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"Lost" Guthrie novel found in TU Library; to be published in 2013.
Published: 7/10/2012 1:00 PM
Last Modified: 7/11/2012 3:03 PM

The New York Times' ArtsBeat blog reports that "House of Earth," a novel that Woody Guthrie wrote in 1947, will be published some time in 2013, after it is edited for publication by the team of writer Douglas Brinkley and actor Johnny Depp.

Brinkley, the author and editor of 26 books including the recently published biography of TV newsman Walter Cronkite, had heard about the novel and set about tracking down a copy of the typescript -- which he found in the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library.

In a story published in the New York Times by Brinkley and Depp, they write that the novel was "written as a direct response to the Dust Bowl," when Guthrie came across the adobe houses of New Mexico.

Guthrie was convinced that adobe houses "would endure the Dust Bowl better than wooden aboveground structures that were vulnerable to wind, snow, dust and termites."

The novel is the story of a married couple whose efforts to construct a house that will both protect them and be in harmony with the land on which it stands runs afoul of the ruling class -- banks and the lumber companies, who take every opportunity to exploit people like Guthrie's protagonists.

Brinkley and Depp write: "After finishing the novel in 1947, Guthrie put the manuscript away and concentrated on songwriting. He may have sensed the novel could be considered passe (post-New Deal writing was frowned upon by cold war-era critics) and ahead of its time (graphic sex). His fertility cycle prose was so edgy that publication was unlikely."

The two write that, "at heart, 'House of Earth' is a meditation on how poor people search for love and meaning in a corrupt world, one in which the rich have lost their moral compass....It's almost as if Guthrie had prophetically written 'House of Earth' for the summer of 2012."



Reader Comments 1 Total
over in ranch acres (7 months ago)
You readers might ought to know where Brinkley and Depp's researcher found the original typescript of the "House of Earth".

Special Collections at McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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