Work Life

Page 8 American Book Review Work Life Joni Tevis This feels like a book Larry Woiwode has been writing his whole life. Since his youth, he has pondered the question of his mother’s early death, his identity as a writer, and the long shadows cast both by his father and William Maxwell, his mentors. This is a meditative book, one that doubles back, skimming ground in order to till more deeply later. His craftsmanship shows in his deft movement through time, writing, “As you know, I go backward to move ahead.” In one sense, A Step from Death is about the nature of work. How does our work define us? What kind of relationship do we have with it? How do the hours we spend laboring change who we are? The book’s strong suit is the fact that it bears all the marks of struggle. Work, here, is of two kinds: farming and writing . Woiwode does both, as did his father, and now he explains them to his son. A Step from Death is a legacy book, an inheritance Woiwode passes down. Woiwode’s father, a farmer and teacher, personified the link between husbandry and literacy. The changes he made to the land are echoed in the marks he made upon his tools, as well as on his son, whom he taught to read every surface: “So he marked his tools by filing three aligned grooves into the hardest metal of each…. I think of this when I come across one of his books in my library, not with three grooves but the slanting perfection of his signature on an endpaper, often with a date below, in classics sold in sets in the 1930s and 1940s.” Hammer and pencil go together, here, each drawing on the other’s strength. So it makes sense for Woiwode’s years of farm work to find their way into his prose, which is at its best when it’s describing the landscape of North Dakota. Mowing the hayfield becomes less a chore than a celebration of brilliant mortality: The grass bent so far back under the force of the fall wind the sickle bar rode over its top, going with the grain, barely clipping on those passes, but every second I spent in the aroma of gasoline exhaust baking on the manifold and muffler (glowing orange as the afterglow dimmed to night) was a wink of eternity, presaging our new life. The sensory details of the smells put the reader right in the moment, and the move into meditation—“a wink of eternity”—summons autumn’s cusp, the threat of winter revealing itself against aspen leaves’ glorious gold. Hammer and pencil go together, here, each drawing on the other’s strength. The particular melancholy of fall in the Upper Midwest ain’t for sissies, and neither is farm work. There’s plenty of danger here, not all of it from heavy machinery. Early in the memoir, Woiwode suffers the near-fatal tractor accident that gives the book its title, but it isn’t his only near miss. Icy road, loaded gun, blazing barn, rearing horse—the country is full of perils, but most threatening of all are the psychic threatsWoiwode must navigate. Losing himself in his work, while critical to writing his best, brings with it the hazard of coming unmoored: alcoholism, depression , breakdown. To work is to risk, and Woiwode picks his way through the minefield with his wife, Carol, and his spirituality. Work is sacred, devotion to a task religious, but total immersion renders the maker vulnerable, as Woiwode knows too well. A boulder in a field is a reminder of more than danger. History leaves its mark, traces for the careful to read. As Woiwode remembers, [I]n a moist outpouring of the scent of soil [the boulder] broke loose and slid ahead enough to hold fast. I wrapped a chain around it in manacle grip, and the gouge it left as I dragged it behind the tractor to its resting place between trees remained for years—still there if you know where to feel in the grass with your boot. Note Woiwode’s long familiarity not just with...