Latest news with #Spartina
Wall Street Journal
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Appreciation: John Casey (1939-2025)
In 1991, the summer before senior year, my high school assigned three books for reading. Summer books weren't those considered classics, like 'King Lear' or Robert Penn Warren's 'All the King's Men,' but they were contenders, near-greats: 'The Street,' Ann Petry's 1946 novel about black life in Harlem; 'The Road From Coorain,' Jill Ker Conway's (1989) memoir of her bleak childhood in the Australian grasslands; and John Casey's 1989 novel, 'Spartina.' In the first English class meeting of the school year, the only book we wanted to talk about was 'Spartina.' How could we not? For starters, there were the main characters' names: Dick Pierce and Elsie Buttrick. Ponder those names as if you were 17. But once Mrs. Archibald waited out our tittering and steered us toward the text, we agreed this maritime thriller was special. The story follows middle-aged Yankee Dick Pierce as he negotiates the class politics of his coastal Rhode Island community, works odd jobs for the summer vacationers, and slowly builds the boat that will give him financial freedom as an independent fisherman.
New York Times
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
John Casey, Novelist of Salty, Rough-Hewn Characters, Dies at 86
John Casey, a writer of lyric yet taut prose in novels, essays and short stories who won the National Book Award in 1989 for 'Spartina,' the story of a rough-hewn fisherman that reviewers called the best American story of nautical life since Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea,' died on Feb. 22 at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 86. His daughters Clare and Julie Casey said the cause was complications of dementia. Mr. Casey, who spent most of his literary career as a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia, was best known for his pinpoint renderings of blue-collar characters, like Dick Pierce, the Rhode Island boatman at the center of 'Spartina,' whom the author referred to as a 'swamp Yankee.' The novel revolves around both Pierce's romantic entanglements — long married, he starts an affair and gets his lover pregnant — and his struggles to build a boat. Spartina, a sea grass, becomes the unifying metaphor of the book. 'Only the spartinas thrived in the salt flood, shut themselves against the salt but drank the water,' Mr. Casey wrote. 'Smart grass. If he ever got his big boat built he might just call her Spartina, though he ought to call her after his wife.' Mr. Casey won a National Book Award in 1989 for his novel 'Spartina' about a married fisherman and his romantic entanglements. Credit... Alfred A. Knopf, New York The novelist Susan Kenney, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called the novel 'splendidly conceived, flawlessly rendered and totally absorbing.' Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
