Drown, Merle 1943–

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Drown, Merle 1943–

PERSONAL:

Born January 14, 1943, in York, ME; son of Merle F. and Hazel Drown; married; wife's name Patricia; children: James, Matthew, Devin. Education: Macalester College, B.A., 1965; attended University of Washington, Seattle, 1965-66; Goddard College, M.F.A., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Concord, NH. Office—Department of English, Southern New Hampshire University, 2500 N. River Rd., Manchester, NH 03106. Agent—Jack Scovil, Scovil, Chichak, Galen, 381 Park Ave., Ste. 1020, New York, NY 10016. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, member of English faculty.

WRITINGS:

Plowing Up a Snake (novel), Dial (New York, NY), 1982.

The Suburbs of Heaven (novel), Soho Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with John Cawelti) Leon Forrest, Meteor in the Madhouse (novellas), Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Merle Drown's fiction illustrates the grisly side of life in backwoods New England. The author, who was born in rural Maine and lives in New Hampshire, once told CA that his first novel, Plowing Up a Snake, "is about an actual murder in a small town, a murder that remained unsolved, although many apparently knew the murderers' identities. What stimulated me to write about this event was that for twenty years I had been hearing people talking about it, making stories about it. They were groping to find the truth, not of the murder, but of the human spirit." In a San Francisco Chronicle review of Plowing Up a Snake, Bruce Colman wrote: "First-time novelist Merle Drown is so good with characters, weather and landscape that we can practically walk the streets of Enoch, New Hampshire, where this story takes place…. [It] is compelling reading, the kind of fiction you can stay up with half the night."

Drown's second novel, The Suburbs of Heaven, is an "antic, tender and bittersweet" story, in the words of a Publishers Weekly reviewer. It portrays the Hutchins family, a New Hampshire clan struggling to recover from many recent tragedies. Jim Hutchins's sister died in a fall down the cellar steps, and his daughter drowned in a neighbor's cow pond. His older son is mentally disturbed, believing that a snake is eating through his brain; the younger son is a brutal, aggressive man who lands in jail for beating his girlfriend. Jim's daughter Lisa, who turns tricks to get liquor, is also involved with an abusive man, one who believes God directs his aggression. Jim's beloved wife Pauline has a strange relationship with her wealthy, widowed brother-in-law Emory, who is widely suspected of killing Helen for insurance money. Pauline lets Emory pay her to dance naked while he films her. A misplaced videocassette sparks the book's climax. Jim—who always dreamed of getting his family out of trouble, getting ahead financially, and escaping his sordid world—explodes into violence. The Publishers Weekly reviewer described Drown's work: "Narrated in the convincing voices of the five Hutchinses, the story veers from ribald to tragic, with consistently amazing plot twists: guns are lost and found; intimate moments are spied upon; revenge is swift, creative and nasty. Throughout, Drown's language shines, and even [his] most misguided characters are fully alive, resonant, and original, speaking with quiet, piercing wisdom."

Drown commented: "It is when characters come alive that fiction can reveal the truth of ideals and ideas. For me that means finding an occurrence, whether it is a personal experience or an anecdote or a news item, that can provide the situation for my characters to become themselves and to live out their lives, separate from me. It is what I believe is creativity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, July, 1982, review of Plowing Up a Snake, p. 1343.

New York Times Book Review, March 5, 2000, Jean Thompson, "New Hampshire Primary: This Novel Features a Disaster-prone yet Enduring Backwoods Family," p. 16.

People, September 20, 1982, review of Plowing Up a Snake, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly, November 22, 1999, review of Suburbs of Heaven, p. 41.

San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 1982, Bruce Colman, review of Plowing Up a Snake