The Container of Companionship: Harriet Clark, “The Hill,” and Finding Meaning
The first Durst Lecturer of the year discusses her new book with moderator Louise Yelin.
By Emma Ivanov
“A big part of having a writing life is having a reading life,” was what Harriet Clark said, in a small meeting with students, an hour or so before her Durst lecture. A book, to her, is something that can be returned to — right there whenever it is needed, the right words within.
Despite outright stating that she considers herself a reader amongst writers and not a writer in her own right, Harriet Clark’s track record is extensive. She has attended fellowships with the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Wallace Stegner Program, both known for their prestige, and was the Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford. Her short story, “Descent,” won the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, and was followed by her debut novel, “The Hill,” earlier this year.
“The Hill” is about Suzanna, the child of a political radical with a life sentence, who grows up and endeavors to keep her mother in her life, despite the obstacles in her way, serving as a companion — a word that is a cornerstone for both the rest of the small meeting and the lecture. The idea of this book, this story, even Suzanna as a character, is a kind of container for Clark to explore her own perspectives on growing up and the prison system.
According to Clark, her literary companions and inspirations for “The Hill” were wide spanning — from Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping” to W.G. Sebald’s “Austerlitz,” references abounded and came together to make something wholly Clark’s own.
The contrast of humor and seriousness in “The Hill” is what brought Bernice Negrin, a freshman theater and performance major, to the pre-lecture meeting of only seven or so people, personal copy annotated with pink highlighter in tow. Negrin recognized how Clark is “really good at solidifying this ‘for forever,’” feeling — the looming loneliness and search for connection in the life of a prisoner’s child.
While the original meeting was small, the turnout for the lecture was wide: professors, creative writing, English, and global literature students, Broadview residents showing up in groups, all intermingling. Professor Anthony Domestico introduced both Harriet Clark and Louise Yelin, professor emerita of literature, who hosted the discussion.
Yelin’s questions honed in on the act of “companioning” — meeting somewhere where they are at and, as Clark put it, “dignifying frameworks around experiences that are often degraded,” whether that be as a teacher or as family or within the prison system or otherwise.
To Yelin, and to Clark, it seems, a companion is a kind of wide reaching container that is meant to help accompany anyone through life, and can be certainly more than one thing — person, story, inspiration, or otherwise. This is what “The Hill,” best accomplishes, to Yelin — it “entirely unfolds in the present,” making the readers go along with it.
The talk eventually drew to a close, met with the applause of the wide-ranging audience, and the inevitable filing out to the Humanities Lobby to get books or notebooks signed by Clark herself and chat with friends and peers — a miniature but meaningful act of companionship as the audience was present in the moment, just for now.
And that is what stood out so starkly — “The Hill” and Harriet Clark’s philosophy seems to be finding love within the lost feeling, figuring out where you are and enjoying the ride, paying homage to the past during it all. Seeing who came before you and being able to say to them, “Because of you, I am,” as Clark said, whether that be Marilynne Robinson or one’s formerly imprisoned mother.
Because these actions, as hinted in the epigraph Clark chose for “The Hill,” — “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” — matter. Because even if they are small or repetitive, they break up the slog of life and make it worth living. The pushing of the rock, real or metaphorical, becomes far more purposeful when you’re not pushing it alone.
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