Our Souls At Night

Alan Kent Haruf (1943-2014) was an American novelist known for his novels set in the fictional small town of Holt, Colorado. Holt is based on Yuma, Colorado, where Haruf lived for a while in the 1980s. Inspired by the works of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, Haruf opted to study literature in college and wanted to be a writer. Like the character of Louis Waters in Our Souls at Night, Haruf initially struggled to support his family as a writer, so he taught literature and writing before he achieved success and recognition. Haruf said of his early attempts at publication, “I sent the stories off to the big slick magazines and they all came back. But once in a great while, a rejection slip had a line or two from the editor, and I took each of these lines as encouragement and kept them in a special folder” (Haruf, Kent. “The Making of a Writer.” Granta, 29 Jan. 2020). Louis echoes this sentiment in Our Souls at Night when he tells Addie, “If I ever got anything from an editor, some word or phrase, I took that as encouragement and practically lived on it for months” (94). Unlike Louis, however, Haruf did eventually receive acclaim for his work. His first novel The Ties That Bind (1984) received a Whiting Award and a Hemingway/PEN Foundation citation. His novel Plainsong (1999) became a bestseller and received various awards and nominations, including being a finalist for the National Book Award. Our Souls at Night is his final novel, published posthumously.

Haruf’s life experiences color the characters and situations in Our Souls at Night. In an article in Granta, he writes of one of the main lessons he learned in childhood: “[D]on’t you be a show-off, and I have tried to abide by that injunction ever since, with all its contradictions and complications” (Haruf, Kent. “The Making of a Writer.” Granta, 29 Jan. 2020). This concept is reflected in his writing style, which avoids flourishes and focuses on ordinary people. In a review of his work, author Ursula Le Guin states that “his courage and achievement in exploring ordinary forms of love – the enduring frustration, the long cost of loyalty, the comfort of daily affection – are unsurpassed by anything I know in contemporary fiction” (Le Guin, Ursula K. “Benediction Review – a Stunningly Original Writer.” The Guardian, 5 Mar. 2014). Indeed, Haruf’s persistence and hard work typify many of the characters who populate Holt in his novels.

Haruf’s advice to aspiring writers reveals both his modesty and perseverance. He writes in the Granta essay, “You have to believe in yourself despite the evidence. I felt as though I had a little flame of talent, not a big talent, but a little pilot-light-sized flame of talent, and I had to tend to it regularly, religiously, with care and discipline, like a kind of monk or acolyte, and not to ever let the little flame go out.” In a sense, the character of Louis Waters provides an example of someone who let the “little flame” go out and doesn’t feel passionate about much in life because of that, until he connects with Addie. Haruf’s final novel, therefore, can be considered a gentle exhortation to his readers to find and keep their passions alive.