House of Earth

by Guthrie, Woody; Brinkley, Douglas; Depp, Johnny

• ISBN13: 9780062253422
• ISBN10: 0062253425
• Edition: Large
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-02-12
• Publisher: Harperluxe

Summary

House of Earthfollows the lives of two farmers, Tike and Ella May Hamlin, husband and wife, who live in the Texas Panhandle in the 1930s. They live a hard life in a flimsy shack, yet exist with extreme (and fraught) vitality. Their wooden house can't keep out the elements, so Tike-Guthrie's alter ego-espouses the gospel of adobe. Everywhere he goes, he carries a five-cent government pamphlet, a how-to manual that teaches poor, rural people how to build an adobe dwelling from the cellar up. Homes made from the land itself-fireproof, windproof, Dust-Bowl proof-houses of earth. I'll grab some mud and you grab some clay So when it rains it won't wash away. We'll build a house that'll be so strong, The winds will sing my baby a song. On the dirt farm, life persists, and Tike and Ella May make love in a scene worthy of D.H. Lawrence. The intimate descriptions serve a purpose, and Guthrie elevates the biological act to a representation of Tike and Ella May's oneness with the land, the farm, and each other. And yet, the land is not the Hamlins' to do with as they please--and so the building of their adobe house remains painfully out of reach. What could be simpler than making a home from bricks, and bricks from dirt? And what could be a more insidious obstacle to that dream than not owning the land on which you live and work? This is what Tike and Ella May combat and how this book makes a direct and forceful statement. In many ways, House of Earth, originally handwritten in a Steno notebook, is a companion piece to This Land Is Your Land. The novel falls somewhere between rural realism and proletariat protest to produce a vivid and moving portrait of the Texas Panhandle and the marginalized people who made a life there in the 1930s.