Indiana, Indiana
By Laird Hunt
Coffee House Press
Laird Hunt spent
around five years on a farm in Indiana with his grandmother, this we know
from the notes in the back of the book. He mentions that it was she who
taught him to “look for cardinals in the dead of winter, flying over the snow,
shining red against the dark trunks.”
In his previous
books, The Impossibly and The Paris Stories, Hunt creates
spaces that seem to operate in multiple ways. Sometimes they rely on the
background or a setting to seed the reader (like the streets of Paris), but
then in the next moment, the reader inhabits a new weird space (like in
Borges). At times, they find themselves thrown into a world that they must
question entirely. It is this questioning that always makes the best
readings, whether in Auster, Borges, or Shakespeare; the mystery is what
keeps us reading. The continuous questioning, this inhabiting of the space
of “negative capability,” as Keats called it, is truer to life than a
story that gives answers. With Hunt, it is the absence of solution that
always gets me so into the writing.
Our main character
in Indiana, Indiana, Noah Summers, is an illiterate visionary, who
moves from being a content rural inhabitant, to a character crippled with
guilt and confusion. It is in this in-between space that Noah Summers spends
most of the story. He has to reckon with this gift that he has, and also
contend with his heartbreak over the only woman he loved: Opal, with whom he
was briefly married to until she was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Virgil,
Noah’s father, often gives his son advice in the form of riddles or terse
philosophic statements and stories. For example: “For every piece of their
lives that is still visible, said Virgil, there are thousands of pieces that
are not.” Noah’s relationship with his rural setting, as well as his
love for his parents, comes across in an honest form; he makes connections
to this physical space that cannot be broken. Indiana is a character in the
novel, and it is a refreshing rural scenario that does not rely on fake
country “folks”—it is obvious Hunt has much respect for this state.
The story unfolds in
a fragmented way that holds back enough to make you feel challenged by the
writing; in a way it mirrors the inner confusion I would expect Noah to
have. The brief descriptive bursts of chapters, coupled with the mysterious
letters from Opal, give Hunt the right kind of play he needs to set up a
complex and rewarding story. It is obvious that Noah feels insecure about
his inability to read; but he more than makes up for it in his rare ability
to “see’ things that are not there, things that have not yet happened. I
really found myself engaged by the storyline, and attached to Noah as a
character because of his instabilities and eccentric talents. Hunt is one of
the rare prose writers out there who challenges his readers, but in the end
does not let them down with predictable dead-ends or tacked-on surprises.
This made me think
about the power of listening. Noah can feel things that seem so powerful,
and on the other hand, he can’t read. He remembers, and often just sits
back and feels—Page 85
“Sometimes,
as he sits in the shed, as he does now, Noah closes his eyes and listens,
and, after a moment, though he has not stopped listening, the sounds of the
shed, of the surrounding night, of his own faint, rough breathing fall far
away, and every sound he hears is remembered.”
Indiana, Indiana
is the type of book that warrants multiple readings; if not to clarify
minute details in the story, then simply to enjoy Hunt’s poetic writing
style. Too many things need to be “remembered” but fly by and are buried
or lost. Take the time to read this book—it deserves our attention.
Erik Sweet, 2005
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