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Stay More #9
Thirteen Albatrosses:
Welcome to the strange, quixotic quest of Vernon to win the governorship of Arkansas. Ingledew, a self-taught genius, is soon hampered by what his opponents refer
to as his â Thirteen Albatrosses.â Among he is an atheist; lives in sin with his first cousin; and believes in â extirpatingâ â that is, getting rid ofâ hospitals, prisons, tobacco, and handguns. Nevertheless, Ingledew attracts to his campaign some of Americaâ s heaviest political hitters. Together they form Ingledewâ s Seven Samurai, aides whose devotion will be tested by kidnappings, adulterous love affairs, and defection to the rival campaign of the vulgar, hated Arkansas Governor Shoat Bradfield.
to as his â Thirteen Albatrosses.â Among he is an atheist; lives in sin with his first cousin; and believes in â extirpatingâ â that is, getting rid ofâ hospitals, prisons, tobacco, and handguns. Nevertheless, Ingledew attracts to his campaign some of Americaâ s heaviest political hitters. Together they form Ingledewâ s Seven Samurai, aides whose devotion will be tested by kidnappings, adulterous love affairs, and defection to the rival campaign of the vulgar, hated Arkansas Governor Shoat Bradfield.
382 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
7 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Donald Harington
37 books114 followersDonald Douglas Harington was an American author. All but the first of his novels either take place in or have an important connection to "Stay More," a fictional Ozark Mountains town based somewhat on Drakes Creek, Arkansas, where Harington spent summers as a child.
Harington was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He lost nearly all of his hearing at age 12 due to meningitis. This did not prevent him from picking up and remembering the vocabulary and modes of expression among the Ozark denizens, nor in conducting his teaching career as an adult.
Though he intended to be a novelist from a very early age, his course of study and his teaching career were in art and art history. He taught art history in New York, New England, and South Dakota before returning to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, his alma mater, where he taught for 22 years before his retirement on 1 May 2008.
Harington is acclaimed as one of America's greatest writers of fiction, if not one of its best known. Entertainment Weekly called him "America's greatest unknown writer." The novelist and critic Fred Chappell said of him "Donald Harington isn't an unknown writer. He's an undiscovered continent." Novelist James Sallis, writing in the Boston Globe: "Harington's books are of a piece -- the quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary U.S. letters."
Harington died of pneumonia, after a long illness, in Springdale on 7 November 2009.
Harington's novels are available from The Toby Press in a uniform edition, with cover illustrations by Wendell Minor. Since his death, The Toby Press has made available the entire set of Harington novels as The Complete Novels of Donald Harington.
Harington was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He lost nearly all of his hearing at age 12 due to meningitis. This did not prevent him from picking up and remembering the vocabulary and modes of expression among the Ozark denizens, nor in conducting his teaching career as an adult.
Though he intended to be a novelist from a very early age, his course of study and his teaching career were in art and art history. He taught art history in New York, New England, and South Dakota before returning to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, his alma mater, where he taught for 22 years before his retirement on 1 May 2008.
Harington is acclaimed as one of America's greatest writers of fiction, if not one of its best known. Entertainment Weekly called him "America's greatest unknown writer." The novelist and critic Fred Chappell said of him "Donald Harington isn't an unknown writer. He's an undiscovered continent." Novelist James Sallis, writing in the Boston Globe: "Harington's books are of a piece -- the quirkiest, most original body of work in contemporary U.S. letters."
Harington died of pneumonia, after a long illness, in Springdale on 7 November 2009.
Harington's novels are available from The Toby Press in a uniform edition, with cover illustrations by Wendell Minor. Since his death, The Toby Press has made available the entire set of Harington novels as The Complete Novels of Donald Harington.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 30, 2016
It is that time again: a presidential election year in the good ol' US of A. At least the cicadas, whose time it also is here, have the decency to trot out their repugnance only every 17 years. In case you haven't noticed, we have reached a new low: Trump or Clinton. Clinton or Trump. I can not, I will not, vote for either one. I voted for Bernie in the primary even though I find his proposals hopelessly naïve. But Bernie's honest, and that means the most for me. Besides, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "No one man can ruin the country in just four years." Of course, Lincoln also said, "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet."
In any event, it seemed like a propitious time to read Thirteen Albatrosses by Donald Harington. Harington, who passed away in 2009, wrote 15 novels, 14 of them about recurring characters in Stay More, a fictional town in Arkansas. Having read three of these novels I can report that Harington is not shy about reusing material in each of the books. The material is essentially the family history of the Ingeldews.
The last of the Ingeldews is Vernon, he being without issue, but perhaps that could change. Vernon, like all male Ingeldews, is genetically shy of the opposite sex and can not look a woman in the face unless it is a female Ingeldew. Which is how he came to be in a 30-year common law marriage with his first cousin Jelena.
Vernon is the owner of Ingeldew Ham, famous for using free-range hogs. The enterprise made him wealthy, and not just Ozark wealthy. The ham business runs itself, so Vernon, who never went beyond grade school, spends his time learning stuff. Self-enrichment, he calls it. An alphabetic autodidact, Vernon attempted to master two subjects every year starting with A: art history and astronomy. Botany and biochemistry followed, then chess and Christianity, drama and dance, entomology and English, finance and folklore, geology and gods, history and horses, Irish and Indo-European linguistics, Japanese and journalism, knight errantry and the Koran, Latin and love, mathematics and music, nature and nuclear physics, the occult and Osage. These subjects, you can imagine, often overlapped. Vernon read, everything available on a subject, but he also published scholarly pieces on the subjects and actually participated when possible, like becoming a reporter for a Japanese newspaper. By the time, in year sixteen, that Vernon got to P, he decided to tackle philosophy and -- drum roll, please -- politics. He read, of course; but on the empirical side, Vernon Ingeldew decided to run for Governor of Arkansas.
Vernon is handsome, verifiably intelligent, and kind. The problem, though, is that Vernon has Thirteen Albatrosses, thirteen things that ought to make Vernon Ingeldew unelectable. I won't name them all, just the highlights: Refuses to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God; Never elected to any office anywhere at any time; Has slept for thirty years out of wedlock with his very first cousin; Never been to college; No military experience; Walks and moves around like he's got all day; Opposed to things that give enjoyment like television, cigarettes and guns, and thinks schools, prisons and hospitals ought to be abolished; Despite being handsome, he's scared to death of women or anything female.
I liked the set-up. But what followed was often broad farce. I hate being overly critical of the recently deceased, but parts of this were actually really bad. I noticed that Harington, in other books, was disturbingly glib about the subject of rape. An historical rape is dealt with in this book and, in fairness, it is not entirely gratuitous. However, other sexual vignettes were almost as disturbing. One female character decides to engage in a kind of adultery. She is charmed (what woman wouldn't be?) by these lines: "You have a sensational body"; "You have the most lithesome long back"; "You look good all over". They first have sex in the shower. Standing up, no less. He was so big, She couldn't resist wrapping her fingers around it and her thumb came nowhere near meeting her fingertips. And...he was so big it was worse than childbirth for a little while. They, of course, have a stupefying climax.
I finished the book anyway because I wanted to see if Vernon would win the election.
And I liked the few pages where Harington introduces a character who speaks with a genuine Ozark dialect. He asked another character, "Y'et yet?" Closer to my home, we would ask the same question, "Jeet jet?"
In any event, it seemed like a propitious time to read Thirteen Albatrosses by Donald Harington. Harington, who passed away in 2009, wrote 15 novels, 14 of them about recurring characters in Stay More, a fictional town in Arkansas. Having read three of these novels I can report that Harington is not shy about reusing material in each of the books. The material is essentially the family history of the Ingeldews.
The last of the Ingeldews is Vernon, he being without issue, but perhaps that could change. Vernon, like all male Ingeldews, is genetically shy of the opposite sex and can not look a woman in the face unless it is a female Ingeldew. Which is how he came to be in a 30-year common law marriage with his first cousin Jelena.
Vernon is the owner of Ingeldew Ham, famous for using free-range hogs. The enterprise made him wealthy, and not just Ozark wealthy. The ham business runs itself, so Vernon, who never went beyond grade school, spends his time learning stuff. Self-enrichment, he calls it. An alphabetic autodidact, Vernon attempted to master two subjects every year starting with A: art history and astronomy. Botany and biochemistry followed, then chess and Christianity, drama and dance, entomology and English, finance and folklore, geology and gods, history and horses, Irish and Indo-European linguistics, Japanese and journalism, knight errantry and the Koran, Latin and love, mathematics and music, nature and nuclear physics, the occult and Osage. These subjects, you can imagine, often overlapped. Vernon read, everything available on a subject, but he also published scholarly pieces on the subjects and actually participated when possible, like becoming a reporter for a Japanese newspaper. By the time, in year sixteen, that Vernon got to P, he decided to tackle philosophy and -- drum roll, please -- politics. He read, of course; but on the empirical side, Vernon Ingeldew decided to run for Governor of Arkansas.
Vernon is handsome, verifiably intelligent, and kind. The problem, though, is that Vernon has Thirteen Albatrosses, thirteen things that ought to make Vernon Ingeldew unelectable. I won't name them all, just the highlights: Refuses to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God; Never elected to any office anywhere at any time; Has slept for thirty years out of wedlock with his very first cousin; Never been to college; No military experience; Walks and moves around like he's got all day; Opposed to things that give enjoyment like television, cigarettes and guns, and thinks schools, prisons and hospitals ought to be abolished; Despite being handsome, he's scared to death of women or anything female.
I liked the set-up. But what followed was often broad farce. I hate being overly critical of the recently deceased, but parts of this were actually really bad. I noticed that Harington, in other books, was disturbingly glib about the subject of rape. An historical rape is dealt with in this book and, in fairness, it is not entirely gratuitous. However, other sexual vignettes were almost as disturbing. One female character decides to engage in a kind of adultery. She is charmed (what woman wouldn't be?) by these lines: "You have a sensational body"; "You have the most lithesome long back"; "You look good all over". They first have sex in the shower. Standing up, no less. He was so big, She couldn't resist wrapping her fingers around it and her thumb came nowhere near meeting her fingertips. And...he was so big it was worse than childbirth for a little while. They, of course, have a stupefying climax.
I finished the book anyway because I wanted to see if Vernon would win the election.
And I liked the few pages where Harington introduces a character who speaks with a genuine Ozark dialect. He asked another character, "Y'et yet?" Closer to my home, we would ask the same question, "Jeet jet?"
June 22, 2017
Enjoyable book, much lighter than Harington's others, but without the same depths of humour and sadness the others had. If the book had stuck more with the mechanics of winning the election, rather than all the improbably love affairs popping up, I might have enjoyed it more. But then, Harington is wonderful at improbable love affairs...
Just re-read it and added another star. Enjoyed it more this time around.
Just re-read it and added another star. Enjoyed it more this time around.
November 3, 2013
Every time I finish a Donald Harington book, I remember why he's become one of my favourite authors. There's always some kind of postmodern experimental writing quirk there that makes it an interesting read, but without that getting in the way of the story. This one has been a good follow up to The Architecture of The Arkansas Ozarks, though is perhaps not quite as up to that book's qualities. Still an incredible read, though.
August 30, 2021
If you're new to Donald Harington, best not start with this. Go to square one, Lightning Bug, and read his "Stay More" novels in the order they were written.
13 Albatrosses is book number 9. Although plot-wise the books are self-contained, the constant references to people, places and even to the titles of previous books (Harington is in the habit of inserting himself as author into the narrative, partially erasing the boundary between reader, writer and story) would be confusing. And missing the rich backdrop of Stay More and the Staymorons residing there would diminish the enjoyment.
13 Albatrosses is vintage Harington, maybe a bit lighter and more straightforward than most of his other books. His playfulness, creativity and joy of language and experimentation are abundantly on display. With every subsequent book Harington continues his Stay More world building: Many of the characters and places have been established in previous books. I don't remember those earlier stories in detail because it's been too long, but some tidbits did resurface while reading 13 Albatrosses.
The book eventually gets you from A to B (i.e. from Vernon Ingledew deciding to stand for election to the outcome of said election), but as always Harington takes his time to get there, meandering around, going on detours and looping back and messing around along the way. And while I did enjoy the book, I also felt that on this occasion he overstayed his stay in Stay More. In the end the reading became something of a chore, and I had to push myself through the last few chapters.
13 Albatrosses is book number 9. Although plot-wise the books are self-contained, the constant references to people, places and even to the titles of previous books (Harington is in the habit of inserting himself as author into the narrative, partially erasing the boundary between reader, writer and story) would be confusing. And missing the rich backdrop of Stay More and the Staymorons residing there would diminish the enjoyment.
13 Albatrosses is vintage Harington, maybe a bit lighter and more straightforward than most of his other books. His playfulness, creativity and joy of language and experimentation are abundantly on display. With every subsequent book Harington continues his Stay More world building: Many of the characters and places have been established in previous books. I don't remember those earlier stories in detail because it's been too long, but some tidbits did resurface while reading 13 Albatrosses.
The book eventually gets you from A to B (i.e. from Vernon Ingledew deciding to stand for election to the outcome of said election), but as always Harington takes his time to get there, meandering around, going on detours and looping back and messing around along the way. And while I did enjoy the book, I also felt that on this occasion he overstayed his stay in Stay More. In the end the reading became something of a chore, and I had to push myself through the last few chapters.
January 19, 2018
2.5 starts. This one was a slog for me. A lot of the meta, but not much of the magic of the earlier Stay More books. I'm wondering whether to finish the series or maybe move on to something else instead.
December 21, 2021
Fabulous continuation of the Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks, with a political twist.
Read
February 25, 2016I’m so glad that Donald Harington lived in Arkansas, so I didn’t ever have to choose between him and Daniel Woodrell when deciding who is my favorite Missouri author. Donald Harington is a bit more experimental with his novels: including characters that know they are characters in novels, authorial intrusions, second person passages, present and future tense writing, and lovely metafiction. “Thirteen Albatrosses” includes many of those items, references to other works of fiction (mainly ones written by Mr. Harington), and two overflowing scoops of humor to really fill it out.
Two negatives: (1) this book is probably better if you have already read some (or all) of the authors previous books set in Stay More, and (2) the book wanders afield from what I thought we would be hearing about. The latter isn’t bad, but I feel like the wandering squishes out of existence some of the story I was hoping would be told. What's told is great, but I was hoping to hear more about what didn't get told.
Overall: highly enjoyable. I plan to work my way through all his books.
Two negatives: (1) this book is probably better if you have already read some (or all) of the authors previous books set in Stay More, and (2) the book wanders afield from what I thought we would be hearing about. The latter isn’t bad, but I feel like the wandering squishes out of existence some of the story I was hoping would be told. What's told is great, but I was hoping to hear more about what didn't get told.
Overall: highly enjoyable. I plan to work my way through all his books.
November 18, 2013
An amusing, spot on take on politicking in general with some wonderful, unforgettable characters. I just realized that Mr. Harington and Carl Hiassen have a lot in common in that they both create memorable characters that are caricatures/composites of folks all of us know all too well. Mr. Harington imbues his characters with foibles and quirks, sometimes mystical or magical elements and makes each denizen of his novels memorable. Do yourself a favor and get to know Mr. Harington and the world that he has created for us in Stay More.
May 1, 2013
This novel has a lot of great things about it, but it is overlong and repetitive. It has a cleverly postmodern premise, in that one character has already read the story in some medieval book or something. It’s also a good political satire, has some fun sexual relationships, and much more. But too much more. At a hundred pages less, this would be as good as
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks.
The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks.
June 4, 2016
This was an entertaining novel about Vernon Ingledew's campaign for governor of Arkansas. I enjoy the humor of Harington's writing, the magical realism, the setting in the Ozarks. The characters are called hillbillies, but they don't seem like hillbillies. All the character's are likable, even the so-called antagonists. Vernon is someone I would like to be like although he has foibles like anyone else. This is a very readable novel with more suspense during the kidnapping section than some of the others.
Read
August 20, 2008Frankly, it was the mental image of a man hoisting himself forward with thirteen dead birds tied to his ankle that made me pick the book up. Then, the description of a Southern politician awash in all the traits that should make him unelectable and yet succeeds (with the help of a savvy cadre of loyalists) made it a must buy. It's an election year. I'll get back to you with an actual review once I read the thing.
January 6, 2009
Awesome! I love everything Donald Harington does. Its hard to find his books as he is a lesser published writer in the Ozarks. Witty and unique.
March 11, 2009
Very fun, quick read. Interesting storytelling, though a little heavy handed toward the end.
December 28, 2010
Love this story, as I have loved all of Harington's work.
December 21, 2012
Tiresome, pompous and strangely offensive. I managed chapter 1 and a bit of chapter 2 before I deleted it from my Kindle and moved on to something else.
June 18, 2014
An interesting perspective on politics, among other things.
May 2, 2017
For no reason of Mr Harington's doing, this took forever to read. Life, and our little puppy mill rescue addition, get in the way of reading sometimes.
Per Karen, my shining light of what to read next, who got me started on Mr Harington, these are all must reads.
Although dated, and although slanted to the back room methodology, this is the story of a political campaign to elect someone who should never be governor, but wants to be.
All the intrique, back stabbing, dirty tricks, sexual trysts, half truths, although with some very real people, and a few stereotypes, is here. Having lived in Arkansas in the Clinton era, I can readily believe most of what is in here.
There is a story, line, but there isn't. There are wonderful characters, caring people, and some not so nice, some wonderful viewpoints, and perhaps a bit of all of us in this Stay More series.
Sadly, this is #9 out of 13, but I shall continue to insert one of his stories in between all the murder, mayhem and sex I tend to read.
He just makes you feel good all under..
Per Karen, my shining light of what to read next, who got me started on Mr Harington, these are all must reads.
Although dated, and although slanted to the back room methodology, this is the story of a political campaign to elect someone who should never be governor, but wants to be.
All the intrique, back stabbing, dirty tricks, sexual trysts, half truths, although with some very real people, and a few stereotypes, is here. Having lived in Arkansas in the Clinton era, I can readily believe most of what is in here.
There is a story, line, but there isn't. There are wonderful characters, caring people, and some not so nice, some wonderful viewpoints, and perhaps a bit of all of us in this Stay More series.
Sadly, this is #9 out of 13, but I shall continue to insert one of his stories in between all the murder, mayhem and sex I tend to read.
He just makes you feel good all under..
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews