With the death of novelist Kent Haruf, Colorado has lost one if its celebrated native sons, its astute and wise observer of rural life and community on Colorado’s Eastern Plains.
The prize-winning author of the acclaimed trilogy “Plainsong,” “Eventide” and 2013’s “Benediction” — all set in the fictional town of Holt, Colo. — died Sunday at the age of 71. The cause was interstitial lung disease. He is survived by his wife, Cathy, and three daughters. Additional survivors are three stepdaughters and two stepsons.
“He really was a giant,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said Monday of the writer, who was born in Pueblo in 1943.
Among Haruf’s many literary honors were the prestigious Whiting Foundation Award for his first novel, “The Tie That Binds”; the Center of the American West’s Wallace Stegner Award, given to those who’ve “made a sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West through literature, art, history, lore, or an understanding of the West”; and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation.
Winner of the 2000 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, “Plainsong” was a finalist for the National Book Award. And in 2008, the Denver Center mounted the world premiere adaptation of “Plainsong.” It was followed by the premiere of “Eventide,” in 2010.
“I thought ‘Plainsong’ and ‘Eventide’ were two of the best books ever written about Colorado,” Hickenlooper said.
Haruf’s graceful, grounded portrait of a rural community was on then-Mayor Hickenlooper’s short list when he launched One Book/One Denver in 2004. “I came very close to picking ‘Plainsong,’ ” recalled Hickenlooper.
“Except there was one kind of dicey scene where teenagers were having sex and a 10-year-old watches them through a knothole in this shack. For something we were just starting, we thought it was too racy.”
“Like a fool, I told Kent this. I’m not sure he ever really forgave me,” Hickenlooper said. “And you know, with a little bit of distance, he was completely right. It was so integral to the story, so maturely done. In no way was it lascivious. I still feel guilty about it.”
A rare relationship
Actor Mike Hartman, in a phone interview from New York, referred to Haruf as his “BS meter.” The Denver Center Theatre Company member starred in “Plainsong” and “Eventide.” In January, he will portray Dad Lewis, the dying protagonist in “Benediction.”
“He would stand or sit next to Kent Thompson (artistic director of the Denver Center company) or the playwright in rehearsal and he’d be watching things,” Hartman recalled. “When he didn’t like what he saw, you’d see him move around or get agitated. His face would screw up.”
In 2006, Thompson and playwright Eric Schmiedl began working with Haruf to bring his trilogy to the stage.
“It was really one of those relationships that are rare,” Thompson said. “It’s a profound loss on both the friendship and artistic level. We did lose a muse.”
The relationship forged between the Denver Center and Haruf was, to borrow a notion, “kismet.”
A year or two before coming to the Denver Center from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Thompson had been given a copy of “Plainsong” by his in-laws.
“The novel was spectacularly good,” he recalled thinking. But at the time it didn’t make sense for what Thompson was doing in Alabama. “Within a year or two, I was at the Denver Center.”
And he “brokered the marriage” between the novelist and playwright Schmiedl.
“These can be quirky relationships when you’re working together, adapting something from another art form and transferring it to a totally different experience,” said Schmiedl.
“Kent was just so generous about the whole process. He wanted to be intimately involved, but not in a controlling fashion. He certainly had a strong view about the work and the characters and the authenticity of story, but he was curious. We talked a lot about how challenging it was as a fiction writer to sit back and kind of trust that the artists working on the show are going to have the best interests of the novel at heart,” said Schmiedl. “It was such an asset for us to have the source of the material in the rehearsal hall with us.”
In 2015, Alfred A. Knopf will publish Haruf’s sixth and final novel, “Our Souls at Night.” Haruf told the Denver Center’s John Moore in what was the author’s final interview that it, too, is set in Holt. Moore asked if the trilogy was about to get a new chapter.
“Well, we’d have to come up with a new word for it: a quad-something. But really, no. I think this is completely separate,” Haruf replied. He then teased: “I will tell you there is a reference to the play ‘Benediction’ in this new book. It’s something these two old people have a little comment about.”
World premiereIn January, theatergoers will be able to join those two old folks when “Benediction” receives its world premiere.
“It’s just reinforced our desire to make ‘Benediction’ as wonderful as possible,” Thompson said.
“Kent knew the struggles of facing your mortality. He hoped it would help other people facing their mortality, to take stock in your life. To try to heal whatever relationships in your life you can or cannot heal. That would be one of the gifts of the production and certainly was of the book.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
T
