Tinkers, Paul Harding

From time to time a novel of particularly excellent quality slips under the radar and once discovered surprises me with unmatched mechanics, beautiful imagery and memorable characters. One such novel was Tinker by Paul Harding published in 2009 by the Bellevue Literary Press, a very small publisher founded in 2005. After spying the books haunting cover on a book shelf I picked it up and discovered that it was not only Harding’s first novel but, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 and was the first book published by a small publisher to do so in 29 years. Tinkers is an amazing piece of American literature and can listed alongside other classic novels such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Tinkers, is a story of a man who in between the spaces hallucinations and clarity of his last few dying days recollects his past childhood and his relationship with his father as a young boy in New England. From his days spent as a thoughtful clock mender and the time spent on the back of his father’s mule drawn wagon Paul Harding shows his readers beauty and mystery with the most delicately written images and draws shock and awe without a moment’s hesitation, steering readers further down into the dying mind of George Crosby. While the book’s “plot” is loosely defined and is very untraditional by any standards the memories seen in its 191 pages allow the reader to follow Crosby and actually feel as the cogs and clock hands or his life come to rest.

A Cold Penitente

Staying warm at night was not a problem this weekend. Sleeping three deep in the back of an SUV has its advantages to keeping warm in the middle of bitter cold night in Penitente Canyon. The sun would warm our skin during the day but hide itself at every opportunity behind vales of cloud and sheets of igneous rock. The cold was unrelenting and came close to making climbing important if not a necessity to keeping warm. Every moment spent on the ground not climbing felt like those moments as a child when you're sitting in the cold water of a swimming pool not moving because you're so cold, even when you know warmth is just a short swim away. Simply moving around a little, swimming back and forth, climbing up and coming down, making your body active will break the cold shiver in your muscles.

Penitente is amazing. Though, at night to make a fire we had to "borrow" a used pallet from the trail head construction taking place to use as fuel to burn. Bored with cold and barred by darkness we directed our energy to other pursuits like breaking logs and dismantling wooden pallets, throwing rocks and cooking every bit of food that we brought. There were few moments where we weren't eating. Family size portions of raviolis first, then tea, then chocolate milk, then chili, bread, more chocolate milk, everytime we finished one bit of food we would move on to the next.

The morning's light dawned new hopes of which to spend energy. Climbing. Short single pitches of large hueco pockets and sharp edges became salvation and with the cold became our ruin at the same time. But, after a long days climbing and with light leaving the valley we left for home, for warmer conditions and less crowded sleeping situations.

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