The cherry pit

Entertaining romp through Little Rock and Hot Springs. It's been over ten years since I read this, but I can still remember several scenes vividly. It was good to read last year what finally became of ol' Clifford. Wonderful!

My friends at Toby Press are doing literature a great service. They are re-issuing Donald Harington's first book, The Cherry Pit, while we wait on his 14th novel, Enduring, which has been delayed due to illness and a car accident injury. The cover may look different, but I am assured that the content was not changed for political correctness' sake. Originally published in 1962, the prose is only dated by its use of language and my knowledge of the state. I find what was considered radical and mind-blowing in the early '60s, is now rather tame material. Clifford Stone is an assistant museum curator of "arcane Americana" in Boston. He has a fulfilling job and a rich wife, yet he longs to go back to his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Why? Cliff doesn't seem to know exactly why either. There's this need for home and comfort and familiarity. He sets about renewing old high school friendships and re-discovering a girl and a love he had forgotten. In many ways, Little Rock is just how Cliff left it. A backward Southern town still wrestling with the issues of race, culture, and love. Cliff sees that right away and wants to go back to Boston, but the South has a hold of him, much like it holds those who grew up there. He can't leave right away, as much as he wants too. Little Rock is caught in that cusp that existed in the 1960s, that longing to hold onto the Old South of the pre-Civil War and the New South that was shaping after desegregation. And that is simply the themes of this magnificent piece of literature that has been saved from almost obscurity. If you've never read any of Harington's works, now is the time. He recently received the Oxford American Lifetime Award for Contributions to Southern Literature...and rightfully so. "Entertainment Weekly" has called him "America's greatest unknown novelist." As Harington takes his place among the great writers of Southern Literature, I find myself longing for home and eagerly awaiting the next novel. Get well soon! Armchair Interviews says: Unique look at the 1960s.

My edition has a great illustration on the front cover. A man is on a bridge overlooking a river. In his background, there are green hills, a church, farmhouses. The image reflected on the water, though, shows skyscrapers and a gilded dome. Such is Clifford's dilemma, For those of us who have a love-hate relationship with our hometown, this book is a must. The back cover of my copy speaks of restoration and renewal. To me the novel had more to do with coming to terms with your past. Cliff is in a sense overcome with nostalgia. He is on the brink of obsession with the way things used to be. He is soon to be 30, and is going through an early middle-age crisis. Always solution-oriented, Cliff goes back home in hopes to find answers to his questions, and even considers relocating there (even though he knows that is impossible). The novel narrates his adventures and misadventures during his time in Little Rock. He rediscovers who his true friends are, and in the process makes a few enemies. Most interesting is his relationship with Dall, his best buddy but a terrible racist. Clifford "converts" him by example, without trying, and the process sounds totally believable, when it would have been very easy to make it look like a fairytale. Cliff's relationship with Margaret, his high-school sweetheart and a very messed up woman, is also well explained. I have always had a friend back home who cannot stop telling me how great it is to still live there. Although there is a lot of humor (the scene in the pool house had me in stitches), this is ultimately a serious novel, that shows how nostalgia is a mistake.

Harington has once again captured the very essence of life in the South. This story is an entertaining romp that, like all good comic novels, has a very serious side to it. I have never read a better exploration of the human need to have a place to call home. Throughout the entire book, Harington keeps you entertained with murderous, lascivious, and affable adventures that will have you laughing hysterically and pondering the meaning of life at the same time