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Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace, by Michael Perry
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Review
“Drop whatever you are doing and sit down to read Michael Perry’s Visiting Tom….Perry is a craftsman of the highest order….When you go back to doing what you were doing when you picked up this book, you might just see your world with a broader, more humane perspective.” (New York Journal of Books)“Warmhearted….engaging….down-to-earth and genuine.” (Kirkus Reviews)“Funnier than Keillor.” (MinnPost)“Visiting Tom is more than just a whimsical portrait of a unique character. It’s a meditation on modernity and self-reliance that sneaks up on you with its unexpected depth.” (Capital Times)“Charming and humorous.” (Booklist)“Michael Perry writes the words that create the memoirs that make so many of us want to raise chickens and pigs, plant a few rows of corn or otherwise just make hay. Mostly, though, he makes us want to get to know our neighbors better - no matter where we live.” (Experience Wisconsin Magazine)“The portrait Mr. Perry paints...is of a place and a life that is worth noting….His writing is beautiful and immediate and elegant.” (Wall Street Journal)“[Perry] is a sharp and empathetic observer.” (Journal Sentinel)“In Visiting Tom, a story that melds Perry’s unique humor with notes of Garrison Keillor and Billy Bryson, the elderly man’s tenderness and character jump off the page as he shares his thoughts on life and love.” (Express Milwaukee)“It’s part memoir, part character piece. There’s a bit of the poetic to it. It’s about fighting bureaucracy, Foxfire-ish self-sustenance, life the ‘old timer’s’ way, and male-bonding foolishness. It’s about fatherhood, marriage and love. And it’s just about one of the sweetest books you’ll ever read.” (Daily Sparks Tribune)
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From the Back Cover
From the acclaimed author of Coop and Population: 485 comes a portrait of a unique individual and a dedicated way of life.What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannons? Visit by visit—often with his young daughters in tow—author Michael Perry finds out.Toiling in his shop, Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and—now and then—batches of potentially “extralegal” explosives. Tom, who is approaching his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, and is famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has stories dating back to the days of his prize Model A and an antiauthoritarian streak refreshed daily by the interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps more than eight million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man’s equanimity and ultimately—when he and Perry converse as husbands and the fathers of daughters—unvarnished tenderness.“PERRY’S the real thing.” —USA Today
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Product details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 8, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 006189446X
ISBN-13: 978-0061894466
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.6 out of 5 stars
178 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#256,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
According to the title the book is about Tom, but its really about the author and contains the type of self referential 'wisdom' that some people will like. Frankly I found it to be more self absorbed than self illuminating. I guess if you live in an urban area and pine for a simpler life you will enjoy this book. I think you would enjoy Prairie Home Companion better as Perry repeats the same sentiments multiple times throughout the books 300 pages.Perry's idolization of Tom gets a much. I personally know someone like Tom. He is a member of our family and such first hand knowledge highlights the limitations of the book. There is much more to the lives of people like Tom that Perry has left out and items that are much more instructive.The book is ok. It gets rather self indulgent and preachy, particularly when the author talks about his family. It is his right and he is right to be proud of them but you get the sense that there is an air of my kids are better than yours as every depiction is sweet and softly colored. They are all above average and that leads to shedding little light on the human condition, rural life or much of anything.Sorry to be so negative, but there is not much in this book but an attempt to capture good feelings, like the stories out of an old Reader's Digest magazine. Nothing wrong with it and if you are looking for some soft awe shucks, then have at Visiting Tom. Hence the 3 star rating.
Perry's "Visiting Tom" was about what I expected after having read "Population 485" almost ten years ago. The people depicted are real and identifiable by locals, but the romanticization of "the old ways" and life lessons are too saccharine for a story that depicts farm folks given to a more pragmatic outlook. While reading, I couldn't help but wonder what Tommy thinks or would think of the book, what Arlene would say if she were still around to offer her opinion, or the verdict of any of the other locals who appear in its pages. Of course, I do not doubt that Perry received their blessing for writing the book. My lived experience makes me cringe at the overly romantic spirit of the story rather than pick at the admirably accurate details.In full disclosure, I have met many of the people depicted in the book and know of many more through family members. My grandparents' farm is on one of the nearby roads christened with the family last name. Running the Steinke Road hill for cross country practice only one time explains why the Fall Creek team always did so much better than my team. "Farmer Jerry's" kids, now well into their careers, showed cattle with me at the Eau Claire Country Fair. I remember Tommy (as I'd always heard him called) and Arlene from childhood visits to buy honey or drop off medicine for an ailing animal. I recognize that it is easy to be a critic if one is from the area where the book is set, and so I want to be clear about my praise the accurate details and descriptions. Even with the names changes, it was easy to identify the people and places referenced. Perry's descriptions depict the places well. The road change about which Perry agonizes was big news for the people around County Road I/J -- I remember my mom getting the scoop on it from Farmer Jerry.Tommy "Hartwig" is a local living legend, known for his quirkiness and brilliant ingenuity, but Perry wants too much from his character. Sometimes the author acknowledges longing for bits of wisdom, depicting Mr. "Hartwig" as an old sage, but he never really resolves the sense of longing even after he squeezes out the book's final concluding sentiments. He wants more from Hartwig in a spiritual sense than Tommy or most people have to give. It is good to have a book that captures many of the aspects of my home area that will be gone or forever changed sooner than I would like to think. However, it often misses the lessons in pragmatism and straightforwardness that characterize daily interaction there. Occasionally, Perry captures the essence of the people that I know and relates it with his characteristic humorous tone. The part truest to the Tommy I knew was Tom's affirmation that Perry was harvesting wheat by hand with his scythe "about right" and later remark that trounced Perry's nostalgia-infused pride by adding that a gas-powered weed whacker worked even better.Folks looking to remember the old days may appreciate the book. My grandpa seemed to like it. Younger people inclined to find their roots in the soil and try their hand at subsistence farming might also find the the sentiments endearing.
There’s a lot to say about this book, and I don’t think I can say it all in a blog post. First, the serendipity: some 6-7 years ago, when I was doing a lot of driving for various reasons, the missus gave me a book on CDs - Population: 485, by this same Michael Perry. Some weeks ago, a musician friend offered to introduce me to Perry, a friend (he didn’t follow up), and out of curiosity I bought this book. Only as I turned the last page did I realize this was the same Michael Perry.Back when the CD was published, the credits had perry thusly: “A registered nurse and former working cowboy currently...with two rural rescue services and one fire department. The current bio has him an amateur pig farmer, still a member of the same rescue services, and a contributing editor to Men’s Health.I’m putting all this up front because the book, while it purports to be about one Tom Hartwig and his wife, Arlene. But as is the case with memoir, the book is more about Perry - through his relationship to the Hartwigs. The story is basically this:The Perrys and Hartwigs are neighbors in rural Wisconsin, and many years ago a highway has been built through Hartwig’s property. This was in the era of massive roadbuilding in the U.S., and roadbuilding was only possible by obtaining property and rights of way through the dicey device of imminent domain, which more or less forces property owners to give up portions of their property for the greater good of things such as roads. The device’s potency has since been watered down severely as building new roads has become less critical to the nation’s functioning.Perry empathizes with Hartwig’s long-ago trauma, and there is a current fight with the state highway folks over a bad decision on a minor road used by few people. Hartwig is of the old order - a self sufficient farmer who is gaining in years. Perry is not, but he has more than a grudging admiration for Tom and Arlene and the individualistic manner in which they’ve lived their lives. And the central metaphor in Perry’s tale here is a cannon Tom has built and occasionally fires. The piece of artillery is similar to Civil War weaponry, which is seen to have nostalgic value to Tom and Perry. Too, Tom has made the dad-gummed thing himself, and the simulated cannonballs and powder. Yankee ingenuity - the centerpiece of this country for more than 200 years. Ah, if we could only find a way to be so individualistic these days, Perry seems to lament.But, Perry notices, Tom has changed. He still begrudges the road, but he’s able to adapt to such upsets in his life. And so Perry realizes that despite his own desire to look longingly over his shoulder at the past, he must overcome upsets, too, and move on. As we writes in the final pages:“This is the universe suggesting that it is quite capable of absorbing my wobbles, and that if need be, it can spare the bulk of an entire galaxy to do the job.â€As you notice, this is more of an essay inspired by reading Perry’s book, and not a book review. And that’s a testament to the thoughts and emotions this book conjures in me. I’m not cut from the same cloth as Perry, who sees the past here through a romanticist’s eyes, although my Southern heritage sometimes demands in a very loud voice that I pay homage to the past. My impulse is to look forward, however, and do whatever I might to prepare for a future I have no way of divining. Still, Perry and I both know that the present is where the action is, the only time, the only state of mind that matters.My rating: 18 of 20 stars
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