String Too Short to Be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm

by Donald Hall

Book Overview

"These vivid New Hampshire farm sketches from Hall's well-spent youth--all written when he was full-grown--are as much attuned to the supple and enticing utilities of language as they are grounded in a vanished time which may, at a glimpse, seem simple, but were complex and rich and not simple at all."--Richard Ford

This is a collection of story-essays diverse in subject but united by the limitless affection the author holds for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567928269
• ISBN13: 9781567928266
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Nonpareil Books
• Length: 176 Pages

Customer Reviews

Hails For Hall

If you claim to like poetry or writing where the ink squiggles can actually allow you the experience of feeling the grist and sand of a place between your toes...take out any work by Donald Hall and you'll feel the tide of the New England coast coming in over your feet...Often mislabled with the churl quip, "regional writer", Mr. Hall is much more.... a master of making you feel you are where he wants to take you...His characters come with the authenticity of having either been known, met, or viewed by Hall, or conjured from his collective memories and boiled down like a fine cider from actual sips of experience he's had with like individuals in his native New England... ...And what individuals he finds and has found in the ernest incredibly delicious confines and environs of the North East...In "String Too Short", Hall takes on the not inconsiderable task of fleshing out the rich hues of his own New England ancestory..You can smell his grandmother's kitchen, taste the dusty hay from his grandfather's barn, and feel the New Hampshire sun on your face via his entrancing and detailed prose... Mr. Hall? Are you out there? As a one time correspondent known to him as "John-Tom" I hope all is well with the venerable "Don" of Eagle Pond...Mr. Hall has taken himself off the pony express of fans he has deservedly developed over the years...and as one who has come across his work and spent pleasant minutes and hours in fine examples of his work, recommended to other readers here such as " Their Bright And Shining Eyes", " Without", " Here At Eagle Pond", and lately, " The Painted Bed", Mr. Hall has well earned praise and a rest in the bright sun of poetry and masterful observations on life around us he has picked up through his well lived adventures and travel...ALL OF HIS WORK..highly recommended!

Excellent

A very poetic and wise account of a fading world that the author was lucky enough to be a part of. Quite moving in places, funny in others. A very satisfying book.

A Celebration of life - present and personal history

Donald Hall is a writer beautifully tangent to and cognizant of the New England spine we all wish to immulate in our thoughts of the 'old American spirit', a spirit too seemingly on the wane at present -even on 4th of July celebrations this year. His most recent collection of short stories , WILLOW TEMPLE , was my introduction to this Whitmanesque, Robert Frost-like wonder boy of observation. In returning to his early work in the Nonpariel Books reissue of STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED one wonders why he has remained in the background, and hasn't found the wide audience he deserves."STRING..." is a series of short stories of Hall's recollections of spending his summers with his beloved grandparents in New Hampshire. All phases of farming and maturing from a small child to a young adult are addressed in a wholly readable, poetic, illuminating fashion. Hall knows how to describe nature as well as anyone writing today. He also revives an appreciation for his roots that we could all study as journeys toward finding ourselves. "To be without history is to be forgotten" he writes."My grandfather did not know the maiden names of either of his grandmothers. I thought that to be forgotten must be the worst fate of all." Hall invites us to accompany him on his memories of haying, picking blueberries, visiting the odd group of people who have become indelible American daguerreotypes for him. "The farm was a form: not a set of rules on the wall, but like the symmetry of winter and summer, or like the balance of day and night over the year, June against December. My grandfather lived by the form all his life, and my summers on the farm were my glimpse of it."Simple gifts, these. And the simplicity of Donald Hall's writing is what makes it so readable and so memorable. The book stands solidly on its own as a definitive New England memoir. In this new reissue there is an added Epilog which traces Hall's return to his Hew Hapshire memories and farm after many life changes. This Epilogue is worth the price of the book. If only this edition weren't tainted by the crudely inappropriate pen and ink pictures imposed on the pages of each new chapter. But that is the only unnecessary clutter in this otherwise tender book.