{"id":37810,"date":"2015-05-13T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T10:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?post_type=feature&p=37810"},"modified":"2016-01-11T09:59:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T14:59:15","slug":"its-hard-to-break-the-ties-that-bind-marlin-bartons-pasture-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pasture<\/a>Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art<\/em> (Hub City Press, 2015)<\/a>, a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting. Domestic relationships \u2013 such as mother to daughter or wife to husband \u2013 are marked by a disruption of care, while unconventional alliances provide the people in them some kindness and relief. While the rendering of place is a notable strength of Barton\u2019s stories, the dramas centered on home and family are mesmerizing and tied to secrecy and damage more than to love.<\/p>\n

In \u201cWatching Kaylie,\u201d Aaron yearns for Kaylie, his brother Charles\u2019s sometime girlfriend who lost her job as a nurse, chain smokes, and shoots heroin. Aaron worries about her too, and his desire mixes with protectiveness. He regularly parks his car among the trees outside her house, and one night he carries her in after she passes out in her front yard. After he tucks her carefully into bed, aware of \u201cthe obscenity of what stirred within him,\u201d and covers her with a blanket to push down his own feelings, he doesn\u2019t leave.<\/p>\n

“He looked through her refrigerator and kitchen cabinets and drawers, found syringes in a zippered compartment of her purse. Over the next couple of hours he checked on her a number of times, and finally couldn\u2019t resist turning and looking at the canvases that faced the living room wall. Several were still lifes of wet grapes piled next to bottles of red wine so dark it looked like blood drawn from a deep vein, [\u2026] and finally he saw one that he hoped he hadn\u2019t been looking for without realizing it, a self-portrait of her shadowed face and bare breasts. The nipples were pierced through with thin silver needles and made the painting look unreal somehow, but erotic and disturbing at the same time.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Aaron is a bait-shop owner, 38 years old, and knows himself to be unattractive to women. There have been a few, ones who are a little drunk and bored, and when he meets Kaylie he can tell she\u2019s not so much special as unusual. But there\u2019s the problem of his brother, who comes across as menacing though not a threat to Aaron, and Kaylie\u2019s dependence on Charles for drugs. Aaron may be in love with Kaylie, but the brother understands her better. In the climactic scene, Aaron has a chance to help Kaylie, and she offers him the only thing she has, her body, as compensation. He realizes that he has a critical choice to make: between always watching\/wanting and accepting that the \u201cpure moments\u201d he has been longing for are rare. Aaron may have to take what is \u201ctainted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marlin<\/a>
Marlin Barton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The couple at the center of \u201cPlaying War,\u201d Carrie and Foster Fuller, are long married, with a college-aged daughter, and civil on the surface, yet Carrie suspects that a series of affairs has prompted her husband to \u201ccheck out of their marriage.\u201d In discussing this with her widowed father, he shares a secret with her involving Foster so that, as he tells her, \u201cit would give you something, an advantage maybe,\u201d if the marriage was ever threatened. Years earlier, Foster and his circle of hunting buddies played a game that ended in the shooting death of one of them, and the group closed ranks to hide the details. Convinced that Foster pulled the trigger and killed Bruce, with whom Carrie had a brief liaison before her wedding, Carrie sets out to pressure her husband\u2019s friends to reveal the truth and impugn Foster.<\/p>\n

Only at the beginning of the story does Carrie seem sympathetic. As she gently stalks Dale, the most vulnerable member of the hunting group, her need to fashion a story of her husband as murderer hardens her and reveals to the reader, and to Carrie herself, the depth of her own motivations. Barton\u2019s handling of Carrie as a character is played out slowly in this, the most novel-like story in the collection. She is occasionally prudent, as when she asks her boss for extra hours in their dental office, anticipating a future when she may need to be financially independent. She is also wily, even manipulative, as when she knowingly exploits Dale\u2019s attraction to her to find out more about the shooting. In his kitchen, she makes and serves him a sandwich, getting up once to refill his glass from a pitcher of sweet tea. \u201cShe walks up behind him and slowly leans over his shoulder with the pitcher, the scent of her perfume strong enough still so that she sees him take a deep breath and hold it. She imagines his eyes are closed.\u201d Barton makes Carrie culpable in her use of sexual power for uncertain aims. She might get the truth, but she will damage Dale \u2013 and perhaps her daughter \u2013 in the process.<\/p>\n

Several of the stories are acutely concerned with problems of the body \u2013 addiction, paternity, physical punishment, and violent death \u2013 and the title story, \u201cPasture Art,\u201d features a mother and daughter who are bound by the mother\u2019s poor health from diabetes and drinking. In addition to caring for her mother, teenager Leah does domestic work for Mr. Hutchins, a widower and her mother\u2019s landlord who makes \u201ccreations\u201d from raked hay, \u201ccut-up pieces of tin, fifty-five gallon drums, driftwood from out of the Tennahpush River, a mirror he took from an old house that had fallen in.\u201d He scavenges to make the pasture art, including a life-sized helicopter, a locomotive, and several creatures, which all sit in the middle of his field.<\/p>\n

Leah keeps busy with caretaking: measuring and injecting her mother\u2019s insulin, dusting the furniture in Mr. Hutchins house, prodding her mother to apply for food stamps. She steals, too, taking a necklace, photograph, and dresses that belonged to Mr. Hutchins\u2019s deceased wife, in an attempt to fashion a grownup life of her own from the leavings of someone else. After a fire destroys much of his pasture art, Leah encourages Mr. Hutchins to remake them. He replies, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to make something out of nothing.\u201d The two have become allies of sorts, and it\u2019s implied that he\u2019s at the end of the line and Leah, who may have to leave her sickly mother behind, at the beginning.<\/p>\n

Although Barton\u2019s stories are plot and character driven, his settings seem inextricable from the narratives. In \u201cInto Silence,\u201d about an adult deaf woman who lives with her needy mother and longs for independence, the old family house shelters them and signifies how steeped in and worn their lives are by history:<\/p>\n

“The roof needed replacing. The steps were warped. Her grandfather, Jason Teclaw, had built the house with slave labor, and made a large, comfortable home, the one oddity in its design the columns across the front and side of the house. [\u2026] There were knotholes, too, visible in the sides of each column. [\u2026] Bricks around the cellar walls had come loose, leaving holes into the darkness that had once been, for a brief period, the saloon that had gotten her grandfather kicked out of the Methodist congregation.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Janey\u2019s impairment and the mother\u2019s weak heart are consistent with the place; their stories can only happen here, Barton shows. Nevertheless, the strongest, most memorable characters here \u2013 Janey in \u201cInto Silence,\u201d Leah in \u201cPasture Art,\u201d and Carrie in \u201cPlaying War\u201d \u2013 both resist and long for the road that leads away from home.<\/p>\n

*An excerpt of Barton\u2019s short story<\/a>, \u201cPasture Art,\u201d was published in ASweetLife.<\/p>\n

Marlin Barton wrote about his diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes<\/a> at age 37 in ASweetLife.<\/p>\n

Marlin Barton’s Book\u00a0Pasture Art<\/a> is available on Amazon<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art (Hub City Press, 2015), a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":37708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1432],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art (Hub City Press, 2015), a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jane Kokernak\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810\",\"name\":\"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-05-13T10:00:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-11T14:59:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8\"},\"description\":\"Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art (Hub City Press, 2015), a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg\",\"width\":600,\"height\":400,\"caption\":\"pasture art 1\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\",\"name\":\"ASweetLife\",\"description\":\"The Diabetes Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8\",\"name\":\"Jane Kokernak\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jane Kokernak\"},\"description\":\"Jane Kokernak teaches in Northeastern University\u2019s College of Computer and Information Science as communications specialist, working with graduate students and faculty on writing and speaking to different audiences. She lives with her family and dog near Boston. In 1992, as an adult, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes; in 2003, she switched from multiple daily injections to an insulin pump and has stayed with it. A contributing writer to ASweetLife since 2010, she is especially interested in how having a chronic illness affects self identity and perceptions of health.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?author=14\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art","description":"Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art (Hub City Press, 2015), a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jane Kokernak","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810","name":"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg","datePublished":"2015-05-13T10:00:50+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-11T14:59:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8"},"description":"Sentimentality is missing in Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art (Hub City Press, 2015), a collection of eight stories set in the Alabama Black Belt, yet pathos is in great supply. Barton assembles unlikely characters who play out the hidden logic in their connections: why an old man protects the young girl who is stealing from him, or why an itinerant photographer apprentices a deaf woman to guide him around the town he is documenting.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/pasture-art-home-1.jpg","width":600,"height":400,"caption":"pasture art 1"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=37810#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"It\u2019s Hard to Break the Ties that Bind: Marlin Barton\u2019s Pasture Art"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/","name":"ASweetLife","description":"The Diabetes Magazine","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8","name":"Jane Kokernak","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jane Kokernak"},"description":"Jane Kokernak teaches in Northeastern University\u2019s College of Computer and Information Science as communications specialist, working with graduate students and faculty on writing and speaking to different audiences. She lives with her family and dog near Boston. In 1992, as an adult, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes; in 2003, she switched from multiple daily injections to an insulin pump and has stayed with it. A contributing writer to ASweetLife since 2010, she is especially interested in how having a chronic illness affects self identity and perceptions of health.","url":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?author=14"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37810"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}