The Other America. Review on A Painted House - John Grisham

Whenever you mention the name of USA what are the images it evokes? Huge cities, skyscrapers, Hollywood, casinos, free sex, strip bars, highways and expressways, cocktail parties in short a land full of money, sex and the good life. But there is another side to the USA, also of vast rural areas, where families are dependent on agriculture, small sleepy towns and villages, vast Prairies where one can see only miles and miles of wheat fields, in fact what is often called as the “Other America” or the America between Los Angeles and New York. The Deep South, the vast plains of the Mid West, the mining towns of West Virginia, the mountainous states of Idaho,Wyoming,Montana, which make up the great American Hinterland. Just as often it is mentioned of two Indias- the Urban and the vast rural hinterland, so also we have coastal America and the Great American Hinterland, which are totally different from each other. This America came into sharp focus when they voted overwhelmingly for George Bush, enabling him to romp home. And just like the urban rural divide in India, these 2 Americas are perennially at conflict. The coastal cities and the Ivy League states look down upon the people from hinterland as country yokels, while the inhabitants of the hinterland, regard the people from NY, LA and other cities as snobbish and arrogant. Anyway more on that later.

Not many of us in India are aware of this part of America, most of us having been exposed only to the razzle dazzle of American life. So when John Grisham who immediately evokes memories of lawyers, courts, trails etc, decided to go completely off track and come up with a tale of growing up in Rural America, one is tempted to have a look at it. It’s like Karan Johar making a departure from his candy flossed Mills & Boon romances to direct a movie with a totally native look. So does A Painted House by Grisham work on this level? Well to a large extent yes, but at the same time it does have it’s drawbacks also.

A Painted House is about Grisham’s own childhood in rural Arkansas, which is one of the less industrialized states in US. The protagonist Luke Chandler is a 7 year old boy who stays on a large cotton farm with his father, his mother, and his grandparents. Pappy as he calls his grandfather is a man firmly wedded to his land, and most of the books revolves around Luke’s interaction with him and Gran his grandmother. Not much is written about Luke’s father, except the fact he fought in World War II. Luke’s mother is a housewife with a kind heart. The book begins with the cotton picking season starting, and his family employing the Spruills who come from the Ozarks a mountainous region in US which is very poor and under developed. Even now in US, a Hilly Billy or a resident of the hills is a derogatory term used to refer to a person who is not very well educated or cultured. And there is also another group of dirt poor Mexicans who work as laborers on the farm. The Chandlers are a fiercely Baptist family and very religious. The rest of the novel deals with how Luke handles his growing up pains, and his exposure to the less savory aspects of life. He is witness to a murder, a pregnancy out of wedlock, the poverty of the people around him, and the problems his people place. The novel ends with their entire cotton crop being ruined by the floods, and Luke migrating to the North, with his father and mother.

Reading the book, what strikes one immediately, is the fact that this is something which takes place in India every day. The action takes place at Black Oak, Arkansas but substitute Black Oak for some remote mofussil town in the Indian hinterland, and the Chandlers for any Indian family, and the story remains the same. The problems faced by the American farmers are no different from that of Indian farmers. Most of them are heavily in debt, and just manage to scrape around. Though I am not from a rural area myself, I used to go to my Grandma’s place during holidays as a kid, and I am well acquainted with the rural scene. The scenes where the Chandlers try to accommodate the Mexicans and arrange for their food, as well as the problems they have to face with hill people, strikes a chord with us immediately. Also for all it’s talk of freedom and equality, there exists a clear sense of hierarchy in the town, with the traders on the top and the share croppers at the bottom, with the medium level farmers like the Chandlers coming in somewhere between. As for the Mexicans, well they are not even considered as human beings. Again Grisham brings out well the regional biases in the US, with the people of Black Oak looking down upon those who stay in the hills.

The attitudes and characterization of the main characters again sounds very much like us. Pappy, Luke’s grandfather, is a crusty, proud old man who inspite of the grinding poverty, always maintains his self respect and would never leave his land. Reminds me of many farmers who I encountered here in India, who would never leave their land at all. Luke’s mother hates the rural life and wants to go to the city where the standard of living is certainly better. The last scene where Luke’s family leaves the place for North is very touching and moving. Also the problems faced by the farmers in US, is very much like in India. Heat, drought,floods, labor costs, nothing much difference between the farmers in India and the US. And the last scene where Luke and his parents leave for a job in the Industrial North,is quite familiar for us in India, where every factory worker belongs in the sense to the hinterland or a rural area. In fact this could well be the story of a Konkani or Marathi family migrating to the mills of Mumbai.

But this book does have it’s share of flaws also. For starters the way the narrator talks doesn’t seem to be that of a 7 year old. He seems too mature for his age, and it jars at many places. It would have been much better if the protagonist had been a teen. Also the book’s pace is quite slow, and you really don’t have those flashes of drama that would grip us. At times the narrative just keeps on rambling, and it looks more like Grisham’s memoirs of his childhood than a novel. Grisham had a great idea and it works also, but why the novel fails short of being a classic is that at times it sounds more like a rambling account than a tale. And again the novel is not such a deep analysis of the rural poor like The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck nor an incisive look at the Southern way of life like To Kill a Mocking Bird. Grisham makes it look more like a personal memoir and while certain parts of the novel do grip you, it doesn’t really stay along with you. But all said do go and read this book, if for nothing, just to get a view of the America about which we really do not know much.