated to the age of six and his first novel,
“The Adventures of Duke Doolittle.”
There is some speculation that his unique “ear” for hillbilly talk is due to his deafness setting in when he
was 12, sort of freezing pronunciation in his mind. He says his deafness is “exaggerated” and that he
never functioned as a deaf person, didn’t go to the deaf school, as suggested following his bout with
meningitis, and never learned to sign. He had about 8 percent hearing in one ear and loved to listen to
classical music with headphones.
With his first wife Nita Harrison
Six-foot-six geek
In New England he became friends with Wm. Styron who introduced him to editor Robt. Loomis at
Random House, which published his first novel, The Cherry Pit, in 1965. Styron “read and corrected” his
first novel (Cherry Pit) and he lived in Styron’s guest house while finishing one of his books. Had a 36year correspondence with Styron that is now in the archives at Duke University. He was mentored by
Styron. Influences: Dostoyefsky, Faulkner, James Agee, and he finally admits, his no. 1 influence is
Vladimir Nabakov and Ekaterina is an homage to Nabakov but Humbert Humbert in this book is a woman
who prefers little boys. He said it’s not as “wicked” for a grown woman to pursue a 12-year-old boy as it is
if you reverse it. Art history, he said, is to him as the study of butterflies was for Nabakov. He held of
reading Pale Fire but when he did he went back and re-read Lolita, reading closer, and left him “forever
imitative” of it.
He never got the fame he wanted and that friends — Styron, John Irving — achieved. He thought a
couple of times he might hit it big but never did. Larry Vonalt of the Chicago Review in one of two long
interviews I found in doing the research on H, asked point-blank: “How have you dealt with the grevious
lack of popularity of your novels thus far?” And H replied that “Over-optimism that my books will be
successes in the marketplace has been my secret flaw as a writer,” adding that It “drove him to
drink.” Later he grew philosophical about it.
He talked about his writing method. He did not outline his novels but sits down and “finds out” about
characters and plot as he goes along. “I don’t predetermine them,” he said. (Compare with Nabakov, who
said “My characters are galley slaves.”)
He said his characters were “imaginary playmates, like the phantom playmates all of us conjure up in
childhood” with wills of their own. “It’s no fun being a puppeteer when one can play God,” he said.
“Without any sense of chart or outline I commence page one,” he said. “I hope . . . a character will show
up and he or she will take over.” “My novels move from beginning to end, just as life does, without
interruptions, detours or unaccounted gaps.” Not entirely true….
“The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks” or TaoTao (pronounced dow-dow, I assume) was his 4th work
of fiction, published before his marriage collapsed and he kind of came apart at the seams after Windham
closed.
Was he an alcoholic? As the Donald Harrington of “Let Us Build Us a City” was. Probably not. He says he
and Kim are “characters”— exaggerations— in “Let Us Build Us.”
Harrington describes crashing and burning:
“I was first runner-up for the Pen-Faulkner Prize for best first novel in 1965, the year Cormac McCarthy
won it for The Orchard Keeper. In 1972 my novel SOP TRIP was chosen by the Book of the Month Club
as their October selection, but at the last minute Solzhenitsyn, who had refused to allow one of his novels
to be “prostituted” as a BOMC selection, was persuaded to change his mind, and my book got bounced.
TAOTAO was a BOMC alternate selection, and we all had great hopes for it. But the reception was a
disappointment, and it was 11 years until my next book came out. During that time my father died. I had
prided myself for 20 years for being a very heavy but controlled drinker, but I lost that control. And
Windham College, where I had earned my living for 16 years, went out of business. Exhausted and
jobless, I moved back to Arkansas and met my second wife Kim, and we took up writing LUB, and with
Kim’s help I turned it all around. I’ve published four books since then.”
Donald Douglas Harington, who lived 73 years, was an American author. All but the first of his novels
either take place in or have an important connection to “Stay More,” a fictional Ozark Mountains town
based somewhat on Drakes Creek, Arkansas, where Harington spent summers as a child.
Harington was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He lost nearly all of his hearing at age 12 due to
meningitis. This did not prevent him from picking up and remembering the vocabulary and modes of
expression among the Ozark denizens, nor in conducting his teaching career as an adult.
Though he intended to be a novelist from a very early age, his course of study and his teaching career
were in art and art history. He taught art history in New York, New England, and South Dakota before
returning to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, his alma mater, where he taught for 22 years
before his retirement on 1 May 2008.
Harington is acclaimed as one of America’s greatest writers of fiction, if not one of its best known.
Entertainment Weekly called him “America’s greatest unknown writer.” The novelist and critic Fred
Chappell said of him “Donald Harington isn’t an unknown writer. He’s an undiscovered continent.”
Novelist James Sallis, writing in the Boston Globe: “Harington’s books are of a piece -- the quirkiest, most
original body of work in contemporary U.S. letters.”
Harington died of pneumonia, after a long illness, in Springdale on 7 November 2009.[1]
Harington’s novels are available from The Toby Press in a uniform edition, with cover illustrations by
Wendell Minor. Since his death, The Toby Press has made available the entire set of Harington novels as
The Complete Novels of Donald Harington.
WHERE IS STAY MORE (aka Stick Around)???
Where is Drakes Creek? The Arkansas Encyclopedia says Madison County. He implies in the intro to Let
Us... that it’s in Newton County, probably not Marble City but something like it. And again in “With” he puts
Sog’s secret cabin in Newton County and it’s within walking distance of Stay More. In an interview he
says “Drakes Creek was some 16 miles east of Fayetteville.” But 16 miles east of Fayetteville is
Hindsville, which isn’t much like Stay More. I thought it was maybe Jasper or something. But 16 miles
east of Fayetteville it is.
In Lightning Bug, he says Stay More is “a community of some 113 souls in the Ozark mountains of
Newton County, south of the county seat, Jasper, and the lovely village of Parthenon, west of the village
of Spunkwater, north of Demijohn, Hunton, and Swain, east of Sidehill and Eden.”
South of Jasper and Parthenon. North of Swain. Those are real places. Not 16 miles East of Fayetteville.
That would put it near Wayton, Crossroad and one of my favorite little towns in the Ozarks, Deer, very
isolated in the Ozark National Forest. None of these places is easy to get to. If you’re coming from
Fayetteville it’s a puzzle. From Little Rock it’s straight up Hwy. 7 but it takes awhile,is twisty and steep. So
we are talking remote. That’s country I know pretty well.
He then warned that “One must not attempt to find it on a recent map; one may find Newton County, and
one may find Jasper and Parthenon and Swain, but one shall not find Stay More - Not because it is some
screwball name that I made up in my own head, but because today it is nothing but a ghost town, almost.”
Nabakov did paint a picture of pedophile lust but it never feels creepy in N.’s hands, whereas sometimes
you get the feeling Harrington really understands what’s going on inside a pedophile’s head. Maybe it’s
part of his genius. He really gets inside the heads of the dogs, too.
Izzy Grinspan, writer of a piece about Harringotn, says this froze Harrington in a time before the Ozarks
lost their speech’s regional flavor and that’s reflected in his books.
By James Sallis
Review of “Farther Along” in the Boston Globe
June 29, 2008
It’s difficult to describe what sets Harington’s work apart. Superficial aspects come easily to mind: rural
Ozark setting, eccentric characters, conflation of history and present lives, fanciful though forever demotic
language, careening points of view, an abundant sense of spiritual presence. But the work seems finally
in some manner different at heart, as though it had issued from another time, another place. 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.
Add unheralded shifts in point of view, long back stories, tasty curlicues of digression and you have
something quite aside from a quick, serviceable read. Harington’s reach is long; he refuses to simplify,
wants to include, in every sentence, every fragment of dialogue, every paragraph and anecdote, as much
of the world’s marvelous complexity and abundance as possible. Yet he does not challenge his readers
so much as repeatedly invite them to sit a spell and listen along with him.
Harington’s narratives are full of such lurches, for us and for his characters. He never allows us to
become too comfortable. Nor does he allow us to forget that it’s all about stories: those we inherit, those
told to us, those we tell ourselves to be able to go on. A writer with every bit of the playfulness and
intelligence of Nabokov, he is also one whose heart and expansive humanity rivals that of Chekhov -- a
writer, that is, who is dearly in love with his people, his place, his world, his work.
The Books
* Enduring (2009) published in Sept. before his death.
* Farther Along (2008)
* The Pitcher Shower (2005)
(In 2005 he published an “imaginary autobiography” of Arkansas-born artist Carroll Cloar in the Oxford
American, a portion of which had been published in 2003 in the Arkansas Times.)
* With (2004)
* Thirteen Albatrosses (or, Falling off the Mountain) (2002)
* When Angels Rest (1998)
* Butterfly Weed (1996)
* On a Clear Day: The Paintings of George Dombek, 1975-1994 (nonfiction, 1995)
* Ekaterina (1993)
* The Choiring of the Trees (1991)
* The Cockroaches of Stay More (1989)
* Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns (nonfiction, 1986)
* The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks (1975)
* Some Other Place. The Right Place. (1972)
* Lightning Bug (1970)
* The Cherry Pit (1965)
AWARDS
* Oxford American Lifetime Award for Contributions to Southern Literature, 2006
* Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, 2003
* Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame, 1996
* Porter Prize for Literary Excellence, 1987
He wrote about Stay More, Ark.
Said the NY Times in its obit: “That place, Stay More, whose residents Mr. Harington called Stay Morons,
turned out to be a strange one, populated by shrewd hillbillies, reclusive millionaires, an itinerant motionpicture projectionist, a candidate for governor who wants to abolish hospitals and schools, and, in “The
Cockroaches of Stay More,” talking insects who constitute their own Ozark subsociety.”
Called an “Ozarks surrealist” in NY Times obit headline.
From Fay. Flyer obit:
“Lots of people will remember Harington for his novels. I’ll remember him as a professor who probably
taught me more in the two semesters I had with him at the University of Arkansas than any professor in
my entire four years there.
He was a tough teacher. He expected a lot out of his students. He’d lock the door at class time and those
who were late weren’t allowed in. I remember that if you missed more than one or two class periods, he
would begin taking the absences out of your grade. He expected participation in the discussions by
requiring students to turn in notecards with questions on them and he’d collect the notecards to use as a
gauge for who was engaged in the conversations he led about art. He graded tough. Sometimes, he
yelled.
But to this day, I can still recognize the style, period, and artist on nearly any painting done by one of the
artists we studied whether I’ve seen it before or not.”
Kim Gunn McClish, a teacher from Central Arkansas, wrote him a fan letter — his first from Ark. — and
they started a correspondence that ended six years later when they got married in 1983.
A couple of things that are what I would say truly original are his “channeling” of the dogs and their
thoughts in “With” and the concept of an “in-habit” that isn’t exactly a ghost.
I read this because it’s such a bunch of shit. Philip Martin: “Reading H. requires an act of faith — you
have to believe in the invisible and ineffable, in the evanescent quality that makes us all more than a
complicacted adventure in chemistry. You have to believe in the final irreducibility of things like a writer’s
voice, like his ability to aspirate - to breathe life into — his characters.”
It gets worse. I can’t bear to repeat it. Honestly. something about ringing a tuning fork in you, makes it
shiver like a crazy bone, just the way the old codger rammed two words together...” blah blah.
Harrington:
“For even if I concede that solipsism is bullshit and you have every right to just as much existence as I
have, I still believe that you and I can never exist on the exact same level of perceived “reality.” And as
long as I am in control of your perception while you’re reading one of my books, I am going to use every
trick I know to take you into realities where you’ve never been.”
Jack Butler on Harrington:
“The difficulty that Don faces, it seems to me, is that because of such scurrilous entertainments as the
Arkansas traveler joke-books, Beverly Hillbillies, and before Jethro and his crowd, the Lum and Abner
movies, everybody in America thinks he or she already has n understanding of Don’s locale - the Ozarks
are filled with barefoot bumpkins, and the bumpkins are supernally quaint. Of course this ‘understanding’
is nothing more than a stereotype.” Butler concluded: “Don Harington is, quite simply, an intense poetic
writers in a world which cannot, by and large, hear the poetry.”]