House of Earth
Rice professor brings Woody Guthrie back to life with the folk singer'slong-lost Dust Bowl novel
Woody Guthrie gave us "This Land Is Your Land," that oft-covered, alternative national anthem, plus countless other folk ballads to serve as commentary and comfort in Dust Bowl America, throughout the World War II years, into the peace movement of the 1960s and beyond.
Guthrie, who passed away in 1967 from Huntington's disease, would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Saturday, but fans haven't seen the last of the beloved folk singer: Guthrie's previously-unpublished novel, House of Earth, will be released by "a major New York publisher" in the spring of 2013, thanks to one Houstonian author.
The book has it all: Poverty, corruption, protest and hay bale love-making, all intertwined in a Steinbeckian-style narrative.
Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley came across mention of the long-lost manuscript during research for a Rolling Stone piece on Bob Dylan, then tracked down a typescript and teamed up with actor Johnny Depp on its editing.
That unlikely pair took to the New York Times earlier this week to hint at the plot line and underlying themes of House of Earth, which follows Tike and Ella May Hamlin, a couple of impoverished farmers from West Texas, in a "searing portrait of the Panhandle and its marginalized Great Depression residents."
The book has it all: Poverty, corruption, protest and hay bale love-making, all intertwined in a Steinbeckian-style narrative.
Guthrie finished the novel in 1947, then shelved it to focus on songwriting and his deteriorating health. According to Brinkley and Depp's NYT essay, "He may have sensed the novel could be considered both passé (post-New Deal writing was frowned upon by cold-war-era critics) and ahead of its time (graphic sex)."
Thankfully, the modern-day audience can't get enough of either.