Author Carolyn Chute, whose novels have inhabited bestseller lists for nearly one decade, will read from her work at 8 p.m. in 105 Dartmouth Hall.
Chute's connection to Dartmouth is through Adjunct Professor of Film Studies Bill Phillips, who adapted her first novel, "The Beans of Egypt, Maine," for a screenplay. The finished film premiered in Spaulding Auditorium several weeks ago and will be released nationally in September. Phillips will introduce Chute at the reading.
"The Beans of Egypt, Maine," Chute's first novel, appeared in 1985 and within the first three months of its release went into five hardcover printings. Her most recent work, "Merry Men," has likewise met with phenomenal success.
Chute's other novels are "Letourneau's Used Auto Parts" and "Metal Man."
From "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" by Carolyn Chute
He moves up the mountain like a packhorse, crunching many small sticks and branches underfoot. She rides on his shoulders like a child. She wears a child-sized summer dress, and her bare legs are almost lost in his beard. Her hair is almost a fluorescent yellow. She is still very bony, very white, very silent. She smells of her morning bath.
On the mountain are countless birches: gray, gold, and the white, some of the young ones bending from last winter's pitiless snows. There is not much shade here. Birds scream from all directions.
Earlene says, "I'm not like Roberta, you know."
Beal grunts over a stone wall and crashes through fern and over soggy ground. "I wish you were," he says.
Her throat tightens. She holds down a garbled scream.
They go into a dark pine grove and his boots hiss.
They can hear the brook. A dragonfly tests Earlene's hair, then veers away. Beal sways slowly toward the brook.
He carries her higher, higher, over a barbed wire. Her yellow hair attracts another dragonfly. This one buzzes in Earlene's ear. She swipes at it.
Beal wears his railroad cap, his dark sunglasses. She feels the packhorse muscles of his shoulders and neck working, and his arteries beat against her legs.
"I HATE Roberta," Earlene almost sobs. "Daddy says it's just a matter of time before the health department shuts her down."
He is silent. When he comes to the brook, he crosses at their autumnal mauve. He stands stock-still except for his hands, which stroke Earlene's ankles, prod the hardness of her nails. Then he turns.
Below are the tiny rooves, a tatter of field, the broad violet hills, here and there a ruffled pond. He stands and stands and stands, a shoulder muscle quivering now and then, his bearing unfriendly, packhorse silent. o
