Klinkenborg, Verlyn 1953(?)–

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KLINKENBORG, Verlyn 1953(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1953; married Regina Wenzek. Education: Received Ph.D. from Princeton University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Upstate New York. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Little, Brown and Company, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Affiliated with Fordham University, New York, NY; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Briggs-Copeland lecturer; New York Times, New York, NY, member of editorial board.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1992, for The Last Fine Time.

WRITINGS:

(Author of catalogue) British Literary Manuscripts: Series I and II, Pierpont Morgan Library/Dover, 1981.

(Editor, with Charles Ryskamp) Mrs. Piozzi to Mr. Conway, Stinehour Press, 1981.

Making Hay (nonfiction), illustrated by Gordon Allen, Lyons and Burford (New York, NY), 1986.

The Last Fine Time (nonfiction), Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

(Author of introduction) Portraits: Photographs of Farm Animals by Danielle Weil, Artisan (New York, NY), 1995.

(Author of text) Straight West, with photographs by Lindy Smith, Lyons Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Rural Life, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

(Author of text) Gardenscapes, photographs by Lynn Geesaman, Aperture (New York, NY), 2003.

Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile, Knopf (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Harper's, Esquire, Mother Jones, National Geographic, and other magazines.

SIDELIGHTS: Verlyn Klinkenborg's books Making Hay and The Rural Life examine the American farm experience, drawing on his own time spent on family farms. In The Last Fine Time, he tells the personal story of his father-in-law's bar in Buffalo, New York.

In the 1986 publication Making Hay, Klinkenborg looks at the process of haying in the Midwestern states, reflecting upon the work from his first-hand experience on a farm in Minnesota. He also provides a history of alfalfa, the plant most often harvested for hay, and makes references to other farms in Iowa and Montana. The resulting structure, according to Wilson Library Bulletin reviewer Peg Padnos, is "a complex story of the interaction of plants, people, animals, and machines," but one that she found "somewhat flawed." Sue Hubbell stated in the New York Times Book Review that Klinkenborg "does a fine job of explaining the complexity of a farmer's life." Padnos concluded that Klinkenborg's writing in Making Hay "is elegant and poem-precise; he brings a sense of history as well as his personal stake to this story."

The Last Fine Time is a history of a neighborhood bar in Buffalo, New York, that was owned by Klinkenborg's father-in-law, Eddie Wenzek. Using personal research and interviews with patrons as well as Wenzek, the author brings to life the people and events of the Polish section of Buffalo from 1947 to 1970, including the transformation of the bar from a working-class watering hole to a more expensive nightclub. Brian Morton, in his New Statesman and Society assessment, pointed out the depth of Klinkenborg's research and declared, "The Last Fine Time is a displaced memoir of a remarkably innocent time and place, all the more real from having been written by a man who only came to it once that fine time was over." Nation reviewer JoAnn Wypijewski questioned the authenticity of a story written by an outsider to the community that it profiles. Wypijewski maintained that Klinkenborg's portrayal failed to capture the "romance" of the people and stories he presented. She stated, "Romance here has lost its honest function of self-protection and parades as social history." New York Times Book Review contributor Frederick Busch also noted that the author "doesn't let [the people in the book] say much. We never learn their rhythms or diction or patterns of breath." Busch commented, however, that "Klinkenborg satisfyingly evokes ways of life, especially when he chronicles the effects of World War II on Buffalo." Klinkenborg described his approach to the material and the language in The Last Fine Time in the New York Times Book Review: "I look for subjects that offer a sense of metaphorical possibility. It's probably clear from the book that I'm as interested in the character of language as in the story itself."

Klinkenborg's The Rural Life returns to the farm experience, this time arranging a number of essays on his time in the country into a single year, with a chapter for each month. In this manner he speaks of the seasonal changes on his own farm in upstate New York, with asides looking at events remembered from his time in the West. The original essays were published as occasional columns on the editorial pages of the New York Times, columns described by James Norton in Flak Magazine as "a consistently sweet note in the editorial column's typically solemn song." Klinkenborg tells of driving through falling snow, of hearing the approach of a thunderstorm, and the simple satisfaction of hearing a rooster's crow at dawn. A Kirkus Reviews critic found that Klinkenborg presents "simple observations of place, work, and weather." The author writes "with scope, profundity, and power achieved through a mastering of the delicate." "It's tempting," Lynn Hamilton admitted in BookPage, "to compare rural writer Verlyn Klinkenborg to pillars of American literature such as Robert Frost and Henry Thoreau…. But Klinkenborg,… uses language with such mastery and has such a unique style that these comparisons may not do him full justice." "The deliberate, finely-hewn sentences convey, above all else, the seriousness with which Klinkenborg takes the task of watching the world around him," a Publishers Weekly critic noted, while Meredith Parets of Booklist concluded that Klinkenborg is "a fine and inspiring writer."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2000, Margaret Flanagan, review of Straight West, p. 42; November 15, 2002, Meredith Parets, review of The Rural Life, p. 554.

Choice, November, 1994, review of The Last Fine Time, p. 399.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2002, review of The Rural Life, p. 1367.

Library Journal, October 15, 2002, Lee Arnold, review of The Rural Life, p. 87.

Nation, April 1, 1991, JoAnn Wypijewski, review of The Last Fine Time, pp. 420-426.

New Statesman and Society, August 23, 1991, Brian Morton, review of The Last Fine Time.

New York Times Book Review, October 12, 1986, Sue Hubbell, review of Making Hay, p. 20; February 8, 1998, review of Making Hay, p. 28; January 20, 1991, Frederick Busch, review of The Last Fine Time, pp. 2, 33.

Publishers Weekly, September 23, 2002, review of The Rural Life, p. 58.

Smithsonian, September, 1986, p. 68.

Times Literary Supplement, August 6, 1982, p. 866.

Wilson Library Bulletin, October, 1987, Peg Padnos, review of Making Hay, p. 94.