Vol. 4


On Books


 

 


'The River Gods,'  by Brian Kiteley

A Novel About Place  —  Northampton 

 

        Novelist Brian Kiteley, who grew up in Northampton, has pulled off a daunting literary feat in his recent book “The River Gods.”

      With an amazingly large and celebrated cast of characters and a loving recollection of his hometown, Kiteley, 53, has offered up a blend of fact and fiction  that plumbs the heart and soul of his Northampton and views it through the prism of the last 350 years.

      And he has managed to accomplish this in a mere 194 pages in a book published by FC2, an imprint of the University of Alabama Press. Kiteley, professor of English and director of creative writing at the University of Denver, previously published two well-received novels, “Still Life with Insects,” and “I Know Many Songs, but I Can Not Sing.” 

Brian Kiteley

     Much of the story is narrated through the voices of the author, members of his family, including his precocious brother, Geoffrey, sister Barbara, and his parents, Murray and Jean, along with Brian’s Canadian grandfather, Eric Kiteley.  Hoards of Brian’s school chums and neighborhood pals also make appearances.

      His parents reside these days at the Lathrop Community in Easthampton, but theirs and by extension Brian’s and Geoffrey’s stories begin in 1962 when the family arrives in Northampton where Murray has joined the Smith College faculty, fresh from a teaching post in California.

       On arriving in Northampton, Jean, early in the book, offers this reaction: “We moved into the Smith College faculty apartments on Fort Hill Terrace, a large horseshoe-shaped set of one-and two-story buildings … there are about a dozen families at Fort Hill … everyone welcomed us with open arms, but I worry this is too easy, an uncharacteristic experience in what I know is usually stuffy, cold-shouldered, aristocratic New England.”

        The Kiteleys are joined often in the narrative course of “The River Gods” by many figures recalling the city’s rich historical past, the earliest being 60-year old Gideon Child, a member of the original Nonotuck settlement in 1654. Others who have supporting parts and the dates of their appearance, are John Pynchon (1675-), Joseph Hawley (1777), Cornell Joseph Parsons (1678), and Sojourner Truth (1852).

      Let’s not leave out Ludwig Wittgenstein (1949), Newton Arvin (1955), and his lover Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Ben Bradlee , Richard Nixon (1969) and his daughter Julie, poets William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, writer George Washington Cable, and Mike Nichols, director of the 1966 movie “Who’s Afraid  of Virginia Woolf,” along with its stars, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. You get the picture, a novel as  extravaganza, as well as a novel as history, memoir and, most of all, place.

         In bringing in these players from the distant past, the author, in an afterword, says this: “Historical figures, especially those whose recorded utterances I’ve used, are as historically accurate as I could make them, although much of the presentation of these ghost is also necessarily phantasmagoric.”        


     
As a relative newcomer to Northampton (1971), I can attest to the impact living in this city has had on our family as well. The longer we have been here, the deeper our roots and the greater our affection for Northampton, past and present. It is a singular place, no doubt about it.

       It is easy, thus, to relate to the Northampton summoned up in “The River Gods.”  The overarching tone of the book is nicely established by Brian’s boyhood  and coming of age,  and his lasting affection for the town.. Yet there is no heavy-handed effort to sanitize or idealize Northampton. Those of us who know the city and something of its history, understand exactly how he feels.

       Finally, I was particularly moved by the portrait that emerges of Brian’s brother, Geoffrey. He seemed so perceptive beyond his years and his outlook on life so liberated, only to die at such a young age, a star burning brightly but too briefly. In any case, I can’t recall a book that deals with the Northampton experience that I have responded with more enthusiasm.

- Edward Shanahan

 


     

 

  

11/19/09

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