“Split Cherry Tree” by Jesse Stuart
Filed under: Great short fiction/Writing
Here’s another short story I really love — Split Cherry Tree by Jesse Stuart.
It’s about another place and time, but it manages to resonate today. There’s a timeless quality to it, and to me timelessness and universality of theme are what make a story great. Change is constant, and every generation will go through the things Dave and his dad experience in Split Cherry Tree.
I love Stuart’s characters … very human.
I think the dialect in this story is a bit heavy handed; although I’ve known plenty of people who talk pretty much the way Stuart’s characters talk, it’s a bit hard to read in large quantities. A little less might have been better. But that might just be a taste thing on my part; the dialect certainly didn’t ruin a great story for me.
What do you think? Do you like this one? Hate it? Loathe it? Not get it? Love it? Wish you’d written it? Feel free to discuss.
– Steve
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I think I would like Stuart better without the heavy dialect. I don’t notice as much dialect here in Pike County these days. Cable TV is washing out all dialect I think. But when we were in school here, it was all around us. (wharshed=washed, getyou=get, ideal=idea, liberry=library, etc.)
When Chris was in the high school drama club they performed a stage version of “The Thread that Runs So True” and it was a hoot. The segment of the book that was taken for the play has a theme very similar to “Split Cherry Tree”– there is nothing wrong with a good, honest, labor/work ethic, but education is important as well. It seems to be a main theme for Stuart.
I think Stuart is a decent writer, but I’ve never felt much of draw to his work. I think it’s because, growing up in central and eastern Kentucky, Stuart was jammed down my throat in grade school, junior high and high school.
The dialect didn’t bother me at all. There’s a music to it, sounded very natural. What bugged me was the primer style of writing: we did this, we did that. It seemed clumsy, and the story just kind of clunked to an end. I’ve read more graceful writing from English classmates.
Hmmm … I thought the narrative appropriate for a first-person tale told by a hillbilly schoolboy. Had it been more graceful, I think it would have been a false note.
Oh, well. Maybe Jesse Stuart is an acquired taste.
– Steve
Ty: Remember way back in the long ago when I wrote a Spider John story in first-person? I remember how you ripped that one because the dialect was so hard to read.
Important safety tip: If your protagonist is a mostly illiterate, mumbling sailor with severe grammar impairment and some missing teeth, he’s probably not the best choice for narrator!
– Steve
Steve - I could hear the narrator’s voice well in a lot of places, but then those looong verbatim conversations sounded more like omniscient narrator than a kid, so I fell out of the sense that it was Dave actually speaking.
Steve, just remember, a little can go a long way. Spider could tell a tale, but the dialect should probably be limited.
I’m guilty of it too, from time to time.