Robert Olmstead’s newest book The Coldest Night is a solid work of fiction about love, loss, and the reverberations of war. Those drawn to Hemingway’s or Stephen Crane’s war fiction will undoubtedly be pleased with this novel, and readers who enjoy the stellar and lyrical prose of writers such as Richard Bausch, William Gay, Ford Madox Ford, and of course, Cormac McCarthy, will find much to satisfy them. I’ll get to more about The Coldest Night in a minute. First, I’d like to elaborate on Olmstead as an artist and instructor.
Robert Olmstead is an author I greatly admire, not only for his strong storytelling, but because his work aided me through my graduate years in creative writing. Along with his several novels—most notably his prize-winning Coal Black Horse—a story collection, and memoir, Olmstead is also the author of a work—currently out-of-print—titled Elements of the Writing Craft. This book was essential for me in getting started with my own work as its premise is geared towards helping the student read like a writer: a skill useful to both the writing hopeful and those who simply want to glean more from their reading experience.
Olmstead states, “If a writer doesn’t read with an eye toward noticing specific, technical strategies, development is almost always slow and torturous, an endless cycle of trial and error. By reading insightfully, a writer improves more quickly, develops a sense of what good writing sounds like, and how it works” (1). Many of the exercises I undertook from Olmstead formed the beginning of stories that went on to be a part of my thesis. Whenever discouragement started to settle in, I would go back to Olmstead’s book and read the last line of his introduction: “The best writers have already written the best short stories, novels, memoirs and books, until you write one better. Here is where you begin” (2). In a sense, a writer begins again each time they sit down to the blank page. Without fail, Olmstead proved a guiding light when the task of starting a new story appeared daunting. He was an excellent instructor.
Often, whether or not an author is worthy to instruct depends on the individual student asking, “How does the author’s work hold up for me?” As one of my favorite poets, Gregory Orr, said in an issue of Writer’s Chronicle, “I often ask my students, ‘Why do you listen to what I have to say if you’ve never read my work?’” With The Coldest Night, Olmstead reminds me that he is indeed an author whose fiction speaks to me, and to spend time with him is become a better reader and writer. I read his work and feel the pull of envy. Whenever this happens with an author, I tend to gather their body of work and read it all, hopefully allowing their sentences to influence my own.
It is absolutely undeniable that The Coldest Night possesses an immense amount of sentences that sing. My reading life involves a great deal of stealing. If a book doesn’t contain a line I wish I had written, I am often unable to connect with the prose. Not so with Olmstead. During my graduate years, I learned that to write even one paragraph without stirring at least one of the reader’s five senses was one too many. One of the paragraphs in The Coldest Night that I really felt occurred in Part II, during the protagonist’s stint in the Korean War: “The wind blew like a scythe, but they kept north, crossing another plateau and marching up the road. It was an empty and evermore desolate country they entered, a landscape of stunted evergreen, granite boulders, and swirling winds of snow” (120). That first line, “The wind blew like a scythe” does a great deal of work on the page. I believe a lesser writer would have stuck with something along the lines of “The soldiers shivered as they walked, “ or “The wind cut like a knife”—lines we’ve read again and again. But a scythe—now that really speaks, sings as I said before. I hear the sound a scythe makes when it swishes through wheat, feel the sharpness of the blade and the cold steel, and of course, there’s the connection we make between death and the scythe—a poignant evocation since our protagonist is at war. And even the pronunciation of the word “scythe” has a cutting and cold sound on the tongue.
Please note, I am not trying to drum up symbolism from Olmstead’s prose, but am underscoring the work done by the use of a single word on the page. We also get the scent of evergreen, the snow swirling in the wind: striking images that resonate, stir the senses, and make for a story that is alive. These attributes are consistent in each of Olmstead’s paragraphs, and these traits alone make The Coldest Night worth reading, but the story is a killer as well.
As a story, The Coldest Night is affecting in its depiction of war and the trauma many endure in war’s wake. I was reminded of The Iliad and The Odyssey while reading, since our hero is flung into the thralls of war, and afterward sets out to get home again. Home also includes the story of Mercy, the love of Henry’s life, who was torn away from him through a sort of Romeo and Juliet family conflict. Part III is especially reminiscent of Hemingway, namely his short story “Soldier’s Home”, as our hero, Henry, struggles to find his footing upon returning to a home greatly altered from the one he left behind, and subsequently shaped by his disastrous experiences at war. Such a story is particularly significant for our 21st century, as we Americans progress through what some have termed a state of “permanent war.” There’s no glory or hyper-patriotism here, just brave kids trying to stay alive, both in and after the war.
This section also contains powerful and moving images. Chapter 31 reads, “He unbuckled his trousers, let his pants fall and directed her to his right leg. A spray of scars, as if a school of minnows, darted his leg” (228). Again, the syntax stuns; one sees the shrapnel scattering into the leg, fleck-shaped, and the darting is applicable to both what caused the wound and the wound’s comparison to a school of minnows. We also know from Henry’s background that he has grown up in the mountains, spent time outdoors, and has probably seen a school of minnows cut beneath the surface of a pond many times. Thus, the simile works all the more. And above all, the same is true of the novel as a whole.
With The Coldest Night, Olmstead proves his is a voice I will return to again and again, for material, inspiration, and instruction. I am certain that you will also find his work compelling and enjoyable, and if you have yet to read his work, come to the event tomorrow and pick up Coal Black Horse as well as The Coldest Night, and let the voice and tone of these stories become more alive with a reading from the artist himself. I intend to thank him for Elements of the Writing Craft, as well as his stories which show us how it’s done. -Ellis
Robert Olmstead will be signing and reading from The Coldest Night at 5:00 and 5:30 this evening.
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