Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

The problem with good books is that they show me how much I still must improve, to elevate my writing from “good” to “great.”

News of the World, by Paulette Jiles, is one such book. Damn.

An aging veteran travels the backroads in post-Civil War Texas, reading newspaper articles to townsfolk who either can’t read or don’t have access to papers from the big cities. He’s asked to take with him a young girl, captured by the Kiowa when she was six, and bring her back to her relatives near San Antonio.The story is simple. The language, as spare as the Texas landscape. The pacing, inexorable as their draft horse’s gait, takes them on a journey of redemption, hope, love, danger, and empathy. This last one, empathy, most of all, for they must learn about each other without the aid of a common language, as the young girl, living for years with the Kiowa, is no longer part of the white world, and the old man, though aware of their cultural differences, is wholly a creature of European sensibilities. But to survive, they must learn, through patience and observation, whether and how much to trust each other.

It always astounds me how truly great writers can evoke so much with so few words. Jiles’ prose is not poetic, but it has a dignified beauty, a simplicity that shows us the truth without embellishment. And Jiles has stripped her prose down even further, eschewing even the use of quotation marks, melding the spoken and the internal dialogues in such a way as they become one, yet remain clearly separate. Likewise, the narrative’s point of view is fluid. Within a few lines we understand the old man’s thoughts and his history of pain and failure, and then see things from the Kiowa girl’s viewpoint, where the simple act of pointing can be an invocation of demons.

This fluidity permeates the prose, but never so much that we aren’t perfectly aware of who is thinking/saying/feeling what. And this, in my opinion, is the point Jiles is trying to make with this style. Past present future. I we you. Everything is connected, relative, relate-able, and makes perfect sense if you take the time to explore it and experience it through the eyes of “the other.”

As I approached the ending of the book, I was fearful. Modern fiction can be cruel, and I had invested so much of my heart into these characters that I feared for them. The world they walked and the paths they traveled were harsh, unforgiving, vicious, and yet filled with beauty, honesty, and clarity. Anything could happen, but I had utter faith in the author that, whatever befell the old man and the young girl, for good or bad, it would make sense.

And it did. I will say no more on that topic.

If you love words, or if you want to learn how to say much with little, I recommend this book to you.

Even if you don’t.

k