Thousand Acres

Biography

• Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won an O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily," published in The Atlantic Monthly.

• Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997.

• Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005) is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel.

• In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has participated in the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Cheltenham Festival, the National Book Festival, the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, and many others.

• She won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and chaired the judges' panel for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2009.

Biography

• Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, considers Smiley's book The Greenlanders to be greatly underappreciated and among the best works of contemporary American fiction.

• Smiley's then wrote a trilogy of novels about an Iowa family over the course of generations. The first novel of the trilogy, Some Luck, was published in 2014 by Random House. The second volume followed in the spring of 2015, and the third volume in the fall of 2015.

Publications—Novels

• Barn Blind (1980)

• At Paradise Gate (1981)

• Duplicate Keys (1984)

• The Greenlanders (1988)

• A Thousand Acres (1991)

• Moo (1995)

• The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (1998)

• Horse Heaven (2000)

• Good Faith (2003)

• Ten Days in the Hills (2007)

• Private Life (2010)

• Some Luck (2014)

• Early Warning (April, 2015)

• Golden Age (October 20, 2015)

• Perestroika in Paris (2020)

Publications—Novels

• She has also written two short story collections, five non-fiction works and several books for young adults

Interviews

• Interview—Iowa PBS

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp-_at1-6Mo

• Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Jane Smiley at the 2015 National Book Festival

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8T4C49dxGA&t=4s

• Jane Smiley discusses her creative process at Talking Volumes, MPR News

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP-vDg_5Wec

Cast of characters

• Ginny Cook Smith

  • Main character and narrator, daughter of Larry Cook, married to Tyler Smith. Along with sister, Rose Cook Lewis, she inherits her father's farmland.

  • Throughout the novel, she experiences a wide variety of emotions, but tends to be secretive about those feelings, even repressing them to project that she's supposed to feel rather than what she actually does. For example, she was sexually assaulted by her father, but has repressed that memory because it doesn't coincide with her beliefs about her father and the roles both of them are supposed to portray.

  • She is based on Goneril from King Lear.

Cast of characters

• Rose Cook Lewis

  • Ginny's sister, married to Pete Lewis. She also inherits their father's land.

  • Rose is ambitious, greedy, but unlike Ginny, much more open to her feelings and more open to the "facts" of reality. She too was sexually abused by Larry, and as a result despises him and wants revenge.

  • At the opening of the novel, she has just undergone treatment for breast cancer, and ultimately dies from it.

  • Rose is based on Regan in King Lear.

Cast of characters

• Caroline Cook

  • The youngest of Larry's three daughters, and his favorite. Married to Frank, she's also a lawyer. When she is dubious about her father's plan to divide up his land among his 3 daughters, to avoid taxes, he cuts her out of the will.

  • Apparently Larry did not sexually abuse her, and apparently she doesn't know of this behavior from her sisters, so she cuts them off for what she believes is his generosity in giving them the land.

  • Caroline's character correlates with Cordelia from King Lear.

Cast of characters

• Larry Cook

  • Father of Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. He is misogynistic, crude, cruel, stubborn, set in his ways. He caused the trauma to his two oldest daughters, and even that follows them into adulthood, shaping their personalities.

  • He is ambitious and selfish, constantly appraised himself by comparisons with the neighbors, his fields, his buildings, his crops. He need to be superior to them all, and therefore, as a young man, exploited them to acquire their land.

  • Based on King Lear in Shakespeare's play, he elicits little or no sympathy, although Shakespeare's Lear can be sympathetic.

Cast of characters

• Harold Clark

  • Larry's neighbor and friendly rival. When Larry's daughters turn against him, Harold immediately takes his side. Although Harold appears friendly, he is as misogynistic as Larry, schemes and plots to get his way. He's based on Gloucester in King Lear.

• Jess Clark

  • Harold's son who has returned to the family farm after several years, initially to avoid the draft. He's something like the Prodigal Son, eliciting his father's good will so that he can re-join the family farm, although Harold may be feigning so that he can punish Jess and cut him off.

  • He has an affair with both Ginny and Rose and Ginny attempts to kill Rose as a result. Ultimately, Jess abandons both sisters.

  • Described as charming and charismatic, and something of a "free thinker," with his interest in organic farming, ultimately he is manipulative and greedy. He's based on Edmund in Shakespeare's play.

Cast of characters

• Tyler "Ty" Smith

  • Ginny's husband. Throughout the novel, he never makes a definitive stance against or with Ginny: he wants to help her with the farm, but he also thinks that she had Rose are being too harsh on Larry. While he is portrayed as a good husband, Ginny still cheats on him with Jess, and hides several of her miscarriages from him.

  • He is based on Albany from King Lear.

• Pete Lewis

  • Rose's husband and an outsider in the farm community where Rose was born and raised. Pete is an alcoholic, beats Rose occasionally, and on one occasion breaks her arm. After that, the abuse seems to end, but he's a self-destructive alcoholic, and dies in a car crash after learning of Rose's affair with Jess. It's uncertain whether that death was accident or suicide.

  • He is based on Cornwall in Shakespeare's King Lear.

Questions for discussion

• Here again, in this novel, the setting is a significant element of the plot, specifically midwestern farms. This novel takes place in 1979, although it includes some history of farming or agriculture from the past.

• How would you describe their farming practices? What do we know about these farming methods?

Questions for discussion

• Larry's decision to "retire" and deed his land to his daughters is the incident that triggers everything that follows in this novel, as it does in Shakespeare's King Lear.

• Why does Larry decide to do this?

Question for discussion

• How would you describe Larry's attitude toward the land? What does it represent?

• Does his attitude extend elsewhere?

Questions for discussion

• If nothing else, this novel is about conflict:

  • Conflict between fathers and their children, especially daughters

  • Conflict among neighbors

  • Conflict among generations

• Choose one and elaborate.

• Why is Ginny the narrator of this novel? Because this is a first-person narration, she see only her perspective.

Questions for discussion

• At the end of this novel, what has been resolved?

• Things have changed dramatically—Rose and Larry are dead, Pete is dead, Ty has moved on, Jess has fled, once again. Ginny is a waitress, raising Rose's two daughters. So what are we left with?

Thank you

Hope to see you in spring

And HAPPY HOLIDAYS!